Play Fallout 3 now with the benefit of being already patched, fixed and modded, and after Play Fallout NV, which by then will be already a bit patched.
One of the first “big” reviews:
9/10
Sarkus
1783
I put in about 1.5 hours on the PC version. Not bugs or glitches that I saw so far. Seemed to run pretty good on my PC with everything at high and high res. And that Caravan pack I got was pretty useful.
HRose
1784
Even Eurogamer review leaves some space to praise the awesome Gamebryo:
Your companion’s dim-witted nature is perhaps connected to the creaking Gamebryo engine, which still carries a lot of Oblivion’s clunkier aspects in its digital genome. Interior maps remain frustratingly vague, character models are still bloated and odd, and both people and objects are prone to random jigging or getting lodged in doors and rocks.
_Poe
1785
That sounds so fantastic, can’t wait till Friday.
It’s not hard to do. They just don’t do it.
HRose’s rants should be tempered by the fact that he believes that any kind of outsourced or third-party game engines or plug-in modules are pure evil, represent sure signs of lazy, haphazard development and that nothing good has ever come from them in the history of mankind.
— Alan
PC Gamer review:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/19/fallout-new-vegas-review/
Plus, I noticed that over on fidgit Tom managed to improve his crashing problems by ditching NPC companions entirely. Perhaps tolerance for the NPCs could partly explain the variance in crash reports.
Dejin
1788
Interesting. I played the original Fallout 3 on the XBox 360 and don’t remember running into any crashes in some 100+ hours of play. I’m sure there were a few, but I don’t remember them, and I was rather surprised to see people saying earlier in this thread that the 360 version of Fallout was unstable. However, I used virtually no companions the entire game (I did have Dogmeat briefly before I discovered that he died too easily, which made me sad, so I left him at home in Megaton). So perhaps that was the difference.
Skipper
1789
Even beyond the occasional lockup that people reported there were numerous people on this forum that ran into the missing NPC bug. Trust me, it was not a bug free launch. That being said, it did run, and despite some bugs, was able to be finished, as far as I can recall. Don’t trust my memory though, a pretty extensive writeup of bugs was kept here.
metta
1790
An Obsidian game with technical issues? Shocker!
I liked the opening at least. Then I had to go in to work to teach three classes in a row starting at 8AM, followed by meetings… By the time I get home, it’ll be time to go out to see Spamalot. Which, actually, is pretty cool, so I ain’t complaining. But I wish the game could have come out, say, on a day when I had nothing else to do. Next time they should ask me first.
I found this pretty ironic, because if Obsidian wouldn’t be chosen to do this game, the developer would be Bethesda. Bethesda, who did the also buggy (and full of technical issues) Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Played just under 2 hours on PC so far. It runs good on Very High for me and loading times are fine (on my 2.5 yr old computer). The voice acting, dialogue and story all seem a lot better than FO3. I did get stuck in the ground once after doing an uphill melee attack in VATS, luckily playing on PC means this is a non-issue (hit ‘~’ [tilde] for the console and type ‘TCL’ to turn off collisions). I’m disappointed that none of the reviews I’ve looked at so far really give much attention to the new crafting and reputation systems. Maybe they turn out to not be worthwhile in the long run, but just having them there (along with Hardcore mode) allows for more role-playing and makes more of the junk you can pick up actually useful.
pilonv1
1794
I don’t know if I’m in the minority but who uses companions in a Fallout game? Maybe it had to do with my sneaky character not wanting a lumbering fool running around with me, but it seems to not only go against the point of the game but the engine doesn’t seem capable of handling it (still).
I used companions for maybe 5-10 hrs of my 200+ hrs in Fallout 3. Used them a lot more in the first two games, but they seemed like too much of a burden to bother with in the third. I liked Dogmeat but he was too fragile.
And now RPS insists on make me sad.
DeepT
1797
Yeah, I play a sneaky character and companions just ruin that. At the very least, they end up being the targets giving me breathing room while they live.
Has anyone ever done much with Lock picking in the last fallout game? I always wonder if the loot you get from it is worth the skill points. In many games locking picking seems to be a bust. You find low value junk, never anything good in locked containers. I was wanting to know if Fallout is the same or is this skill worth taking?
My build in this game will be:
Traits:
Kamikaze: +10 Action points, -2 Damage reduction
WildWasteland
Stats:
5 Str
5 Per
6 End
5 Char
7 Int
7 Agi
5 Luck
Tagged Skills: Guns, Repair, and Sneak.
I put in a bit over 3 hours on the PC, there were some graphical glitches but nothing earth shattering, frame rates were fine. Melee characters seem like they would be perfectly viable at least initially.
My overall impression is it is fallout 3, with more stuff, quite possibly too much stuff. It is precisely a Quarter to Three so time to go to bed.
Has anybody figured out where the manual is for those of us who bought it via Steam. I can never find the damn things.
Companions are useless because this engine simply cannot handle them decently. I will probably use them only to do their quests and then bye bye.
Are skill point gains still tied to INT, like in Fallout 3?
I decrypted the install before I came to work this morning, but didn’t really have time to play. Debating whether to go with hardcore mode or not. Really the only thing that’s holding me back is ammo having weight, which could be a real drag, particular since in Fallout 3 I played low STR characters so I could fold those points into INT, and I was planning on doing the same here.
