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• Reviewed on: Xbox 360
• Also available for: PlayStation 3, Windows PC
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• The Good: Post-apocalyptic wastelands are stunningly realized. Unique FPS combat delivers gruesomely cinematic action sequences. Engrossing character development system.
• The Bad: Character models and facial animations don't quite measure up to those of other top-tier games. Time consuming inventory system can be a drag.
• The Verdict: Set it in one of the most dauntingly enormous game worlds yet created, this post-atomic holocaust adventure masterfully combines role-playing smarts with a slick first-person shooter presentation.
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I wouldn't want to live in Fallout 3's post-nuclear holocaust future.

For starters, there's not a speck of green to be seen anywhere amid the dilapidated ruins of Washington D.C., save the lime skin of minigun-toting super mutants who wander the wasteland with an aim to kill anything not as deformed as they are.

Worse still, radiation has spoiled almost all food and water supplies, forcing wasteland explorers to inject themselves with rare pharmaceuticals to keep from transforming into diseased ghouls.

And that's saying nothing of the grotesquely enlarged insect population, which includes dog-sized roaches and even bigger ants that breathe fire.

Simply put, it's bad times for all residents. But, my goodness, is it ever a fun place for a gamer to visit.

Irish actor survives World War III, becomes your dad

Fallout 3 sucked me in from the moment my character was birthed into the hands his loving father, voiced warmly and persuasively by Liam Neeson. I'd never taken on the role of a baby before, but I found toddling about the metal-walled rooms of Vault 101, a 200-year-old bomb shelter buried safely beneath the District of Columbia, to be both interesting and strangely agreeable.

As the first half-hour or so of the game progressed, I moved through a series of scenes that led my avatar from toddler to outcast prepubescent to self-assured teen. These formative moments allowed me to select key physical attributes, including gender, hair style, and facial features, and also to distribute character points amongst such traits as intelligence, charisma, and strength.

It was an entertaining, innovative, and decidedly engaging method of producing a role-playing game character.

The world is your irradiated oyster

While I enjoyed the opening minutes, it wasn't until I ventured outside the Vault and into the vast expanse of the Capital Wasteland that I truly began to understand and appreciate what Fallout 3's developer, Bethesda Softworks, had wrought.

Players familiar with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, another of the Maryland-based studio's games, will have some notion of what I mean when I say the scope of Fallout 3 is truly epic. The world, composed of an enormous, seamless outdoor map that stretches out dozens of kilometres in every direction from the Vault, feels real and all but limitless.

I visited townships built out of the ruins of the capital city, with teetering, gutted towers threatening to collapse and obliterate them. I saw many of Washington's most famous landmarks, including the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument (as well as that stretch of ground separating them known as the Mall, which, in the future, has been transformed into a perilous network of trenches and bunkers patrolled by mutants).

And that's to say nothing of the game's countless interior locations set in random buildings, subways, and sewers, which play home to strange survivalist cults and roaming raiders. I even found a highly secure city built within the remnants of an old aircraft carrier.

Point being, ambitious players interested in exploring every nook and cranny of this virtual D.C. will need a hundred hours or more to fully investigate every last location.

Morality meltdown in the post-apocalypse age

During my explorations I met all manner of interesting characters, like a boy whose town had been overrun by fire ants, and an old-timer whose settlement perched atop a freeway bridge had recently come under attack by what he believed were vampires.

I had complete freedom to deal with these people however I chose. I could help them, ignore them, kill them or steal from them. Each decision I made affected my avatar's reputation, and I heard reports on almost everything I did via a wasteland D.J. who kept an ear to the ground and took a keen interest in broadcasting my many exploits to anyone within listening range. (Word to the wise: If you're looking to make friends, best not set off the atomic bomb you find in the town of Megaton).

Meanwhile, an engrossing character development system allowed me to alter my characters' abilities by selecting from scores of useful and sometimes humorous perks. My favourites: Nerd Rage, which gave my hero a boost to strength and damage resistance whenever he was pushed around too much by his fellow wastelanders, and Cannibal, which let him eat the dead to regain health (though at the risk of being shunned by his fellow humans, should he be caught doing it).

Slow motion mutant dismemberment done right

But Fallout 3 isn't just about exploring the irradiated wastes and managing your character.

It also features some of the most compelling first-person shooting action in recent memory, thanks to an innovative mechanic called the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS), which gives players the ability to pause action, select attack locations, and then watch them execute in slow motion via a dynamic camera.

Use VATS to fire a couple of rifle shots at an enemy's head, for example, and you might see the first bullet slam into your foe's noodle from a view directly beside him, spattering blood across the floor, wall, and camera lens, then be treated to a close-up of the next slug zipping through the air and cutting through his neck, effectively decapitating him.

It's delightfully gruesome stuff — for mature players, that is (needless to say, this isn't the sort of game that would make a suitable gift for your grade school kids).

Sets the benchmark for virtual Armageddon

Of course, Fallout 3 isn't quite perfect.

Characters don't look as clean and crisp as those found in some other titles being released this holiday, and their faces emote somewhat awkwardly. Plus, a limited inventory system forces players to make plenty of trips to traders to sell off excess gear when they become over-encumbered, which quickly grows tedious (though the developers have, thoughtfully, provided the means to instantly teleport anywhere we've previously been).

Still, it's about as close to flawless as I've seen in a game of this ilk. Bethesda Softworks has masterfully melded role-playing game intelligence with heart-pounding first-person shooter action, and set it in one of the largest, most immersive and compelling game worlds yet made. Fallout 3 is a strong contender for best game of the year, and will be seen as a benchmark for open-world interactive entertainment for years to come.