An FPS without emphasis on combat is a bit, wasteful wouldn't you say? Ok it's not a 'combat game' but combat has still been a prominent aspect of the Fallout series with many machanics devoted to it's singular function (not including Tactics as that was pretty much bred for combat ) I would have thought that the FPS spin on Fallout combined with it's history of being quite an original series would bring something fresh to the table from both sides of the RPG/FPS fronts. I don't think VATS plays enough of a part, and it's function is a one-trick pony at best.

As for overall difficulty, I find it hard to make FO3 challenging. It has 5(?) difficulty settings. Normal is too easy, and very hard is too normal, from my experience at least. I've considered playing FO3 on very easy just to see how much easier it can actually get I find the originals provide somewhat of a challenge on normal settings. FO2 is definitely more difficult when you change the combat setting to rough, I've experienced countless misses at 95% hit ratio, and at least a few critical misses (at luck 9) compared to zero on normal. I would guess it also gives critters more HP, or your damage is stunted whilst theirs is amplified, but beyond simple value changes the mechanics themselves are addressed, it's a very noticable difference once you make the change. And beyond that you can make the non-combat aspects of the game more difficult because it has a separate slider catered to that aspect. I also think Tactics is challenging enough in it's own right, I'm very keen to play again on very hard in my next playthrough, and I expect I'll be pulling my hair out based on how hard I'm finding it already on hard setting, ironically

I've personally found Fallout in general to be a pretty combat-intensive game. There's plenty of "down" time in all of them, with a focus on interacting with NPCs and options to complete an objective without violence.

Still, in my experience in Fallout 3 I saw a pretty common pattern of getting a quest, fighting a number of encounters on my way there, clearing out the area of hostiles, and then completing the objective. Sure, combat's not the focus of the game - but it also figures quite prominently in just about any playthrough of the game, regardless of your character build. I hear that it's possible to get through the game without any violence at all, but I'm not sure how viable that is without a lot of running away (and there's some quests where I don't even see how it's possible - not to so it isn't, just it seems like it would be an inordinate amount of work to get through in a non-violent manner.)

On an entire different note: I am really glad nobody in this thread has yet misspelled 'nuclear' as 'nucular'.

I disagree, in F2 i actually prayed for my enemies to land crits on me on several occasions(SAD anybody? 1 crit kills your character <.<).
In F1 i never had Enclaveds God armore, the choice is Tesla vs Improved Power Armore. Tesla granted the protection needed against Laser and Plasma, IPA in the other hand was better in every other aspect(but it was darn heavy too).
Master and Horrigan also, they was though as heck.

Fallout 1's combat was very difficult if you were unprepared, such as when I thought I could do the caravan run from The Hub to Junktown only to realize that the 10mm pistol was no match for the mantises as they mauled the NPCs. How was I supposed to know? I spent this whole time stabbing rats with the combat knife and blowing mole rats' brains out with the pistol. I had no idea! FORGIVE MEEEEE!

Fallout 2's combat was also difficult, but in more of a "ridiculous and extremely convoluted circumstances" way. I hated the combat encounters in Fallout 2: "You encounter fighting . Oh, and even though you supposedly "encountered" them fighting one another, you're somehow in the middle of the crossfire and Vic just decapitated you bya ccident. Oh my!"

:facepalm:

Like I said before, they're all easy at some point. These aren't Japanese games were talking about.

You should have invested more in Perception, which determines how close to the enemies you end up in random encounters.

Yeah, and that's what I like best about the originals. Your stats and skills are much more significant, while in FO3, things like perks are more of a bonus instead of effective gameplay tools.

FP point of view does not equal FPS.

Vic and the rest of them was the most difficult aspect of combat in fO2. Talk about crappy AI...

You can give a Sulik an SMG but you can't make him aim.

True. FPS literally means "First Person Shooter", but also tends to describe games that only expect you to shoot things (Quake even required you to shoot doors to activate them). A lot of games are cool and simple but are not First person.... take the recent IronMan game. It is a typical rail shooter in TPP with some rather harsh (and silly) limitations on where he can move, and what he can interact with.

(In my mind, FPS also means "Simple"; IE like Quake 3 and Doom 3 or Quake 1 and Doom 1 ~There's little difference but the artwork).

Off the top, Arx Fatalis is the game that comes to mind that is FPP, and RPG, and an Xbox game as well as PC; and is not a typical rail "shooter/stabber". ~Its actually pretty awesome on the PC (but they did cripple the spellcasting for the Xbox) .

Nowadays the kind of FPS you describe is considered 'old-school' FPS. Painkiller is the only modern example of such a game. There's really more to Half Life 2, F.E.A.R. & Crysis than just shooting.

I have F.E.A.R. [collectors ed.] and got tired of it within the first half an hour. My earlier example was exaggerated slightly to sink the point but in my experience, modern series' like Doom3, Quake4, FEAR, HALO, FARCRY, Oblivion, Fallout3 ~Take your pick, they are no different at the core, even though a few have branching paths. I actually like shooters at the core, but the "new school?" FPS games needlessly over complicate the gameplay. Given the choice, on a top of the line gamer's PC, I'd play Blood instead of F.E.A.R. [both made by Monolith], I'd play GLQuake & Doom2 over Doom3 & Quake4; I own all of these example games, I might play the older ones all night long, but the recent gen. games seem to bore the hell out of me. I quit Quake4 in under an hour, and haven't played it since. It is by no means nostalgia, its partly that the old versions are casual games that can be started and quit, picked up and put down ~and the new games are overly involved for such a simple task. The only reason to play a shooter is to run around shooting stuff. Anything more complicated becomes an RPG by proxy and [IMO] usually fails miserably at it.

Gizmo, you're a smart guy, but when you write obvious logical failures like that, I stop listening. Oblivion and Fallout 3 are NOT FPS, and any characterizations as such invalidate following arguments...in my mind.

I'm open if you want to explain why not. (and Logically "speaking" why is that a failure?)

*I did not originally intend to add Oblivion of Fallout 3 BTW, but I was typing a list of FPS games and at the end, they came to mind.

Edit: In my mind, the recent RPG's of the day don't seem to distance themselves that much from the awful
"I can roleplay a 'Space Marine' in Doom" argument.

Combat-wise, why is F3 not a First (or third) Person Shooter, much like Doom3 Quake 4 and Gears of War?
Is it because its hampered down by the optional VATS system?
Ist it because the stats affect the weapon skill? (So it is in http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/noonelivesforever2asihw/index.html, is that an RPG?)

The only truely great FPS, that didn't become a "Doom" style game was Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines. Now if Fallout 3, had been done along the lines of VTM:B I promise you that, you would not have the controversy and hatred of Fallout 3 that you do now.

Great game :tops:

~Ever play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mntnjaw88tE&feature=related?

To Gizmo's point about 'FPS' equating to 'simple', this is probably the same distinction I have made, albeit a subconcious one.

I have been a long time fan of Nintendo's Metroid franchise, it was originally a 2D sidescroller with emphasis on exploration. Retro studios then evolved it into a living breathing 3D environment with their 'Metroid Prime' trilogy, and in my opinion they did it perfectly. But that's besides the point.

The Primes are essentially FPS, but they're alot more than that even at the core, they're not just about blasting aliens (Metroid Prime/Halo comparisons are the most popular), they still provide that heavy exploration value that previous Metroid games excelled in, and though the many puzzles in the games are solved with the use of your gun (albeit more than simple pointing and shooting), and in pure FPS style all of the doors are shot activated, these games were still not 'simple' or 'mindless' enough to be considered FPS, so they were dubbed First Person Adventures. And it delivered the message quite efficiently.

There was also a Metroid Prime spinoff on the DS called Metroid Prime: Hunters, which emphasised online deathmatch, and broke away from the heavy single player immersion of the whole Metroid franchise. This game is more commonly refered to as FPS, though its story has a few exploration elements, the game is pretty much just a catalyst to flaunt the DS's online capabilities for a fast-paced, real-time shooter. Whether people do it consciously or not, many references to FPS are made, I feel, with a pre-concieved notion of being 'simple' to some degree.

Thank you Gizmo, for rationalising this in my mind


I've played a demo years ago, loved it Always wanted to buy it, never got around to it. Story of my life when it comes to games

I did not get a chance to play through to the end back then, and have since lost the disc.
(I did not make it out of the middle ages )
If I found it again, I'd buy it.

They kind of are FPS, though - aren't they? At least in Fallout 3 I've found shooting things to be a pretty common element (and combat was just as common in the original Fallouts, as well.) If I shoot things from a first-person perspective - that, in my mind, makes it at least partially FPS. (For myself, I play in third-person, so I guess that makes my combat portion of the game a Third-Person Shooter.)

Even though - all these terms are just supposed to be used as descriptors. Trying to apply value judgements sort of negates the entire purpose of them. Trying to use them as anything other than describing what sort of game you are playing is where we run into problems. RPGs have RPG elements, and Shooters have shooter elements. If I'm trying to describe Fallout 3, I'd say it's a real-time RPG that has distinct Shooter elements incorporated. None of those terms make it objectively... anything other than a game that has those elements.

Where I find we run into problems around here is when we try and assign values to these terms beyond their descriptive ability - that's not what those terms exist for. A 2D Sidescroller could be used to describe any range of games, from a hectic shooter like Contra, to more thoughtful games like Flashback, Metroid, or Prince of Persia; to any number of shovelware movie-adaptations that came out in the NES/SNES hey-days. In no way could anyone say "a 'true' sidescrollers is blah blah blah" any more than one can logically say "FPSs are X," or "RPGs have to have such and such." Beyond those attributes that are intrinsic to that style of gameplay - an FPS has to be a game where you shoot things from a first-person perspective; whatever else it does is beyond the limits of that descriptive.

We can, of course, get subjective with these terms: "I only like RPGs that have these elements in common," or "I don't like FPSs." Fallout 3 is a TPP/FPP RPG with Shooter elements. It just is, that's how the game plays. Applying a value judgement to that description beyond subjective feelings about any part of that description is where we run into problems.

Redemption was terrible in my opinion, second rate story telling combined with some fairly broken gameplay mechanics. Bloodlines was a much better game, I felt.

Oh, it's a first person game and you shoot things. That makes it an FPS, and if it's an FPS it aint no RPG. How dare BEth ruin the franchise!

It's kind of like calling FO2 a tactical combat game. Look at FO2 and FOT. Which is the RPG? Both have similar combat, and both have elements of RPGs. The answer is simple. FO2 main feature is roleplay, and FOT main feature is combat.

Bah.

First person shooters are designed for combat. Combat is the major feature. Anything else is bolted on to that combat framework. Take Stalker, for example...I use it as an example because it's the only FPS I have played since Half Life. Stalker, even though there are some stats involved, some freedom of movement as well, is all about COMBAT. Fallout, and Oblivion are designed for roleplay. Combat is secondary.

How many threads have we seen about the shallow combat in FO? Even you and Gizmo there have lamented lack of combat depth and combat mechanics in these games....lack of types of damage in armor, for example.

Now, someone can play Fallout as an FPS...we have many posters here who do exactly that, but FO3 is first and foremost an RPG, and I think it's a pretty cool design which allows many types of players to at least enjoy some aspects of the game.

That's why calling Fallout 3 an FPS is ridiculous.

There is such an animal as Bad Design Choice. Just because it was intentional, doesn't make something less retarded.



I think if I broke down how much combat-to-dialog/world interaction/quests/stats there is present to Fallout 3, it wouldn't be too far off being a primary focus of the game. ("Because blowing people apart is fun lolz" -gamesas). Whilst it may not be an FPS, it IS a combat orientated game. In first person. With guns. Just because you can pretend to be a furry loving toss-bag who must sleep 8 hours every day, doesn't make the game any less of a combat-focused game. Hell, you can do that in STALKER too! Eat a meal every x-amount of hours, pretend to sleep by going afk during night fall! *deep RPG*

You can go a long way in this game by totally avoiding combat. People post that the only kill you really have to make is the radroach in the vault. I do a lot of stealthing out in the wastes with my character. I could, if I wanted, avoid nearly all combat and still enjoy myself. Try that in Stalker.

I have a character around level 10 who wears wasteland trader clothing...no armor, and carries around a hunting rifle and an SMG. She has a hand full of stimpacks and a mess of mirelurk meat. She avoids all combat unless she needs supplies and even then is very careful. She sneaks, uses stealthboys, and has nearly completed Moira's quests. So far she has died one time when she was jumped by a Yao Gai. You couldn't do something like this in an FPS...avoid combat and wear no armor. Take caomabt out of Stalker, and there is nothing left. Take combat out of Fallout and you still have the RP.