Fallout 3 Impressions and Opinions

[White Haven]

Unpleasantness: Found my first Unkillable Quest NPCs yesterday. There may be others, but I haven't met them yet. Zimmer and Armitage in Rivet City get 'knocked out' when you blow them to kingdom come. Disappointing. I did, however, begin White Haven's Grand Slaver Purge in Rivet City, by assassinating Sister. That irritated the guards there, however, and I had to lie low for a while.

[Mr Bean]

Unpleasantness: Found my first Unkillable Quest NPCs yesterday. There may be others, but I haven't met them yet. Zimmer and Armitage in Rivet City get 'knocked out' when you blow them to kingdom come. Disappointing. I did, however, begin White Haven's Grand Slaver Purge in Rivet City, by assassinating Sister. That irritated the guards there, however, and I had to lie low for a while.

Here's what you do, wait until he's at the Muddy Rudder Bar, sneak up to him plant a grenade then run for the exit. Hilarity ensues and you can take a two day vacation from Rivet and be fine.

[Mr Bean]

The grand guide to dealing with enemies with big bad weapons.

Shoot the weapon!
Big baddy have a Rocket launcher? That's a big old target, zoom in with your assault rifle or Chinese rifle and unload on it. Weapons can take damage. And it's rather fun to be fighting a super mutant who's reduced to hand to hand because I just took out his mini-gun with two quick 10mm shots. Same thing with Fat man launchers or Rocket launchers. If you aim sucks VATS away friend.

[White Haven]

I love hunting Super Mutants with my old .32. Hell, I love hunting EVERYTHING with the .32, it makes for a neat self-imposed challenge. The downside, of course, is that I'm running low on .32 bullets...oh well, I might have to dip into the two-thousand-odd rounds of 5.56 I've been slowly accumulating, or the 160 rounds of .308, or the ~450 shotgun shells. Maybe the 1100 energy cells. Ammo problems what? Sure, if you bumrush the mainline quests you can run low, but as an explorer, you can quickly scavenge more ammo than God. Just make sure to carry a weapon of every conceivable caliber you can manage so you'll always have a bullet-hose at need.

And yes, weapon condition deteriorates FUCKING way too fast.

[Nephtys]

I love hunting Super Mutants with my old .32. Hell, I love hunting EVERYTHING with the .32, it makes for a neat self-imposed challenge. The downside, of course, is that I'm running low on .32 bullets...oh well, I might have to dip into the two-thousand-odd rounds of 5.56 I've been slowly accumulating, or the 160 rounds of .308, or the ~450 shotgun shells. Maybe the 1100 energy cells. Ammo problems what? Sure, if you bumrush the mainline quests you can run low, but as an explorer, you can quickly scavenge more ammo than God. Just make sure to carry a weapon of every conceivable caliber you can manage so you'll always have a bullet-hose at need.

And yes, weapon condition deteriorates FUCKING way too fast.

It's not too bad, since you'll be finding replacement weapons constantly for the main ones. I've got more chinese assault rifles than I know what to do with. Combat Shotguns are also reasonably common.

Also, what's the diff between Assault Rifle and Chinese Assault Rifle? I know the Chinese Pistol is a giant peice of trash, but why does the CAR do more damage than the AR?

[Mr Bean]

It's not too bad, since you'll be finding replacement weapons constantly for the main ones. I've got more chinese assault rifles than I know what to do with. Combat Shotguns are also reasonably common.

Also, what's the diff between Assault Rifle and Chinese Assault Rifle? I know the Chinese Pistol is a giant peice of trash, but why does the CAR do more damage than the AR?

Magic
Seriously, there's no reason. The Chinese pistol is a giant POS while the Chinese Rifle is excellent against all enemies but Deathclaws and Behemoths.

[The Grim Squeaker]

It's not too bad, since you'll be finding replacement weapons constantly for the main ones. I've got more chinese assault rifles than I know what to do with. Combat Shotguns are also reasonably common.

Also, what's the diff between Assault Rifle and Chinese Assault Rifle? I know the Chinese Pistol is a giant peice of trash, but why does the CAR do more damage than the AR?

Magic
Seriously, there's no reason. The Chinese pistol is a giant POS while the Chinese Rifle is excellent against all enemies but Deathclaws and Behemoths.

Where can I find Deathclaws in the game?
As soon as I get through dead space, i'll be replaying the game, so i'm looking for interesting goodies and vaults that I missed the first time through

[White Haven]

Oh, you can work AROUND the shitty weapon degradation without too much hassle, it just feels WAY off to have a weapon fucking up terribly by the end of a single extended firefight. Deathclaws, Behemoths, and Sentry Bots are the only enemies I've encountered so far that really keep me on my toes...which, naturally, is why I go looking for them explicitly whenever possible. And DEATH, head up north around Vault 92 and find Old Olney. It's CRAWLING with Deathclaws, I think I walked home with something on the order of 16-18 hands by the time I was done. Up in the town is bad enough. The sewers...now that's a bit of a rush. Hunting Deathclaws in close quarters with a shotgun and a prayer is hella fun.

[Stark]

Assuming skills factor into degradation (optimistic given Beth), even at the start of the game a few mags of laser fire only degrades the weapon by a few percent. It's 'unrealistic', but many games with weapon degradation are far, far worse. The totally retarded repair system is the real culprit here with regard to guns failing out in an unrealistically short time. My AK has lasted ages and ages and all I've done is repair it once. The game needs moneysinks, to be frank; I'm swimming in money, stims and ammo and there's nothing on the horizon for me to even think about buying, and I'm like level 8.

And now that I've found the proper sniper rifle, I don't even need VATS to make the game laughably easy. It's quite accurate in realtime (even with small guns 20) and I can take a guys head off with a single stealthed critical, and the AI is so stupid even though they appear to know where you are, they can't path to you. Ironically my skill rating (and the broken method of determining shot difficulty) means this is impossible in VATS.

[Anarchist Bunny]

Will I need/get any thing from Doctor Lesko after the Those quest?

Because I would really like to get the rewards from him, off the crazy bastard and go finish off that queen.

[charlemagne]

Will I need/get any thing from Doctor Lesko after the Those quest?

Because I would really like to get the rewards from him, off the crazy bastard and go finish off that queen.

Yeah, he can give you some crazy mutant gene shot that will increase either strength or one other skill I forgot, both plus +25% fire resistence.

Fighting human targets really is laughable easy, their heads explode so fast. I took one perk that increases my overall damage by 5%, but also makes enemies explode in guts and fleshy pieces more often, so it's sometimes really hard to really loot all corpses, because there's just red blobs of flesh all over the place I'm level 13 now, and wandering the wastelands can get dangerous when there's two of those Yu-Gi-Oh-ohwhatwasthenameagain-beasts, they do a LOT of damage and they don't die from one or two well-placed headshots.

[Pulp Hero]

Yeah, fucking bears, man. They sneak up behind your radar and maul you to death.

Now that I have crazy high stealth its not so much of a problem. Once I came across a radscorpion and bear fighting it out- zoomed in with my sniper rifle and shot the winner.

Question to anyone who took it: Does the "Animal Friend" perk apply to Mirelurks and giant ants? Because, if so, I am taking that next play through.

[TC Pilot]

Just got the game today. I didn't have much fun bumbling my way through the first couple hours, getting in way over my head. I was stupid enough to try and do a quest as a lvl 2 shmuck for Bigtown that pitted me against Super Mutants.

Hehe, I've learned now.

[Stark]

I was killing legions of super mutants at level 3. It's just about sploiting the hideously unbalanced game systems to get wins.

Now I'm about level 9, commando + gun skill of 20 = constant instakill headshots. The skill system may be just slightly broken, lol.

[charlemagne]

Also, I thought the system of fixed skill points you get with each level up would maybe pervent all characters becoming jack-of-all-trades as in Oblivion, but I'm level 13 now with maxed out small guns and repair skills and fairly high lockpick and science - seems like you'll get lots of skills pretty high before reaching max level. That's disappointing, I've had enough "I'm good at EVERYTHING" chars in Oblivion.

The thing is, although there's lots of broken stuff (again), the game ist still heaps of fun.

[Ohma]

Pfft, ha ha, some loser just dodged two swings from my baseball bat while in VATS because he was in the middle of whipping out his melee weapon, even more hilarious, the game seems to have been designed to clumsily justify that by having him slide away from me.

Yeah, it seems like it doesn't matter much how high your weapons skills are, at least not for the purposes of hitting dudes, I've repeatedly made shots that I would've had to retry like, 7-9 times to make (even with a higher weapons skill than my char in 3 has) in either Fallouts 1 or 2.

And is it just me or does the house in Megaton seem more than a bit contrived? Granted, DC does seem to have a surplus of functioning robots (no doubt due in part to the presence of both the BoS and Enclave), and I did save them from potential nuclear death, but you'd think that a fully functional Mr. Handy (or whatever Wadsworth is) would be just a bit more valuable than they'd be willing to part with just like that...or that they would have mentioned Wadsworth before...

Also, I find the whole "persistent" population thing to be highly annoying when it comes to NPCs of interest. There's no good reason I should only have come across Walter by complete accident while walking towards the exit out of the town after assuming that I'd done everything I could at that moment (honestly, I'm fine with giving them like, two places to be depending on the time, but I shouldn't be able to miss NPCs like that after repeatedly visiting the two major places they're supposed to be everyday because they're too busy wandering around town all day and all night)

[Vympel]

Also, I find the whole "persistent" population thing to be highly annoying when it comes to NPCs of interest. There's no good reason I should only have come across Walter by complete accident while walking towards the exit out of the town after assuming that I'd done everything I could at that moment (honestly, I'm fine with giving them like, two places to be depending on the time, but I shouldn't be able to miss NPCs like that after repeatedly visiting the two major places they're supposed to be everyday because they're too busy wandering around town all day and all night)

Where the fuck is Walter? I found him, fixed the pipes, and never saw him again. I don't care for the XP since the way I play (absurd completist) I'll hit the level cap before the end of the game, but it just bothers me.

[Stark]

Also, I thought the system of fixed skill points you get with each level up would maybe pervent all characters becoming jack-of-all-trades as in Oblivion, but I'm level 13 now with maxed out small guns and repair skills and fairly high lockpick and science - seems like you'll get lots of skills pretty high before reaching max level. That's disappointing, I've had enough "I'm good at EVERYTHING" chars in Oblivion.

The thing is, although there's lots of broken stuff (again), the game ist still heaps of fun.

I have 2 skills maxed at level 8. That's... pretty broken, especially when you consider there's only a few 'roadblock' skills (like lockpick, science, speech) and the rest are just 'convenience' skills (like medicine, gun skills, etc). If I started again and tagged lockpick, science and speech the game would be EVEN EASIER and I'd probably have all three maxed at level 10-11. I've never put a point into gun skills ever, and I'm still the headshot master; I can only imagine what it's like for those 100% gun skill guys.

On console Walter tends to disappear apparently; I've never lost track of the guy (bar or water treatment) but my mate on 360 couldn't find him for days.

[Vympel]

On console Walter tends to disappear apparently; I've never lost track of the guy (bar or water treatment) but my mate on 360 couldn't find him for days.

He disappears on PC too.

[haard]

Jefferson Memorial area bug, anyone else? Can't go near the damned place, and B. has yet to say anything about a patch
The upside is the bug is at least cross-platform, so I hope they will be forced to patch it...

[charlemagne]

He disappears on PC too.

At least on PC I guess you can summon him using the console. I don't know codes for that, but I resurrected Dogmeat once, because he ran way and died while I was on the phone or something and forgot to pause the game. (Didn't really work though, after the "Dogmeat has died" message box the resurrected dog didn't run the proper AI packages, so there's an aimlessly wandering Dogmeat in the DC library now I didn't reload an earlier save because I forgot about the "wait for me at 101" option, and frankly Dogmeat was too high maintenance to be any real fun)

Jefferson Memorial wasn't a problem for me. What bug is there?

[haard]

Freeze whenever you get close to the memorial (or, for some, when getting out of it after going in with no trouble) - on PC I don't know the details, but on both PS3 and Xbox a lot of people experience system freeze, solvable only by rebooting.
I don't know if a new game would solve it, but an earlier save, clear cache etc does not solve it (for me, and at least some others).

[charlemagne]

Freeze whenever you get close to the memorial (or, for some, when getting out of it after going in with no trouble) - on PC I don't know the details, but on both PS3 and Xbox a lot of people experience system freeze, solvable only by rebooting.
I don't know if a new game would solve it, but an earlier save, clear cache etc does not solve it (for me, and at least some others).

Ouch, that's bad. Glad I was lucky.

[Vympel]

Speaking of instability, I've had a lot of crashes lately. They seem to occur most often when I'm accessing inventory on a dead body to loot it - supremely annoying if like me you just killed like 10 Enclave soldiers and you have to do it allllll over again.

[White Haven]

Sir, are you attempting to imply that wreaking seven different types of anal ruin upon minions of the Enclave is not rewarding enough to do twice?