Fallout 3 was also made by Bethesda, but with this game, they did a great job of improving the things I hated about Oblivion. So, let's go through those really quickly:
- Leveling up: God that was a pain in my ass in Oblivion. It worked thusly: At the beginning of the game, you pick X number of skills (x was equal to 5 or something like that. I can't recall). These skills became your primary skills. Anyway, you leveled up those skills by using them. When Y number of those skills had leveled up (Y=10 I think, and that could be 10 skills in any combination), your character gained a level. This was sometimes a long and tedious process, especially when you either don't pick primary skills that are easy to level up, or your easy-to-level primary skills have maxed out and you're left with the hard-to-level skills. Fallout 3 fixes this issue by going to the more traditional kill things and complete quests to earn experience model.
- Story: The story of Oblivion was boring, plain and simple. Not much happened, and even less of that was exciting. Fallout 3 has an engrossing storyline, because most of it is based on your character choices and your relationship with your father. Character-driven story is where it's at.
- Character diversity: In Oblivion, you gain a ton of levels. Each level gives you points to distribute into any of your skills. Gain enough levels and suddenly you're good at everything. Fallout 3 has the level cap. Your character can reach level 20, then you gain no more levels. This design decision has come under a lot of fire since the game's release, but I believe it was the correct decision. Because you can only gain 20 levels, you can only dump your skill points into so many skills (usually 3-4 main skills). This makes your character feel different from any other characters you may create, because the character is good at one general thing, and pretty much blows at everything else. That means if you make a sneaky guy who owns with pistols, he will feel different (in terms of how you approach each objective in the game) than if you created uber-chick who wanders the Wasteland wearing Power Armor and wielding a sledgehammer. This diversity adds a certain (large) amount of replayability, because you (or I at least) want to go back through the game and try a different type of character.
- The ending: No spoilers here, but I will tell you that the end of Fallout 3, particularly the last couple hours of the main story (starting with the first twist) and culminating with a decision that will likely leave you reeling, Fallout has one of the better endings I've played through this year. It was definitely satisfying. Unlike Oblivion's ending.
- Music: Ah, the music in Oblivion drove me nuts. Like most of the rest of the game, I found it boring. Because it lacked anything attention-grabbing, it didn't really feel like a score so much as ambient droning. Leave the droning to the bugs, and give me some music! Fallout 3, again, fixed that issue. The standard, wander around the map background music was soft, mostly beatless, bordering on droning in fact, but every so often it would take a hauntingly beautiful, attention-grabbing turn as if to say "Hey, I'm still here. Listen." It was refreshing. The battle music in the game is top notch, and I'd easily drop some money to buy the album just to hear the battle tunes. Some of the music, particularly in the subway systems, reminds me of Matt Uleman's Diablo 2 score, and so there was a bit of nostalgia mixed in with the experience as well.
Score: 9.0/10.0
Moving right along, Gears of War, in my opinion, didn't deserve the hype or recognition it recieved. It's beautiful, yes, but none of the rest of the game lived up to my expectations. The characters were about as deep as the puddle of water on my deck. The story was there sometimes and completely absent others. The combat system, particularly the cover mechanic, didn't jive with me - it was just missing that fun factor. Were I to have scored it on this blog, I would have given it a 2.0/10.0, only because it looked nice.
Suffice it to say I was skeptical of the second game.
I had the chance to sit down and play through the game this weekend (no, it's not very long). I was impressed, but only relative to the first game. The story is deeper, more like the slightly larger puddle of water under my deck. The characters are still flimsy, and the dialog is often stilted and, well, janky. The combat system remains almost completely untouched, though they fixed the cover mechanic a bit. I can see why they didn't do anything about that, though, because I was in the definite minority with my "I don't like this" comments.
Aside from these shortcomings, there were a couple of moments that I really felt the game would come together and be something truly spectacular, but it just never happened. And that is the biggest shortcoming of all.
What really did stand out in the experience, though, and I mean really stood out, was the score. There were times that the music was so entirely engrossing that I forgot I was playing the game and ended up as a smear of blood on the wall. Whoops! But seriously, the score is amazing. All I could think about after playing through that game was "When can I buy the score?" Must. Listen. Again.
After a small amount of digging, I discovered that the score was composed by Steve Jablonsky. The astute reader may notice that he is the same guy that composed the Transformers score that I am so madly in love with. That was another experience where I was more enthralled with the music than I was the medium it was scoring (and I love the Transformers movie). Transformers is still one of the most played soundtracks in my collection, and I have no doubt that Gears of War 2 will soon be joining it. Jablonsky writes music that is captivating (it's really hard to describe, to put into words just how good it is), and it fits with what is happening onscreen so well it's nigh indescribable. For me, the score to GoW2 is the game. It's the only part of that experience that I will take with me beyond this review.
So:
Score (game): 3.0/10.0
Score (score): 10.0/10.0
Yes, I can do that. :)
I managed to pick up Dead Space for $30 on Amazon's Black Friday sale (GO AMAZON!), so I'll be spending some quality time with that game tomorrow. I'm very interested to see what EA has done with its first entry into the survival/horror genre as I have seen mixed reviews from various outlets. I'm excited to sit down and play and see if it can scare me. ... I doubt that it will, but it should hopefully be an intense experience nonetheless. Also, I've got some friends who want to hook it up with Left 4 Dead, so I'm excited about that game as well. That may be a bit farther down the road, though, seeing as my budget is tight with Christmas expenses.
I also recently picked up the Too Human soundtrack off iTunes. God help me, that game was atrocious, but the soundtrack was good enough to catch my attention. I haven't had time to give it the listen it deserves, but I plan on doing that shortly. Also up on the "I want it" block is the score from Infinite Undiscovery... again, bad game as I discussed here, but damn fine soundtrack.
Also of note, I hate World of Warcraft the games, but damn do I love the soundtracks. Blizzard has a great tendency to make awesome music. The new Diablo III Overture is simply jaw-dropping.
Stay tuned, more to come.
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