Heres parts of the article.
Not surprisingly, Fallout 3 works best on PC. Graphically speaking the game runs - for the most part - at 60fps at 720p on our system, with only the occasional drop in frame-rate. Its fully anti-aliased image, high-quality textures and much shorter load-times are of course welcome, but the game's use of the standard mouse-and-keyboard controls really makes it a pleasure to interface with compared to the console versions.
The most surprising thing about Fallout 3 on console is just how little has been compromised in terms of the actual game content and design. Graphically, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions retain just about everything from the original PC code. Bearing in mind the staggering complexity and overall scale of the maps, combined with the astonishing amounts of detail in the blasted wastelands of Washington DC, this is no mean feat.
So considering the level of achievement that has been attained for both console versions, just how has the PS3 version (and in some places, the 360 game) managed to attract so much negative press? It's an intriguing question, and so we come to the centrepiece of this feature - a three-way video comparison, with full 720p 60fps renders of all three videos downloadable, as usual, on the author's blog.
Contrast issues aside, the Xbox 360 version of the game is basically a nicer place to be. There's still the occasional rough edge, but most of the image is filtered with 4x multi-sampling anti-aliasing - the same kind of ultra-fine smoothing as seen in Race Driver: GRID and Project Gotham Racing 4. The Xbox 360 physically can't do better than this, and while it's selective and not quite as good as the complete anti-aliasing coverage seen in the PC game, it's very, very close and plays an instrumental role in making Fallout 3's environments seem more believably realistic. Image integrity like this is a crucial part of the game, and the PS3 version loses something without it.
V-Synchronicity
Part of the Xbox 360 version's frame-rate advantage is down to the way it handles v-sync compared to the PS3 game. For the most part, the 360 game is locked at 30fps, but when the engine is struggling, it'll turn off the v-lock to maintain refresh rate. PS3 on the other hand remains v-locked come what may.
In a slow-moving game with relatively static lighting and not so much fast-moving left-to-right movement, screen-tear is a lot more difficult to pick up compared to your average action game, so the decision to lose v-lock in challenging scenes is most likely the right one. Unavoidably, there are some scenes where it looks terrible (for example, battling the Super Mutant Brute in the Project Purity lab) but overall, it maintains smoothness even in complex scenes, while control remains smooth, and doesn't kick in often enough to be considered a major handicap.
Keeping v-lock at all times doesn't work out so well on PS3. The further you get into the game, the more obvious the judder becomes. An environment that's difficult to render combined with several characters can see the frame-rate plummet to 15fps averages - bearable, unless you're in the midst of combat where you're battling technical deficiencies as much as your in-game opponents.
However, despite its issues, in many ways, the PS3 is trying harder than the 360 game in retaining the most intricate elements of the PC game's visuals and for that it deserves some respect.
Certain texture-based lighting effects are totally absent on Xbox 360, making characters and creatures look more flat than on PS3 and PC. Detailing on selected textures looks to have been reduced, and complexity of rocks when viewed close up also reveals a paring down of detail here. In terms of elements that are actually noticeable during gameplay, these differences can also extend to the close-ups with the in-game characters - hair in particular looks nicer on PS3, metallic items look more... metallic. In short, PS3 and PC have an extra sheen of detailing that's missing on Xbox 360.
There's much to commend to the PS3's approach, but the bottom line is that the decisions taken on the 360 version were the right ones for downsizing the game with the minimum of impact on gameplay and visual consistency. While the PS3 version is still playable enough, you can't help but think that a better job could have been done with the port, especially bearing in mind how progressed the PS3 rendition of Oblivion was over its 360 sibling. But let's get this into perspective here. There's not the game-breaking impact that others have suggested - though non-VATS combat really can become a chore - just an overall sense that a truly important game is not the best it could've been, and that perhaps predictably, once again the PS3 deserves better.
Moving away from console, the real revelation is just how good the PC version is, and how well the game performs with relatively meagre hardware. Swapping in a dual-core CPU instead of the quad didn't impact performance massively and with the 8800GT or equivalent weighing in at GBP 90 or so at the time of writing, upgrading a modern-ish desktop or media centre PC to double up as a games machine is a hugely tempting proposition, especially with a game as special as this. Speaking as someone without day-to-day experience of PC gaming, Fallout 3 is a wonderful affirmation that computer gaming is still as strong a proposition as ever it was, despite the rising power and influence of the current generation of consoles.
Full article with videos here.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=285507
