The radioactive dust of the Capital Wasteland clings to your boots long after you switch the console off.

The profile of Fallout 3 stays cautious for now, because it rests on few votes. But a direction is forming. Its sound is where it leaves the biggest mark, ahead of a little over seven games in ten, and on the desert island question it holds the same promise, the companion you would gladly take with you. Connection follows, above the middle of the pack. The rest sits around the median, the fun, the art style, the controller feel. Only one line really drops, rediscovery, right at the bottom, ahead of barely one game in ten. The early votes suggest this, so take it as something to confirm, but the idea is lovely: this is a world you love to inhabit more than one you dream of experiencing fresh again.

Next to modern open worlds, smoother and far more generous with comfort, Fallout 3 shows its age in how it handles in your hands. What it keeps is the atmosphere, that blend of 1950s naivety and nuclear dread few games ever pulled off.

So who is it for? You, if you love getting lost in a wasteland that tells a story at every ruin, headphones on. Much less so if you want razor sharp mechanics and a world that surprises you on the second visit.