Fallout 3 GC Previews
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Heading toward the waypoint I accessed my Pip Boy to get an overhead view of the terrain and see how long the walk would take. I only had to kill a few Raiders under a glowing moon before arriving at the German Town police station where I really got to put VATS to the test.GamersGlobal.
In my previous encounter I had dispatched of my enemies quickly without running out of the necessary action points required to queue up more attacks. The Super Mutants guarding the police station were a completely different story. I was able to land a few shots with my new rifle before one of the mutants barreled toward me to lay on some damaging blows. I had to change my grenade hot key to stimpacks and took to running away instead of charging forward. Unfortunately it was here that my time with the game ended, though I could've easily spent the rest of the afternoon entranced by Bethesda's latest.
Now, at GC in Leipzig, we spent about an hour with the PC version of Fallout 3 (which is supposed to have the same gameplay) and could verify most of what Pete told us. V.A.T.S. no longer felt too mighty, and in fact, we were able to cripple the limbs of a super mutant without killing him, as it should be. Still, a successful V.A.T.S. shot can instantly kill an opponent if the damage to the limb brings his overall hitpoints to zero. For example, we shot 2 times at the left arm of a raider; the first shot hit and made him lose his weapon, the second shot crippled his arm, at the same time killing him. We are STILL not quite convinced about V.A.T.S., because our standard tactic was to try to get very near the opponents, who didn't seem to hit us much better than over a greater distance, and than entering V.A.T.S.: With this tactic, the relative low range of our pistol or hunting rifle didn't count, and we could hit our target with a to-hit probability of 80 to 95 % percent. The opponents, on the other hand, do not have V.A.T.S. Also, the Action Points still filled up pretty quickly, so running away from a Super Mutant for half a minute would replenish them to the maximum, allowing us to fight him effectively again. But to make this clear: the fighting no longer felt far too easy or flawed. As in Oblivion, opponents will run or swim towards you in order to reach you, or fight from afar when they have appropiate weapons. Some will throw grenades at you, others will fight you with poles or clubs.
