10. Fallout 3 (X360)
Fallout 3 has often been referred to, both derisively and not, as "Oblivion with guns". That's pretty accurate. After all, it is an RPG set in a huge, open world that's populated by a great many characters, all of whom are quite ugly and have been voiced by one of five (six, at most) people. And it controls similarly, runs on the same engine, and could basically pass as a mod of Oblivion, albeit an extremely ambitious one. But while I enjoyed Oblivion and played it pretty exhaustively, nothing in it really prepared me for how utterly absorbed I would be by Fallout 3.
I'm sure part of that is down to its post-apocalyptic setting, which I find much more appealing than the Elder Scrolls' fairly generic Tolkien-inspired world. In the future, Washington, D.C. has been nuked by the Chinese and is now the battleground for a war between numerous factions including the green-skinned super mutants, a knightly order who fashions its battle armor from old car parts, and roving gangs of cannibalistic thugs who want to rape you and wear your skin. So it's an improvement over contemporary D.C., to be sure, but remains a pretty bad scene. And it's an excellent setting for a video game! Bethesda really did a tremendous job of recreating and reimagining D.C. It is truly surreal the first time you stumble into the National Mall and discover that it's the site of ongoing trench warfare between the super mutants and the Brotherhood. Less iconic locations can be pretty affecting, too. Sifting through abandoned homes and burned out churches for loot can be as unsettling as it is fun and rewarding.
Fallout 3 also has a much stronger narrative drive than Oblivion, or most other open world games for that matter. Seeing your own character's birth is a strangely powerful way to start things off and having Liam Neeson for a dad is a pretty sweet deal for any kid, so you feel suitably unmoored when he splits on you and your nice little vault-contained world is inevitably ripped apart. You'll really want to track down dear old Dad and find out just what the hell is going on, and the more you find out, the more you begin to feel that there is really a lot at stake here. There are tons of sidequests and other diversions - the vast world itself, so strange and yet very familiar, is basically one giant distraction - so the fact that I tend to find myself gravitating back toward the main story says a lot.
That's not to say I don't get distracted, though. Far from it. It's impossible not to when getting into shootouts with random raiders is a complete gas thanks to V.A.T.S., which serves the combined purposes of emulating the previous Fallouts' turn-based combat and ability to target specific body parts, distracting from the game's otherwise dodgy shooting mechanics, and delivering spectacularly cinematic deaths. Watching heads explode in V.A.T.S. never gets old. But writing about Fallout 3 does, so I'm done here!
