Okay, maybe that headline does real gamer nerds a disservice, as I only play one computer game anymore…when I have mental blocks and just don’t want to go outside for a bit.
So I play Fallout 3. It’s the last game I’ve paid for (almost a year ago). When you only play like one game, it’s got to be customizable or you end up falling asleep after 10 minutes. Thankfully, it IS pretty customizable.
The mod community, for the most part (except for the hairpacks…why can’t someone who isn’t an anime nerd do graphics modelling?) is doing pretty good work expanding the game and making it more worthwhile to play characters other than “stealthy sniper guy” or “pyro melee guy”, the two character classes that seem to do best at a vanilla (unmodded) version of the game.
One such mod is the “playa” mod, and I’m talking about Seducing Women. Holy hell, this is a surprisingly good and entertaining mod. There’s a multi-part quest to hook up with lots of women, find pornography, and research the orgies of the upper class types. Gives the charismatic type player a shot at getting enough experience to keep from being lunchmeat early on in the game.
The Weapons kit mod and RobCo certified mods help the techie players out a whole lot…both are reasonably imbalanced, but if you apply Mart’s Monster Mod, you’ll balance that right back out. That guy went and buffed up a whole lot of monsters wandering around the wasteland.
Raiders, Mercenary, Regulators, Talon expanded is an awesome mod if you want a little more diversity out of the game. Adds a bunch of new combat armors, too, which is really why I dig it…combat armor is rad. The Rivet City armor, especially, is great…black, helps your small guns skills out (built in speed holster or something?), and it doesn’t have Talon Company bad white eagle claw on it. Reneer’s Radio Mod accomplished a super simple thing that I wanted since I first started playing the game, which was just to change the radio station or turn it off. I can only take hearing “Wonderful guy” and “Let’s go sunning”, along with most of the Enclave station, for only so long before I just turn off the sound altogether.
And if you play this game and you’re not using the mod manager or FOSE (script extender) then you’re probably missing out. They’ll help you get all those various mods working together right.
Now if only there were a graphics modeler who knew how hair should look like 1. in real life, and 2. in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The only good hair mod I’ve found for male characters is the bald hairstyle mod. The ONLY one. Every other one looks like a generic woman’s hairstyle that has been screwed up a little bit. And the women’s hairstyles are totally not what you’d expect in a world where there aren’t any hairspray or gel factories. In fact, I have no idea how the hell that hair was supposed to be held up. Most were ported over from Oblivion, and to be honest, they looked like ass in that one, too. They’re bad anime haircuts, people, I’m sorry you spent so much time rendering them, but they look like ass. They look extremely fake and are way, way over the top. The vanilla Fallout 3 haircuts are way better. The only reason I make a deal about this is that there are actual NPC’s in the game who’ll cut your hair, and it’s a waste if there’s only like one hairstyle that doesn’t look like ass. Bald makes a whole lot more sense in a radiated world than wood elf hair or emo hair, okay? And it looks a billion times cooler.
Improved glasses and shades makes a lot of sense, and adds a use for one of the more useless clothing items in the game. For that matter, Improved goggles is right in that same vein. Makes sense something that protects your eyes from a hostile environment might make your vision a little better. Galloping Gourmet makes food considerably less worthless. Instead of “healing you instantly”, it heals (and maybe irradiates or another effect) you over time.
Then there’s Wasteland Whisperer. No, I don’t want to spend 20 minutes walking backward, depleting all my ammo at a huge mutated crab monster only to get a little crab meat. No, I don’t want to have to kill every dog I run across in the wasteland (makes the Animal Friend perk a little easier to get early on). Yes, I like the idea of being able to lure animals into following me by feeding them snacks. This mod is another great one for high charisma characters who don’t know their way around a pistol, by the way.
Eyepatch Why the hell not. Next up is a crazy pirate mod. There’s a weird little shack in the DC ruins called “Pirate Poly’s”. I’d say that’d be a great place to start.
There are many more fan made mods that really add a lot more to the game. Some fairly good quests…though not anywhere near as good as the official downloadable content. I kind of wish these quests were made by real Fallout fans and not just Oblivion fanatics, as they generally stink royally of Oblivion (which, yes, I played, and yes, I miss the wildly insane jumping capabilities). But the ones I mentioned just freaking work with the game. Then again, I go so sick of several of the Galaxy News Radio songs that I manually replaced them with songs that didn’t annoy me so much…but probably aren’t very “1950’s”. I can’t believe they opted for “Let’s go sunning” over Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife” or whatever. I seriously cannot get into blowing away a bunch of cannibalistic, feral mutants in a sewer while hearing Tex Beneke. I just can’t. She ruins the whole mood by singing about being in love with some dude. There are some good music replacer mods, but they’re kind of hit and miss from my experience with them. Usually it’s because the song isn’t encoded just right or something.