In the post-nuclear war era there appears to be no fashion designers anywhere, not that it would do any good. In the Wastelands people put on whatever renders the most protection. But don’t think about Kevlar only; there’s also radiation poisoning that you need protection from. With lots of options to choose from in the clothing department, I should probably mention the wide variety of weaponry, items and ammunition also available in Fallout 3.

Small guns, big guns, melee, unarmed and explosives are the categories available when dealing with weaponry in Fallout 3. Each category is impressively loaded with an abundance of weapons available for that particular category. For example, small guns include most conventional projectile weapons such as pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, rifles (including automatic and even sniper), dart guns, railspike guns and even the BB gun. If that list does not put a smile on your face, maybe the big guns will. Flame throwers, mini-guns, gatling lasers, and a variety of missile and rocket launchers should help you keep the peace, because once everyone is dead there is no one left to start any trouble.

Now that I’ve covered the weapons and the armor I should probably move to the controls section of the review. Fallout 3, even though it is an RPG, it actually plays like a 1st or 3rd person shooter (depending on your visual preference). Movement is done by the traditional W, A, S, D keys with the mouse being used to aim and to shoot. As most other PC games, Fallout 3 has customizable controls, so if the default buttons are not up to par, you can always change them to your liking. Just as in most other shooters, head-shouts hurt a lot so try aiming for the head whenever possible. The gameplay is smooth, and in over 35+ hours of gameplay the game crashed on me only once, but I should probably mention that when it crashed I was Alt-Tabbing between the game and this review; there is a good chance that the game would not have crashed if I would have just left it alone. About the only disappointing factor is the lack of a lean left/right key. The lean option is for the most part standard in today’s shooters, and I think that for the type of game that Fallout 3 is, the lean key would have been a welcome addition to an already great game.

The last paragraph in the gameplay and controls section I will dedicate to the game’s character creation and leveling. Since I haven’t played the previous Fallouts I can’t comment on how the leveling and character design has changed, but I can make this comment: Fallout 3 is everything that Oblivion was not. Fallout 3 uses an XP system similar to most other RPG: you get exp for kills, some completed quests and by performing certain actions. One of the actions that can earn you exp is by disarming mines or unlocking any locked lock. The true character creation takes place by the perks that you chose when you level. For example the Iron Fist perk can be taken a total of 3 times and each time this perk is selected the unarmed skill goes up by 5 points; for a brawler, Iron Fist is the ideal perk to take, but it would be a waste to take if your character only uses sniper rifles. The perks offer a unique way to build characters especially combined with the desired S.P.E.C.I.A.L. combination (S.P.E.C.I.A.L is the acronym for your seven primary statistics: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. So far, in Fallout 3, I have 3 characters, and while they are all looking for their father, none of them look the same, and even more impressively, they are all very unique in their abilities.