bbarcell

@eudoxus note: I would favorably compare the overall 'style' - i.e. design, story and characters, to FO1 and particularly FO2, another reason I liked it so much. FO3 was too much Oblivion, too little fallout.

The exploration in FO3 was great, but eventually the payoff wasn't worth it. Once the novelty of exploration wore off, I'd find myself wandering for hours and rarely seeing anything interesting. There was almost no one interesting to talk to outside of a few major quests early on and the main quest. It felt empty. Sure, there were stories, but most of them were the kind you had to make yourself or interpret from the environment. Halfway through the game, I got bored of exploring and not finding anything interesting and just burned through the rest of the achievements (100%).

I thought I would skip NV after all of the negativity, but when I did pick it up, I liked it WAY more than FO3. It had way more personality. The world was more dense; any time I wanted to explore, I found something interesting. Nearly everywhere you went was a town or an outpost, with several people to chat with and learn about. Nearly every quest was like a custom-written novella, usually with moral choices. I became attached to most of my companions and had a hard time choosing which to take with me, unlike FO3 where I didn't care about them at all.

Don't get me started on the faction system - first time I've played through a game 4 times and actually felt like it was different all 4 times.

NV's problems would be that I had to save constantly, lest the game freeze up during a loading screen; the crafting system was more trouble than it was worth; and the combat system sucked almost as much as the original, though at least they improved the non-VATS shooting mechanics and the sneaking/hand-to-hand stuff. When it came to stories and characters, though, it beat FO3 hands down.

ZELDA, but it didn't unlock the second quest. What up with that? Filing a bug report, asap.

Really seems like a game that was already in design and had Kirby slapped on top to get some brand recognition. Not saying that's a totally bad thing but that really is how it feels.

Competition = good for consumers. I'm not sure what is up with attitude that we have Steam so we don't need anything else. I like competitive services like GFWL and Impulse and D2D because they keep Steam honest. I also like my cheevos.

Technically? A pirated copy of Sands of Time on the PC, but I only played the first level and was never able to get into it. Don't crucify me, I have money now and I don't pirate games anymore! PoP on the 360 was the first I *really* played all the way through.

Xbox 360