Wandering far

I've finally finished playing Fallout 3 (PC) for the time being. I've visited every significant location, though not found every bobblehead nor triggered every quest, and you know, that's fine. I never wanted the experience to degenerate into a complete fetch quest, I just wanted to see what the wasteland had to offer.

Leaving the confines of Vault 101 I played the game pretty much as myself, in so much as I can be myself in a fictional post apocalyptic future, letting my personal morality be my guide. As such, as tempted as I was to put a .44 magnum shell into the back of the likes of Moriarty's head and blow the residents of Megaton to kingdom come, I never did so. Maybe next play through. And that's the biggest ringing endorsement I can give. Despite almost 100 hours of wandering the wastes I'd be more than happy to start all over again. Sure the ending is a bit of kick in the happy sack, but that doesn't detract from the delights that have gone before.

I could of course continue playing now, with the Operation Anchorage expansion, though as it's only available through the Games For Windows Marketplace, which would be a reason to disregard it in itself, and the reviews giving the impression that it is akin to sprinkling powered turd on my cornflakes, I think I'll give it a miss.

There's other expansions in the works and I'm sure when Bethesda have finished milking it they'll put a nice little expansion compilation together as they did with the Knights of the Nine for Oblivion and that's when I'll jump back in, only this time as a twisted killing machine bent on intensifying the pain and misery of the inhabitants of this ravaged DC. [insert Vincent Price laughter here]

So with an ever expanding backlog of games it was a tough choice deciding where to go next. Being the FPS lover that I am Far Cry 2 was always going to be favourite, though with the recent system wipe I need to restart both Colin McRae DiRT and Psychonauts so there was a temptation to go back to them. I've also got Beyond Good & Evil and Company of Heroes Gold Edition sitting in my Steam list eyeing me disappointedly. I've not given nearly enough time to zombie blasting in Left 4 Dead, and Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto IV aren't going to play themselves. Add to that the recent release of F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin and Burnout Paradise Ultimate Box demo's, that gave me just enough to tempt me in with their wily ways, and the excitement is palpable. How am I going to cope?

One notable absentee in all this is Warhammer Online. There was some debate about Warhammer over at the ZTTB site, which I'll expand upon my input in order to explain that while I am still playing it, I'm not doing so as much as I expected.

I dabbled with Warhammer briefly in school, though I was primarily a D&D kind of guy, and maybe my memory isn't too good because I wasn't expecting, well, what Warhammer Online is. I've tried to love it, tried to warm to it's charms, but once the initial excitement wore off I felt that there's just something missing. Now it may just be me being the anti-social nay sayer that I can be, but the reason I liked Guild Wars was because I got to play with people I liked and had fun with. Once all the guildies stopped playing I had no reason to go back and finish it. I was never really into running around alone, and not being sure I could invest the time needed for character development I was never convinced a proper MMO would fit, so I avoided the likes World of Warcraft and Everquest II for this reason and because of the monthly subscription, despite the number of people I knew who where jumping in and splashing around while telling me how lovely it was and to get the water wings off and join them.

Warhammer, I told myself, would be different. Surely going into a massive bloody conflict with several hundred others as body parts fly across the battlefield in a hail of flame and bullets would be my dream ticket, particularly as we had, an all be it brief, history.
It seems strange then that I'm having most fun going off doing the PvE alone. I certainly didn't expect that. I think the cause of this unexpected development is that I've found people still play as individuals, and as such the PQ's work best because people can do their own thing but it still contributes to the overall goal. In the PvP scenarios, unless you have at least a party and preferably a warband going in, it just becomes a free for all. That makes the experience feel somewhat unsatisfying. Hollow.

Having said all that, I still think it's worth picking up and having a play, and despite my reservations I have put my money on the table and will be playing until May, but I really don't know if I'll go beyond that. There's no doubt that WoWers who came across for the launch didn't find it compelling enough to stay once Wrath of the Lich King was released, and there was a significant juggling act to balance the servers. There's also been a number of changes in game since launch that have improved things with Mythic being swift to implement them and the speed with which they've responded to criticism has been commendable. They've reintroduced classes that were removed to ensure the game launched on time and balancing and UI issues have been rectified. All in all it is very solid and well implemented.

The environments are fantastic. The characterisations are brilliant. The Tome Of Knowledge is a stroke of genius. There's a wealth of material in and around the game world that you can delve as deep as you like into. There's an abundance of content, and you're free to sample whichever takes your fancy. Want to play as a High Elf but like the Dwarf story? Go do the Dwarf story then. Once you've basically got through the training quests and got to your first warcamp, your race doesn't have to dictate your quest path. The quests themselves can range from a quick walk down the road to chat to someone, to sprawling multi-part epics. Should you find some like minded people to adventure with, your quests can be shared with the others in your party, with re spawn of components/quest items happening swiftly enough that you don't get bored waiting for everyone to get the loot.

There's so many plus points and great things in there and I want it to be a great success. That's why I'd love to recommend it to everyone as an essential purchase. The fact that I can't saddens me. I hope that anyone who does buy it likes it. I hope it's just that MMO's at the end of the day aren't my bag. I really do.

Not that I can worry about that now. I've got some bloke going by the pseudonym “The Jackal” to kill.