I finally finished Fallout 3.

Well, I didn’t quite finish it, because there are more than a dozen missions I haven’t taken on and countless areas left unexplored.

But I wrapped up the main story. And that’s saying something, because it’s taken me nearly a year to do so.

By the time I completed the Fallout 3 cycle – the main game and the five additional chapters released as downloadable content for the PC and Xbox 360 – I had 486 save files and had been playing for more than 120 hours.

Set in a world similar to our own but with an alternate history, the events of Fallout 3 take place some 200 years after a nuclear war between China and the U.S. Players take on the role of an unnamed character – female or male – that leaves the safety of a survival shelter and journeys into the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Washington, D.C., area.

The game is an action-adventure role-playing game, so as your character completes tasks and gains experience, you can improve her or his skills and abilities. Want to be faster? Increase your speed. Rather be stronger? Level up your strength instead.

Games like these require players to make decisions every step of the way. Decisions about what missions to undertake and what faction to side with. Decisions about how to improve characters and whom to sacrifice along the way.

Which is why I promised myself that, when playing Fallout 3, I wouldn’t have too many save files.

It’s always been a problem for me with games that come from developers and publishers like Bethesda Softworks. The story of Fallout 3 is so deep, the plot paths so intricate, that I’m always creating a new save-game file so that I can back up a step or two in time if I want to change my mind.

It gets so that I have to keep a pad of paper close by with an annotated list of the various save-game files. If I decide that instead of choosing the “Finesse” perk, which grants a better probability of scoring a critical hit while in combat, I should have selected “Strong Back”, which allows me to carry more equipment, I can check my notes and load save file #62.

The existence of additional chapters for the game that are available for download just makes this worse.

Downloadable content is a strategy for extending the life of games, both in terms of playability for the consumer and revenue generation for the publisher. There have been five annexes to the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Fallout 3: Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout, and Mothership Zeta.

Fallout 3 hit shelves on October 28, 2008. The final chapter of the game, Mothership Zeta, found its way onto the Xbox Live service on August 3, 2009. In October, a Game of the Year edition of the boxed game, which includes the main game and all five downloadable pieces, comes out on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Publisher Bethesda, meanwhile, collected $70 for every copy of the main game sold, and an additional $10 for each extra chapter. A total of $120 from the likes of me.

But you know what? It was worth it.

Like the four previous additional chapters, Mothership Zeta adds about eight to 10 hours to your Fallout 3 experience. In it, you are abducted by aliens, lifted off the surface of the Earth, and into an orbiting spacecraft. After a brief period of wakefulness during which you witness yourself being probed, you come to in a cell. And you’re not alone.

You’ll find and rescue other humans, and you’ll explore the spacecraft, all while trying to find out how to get home. New, alien weapons have been introduced, as is a new perk that gives a bonus when using the alien ray guns. At one point, you’ll come across a wealth of human items that have been collected, not to mention a number of cows that go flying through what seems to be a garbage chute. Now we know the secret behind all those cattle mutilations.

Many of the DLC chapters have brought a new look to Fallout 3. Operation: Anchorage gave us the ice and cliffs of Alaska. The Pitt took us to the crumbling steelworks of Pittsburgh. In Point Lookout, we visited the rural swampland – once a state park – that was not affected by a bomb blast, although the region was affected by nuclear fallout.

In Mothership Zeta, we are exploring a steampunk spacecraft that happens to be armed with a Death Ray. And as a finale to one of the best games of 2008 and 2009, saving the Earth from obliteration by an alien menace is just about perfect.

Even if it took me 120 hours to get there.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

If there is a growth industry in the realm of video game development, it is in creating titles for Apple’s iPhone. Nowhere is that more true than Vancouver, where a host of start-ups are working on software for the disruptive mobile device.

Such is the topic of my latest column in the Georgia Straight.

While Vancouver’s video-game sector has contracted during the recession, one part of the local development scene has been bucking the trend. The increasing appetite for games that can be played on devices such as Apple’s iPhone has made this a bright spot in the sagging economy.

I was in San Diego last week to cover my first Comic-Con. It was the 40th anniversary of the event and nothing could prepare me for the excess.

Early estimates put the four-day count at over 125,000 people. There were lines to get into other lines. There were great costumes and weak costumes and WTF costumes. There were rail-thin people and grossly overweight people. There were babies and kids and adolescents and adults and older adults. There were games and toys and comics and movies and TV and actors and celebrities of all types.

And I managed to crank out 17 articles in five days. Here’s a run-down:

• Do You Still Like Captain Jack? Barrowman asks the Comic-Con crowd to judge the head of ‘Torchwood’
• From ‘Halo’ to ‘District 9’: Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp turn bad news into good
• Tennant Bids Farewell to ‘Doctor Who’ Fans: But actor insists the show must go on
• ‘Torchwood’ Getting a Fourth Season: Not clear what role creator Russell Davies will have
• The Boy and ‘The Box’: Richard Kelly looks to events at NASA for an ending
• ‘Fringe’ Gets Ahead of Itself: Olivia and the Bishops to be more involved in Season Two
• ‘V’ Producers Dodge Race Question: But they should pay attention to the issue that was raised
• Chuck Panel Rocks the House at Comic-Con: But do the creators have any ideas for Season Three?
• Rebooting Sherlock Holmes: Going back to the source the route to success says Downey
• Sendak: ‘They Can Go Straight To Hell’: Author loves film adaptation of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’
• Science Fact Meets Science Fiction: Data from Cassini satellite used in new animated film
• Halo Goes Anime: Microsoft’s game franchise moves to a new medium with ‘Halo Legends’
• Big, Bad Bruce Campbell: The B-Movie star and friends talk ‘Burn Notice’ at Comic-Con
• Wonder Women at Comic-Con: Iconic female characters in pop culture
• Rayguns and Robots, Babes and VR: Highlights from the exhibit hall at Comic-con 2009
• People, People Everywhere: The crowds descend on San Diego for Comic-Con
• Welcome to Comic-Con 2009: Where Felicia Day selflessly indoctrinates us

Now I am going to sleep for three days.

Did you know that there are 118 fundamental “awesoments”? All things are composed of them.

And courtesy of dapperstache.com we know what they are and what the relationships are between them.

Pictured here is the Periodic Table of the Awesoments which lays everything out.

See the connections between pirates, zombies, aliens, and bounty hunters, for example. Or how ninja, snipers, assassins, vampires, and ghosts share commonalities. And how lightning, sex, and black holes are related.

Note that there are as yet a few undiscovered – or at least unidentified – awesoments. Suggestions welcome.

EA Canada played hosted to the annual EA Sports media event today (July 13). On the docket at Fall Starting Lineup were NBA Live, NHL 10, FIFA 10, and Grand Slam Tennis.

The stars of the show were Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic), Milan Lucic (Boston Bruins), Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA), and Venus Williams?.

After the media were sorted into four groups, we took to the sports field for some lessons from the pros.

First up for me was Howard with some lessons on how to work a post-up play into the key. He told one media volunteer that he’d have to yell louder if he wanted the ball. “You’ve got 20,000 people watching you, the music is blasting,” said the young NBA superstar who led the Magic to the NBA finals this year. “You’ve gotta be loud.”

Next was a session with Vancouver-native Lucic, who was a member of the Vancouver Giants junior team before making the move to Boston to play with the Bruins.

David Littman, NHL 10 producer, was messing about with a stick and a puck when we walked up. Littman was a goalie in the pros for a time, and I asked him why he wasn’t wearing the thick pads between the pipes for the demonstration.

“When you’re a goalie for 30 years,” he confessed, “all you want to do is try and score goals.”

“NHL 10 is all about emotion and intensity,” he told the assembled media, “which is Milan’s game. Checking, fighting, and board play are all part of his game.”

One of the main features of NHL 10 is board play, which allows gamers to get in close along the boards. Lucic said that he uses the boards offensively for puck protection. “You need to know how to use the boards to your advantage,” he said. One of the best ways to stop the offensive cycle strategy, he explained, was to use the boards to “hit and pin.”

After a demonstration in which Lucic took Littman into a section of boards that had been set up along the fence in the court, Littman joked, “I think you hurt my spleen.”

Tennis was next, and Venus Williams told us the top things to remember when serving. First, get a proper grip on the racket. Second, the toe of your front foot should point at the net post ahead of you. Third, the ball should be held in the fingertips, not the palm.

“I have a lot of fun [at these events],” she said. “It makes you think about the game differently.”

Williams said that she liked meeting other professional athletes because it gave her a chance to ask them about their training regimens and “what kinds of injuries they get and how they deal with them.”

When asked if Roger Federer, who just won at Wimbledon, was a male Venus, she said, “There is no male Venus.”

And finally, we got some tips on designing free kick set pieces from Sacha Kljestan, who plays for Chivas USA in the MLS and for the U.S. National Team. “When you design your own set plays,” he explained, “you always have a chance to score.”

After the lessons came the King of the Court competition that pitted the four athletes against each other to answer the question: Who’d be better at the other’s sport?

My money was on the hockey and soccer players at having the best cross-sport skills. Or at least the most familiarity with the other sports. Williams admitted that she’d never picked up a hockey stick before.

In the first event, an EA modified version of the basketball game Horse, she said that when she plays basketball, she kicks her leg out like she’s serving in tennis. “I can’t help it,” she laughed. Sure enough, in her last basket attempt, she jumped in the air and brought both her feet up.

Howard was the day’s class clown. During the King of the Court podium presentation, in which he was awarded the largest trophy, he gave an “acceptance speech,” in which he thanked the people of Earth. His planet, he said, is populated by supermen like Shaq and Obama.

The four athletes were, if you’ll pardon the pun, good sports.

Here are some more photos from the event:

FIFA line producer David Rutter and a media volunteer form a two-man wall against Kljestan’s free kick.

Victor Lucas from Electric Playground gets some pointers from Dwight Howard.

Venus Williams celebrates a lucky rim bounce.

Sacha Kljestan attempts to soccer-kick a basketball for two points.

Venus Williams picks up a hockey stick for the first time. “How close can I go?” she asked.

Basketballer Dwight Howard snaps a serve.