So, I've FINALLY finished Fallout 3.

Seriously, when did that game come out?

October 30th 2008? Yikes.

Why did it take you so long? I hear you ask. Well I'll tell you why- because I'm a terrible video game completionist (and apparently, completionist is not a real word, hmm...), and any time I got stuck on some particularly long and arduous or simply frustrating quest, I'd just give up, and decide that playing FIFA was far easier- if not infinitely more mind-numbing.

Yes, I've finally completed Fallout 3 on the PS3, after I started playing it perhaps six months after it came out. When I picked it up it was perhaps six months after it came out. I was still in my first year of college; my best mate picked it up for the Xbox 360, and I remember several ocassions of going to his place and just sitting and watching him play this awesome, fun-looking, completely different kind of game- something I'd never experienced before.

The Hero from Vault 101- your character-
wandering the Capital Wasteland.

I went and got it, and instantly I was hooked- I spent hours upon hours playing it, and perhaps just as long talking to my buddies at college whenever we had the chance. And, as I said before, I probably stopped playing it because I got stuck on something and then chickened out. Sadly I'm like that with games. I was seriously perhaps an hour away from finishing InFamous on the PS3, before deciding that the last level was too hard and trading it in for another game.

An awesome game- and perhaps one of the best I've ever played- I was always going to finish Fallout 3, so I'm glad I finally did. It's a vast, expansive, free-roaming first-person-shooter-come-role-playing-game which seems to be alive- you never find the same enemies in the same place, nor the same items, and there are so many different outcomes and consequences for your actions. In certain instances it is possible to screw yourself completely by making certain karma-based decisions, or to just break the game by killing the wrong character in the wrong place or at the wrong time. It's not overly-structured and the game doesn't molly-coddle you into doing what you're supposed to do, march off with the spoils and then thank-you-very-much- it just lets you wade in up to your knees, not knowing what might happen, but loving every minute of it.

A Super Mutant, before being systematically dismembered using VATS.

For some reason, I was rather surprised when I did finish it- I didn't see it coming, and all of a sudden there's this epic battle and then "Oh, so I've done it... really? That's it?" And then I began to miss it instantly. So, here's to Fallout 3, one of the greatest games I've ever played.

And now to play it's downloadable content! Finally.