Fallout 3

I'll trade you a kidney for 10 rounds of ammo!

Fallout 3 is a bullet famine!  I seem to have spent half my time skulking around trying to find a lone enemy to kill with the baseball bat so that I can steal a few measly rounds to take out the next one.



A modern nuclear warhead would cause everthing in this picture to evaporate.

The game started a bit slowly.  The growing-up parts of the game didn't do much for me.  That's leaving aside the fact that at one stage the game got stuck and I had to go back to my last save and do things differently.  (I am surprised that problems like this have not been patched considering the age and popularity of the game).

When I eventually got out of the Vault I was unused to the huge amount of freedom that this game gave me (after several days of the very directed journey of Alice).  I wandered off in completely the wrong direction and have not yet reached the town where I'm supposed to investigate the whereabouts of my missing dad, despite discovering several locations and being burned and shot to death by numerous types of enemy.

I still feel as if I am missing out on something in the game.  I have not used any skills to make anything.  At one point I discovered a workbench but was told I need to improve some skill or other to I think it was 100 in order to use it.  My score for that skill was about 17 at the time.

Whenever I find a lock to pick or when I wish to repair an item I am told that I need some astronomical score to do that.  I have to say though that I do like the mechanic for picking locks (on the few occasions I've been allowed to try it).  Instead of having to perform some mini game which is not really anything to do with lock picking an image of an actual lock with a "bobby-pin" and screw driver inserted into it appears on the screen.  You first use the left stick to turn the pin then, when it seems to be in the proper position, hold it there and turn the screwdriver with the right stick.  How do you know when the pin is in the right place?  Well it really seems to be a combination of listening to the sound it makes and just using a bit of intuition.  If you turn the screwdriver at the wrong time you can break the pin if you don't relent fast enough.

I reached the wharf by the river where an old woman offered to trade with me.  Great! I thought I'll be able to buy some ammo!  What did she have on offer?  A knife.  I sold her a load of the useless things I had collected thinking at the time that they might be useful, but I don't know why as I have nowhere to go to spend my money.  By which I mean bottle caps, obviously.

I enjoy exploring the world of Fallout 3 and will spend a lot more time doing it but the next thing I'm going to do is pursue the story as I guess character progression and better skills lie in that direction.