So. I'm here to confess a secret. This is just between you and me, mind, so don't go spreading it around, okay? The secret is…

The secret is the fact that I kinda maybe sorta… have always liked the gym.

There, I said it.

It comes, I think, from high school PE. I loathed PE with a passion; we spent 90% of the time playing excruciating team sports which were nothing but an exercise (hah!) in humiliation and an effective way of turning less athletic persons like myself off the idea of physical activity for life. The other time was split between gymnastics (whoever thought that was a good idea needs to be expelled from the education system), barn dancing lessons (okay, if a bit "WTF?"), walking/running around the block (fun) and occasionally – if we were very, very lucky – walking down to the local gym. It only happened a handful of times; we'd get there, do about half an hour of BoxFit, then another half an hour of just mucking about on the equipment. I used to wonder why we didn't get to do that every class; it was self-directed, non-competitive, and no-one got "left behind". You could walk on a treadmill next to your friend who was running and it wasn't a big deal.

Alas, we were lucky if we got one week of gym visits a year. The trials of an under-funded public school, and all that.

Thing is, despite liking the idea intellectually, I've never actually been a member of a gym. We live within walking distance of one,¹ and recently, as part of ~Mat [h]'s health-kick, he joined up. Meanwhile, my parents started going to a different gym in Woden – one that recognises the members of the local gym on weekends and public holidays – and work changed its "healthy living" rebate.

So, the other week, I caved in and joined the local. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week saw me on a rotation of bike, weights, rowing machine and – when I was feeling adventurous – cross-trainer. If I can do five minutes on the latter it's a Good Day.²

One week down. I've got a three month membership, and if I recall correctly it takes something like that length of time to properly change a behaviour or adopt a new routine. So we'll see.

At randomredux's urging, I went out an "obtained" Fallout 3 on Friday night. I was always a big fan of 1 and 2 (especially 2, which as far as I know was about the first mainstream game containing same-sex marriage), and I tend to like Bethesda's stuff as a general rule, but I was avoiding it since Lich King is coming out so soon. But randomredux convinced me (I wasn't a hard sell), so…

Gameplay wise, F3 "feels" like Oblivion, in that the concepts around the HUD, menus and dialogue are similar. Visually it looks more… well, Silent Hill than anything. The world seems a little smaller than Oblivion, which I think in this case is a plus; Oblivion's open world I thought was a little too big, especially since I wasn't really keen on the mythos of the world and ended up getting bored with dungeon after dungeon after cave after dungeon.

In the Wasterland, at least, F3 mostly manages to avoid this by having most of its locations above ground. On the other hand, I have been finding it a bit light on side-quests; there are a lot of cool, abandoned locations but they seem to be almost exclusively populated by Raiders or (in DC itself) Super Mutants. I was especially disappointed when I decided to single-handedly take back the Capitol to find nothing really there. I mean, shit, it's the Capitol! I'm trying to re-take it! I killed every living thing in there and nada; no quest, no "good work for restoring the seat of our government", nothing. Same with clearing out the Mall.

This is how I normally play these games, see; I don't follow the plot, I set out on my own and see what I can get done. And I resent it when the plot disallows me my freedom. I'm not to the point with F3 that I'm ready to give up, but… but I get the feeling the game is forcing me into its storyline (which is… okay, I guess; better than Oblivion's, at any rate) rather than letting me get out and save the world on my own.

But more than that, I think my main complaint with F3 is that it's trying too hard to be twitchy. The V.A.T.S. is an interesting way of trying to make the game – which, let's face it, is an RPG – actually accessible to RPG players while still retaining its otherwise FPS-esque combat system. I dislike the idea of trying to put twitch into RPGs in general, so I'm a little lukewarm with the implimentation but I suppose I'm used to it coming off the back of Bethesda's other stuff. And, well, I cheat through these games something chronic, so it's kind of a moot point. Still, I feel there's a lot of F3 that's going to frustrate the "traditional", non-cheating RPG player.

The two things I really don't like in the are the lock-picking and computer hacking minigames. I didn't like this system when it cropped up in Oblivion, either, but at least there it was a bit easier to learn how and when to push up the tumblers. F3's seems a lot more like blind motherfucking luck (as there's no real visual feedback), same with the hacking puzzle. As far as I can tell, your actual Skill rating only affects what difficulty of lock you can attempt; it's still up to you, the player, to actually do the picking.

Here's a tip, Bethesda: If I have 100 in my Lockpicking skill, I don't want to be fucking about with broken bobby pins. I'm the fucking lock master, for godssakes! Either have a skill-based system or don't, this hybrid "ZOMG JUST LIKE REAL [insert-action-here]!" shit is getting on my nerves.

So. Ultimately I think I'd rate F3 somewhere above Oblivion and below Morrowind. It's been about a zillion years since I've played the prequels, so I'm not going to give it a rating versus those, especially since the gameplay is so radically different. But I like the world, even while I wish the story was a bit more expansive than just the main plot (though the obligatory not-evil evil-race guy, Fawkes, upped my squee factor exponentially). Bonus points: Ron Perlman, Liam Neeson and Malcolm McDowell. Cons: From what I gather, the game isn't open-ended (that is, once it's over, it's over), which is kinda a bummer. The whole "Chinese invasion" thing also feels a bit… awkward nowadays, considering, so I'm just going to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt and assume they inherited it from previous canon.

Still probably the best RPG I've played in, well, a hell of a long time.

1. Ironically, the same place we used to occasionally visit in high school, albiet refurbished with new ownership, a new name and a new entry door. ^
2. For those of you who haven't seen them, they essentially simulate no-impact running; think of what you might imagine running on the moon is like, and that's close. Except a hell of a lot harder than you'd expect. ^

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.