Fallout 3 E3 Preview
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Whether you're a ranged or melee fighter, the most effective way to eliminate the opposition is by using VATS. Tapping the Xbox 360 gamepad's right bumper pauses the action while the camera zooms in to target a specific enemy, broken down by hit locations. Each targetable location which extends beyond the body to include any wielded weapons as well is accompanied by a percentage value which indicates your chances of achieving a direct hit. Successive attacks can be queued up until there are no Action Points left to be spent they regenerate automatically as you perform real-time attacks which at the best of times for us amounted to roughly half an ammo clip.
After one or more attacks have been set up in VATS, real-time action is returned to with the push of a button. Queued strikes are dealt out automatically, with killing or particularly damaging blows highlighted by a slow-motion close-up. After sinking tens of hours into Elder Scrolls IV, Bethesda's previous game, the level of gore in display in Fallout 3 came as a bit of a surprise. More than once we saw one of our headshots remove half of the fallen opponent's skull. In another case, a well-thrown grenade resulted in a satisfying rain of torso-less limbs.