‘Fallout 3’

‘Fallout 3’

(EA Games) for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC

Genre: Shooter; Rating: M

Grade: A+

This is just an amazing game, pure and simple. Something you will load up, be vaguely interested in at the start and then soon find yourself skipping meals, bathroom breaks and time with anyone with an actual pulse. I have no comment for the amount of times these things happened to me, but I now have a scraggly beard, fear the sun and panic at any sounds that don’t emanate from my TV.

It would be easy to just say that “Fallout 3” is “Oblivion” set in post-apocalyptic Washington. If you didn’t play “Oblivion” (Bethesda’s award-winning RPG set in a mythical realm of swords and castles), you missed out on something beautiful. But “Fallout 3” takes this even further and delivers probably the largest explorable game world ever, and it never gets boring.

I’m definitely biased, because I live in Washington. All the little D.C. touches are here: Subway stations look as they should, neighborhoods and D.C.-centric enclaves have nice touches of realism and the National Mall area is just teeming with evil supermutants and ghouls that could have previously been congressmen for all I know.

The gameplay itself is rich and full of options. You’ll go on tons of quests, both to help the few remaining humans survive and to solve the mystery of your missing father — and also learn what happened to Washington in the first place. There is a healthy and exciting balance between RPG and first-person shooter elements that keeps the game from becoming repetitive.

To describe the visuals as stunning fails to do it justice. Load times are forgivable. Enemies have smart AI and don’t give up for a second. The level-up system is nicely paced so you aren’t getting too good, too fast. There are some things that really bug me after awhile (the dialogue system is too slow and antiquated, for instance). But such shortcomings are not stopping “Fallout 3” from being one of the top five games of the year.

I had been eagerly hoping that a sequel to “Oblivion” would be coming from Bethesda. It’s just a distant memory now, as I walk around the real D.C. thinking of those creepy creatures I happily dispatched in my screen-world D.C.

‘Dead Space’

(EA Games) for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC

Genre: Shooter; Rating: M

Grade: A

I don’t consider myself as having a weak constitution, but there are certainly times when the fright factor is high and the gore gets to me. Yet none of that should keep one from experiencing “Dead Space.”

While the survival-horror genre is a well-worn trail, much of “Dead Space” feels unique, from both the environment to the gameplay.

You star as a scientist investigating the strange happenings aboard a spaceship where former friends and colleagues have been mutated into nasty buggers who are very adept and tearing you limb from limb.

The story is well drawn out and has its fair share of twists and turns — and more than enough freak-out moments to please any horror fan.

— Chris Campbell, Scripps Howard