I recently finally finished Fallout 3. My character ended up being pretty immoral: looting everything that wasn't nailed down and being a complete jerk to everyone. He wasn't much of a murderer though, unless someone pissed me off. I loved my title at the end: Scourge of Humanity.

I must say that I was pretty impressed with the game. The size of the game world and its details, the hilarious dialogue options, and fun combat really had me hooked. I was pretty happy with myself though since I didn't rely on any guides to get my through the game. Not like I really needed it; the game did a great job of telling you where you need to go.

About the only disappointing thing I found was the game became way too easy on the default difficulty, and was even too easy on Hard. I never had any ammo shortages. I could take a lot of punishment once I gained a few levels, and stimpacks/health items practically grow on trees. And if anything really bad happened, I could go back to my house and heal up at My First Infirmary. It only went downhill once I got a follower. Charon mowed through enemies – it got to the point where I had to tell him to wait behind so I could get some EXP.

The most egregious part was radiation. It's practically a non-issue. Get too much radiation? Go to a doctor and he'll fix it up. You're swimming in caps, so who cares. And My First Infirmary will clear it up for free. I wish that radiation was more permanent, or harder to clear. It would have made the game more challenging.

I decided to play through the game on Very Hard as a good character. I wouldn't be able to loot tons of ammo, murder people to make life easy, or lie to shorten quests. I'm also not going to purchase an infirmary, nor am I going to recruit a follower. I also am trying to avoid save/reload as much as possible.

The game is a totally different experience. I chose to go out and explore the wasteland rather than advance the questline, and it's pretty frightening. For the first few levels, even molerats would take me down in a few hits. Raiders were bad news…I ended up running away from many encounters. And let's not mention super mutants. I was terrified of them. My paltry arsenal couldn't do much against them, and I didn't want to waste my tiny ammo supply on them (since I needed all the bullets I could get for vicious dogs). One time a pack of 5 dogs attacked me, and I had to use up several of my precious frag mines on them or else I would have been toast.

The exploration is a lot of fun too. I love walking to a location, and spotting or hearing an explosion in the distance. Makes you feel like there are things going on in the world. Random encounters also contribute to that. I ran into a group of non-hostile hunters. A little bit later, I was on a hilltop and watched them get slaughtered by super mutants.

Now that I'm level 7 and have better weapons, I can fight some of the tougher enemies. I still have ammo shortages on some weapons, and I try not to use my best ones too often since I don't have spare weapons to repair them with. I chose to try energy weapons, and they are rare at this point in the game.

I end up having to eat a lot of irradiated food and need to monitor my rads – I am only allowing myself to remove them with Rad-aways, which I only have a couple right now. I am raising my medicine skill to make stimpacks more useful.

And with that said, off to raid Vault 106.

For those of you heading to WAR, check out the new Warhammer Online database. I'll get a disclaimer out of the way: Yes, I work for Curse. But we're especially proud of WARDB, and want to spread the word. For anyone who's played MMOs before, you know how valuable a database site can be in your journey.

www.WARDB.com already has a ton of items, quests, and NPCs for the game. So if you're in the beta, you can use the site to help you. We've got a ton of other features as well:

• Career Builder - a tool to simulate mastery builds
• Renown Builder - a tool to simulate Renown builds
• Battlefield Map - See where the battles are occurring on your server
• Character Profiles - View your character, achievements, and items
• Guild Profiles -Profiles for guilds showing their rank and members
• And much more!

We also have a Wiki live at www.thewarwiki.com

I'll make another post later on about my experiences so far in the game.

While I wish this was about the band, this post is about another thing I haven't seen since growing up in the 80's. I somehow contracted an awesome case of poison oak. I guess when I was hiding in the bushes to surprise an upcoming group of people, I squatted in some poison oak and got it on my legs. And not knowing I did so, I managed to spread the oil on my arms. I can't even remember the last time I had poison-something (I guess ivy does not grow in CA), but it looks like I have a horrible disease. While people tend to stay away from me now at the gym, the itching is driving me crazy.