Fallout 3 may look and even act like a shooter game at times but it isn't. The game's RPG aspects are many, from leveling up and boosting your many different attributed (strength, endurance and so on) to increasing your skills and gaining extra perks (with such names as Black Widow. Mister Sandman and Cannibal). Even the use of items can decay over time and can be repaired (here's a quick clue; try to go through all the desks that you can in the Vault before you leave, you might find some useful stuff you can put in your inventory later).

Fallout 3 employs both a real time combat system and a semi-turn based system called V.A.T.S. Some might find that the real time system is best for them while other might get a little frustrated by it (it still uses the game's stats system so it's not a pure shooter in that regard). The nice thing about V.A.T.S. is that it allows you to target specific body points on your selected enemy so you might can disable a person without shooting his or her (or its) head off (although shooting heads off is still a lot of fun to do in the game). You're limited to how many time you can use V.A.T.S at one time because of your Action Points level so you will have to go into real time combat sometimes.

The result of this mix of a hard core RPG with some shooter elements is a game that, for the most part, sucks you into the Fallout 3 world. Again, much like Oblivion, there are so many things to do and accomplish that just playing through the single player storyline straight through is something of a disservice. And let's not forget that Bethesda Softworks plans to update the PC version of the game (along with the Xbox 360 port) with downloadable content after its release (although we are betting we will have to pay for the extra content). The PC game also supports Games for Windows Live which is now completely free. That means you can get achievement scores and (if you have an Xbox 360 gamer tag) you can add them to your Gamerscore.

Visually the game is quite solid, thanks in part to the terrific art and environment design of the game's development team. The graphics are not up to Crysis' high specifications but there's lots of character detail, some nice visual effects and some great head blowing visuals (yes we like them).

The biggest issue we have with Fallout 3 is that there doesn't seem to be a massive improvement in terms of Bethesda Softworks previous games. Oblivion was a great game but Fallout 3 almost seems at times to be a total conversion of Oblivion. The AI of the many NPCs in the game seems to react in the same way as those in Oblivion. Many of the quests have a familiar feel. Even the game's introduction, as we mentioned before, has a lot of similarities. This is a quibble, however. Most game developers would be very happy about a game as well designed as Fallout 3 turned out to be.

Long time Fallout fans are most likely debating like mad over whether Fallout 3 is a true continuation to their beloved game series. For everybody else, Fallout 3 is an excellent open world game play experience and we can't wait to see what the development team has in store for the future for this title. Our Pip-Boy 3000 is ready.