Author Archives: Jeanette

My List of Top Ten Things Wrong With Resident Evil 6

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In my August 2016 blogpost, I stated that the 2012 video game, Resident Evil 6, deserved its own list of nitpicks. It’s my opinion that RE6’s developers went way overboard in terms of content, and it resulted in one of the most flawed video games I’ve ever played.  Though none of the previous games in the series is entirely perfect, the one thing that they all have going for them is that they operated on a small scale.  Generally, each is limited to 1-3 main characters that the player can control throughout the game and take place in areas that are limited in scope.

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From L to R – Jake, Sherry, Chris, Piers, Helena, Leon, Ada (photo credit below)

RE6 upped the ante by giving the player their choice of seven separate characters to play – four returning from previous games and three newcomers – and having the action taking place in the United States, China, and somewhere in Eastern Europe, as well as on a submarine, a jumbo passenger jet, an aircraft carrier, and a deep-sea oil rig. I feel that both elements ended up hurting the game since more time was spent on their development than on crafting a solid story. (Photo credit)  As if the game didn’t suffer enough with its wider character selection and global scale, I found RE6’s many monsters either annoying or over-the-top.  If the developers had spent as much time working out the kinks in the narrative as they did designing the characters, creatures, and environments, the game would be much more enjoyable.

While I have my share of problems with this game, I don’t hate it as much as many players whose scathing reviews I’ve seen. I consider myself pretty open-minded, and one of the things I do like is how RE6 has four separate campaigns that each contain a piece of a much larger story.

Before I delve into a breakdown on what irked me the most about RE6, I’ll start with an overview of each of the four scenarios.  Government agent Leon Kennedy strives to expose the mastermind behind a string of outbreaks and teams with a rogue Secret Service agent named Helena Harper who was coerced into committing acts of terrorism.  Captain Chris Redfield of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (B.S.A.A.) seeks revenge against a female terrorist who decimated a military team he commanded, while Chris’ protégé, Piers Nivans, strives to keep him from crossing the line.  NSA operative Sherry Birkin undertakes a mission to find and protect a mercenary named Jake Muller, whose blood may hold the key to neutralizing a new manmade virus that’s been unleashed on the world.  And corporate spy Ada Wong launches her own investigation when she discovers she will be made a scapegoat for these new acts of bio-terrorism.  For anyone who may not have played this game but would like to, please be warned that there are spoilers ahead.

And now, on with the list.

10) Leon has an insane amount of patience.

After being forced to kill the zombified U.S. President, Adam Benford, at the start of her and Leon’s story, Helena comments out loud that the President’s death is her fault.  Each time Leon questions her for an explanation throughout the first two chapters of their campaign, she continually makes excuses for procrastinating.  Even though he was close friends with President Benford and only just met Helena, I can understand Leon letting it slide once or twice.  But it’s a wonder he doesn’t lose it after she blows him off a total of five times.  What makes the scenario even more insane is that when Helena finally does reveal what going on, her whole character is called into question.  At the end of the second chapter, she discloses that she was compromised because her sister’s life was on the line.

9) Psychological trauma, what’s that?

Chris’ story kicks off with him going AWOL after the loss of almost his entire squad, trying to lose himself in a bottle as a means of forgetting.  Piers tracks his former captain down after six months have gone by with the intention of bringing him back into the fold.  Yet, the immediate response of everyone in the B.S.A.A. is to throw Chris right back in the field without any treatment whatsoever.  It’s even more boggling that Chris has any sense left in between coming off a serious drinking binge, suffering from PTSD, and later obsessively pursuing the woman who killed his teammates.

8) Might as well have a neon sign that says ‘I’m up to no good.’

One of the things I found most puzzling about Resident Evil 6 were the gargantuan humanoid creatures called Ogroman in Chris’ campaign.  For the sake of argument, I will say that RE6’s villainess, Carla, was the one who manufactured the enormous beasts encountered by the protagonists.  I will also assume that she wanted to keep her activities hidden from the game’s other villain, Simmons, so he wouldn’t swoop in and shut her down.  Yet she still tempts fate and blatantly throws several creatures that are larger than a two-story house at the military, as well as spearheads a bio-terrorist organization called Neo-Umbrella.  Since Simmons is a character who has government connections, likes to maintain order, and stay on top of things, it’s a wonder that Carla is able to operate unhindered for at least a six-month period.

7) The villains who wield far too much power.

I can understand the need for RE6’s game designers, after the apparent death of the series’ supervillain, Wesker, in the fifth game, to come up with a bad guy or two worthy of filling the void.  Yet both Carla and Simmons are able to get away with an awful lot.  Between the two of them, they lay claim to a total of three or four enormous secret facilities or bases, orchestrate a presidential assassination, destroy a U.S. city with a guided missile, cause not one but two massive outbreaks that kill at least half a million people, put a big dent in the forces of a global militaristic organization, manufacture one of the most destructive genetic-altering viruses present in the Resident Evil series, and almost bring about the end of the world.  On top of all that, either Carla or Simmons has an aircraft carrier, an oceanic oil rig, and a nuclear sub in their possession.  Dead or not, I imagine that Wesker has to envy these two for greatly outdoing him in the very game that marks their first appearance.

6) Daddy issues.

I consider Sherry and Jake’s campaign the most polished and straightforward out of the four, but I also feel that it held a wasted goldmine of dramatic elements that could easily have been brought into the story.  Midway through their campaign, Jake discovers that the father he’s never known is none other than the late Albert Wesker.  If it were up to me, I would have put more emphasis on how Jake deals with the revelation that his absentee dad was the world’s most wanted bioterrorist.  It would have been interesting to see more of Jake’s transition from a selfish, greedy soldier of fortune at the start of the game to a character who aims to be the antithesis of everything his father stood for.  Even the scene between Jake and his dad’s greatest rival, Chris, toward the end could have been better written and a much more defining moment, for both of them. Instead, Jake, who has shown hatred toward his father through interactions with Sherry, is inexplicably angry at Chris for having killed Wesker.

5) Carla shares Simmons’ obsession with Ada?

The source of the conflict between the two villains in RE6 has an interesting basis, even if the plot itself was not well thought out.  More than a decade prior to the events in the game, Simmons was deeply infatuated with Ada, to the point that he didn’t take it well when she left him.  He spent a great deal of time experimenting with genetics and harming countless people in an attempt to create a doppelganger.  He ultimately succeeded with his devoted lab assistant, Carla, who he brainwashed to behave like the real Ada.  This scheme backfired when Carla regained her memory and went mad with thoughts of revenge.  The one thing I find the most unbelievable about this whole scenario is that Carla makes no attempt to change her appearance once she remembers.  Throughout an entire game that takes place over a six month period, both Ada and Carla have hairstyles that are a perfect match. One could argue that Carla made sure she’d be indistinguishable from the real Ada when it came to framing her.  But given that Carla’s master plan was to destroy the world, why bother?

4) Time for a career change.

From the time of her first appearance in Resident Evil 2 in 1998, Ada has never been known as anything other than a freelance spy.  One can assume that she enjoys what she does or she wouldn’t still be at it by the time the sixth game rolls around in 2012.  While it’s puzzling why Carla even attempts to pin the latest string of terrorist attacks on her, there is a plot element toward the end of Ada’s campaign that makes even less sense.  A peek into Ada’s thoughts reveals that she intends to destroy any evidence that would prove she’d played no part in instigating the attacks.  Unless being labeled as a bioterrorist is some weird way of increasing her notoriety or deepening the pool of people looking to hire her, Ada must really be begging to spend the rest of her days behind bars if any law enforcement agency or the military ever catch her.

3) Zombies on a plane.

My explanation for the plane crash that occurs in chapter 4 of Leon’s campaign is that the game developers must have really wanted a grand spectacle to mark Leon and Helena’s arrival in China.  But the events leading up to it are just plain idiotic.  The buildup to this scenario is as follows.  Leon learns from one of his allies that Simmons is en route to China, and Leon and Helena book a flight in pursuit.  Sometime during the last leg of their trip, the heroes discover that the pilot has fallen victim to a virus and has mutated into a horrific creature that is infecting everyone on board, except for the protagonists.  The game’s biggest mystery is that it never explains how or why the pilot is targeted.  By this point, Simmons had just been made aware by Ada that Carla is on a rampage, so his focus had to be primarily on dealing with her.  And it’s doubtful Carla would set her sights on eliminating Leon and Helena out of nowhere since she pretty much ignores them throughout the whole game.  Unless there was an unknown third villain in play operating from the shadows, it would have been impossible for anyone to start an epidemic aboard a specific jet that had been in the air for roughly twelve hours.

2) Just die already!

Generally, I’m someone who likes a challenge and to square off with any game’s final boss that takes extra time and effort to triumph against.  But RE6 sets the bar ridiculously high when it comes to Leon and Helena battling against Simmons.  Within minutes of being exposed to Carla’s specially-made viral cocktail, Simmons mutates into an oversized canine-like creature and is seemingly stopped when he gets dragged underneath a bullet train that subsequently derails.  But it doesn’t stop there.  For Round Two, he transforms into a mutant T-Rex and seemingly dies again after getting pumped full of lead.  Round Three sees him go back to his first stage mutation and supposedly bite it when Ada stabs him in the side and drops him into a raging inferno.  For the final round, he becomes a giant housefly – God,I wish I was kidding about this – and is ultimately defeated after several lightning strikes courtesy of a metal antenna that gets stuck in him and getting shot by a rocket launcher. And yet what finally kills him is that he reverts to his human self, gets impaled on an obelisk, and bleeds out.  To say all of this is overkill is a vast understatement.

1) If the monsters don’t get you, the camera angles will.

One thing that annoyed me the most about RE6 aside from the many plot holes was a certain game mechanic that got me killed more than once.  Sometimes, when my character was running from something dangerous, the tendency of the camera view to shift by a 90 or 180 degree angle without warning often resulted in said character sprinting in the wrong direction.  This aspect was never more frustrating than when I was playing the last chapter in Chris’ campaign and had to run up this inclined spiral walkway to get away from a giant creature that was after me.  The game keeps track of how many times you’re killed, and in all other chapters, my death count averaged from 3-5.  For Chris’ final chapter, I got killed well over a hundred times before I got it right.  To give an idea, here is a video recorded by another player of the scenario in question.

For a game that has this many flaws, you might ask why I’m in the minority of people who don’t flat out hate it. I would say that as a writer with a very vivid imagination, I see ways in which those imperfections can be corrected.  I have even done so through writing my own What-If fanfiction stories.  I am currently working on an alternate take of the events in the fifth game, a story titled Tangled Web. And I have some ideas in store for a sequel to said story that will borrow the best elements from RE6.

And, whenever I get around to writing my planned fanfiction sequel to Tangled Web, I can guarantee a cooler climax than battling a giant insect.

Resident Evil illogical moments

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Until the first live-action Resident Evil movie starring Milla Jovovich came out in 2002, I had never actually played any of the games. My general experience with the series was limited to watching gameplay videos online or reading the novel adaptations written by S.D. Perry.  I don’t favor the films since they are anything but faithful adaptations and have all the established characters from the Resident Evil, or RE for short, universe play second fiddle to an all-original character portrayed by Jovovich.  But the games aren’t without their share of problems.

While most of the games in the series have stellar stories, epic action sequences, interesting heroes and villains, and truly iconic monsters, there are also moments that don’t make any sense whatsoever if you think about it. Which I have.  What follows is my list of the ten most illogical things in the Resident Evil video game series.  I thought about including a moment from the latest main entry in the series, but there is so much wrong with RE6 that it deserves its own list.

10) Are the bad guys really this bored or stupid?

The opening for RE4 has government agent Leon Kennedy journeying to a remote area in Spain in search of the President’s missing daughter, Ashley.  Story-wise, I believe only two hours transpire from when Leon first encounters a hostile cult-like terrorist group behind the abduction to when he finds a random note written by one of the cultists.  This note not only acknowledges Leon’s presence in their village, but it also flat out states where Ashley is being held.  Given that the cultists have been hell-bent on eliminating Leon as a threat up to this point, it begs the question on why one of them would take the time to write this.  And, the note’s writer may as well have added an additional sentence: I’ll just leave this lying on a table where the intruder can easily spot it.

9) Fear of getting wet?

The water puzzle in the prequel game, Resident Evil Zero, where you have to move three crates to form a pathway over this rather small tank – simply to retrieve a valve needed to access a locked room, I might add – couldn’t be more ridiculous if it tried.  One thought that crossed my mind, as I was pushing the boxes into place, was ‘Why can’t Rebecca or Billy just swim across to get what they need?’  What makes it even more absurd is that this puzzle is encountered just after Billy pulled himself out of a waterway and hadn’t had time to dry off.

8) Shoddy containment measures.

One of the most curious aspects of RE5 is how many monsters are roaming about unchecked in Wesker’s secret facility.  While one could argue that the game’s antagonists unleashed the majority of them to deal with Chris and Sheva, the cages for the Lickers tell a different story.  The beasts are seen confined within a glass enclosure that they can, and do, easily break out of when the heroes are passing by.  There is evidence that at least three people have been killed by these creatures before Chris and Sheva even stumble upon them.  Given that the Lickers are one of the deadliest creatures present in the series, it’s questionable why even Wesker doesn’t take better care to protect his own staff from them.

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Clockwise from top left: Wesker distracted by Alexia; Resident Evil Zero’s crate puzzle; Glass cage for the Lickers in RE5; Chris preparing to punch a boulder; Rachel Foley running from a monster; and Ben’s prison cell in RE2. (photo credits at end)

7) Did the dogs really stay by the doors the entire time?

The first game in the series kicks off with members of the paramilitary organization, S.T.A.R.S., taking refuge in a seemingly deserted mansion after being chased through the woods by a group of zombified Dobermans.  The majority of the game centers around trying to find an alternate way out, as any attempt to exit through the front doors results in one of the dogs gaining entry to the house and attacking whichever character tried to leave.  It doesn’t matter what point of the game it is; the dogs are always there.  Why they stick around that area even when the S.T.A.R.S. members aren’t anywhere near the main hall is anyone’s guess, especially when there has to be something more accessible to hunt somewhere in the forest.

6) Wesker is far too easily distracted.

In RE: Code Veronica, the mainstay villain of the series, normally known for having remarkable focus and awareness, can’t seem to decide who to give his undivided attention to at various points.  During one scene where he has his mortal enemy, Chris, in a chokehold and is threatening to end his life, Wesker hears the game’s primary villainess, Alexia, laughing on a nearby computer monitor before the screen goes dark.  For whatever reason, Wesker throws Chris aside and immediately takes off to chase her down.  Yet later, when Wesker is actually fighting Alexia, he seemingly forgets about her and lunges toward Chris when he realizes the latter is present in the room.  As a result, Alexia nearly succeeds in setting Wesker on fire.

5) Turn off for the relentless killing machine?

RE3 sees Jill Valentine attempting to escape the doomed Raccoon City while also trying to survive against a genetically-engineered humanoid creature called Nemesis that’s been programmed to kill her and the other S.T.A.R.S. survivors from the first game.  Jill is relentlessly pursued by Nemesis throughout RE3 until a period where she is infected with a virus and requires a cure to keep breathing.  A man named Carlos, who isn’t even a S.T.A.R.S. member, comes to her aid by manufacturing the antidote she needs.  Even though Jill has been left unprotected and virtually helpless, Nemesis comes after Carlos while he’s on his way back to her.  Given that Nemesis otherwise dogs her every step of the way, this sudden deviation is very curious.

4) Must have found a plot hole to walk through.

During an exploration of the derelict, creature-infested police station in RE2, rookie cop Leon and corporate spy Ada come across a man named Ben who’s locked himself in a jail cell.  Ben states that he wishes to stay in there because he feels it’s safer than roaming the halls.  Later in the game, Leon is literally at the other end of the hall from the holding cells when he hears Ben screaming.  When the scene cuts to Ben, he’s seen being attacked by a particularly large monster that’s somehow gotten into the cell with him though the door is still shut and there is no other viable entry point in sight.  Even odder is that when Leon makes it over there less than a minute later, the creature is nowhere to be found.

3) How many members does this terrorist group have?

Much of the plot of RE: Revelations revolves around a bio-terrorist group known as Veltro and an investigation on whether or not they’re still active.  Several pairs of military teams are sent to investigate the cruise ships that Veltro had been using as their base of operations, only to find that each ship is overrun with mutated members of the terrorist group.  Ridiculously overrun, as there never seems to be any shortage of creatures around during the exploration of the primary ship, the Queen Zenobia.  During one battle, there’s even an endless supply of humanoid monsters coming out of the vents to replace the ones killed by the player.

2) How did she make it into the military if she’s this spineless?

The government organization known as the FBC, or Federal Bioterrorism Commission, featured in Resident Evil: Revelations seemed to have many promising agents to its name.  Three of the four who were featured most prominently – Raymond, Jessica, and Parker – seemed more than capable of keeping their wits in dangerous situations.  Not the case with Rachel Foley.  While it’s unclear how long she’d been an agent prior to being sent to investigate the Queen Zenobia, she immediately turns into a proverbial damsel in distress when faced with just one of the mutated creatures roaming the ship.  She even throws her gun at the creature when she runs out of bullets.

1) Chris suddenly becomes Hercules.

Even though I’ve seen the most outlandish moment in RE5 as the butt of many jokes on the internet, I still have to include it on this list.  During the game’s final battle, Chris Redfield’s idea of creating a safe pathway for his partner, Sheva, is to repeatedly punch a boulder three times his size to get it to move.  You would think that, after Chris stated in an earlier point in the same game that he’s no superhero and even exhibited signs of pain just from punching his arch-enemy, Wesker, in the face, there would be some hesitation before carrying out this daunting task.  Nope.  Not only does Chris rush in and start whaling on this giant rock, but he also gets it rolling aside in under 30 seconds.

Regardless of this list of criticisms, I am a huge fan of the video game series. What I like most is how the games have evolved with the times.  I love the puzzle-driven adventures released from 1996 to 2002 just as much the high definition third-person shooter style from 2004 on.  Each game, excluding the spinoffs of Operation Raccoon City and the Chronicles series, brings something unique to the table that sets it apart from the rest.  Whether you prefer the tense, fast-paced scenario in RE3 that forces the player to keep moving, the twist-around-every-corner story present in Code Veronica, the impressive cinematic fights involving Wesker in RE5, or even discovering the secret cause of the first outbreak in Resident Evil Zero, there is something to satisfy just about everyone.

And the soon-to-be-released RE7, coming next year, promises a new spin on the series. According to reports, it will be a first-person shooter and will return the series to its “horror roots.”  It is unknown yet what the story will be or if any of the previous characters of the series will even be present in this newest installment, but it is something to which I am very much looking forward.
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Photo credits:
1–Wesker distracted by Alexia
2–Resident Evil Zero’s crate puzzle
3–Glass cage for the Lickers in Resident Evil 5
4–Chris prepares to punch a boulder
5–Rachel Foley runs from a monster
6–Ben’s prison cell in Resident Evil 2

Fallout 4 WTF Moments

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I had been looking forward to the video game, Fallout 4, for years, even before it was announced it would be released in early November 2015. Being an avid fan of the two previous installments–Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas–I was excited to begin a whole new adventure in a post-apocalyptic world. When I saw the first previews and news about Fallout 4 in the summer of 2015, my anticipation grew exponentially. Unlike the previous installments, this new game looked to be a far more immersive experience. There was so much that got me excited.

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My first playable character. Not sure where I acquired the face paint around the eyes from, but didn’t start out with it.

Instead of playing as a character born after the world was destroyed by nuclear war, players were treated to someone from the old world that got frozen in time for 200+ years. This new character, customizable according to player preference to be either male or female, would also have a voice; the game’s developers commissioned a couple actors to record a ton of dialogue for this purpose. For my first play through, I chose to be a redheaded female modeled to look like a character from one of the fiction stories I write.

However, I did not anticipate the different style of gameplay or know that I needed to exercise more caution to avoid getting killed. In the midst of adapting and learning tactics, I encountered enough harrowing or unusual situations to put together my Top Ten List of WTF Moments, each with its own subtitle.

Before I delve into this list, I’d like to start with a few honorary mentions – one from Fallout 4 that I encountered after I wrote up this blogpost, and one from Fallout 3 that I had forgotten about.

Who are you?
Sometime during my first playthrough of Fallout 4, I was walking along the road when I saw someone coming from the opposite direction. Didn’t think much of it until the guy spotted me, pulled out a tire iron, and started running at me yelling, “You’re gonna pay!” After I gunned him down, I found he was from one of the game’s shady factions that, as a do-gooder, I’d managed to tick off.

Here’s something you don’t see everyday.
I was having such a tough time during a battle against a couple of Fallout 3’s Super Mutants that I eventually ducked behind some cover to recoup. I took down one of them after some doing and was planning my attack against the other when he suddenly stopped shooting at me. When I poked my head out, I found that some wacky game glitch had turned him on his side and buried him halfway in the ground.

Now the list, leading up to the Number One WTF moment:

10) Noooo!
While crossing a bridge over one of the many waterways, I wondered aloud, “Why is there so much gasoline here?” After taking another couple steps, I heard the telltale beeping of an incendiary landmine ready to go off. I futilely tried to escape, but didn’t make it in time.

9) What the hell was that?!
While running from a group of hulking green creatures called Super Mutants, I heard a beeping that didn’t sound like a land mine. Before I could even figure out what that sound was, something exploded right next to me. I later found out that one Super Mutant in each group acts as a suicide bomber with a mini-nuke.

8) Are you kidding?!
While sneaking my way through a monster-infested city using alleys and sticking to the shadows, I was caught off guard when a mutant black bear, usually found out in the wilderness and not in the middle of a city, started walking past the entrance to an alley and spotted me. It killed me in one blow.

7) Who’s shooting at me?!
At one point, I was given a mission by one of the game’s NPCs, or non-playable characters, to rid an auto factory of a gang of raiders. The roof had a walkway around the smoke stacks. While I was elevated, I took a good look at the roof and didn’t see any raiders in sight. As I was descending the staircase, five bad guys literally appeared out of nowhere and opened fire on me. My best guess here is that my computer’s graphics card was having trouble rendering the enemy units until I got close.

6) Seriously?!
Upon my first visit to a friendly settlement, one of the children running around offered to give me a tour, which for some reason qualified as a quest to complete. During the tour, I stopped to loot some food and healing items from one of the rooms. The next thing I know, the words “Quest failed” appeared on the screen because I didn’t keep up with my guide.

5) Oh-kay….
In one underground facility, I was pitted against a pack of creatures called molerats who tunneled through the dirt and ambushed me in whatever room I happened to be in. Somehow, one of them got stuck due to a game glitch, which I didn’t figure out until I’d descended a staircase and wondered why it wasn’t coming after me. For some reason, it kept popping in and out of a hole in the same room. I eventually backtracked to finish it off so I could get rid of the “danger” indicator flashing on the screen. Even attacking it with a blade didn’t interrupt this behavior; I could only deal damage to it intermittently. Killing it took some doing.

4) Oh, my God, I’m gonna die!
From my time playing Fallout 3, I knew that the largest creature around was a Behemoth. When undertaking a mission to reclaim a fortified settlement that had been “decimated by a giant creature that came out of the water,” I assumed that this was what I would be fighting. I had already taken down one Behemoth in this game, so figured this wouldn’t be a problem. So imagine my surprise when the monster I was fighting turned out to be an equally huge sea creature that could spit acid and took me ten tries to beat.

3) My bad.
As part of the main questline, I needed to track down a character named Virgil for information. When I got to the cave where he was hiding, I mistakenly thought I needed to eliminate his guards to talk to him. Unfortunately, my decision to start shooting made Virgil outright hostile. I was forced to attack him; once his health was depleted, he collapsed to the floor and appeared to be winded for several seconds. I thought this would enable me to talk to him when his health suddenly filled all the way back up and he resumed attacking me. This cycle repeated at least three more times; at one point, I personally blurted out, “I’m sorry, Virgil. I just want to talk.” I soon figured the only way to fix it was to load from the last savepoint.

2) Holy crap!
Just when I thought I had gotten a good handle on the game and how to survive, I was thrown for a loop while wandering through a rundown section of a science facility. I ran into a cyborg called an Assaultron I had never encountered before in any previous Fallout game. Even so, I thought I was doing okay until this high-powered laser beam shot out of its visor and completely depleted my health in 1.5 seconds.

1) Hold the elevator, or Preston is suicidal?
At one point, I had to escape from a thirty-story building by taking a window washer platform down. Once my character was on board, I pressed the button to go down since I was under fire. After the ramp slid back, my A.I. companion, Preston, came running like everything was normal and dropped off the side of the building. Because A.I. companions are indestructible in this game, he survived the fall. What makes it even funnier is that this wasn’t the first or last time that Preston tried to get on an elevator after the ramp had retracted.

Overall, Fallout 4 is an amazing game; I feel it is far more engaging and interesting than its predecessors, and there is no shortage of areas, both above ground and below, to explore. I look forward to countless hours spent enjoying all this game has to offer, as well as what the expansion packs, released and forthcoming, will add to it.

Fallout 3: WTF Moments

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Despite now being an avid fan and having logged over 300 collective hours of gameplay, I had zero knowledge of the Fallout video game series until I took a game design class at a local community college. One of my classmates played a clip of the first twenty-some minutes of Fallout 3 while pointing out elements that made it a well-designed video game. The notion of playing as a character who lived their entire life in a fallout shelter venturing out into an unknown world in search of a missing parent was enough to intrigue me. I got hooked and wanted to experience more of this world.

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First view of the world outside the shelter

I’ve since come to learn that I am a lot more cautious and patient than most players. I spent the majority of my time trying to go unseen by the game’s dangerous monsters, robots and humans while wandering through this post-apocalyptic wasteland. And sometimes, what I would find more frightening than some of the mutated creatures were the glitches that seemed to pop up unexpectedly. After much thought, I decided to put together a list of 10 of the most jarring or bizarre things I encountered from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.
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1) Didn’t see that coming
I knew from my classmate’s demonstration that one set of creatures I could expect to encounter would be giant black ants. I ran into some early on in my gameplay and didn’t find them all that difficult to kill. A few good hits with a melee weapon–my general favorite at the time–made short work of them. Then I acquired a quest to clear a town of giant fire ants. The first one I saw upon reaching this town was red instead of black. I didn’t see any other difference until it got close. Before I knew it, my entire screen and vision was filled with flames that the fire ant was spewing at me.

2) Think I just had a heart attack!
All enemy units appear as a red blip on the radar, but you can only see the blips present in whatever direction you’re facing. That being said, I was crouched and sneaking through a wide, open area with the computer’s volume off when the word “Danger” flashed on the screen. This means that something is moving in to attack. I could only see one blip on my radar. Since I was playing without any sound and unable to hear anything coming, I watched intently for several seconds to try and see what was approaching me. When I failed to spot anything, I turned around…and a molerat’s face filled the entire screen with its mouth open.

3) Do I have to fight this thing?
I had exercised so much caution during my first play-through of Fallout 3–even sometimes taking detours to avoid a fight–that I didn’t see or even know about the game’s most dangerous creature until very late in the main questline. I was trying to escape from an underground facility known as Raven Rock when I came upon this large crate at the top of a staircase. I used a nearby computer terminal to open the crate and watched in terror as this demonic-looking creature with long sharp talons stepped out. Fortunately, it didn’t see me and it moved away to attack the enemy units further down the hallway. It took me three to four minutes of sitting by the crate before I worked up the courage to move.

4) The mother of bad ideas….
One of the side quests for Fallout 3 entails retrieving an important document being guarded by a dangerous cyborg inside a small office. I didn’t have the skill set needed to persuade him to hand over the document without a fight. After several rounds of trying and failing to beat this cyborg, I got frustrated enough to try an alternate–and very stupid–tactic. In a nutshell, firing a mini-nuke launcher in a small, enclosed space is effective at both killing and committing suicide.

5) This area is totally f***ed!
There is a location in Fallout: New Vegas called Black Mountain where so many odd things occur that I call it Game Glitch Central. Repeat occurrences of seeing monsters literally appear out of thin air right next to me, my character being randomly thrown back down to the base of the mountain path, and game crashes, among other problems, eventually made this an area to avoid at all costs, for me at least.

6) Can’t we talk this over?
When I first started playing Fallout 3, it was on a laptop with a mouse touchpad. The touchpad was highly sensitive and more than once, the gun I was using would discharge when I least expected it. This really became a problem when I was roaming around one of the friendly wasteland settlements and accidentally shot someone. The next thing I know, I had every single adult inhabitant running at me with guns drawn ready to take me down.

7) Oops!
Being a gamer who prefers stealth over frontal assaults, I had adopted a unique tactic over time. With a high Sneak skill and decked out in the Chinese Stealth Armor that made me invisible when crouched, I planted land mines in the path of any enemy unit or monster I came across to take them out. This tactic didn’t work as well when several Enclave soldiers made a turn at an intersection before reaching the mine. I maneuvered to get ahead of them undetected and planted another land mine without picking up the first. Once they had been taken out, I was looting the bodies for good stuff to sell when I heard this booming sound behind me. When I turned around, I saw I’d inadvertently killed a merchant who was passing through the same intersection.

8) Reload required?
The first expansion pack for Fallout: New Vegas, called Dead Money, took you to a highly toxic area centered in and around a derelict casino. The overall mission requires the player to access the casino’s vault in search of treasure. For me, it was a very time-consuming and dangerous undertaking. At one point, I had to escape from a radio tower that had half a dozen monsters roaming about outside. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I wasn’t at only one bar of health, had no healing items, and very little ammo; all it would take to kill me would be one or two hits. It took some doing, but somehow I made it out of that situation in one piece. A good thing too, since the last time I had saved was about 50 minutes of gameplay earlier.

9) This is beyond freaky.
I don’t know how many players, if any, encountered the unique game glitch that I did in Fallout 3. Strangely, this one only seemed to target a specific creature, the Yao Guai, a mutant black bear. When killed, it would sometimes fall into the ground and then spring back out with a distorted, taffy-like appearance. I sort of wish I had a picture of this effect, but it was always unnerving enough to send me running off in another direction.

10) WTF?
One of the weirdest glitches I encountered in Fallout 3 was when I approached one of the many mountains and was seeing two red blips on my radar. It’s a good thing I looked up to see the sky, or I would have missed seeing two black shapes launching into the air. My initial, irrational thought was that something was jumping over the mountain to attack me. I looked around wildly until my gaze landed on my A.I. companion; he was holding his gun at a perfect 90 degree angle. I watched him stand in that position for a couple seconds. Then, lowering his gun, he said, “Oh, they got away.” I later found out that there’s a glitch that randomly launches some monsters into the stratosphere.
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Prior to my hours spent playing Fallout 3, I don’t believe I had ever played an open-world game. I’ve since come to love the idea of exploring a large map to your heart’s content and being given the option to just ignore the main game story indefinitely. Despite how many hours I spent playing and replaying Fallout 3, I don’t think I explored every nook and cranny on the map. The world of Fallout: New Vegas was a smaller scale, but gave the player the option to gamble on slot machines or card tables set it apart from its predecessor.

Yet, each game had its flaws. I don’t feel the main story of Fallout 3 was compelling enough to make me want to play it over and over. Fallout: New Vegas does have an interesting plot and gave the player the option to become the ruler of the Casino Strip, but it doesn’t have a big enough map in which to roam around.

Even though I may never go back to playing the two previous games, especially after the recently-released Fallout 4 has eclipsed them by far, I can still look back fondly on those moments that made 3 and New Vegas a particularly memorable experience for me.