A fantastic bridge between the Bethesda play-style and the Fallout universe. Unfortunately, it is only a bridge...
Well all you'd need to better envision that world is a copy of Fallout 3. This game beautifully personifies the fallout universe, with every visual aspect leaving you wondering if it could be real. It's beauty far surpased the world of Oblivion, and showed us just what Bethesda can do.
The controls feel natural and flow well, something I have yet to experience in a Bethesda game. Face buttons are assigned to a much more comfortable "western" gaming style, and the sensitivity was just right from the get-go for me.
I absolutely love the interface of Fallout, detailing the pip-boy quite a bit more and using it regularly was a nice touch. Finding my way around the menus was easy enough, though Oblivion's awkward sleep mechanic still exists. A throwback to Fallout's rest system would have been nicer but is nothing worth being upset about. V.A.T.S. works great, when you can get it to target properly, as you occasionally have to move the analog stick up to target their right arm from their left arm instead of simply flicking it to the right.
So where does this game truly fail? It is simply not Fallout. The mutants are back to being simple minded ogre-esque monstrosities that kill everything in sight. There is the presence of the Behemoths which, despite providing a decent challenge, creates such amazing questions as "which twenty-five foot tall human did they dip in the FEV?" No ammount of evolutionary explanations could account for them, and it saddens me to break from the fun 'sci-fi' realism of the original Fallout's.
Speaking of breaking the 'sci-fi' realism, in the Fallout games every city had a farm and a large amount of Brahmin (the two-headed mutant cows they use for food). That brings a disturbing question to mind, is everyone in Fallout 3 a cannibal? I know there are a few admitted cannibals in the game but that is a bit absurd.
The raider's have no organization anymore, which is a shame as they always had some major base of operations and provided ample challenge in the game. They have become more of a slight annoyance in Fallout 3, as you curse at the fact that you must repair your beloved items over the supposedly viscious loud mouth bandits you just murdered like helpless children.
Oh, that reminds me, the 'repairing' system in the game...my least favorite feature. The fact that they have yet to patch some of the wonderful named and unique items to be repairable with lesser items is absurd. I don't much like the idea of being given this amazing weapon and then have someone look to me and say 'if you use this more than fifty times you can never use it again.' Some reward Bethesda...some reward.
Overall the game looks pretty and it does play well, but the lack of simple features and the awkard presence of out of place things truly breaks the flow of an otherwise amazing game. Perhaps calling it Post Apocalyptic Wasteland would be better than branding this as the future of Fallout.