Mass Effect, Crysis, or Fallout 3?

They're all good, and all play to different strengths. Fallout if you like open world RPG-ing, Crysis if you want a more frenetic FPS showcase, or Mass Effect if you like a great implementation of a SF setting. I like all three, but if I had to pick, I'd go Fallout. Fallout and Mass Effect if you can choose two.

I had a tonne of fun with Mass Effect but I'm dying to get my hands on a copy of Fallout.

Maybe play Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion first? You should be able to get it cheap and it's from the same people that did Fallout. It's a pretty amazing game in itself and has more depth than both ME and F3.

Out of those three I'd definitely say Mass Effect. In fact I'd say Mass Effect over most games.

Both Mass Effect and Fallout 3 suffer from unbalanced gameplay and items late in the game. At least for me they were ridiculously easy after half the game was done, as if I had installed a one-head-shotting script together with infinite ammo.
The item collecting mechanics/ingame economy is pretty much broken too.

I'd say Crysis first, because of all the free-roaming and awe-inspiring set pieces. If you play on "Delta Force" difficulty it really is something else. There is no crosshair and the AI is really clever. Couple that with the dense jungles, mountains, vehicles etc... and it makes for fantastic Stealth-Rambo-MacGyver gameplay.
Mass Effect second if you are a Sci-fi buff and Fallout 3 last. It's a very nice game, it just suffers from the inbalance.

The correct answer is all three. Sell some blood.

I had a similar debate a couple weeks ago and sold a few old games and got both Fallout 3 and Mass Effect used. I like Fallout a lot more.

The only real downside to Mass Effect is the awful inventory system. As Blueharvester mentions, its also allows you so much freedom to do things in your own order that keeping mission difficulty closely fit to your current strength is pretty much impossible. I thought any unevenness that resulted was worth it for the open-endedness.

I haven't played the others, but Mass Effect is generally awesome.

What the other folks are saying about Mass Effect and Fallout is true, though I'm personally a fan of breaking the holy shit out of the endgame. Screw challenge, I want my massively overpowered soldier!

Fallout 3 is basically post-apocalyptic Oblivion. (Not entirely, of course, but close enough.) If you found Oblivion addicting you'll burn another 100 hours in Fallout as well.

And for what it's worth, Mass Effect builds to a truly kick-ass ending. The last couple of hours are breathlessly paced.

Does Fallout 3 have Oblivion's level-scaling thing, so that no matter where you go the difficulty scales to your character? Cause I wasn't too much a fan of that.

Oblivion didn't do that, but no Fallout doesn't seem to scale enemies too you.

I may have gotten a title mixed up, but that's good to hear about Fallout 3 (I'm on the verge of pulling that trigger, too). I appreciate getting decimated for taking a wrong turn, then coming back to kick something's ass later on.

The Oblivion I played (PC) definitely has the scaling problem. It's a near game-breaking flaw. Fallout doesn't.

Basically what they did in Fallout 3 was set min/max levels for enemies to scale to. Basically that means that at some point as you level, the enemies will max out on their levels and they'll start getting 'easier' as you get above their best level. Being capped at level 20 originally, some enemies had maxes that were close to that but others were capped much lower so that you could swat or ignore them later in the game.

I'm not exactly sure how the expanded level caps of the DLC factor in though.

Either they patched it or we have different definitions of game breaking. In my game they introduced newer enemy types as you advanced in level, but still kept older/weaker versions of the enemies around too. So when you got to level 12 you'd meet Brown Bears, but you'd also still have wolves and crabs and shit running around.

Yeah, but the human enemy characters (at least) got progessively better equipment as you leveled, thus you'd start stumbling across thug camps with everyone wearing glass armor.

Fallout 3. I hate the combat in Oblivion, but Fallout 3's VATS is a massive improvement. I don't get the appeal of Crysis, at all.

We have different definitions of game breaking.

When people complain about "level scaling" they are complaining about Oblivion. You could completely hose your character--or at least make the game inordinately difficult-- by levelling up too quickly.

The appeal of Crysis?
Well if you have a good PC (Core2Duo+GTX2XX) the immersion in the jungles and settings is breathtaking. There is enough exploration and WOW! moments in there to make FALLOUT jealous.
I didn't like the repetitious Fallout 3 locations. All the subways and interiors of houses looked the same.
Combat in CRYSIS is tons better than both Mass Effect and Fallout 3.
In FALLOUT 3 you either get detected from miles away or later in the game you can shoot someone's head of, without his card playing buddy noticing.
All the combat mechanics are ultra-basic. And the VATS system is a joke. Headshotting is always the best choice.
When FALLOUT3 tried to be a shooter (Anchorage DLC) it failed miserably.
In CRYSIS there are endless possibilities how to engage an enemy encampment.
Stay totally silent, use poison ammo darts or make a huge mess out of a truck, a fuel depot or whatever and then hide.
Or make yourself comfortable on a high hill and snipe like mad into the enemy camp. I just loved the way their teams would scramble to spread out, fire reinforcement flares or start helicopters to search for you.
Say what you will about the AI not being flawless, CRYSIS at least had a very good AI.
Both Mass Effect and Fallout 3 basically have enemies in fixed positions or on fixed patrol paths that just start shooting or running towards you when you activate them.

As I've mentioned earlier: CRYSIS has a very nice "pro-gamer" difficulty setting too. It deactivates the crosshair (making ironsights important) and makes the enemies do realistic damage. You really have to outsmart an enemy team and use the nanosuit in imaginative ways to survive. For me that was a lot more rewarding than the walking tank combat in MASS EFFECt/FALLOUT where you can be hit a ridiculous amount of times before even having to think about changing something to your fighting style.


From a story point of view, I would put FALLOUT 3 last, behind CRYSIS and Mass Effect first of course. FALLOUT3, like OBLIVION has something incredibly pedestrian/boring when it comes to making you feel like you are part of a bigger story. The world doesn't really change, even if you end the game. I don't know how to describe it accurately, it just feels like their is no growth, the stakes don't feel high. The towns are too small. Everything feels too static. Both MASS EFFECT and CRYSIS do way better in that regard.
But as I said: They are different enough in the core gameplay department so you should play all three.

No offense, but you're nuts.

I just didn't find this at all. Yes there is scaling, but if you complete the main storyline first before you become too powerful, it's completely doable. Then you've got the 70-80 other hours of gameplay left to you to level up.

No offense, but you are awesome.

Why am I nuts?

In Bethesda games (OBLIVION/FALLOUT3) when there is a "game-changing" event in the story, you get like 5 soldiers fighting another 5 over the END OF THE WORLD.
Or you get some barrels of clean water distributed around all-too familiar locations. Nothing ever really changes in their worlds.
They are all neatly designed, but the story (and ultimately you as a player has zero influence) on the world and how it unfolds or changes.
The storytelling is very wooden and often times breaks immersion.
When you free your father out of the VR simulation and accompany him to Rivet City I couldn't stop laughing. You could blast daddy 500 meters high with bottlecap mines, he would fly into some ruins, shortly stick there and then magically reappear on his path again. Never even mentioning anything you did.
Maybe that is the biggest mistake in their game designs: They allow you to do a lot of stuff, but it NEVER EVER gets mentioned by any character.
You can blow a wife's head off and dangle her corpse in front of her husband and he still tells you how nice of a day today is and asks if you'd like something to eat.
The characters are just dumb as shit. They don't notice when you wear the clothes of their loved ones or put their heads on the dining table.
I'd call it broken game design. It's neat you can do it in the first place, but please integrate that possibility into the game and not let it break immersion at every point.

I just don't like handling of story points and character interaction in both OBLIVION and FALLOUT3.
Don't get me wrong. They are RPG-like of course and it is in a way more difficult to get a gamedesign in this genre waterproof, but there are just so many flaws.
When I played OBLIVION/FALLOUT3 I got my entertainment from unintended humor by messing with the characters and doing ridiculous things that totally break immersion and not because of their intended design.

CRYSIS didn't set out to build a whole world and it is no DEUS EX or anything, but they nailed what they intended to do:
Total immersion and freedom of choice for the player.
They put the narrative in the hands of the player at all times. The overall plot of course is set in stone, but how you do the "objectives" is completely up to you. No other current FPS gives you that much freedom.

I think we're learning a lot about Blueharvester today.

Seriously though, all good points and not much to argue against. It's very subjective--there's something intangible about Bethesda's game design, where the free-form play either hooks you in, flaws and all, or it doesn't.

I will say, though, that Fallout 3, with the visuals cranked and that HDR glare going, is bleakly gorgeous. There's not much variety to the world but I never got tired of looking at that blasted sky either.

I've not really played the other 2. But I will say I was underwhelmed with the main story in Fallout 3.

I mean it's fine enough, but lets not act like Bethesda's strong point was their great story lines. I do think there was more they could've done with it. and it does that annoying thing which all games do which is "We'll give you freedom of choice, but you're ultimately led down the same path".

I actually love Fallout 3 as well, but I think the sidequests were a hell of a lot stronger than the main thrust of the game.

Fallout 3. Seriously.

And I'm fine with that. The great sidequests flesh out the world to be discovered better than a super-long linear mainquest would, and there are always little gems left to be discovered. You can build your character any way you like and approach the game from almost any angle. On my second playthrough I discovered all new missions and sidequests and apart from the main storyline it was like I was playing a brand-new version of the game.


And as far as Crysis goes, I thought it was an absolute blast, but it's a linear space-marine FPS with all the standard action tropes. I could name half a dozen sidequests alone in F3 that are more intriguing, with more dialogue, more characters, more pathos, more mystery, more everything. To compare the two games on a story basis seems completely silly.

Try FarCry 2.

Sorry for three posts in a row, but Steam just put Fallout 3 on weekend special for half-price, $24.99.

This is terrible advice. Far Cry 2 is an awful, awful game. Looks pretty, but has some of the worst design flaws I've ever seen. The malaria dynamic and respawning guard checkpoints, alone, were enough to make me quit the game.

I agree that it's silly to compare them on the basis of the plotted out story path. CRYSIS is a shooter at it's core after all.
But when it comes to the story you generate as a player while playing it is vastly superior. I had lot's more funny and awesome things to tell about my adventures in the jungle than the ones in Fallout3.
FALLOUT3 beats every other game when you want to mess with stuff. Drop dead bodies from the tower, see if guards detect you head shotting their neighbour, etc
But this is mostly the unintended stuff you can do that totally breaks the character interaction and immersion.
if you love fooling around and then hitting QUICKLOAD to walk your karma neutral path again, FALLOUT 3 is very entertaining. I'm just saying the entertainment doesn't come from the plot but fooling around with the game's sandbox while breaking the intended game design.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree then.

And I don't often disagree with Overlord's taste in games, but I found FarCry2 to be a blast. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Fallout 3 is 50% off on Steam this weekend. There you go. Choice made.