Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was the fact that when I got to Bethesda on Thursday, for my last appointment of E3, I got to play around a half-hour of Fallout 3. There were a few restrictions on what we could or could not write about, but I jumped right into it to the point of forgetting to write anything down.

The demo started off by walking out of Vault 101. The unnatural - to you - light blinds you for a second and there I am, looking over a scenic overpass. Getting my bearings, I walked around a bit until I got jumped by a vicious dog.

My first taste of Fallout 3 combat.

Backpedaling, I popped off a few rounds at the dog, finally took him down. As I walked on towards a small town that I spied, I was jumped by another dog. This time, I held down one button and pulled up VATS - the "action point" system of Fallout 3. It showed me what my percentage chances of hitting the dog in various places would be, and a few shots later, down went the dog.

Off to the city.

Walking through the city, having talked to its sheriff after being waved in by the robotic guard, I kept my radio tuned to some music until I found a small shop. There the lady gave me a job - going to retrieve some landmines and bring them back to her. Not having much of another job, I decided to take it.

I left the town and one of the devs said I could find a closer quest. I went back and talked to her, but alas, could not get another one, so I wandered out. I walked through what appeared to be a bombed out suburb and saw some wrecked cars.

I shot up a car and it exploded on me, busting up my leg. Fortunately I managed to hypo my leg back into safety and walk successfully until I found a schoolhouse.

Entering, I found it taken over by raiders. Going from room to room, I shot it out with various raiders using both real-time combat and VATS. You could play the game entirely using one or the other, but a combination of the two seemed to be the way to go.

There's a lot of excitement and a lot of trepidation about the new game - no, it's not a perfect recreation of a ten year old game, but it looks like - to me - it's going to be a great RPG. I went from "oh, I'm going to buy this" to "I'm going out and pre-ordering it" after getting a chance to play it.