i'm leaving WATMM

[Bob Dylan]

I suck at FPS and RPGs. I want to like it but I keep getting killed. Look, stop shooting at me! Then I press V but fuck I have a frigin baseball bat, what do you want me to do against 3 people sniping at me? They are 100 feet away. Same for Mass Effect, or KOTOR (similar titles).

 

 

This is like 5 minutes outside the vault. All the time. I guess I can start pressing F5 each minute instead.

[Guest catsonearth]

I suck at FPS and RPGs. I want to like it but I keep getting killed. Look, stop shooting at me! Then I press V but fuck I have a frigin baseball bat, what do you want me to do against 3 people sniping at me? They are 100 feet away. Same for Mass Effect, or KOTOR (similar titles).

 

 

This is like 5 minutes outside the vault. All the time. I guess I can start pressing F5 each minute instead.

 

i wouldn't try to brave the wastelands fresh out of the vault if i were you. head to the nearby megaton and build up a little XP, get some decent weapons before you go marauding about.

[Hoodie]

i think the melee in this game generally sucks. why waste your time swinging at an enemy like ten times when you can just do one or two shots to the head and be done with it?

 

i maxed out small guns, now i'm busy maxing out energy weapons (a-23's plasma rifle is hot stuff!) i tried to use the shishkabob and vampire edge, but they were just too underpowered. i don't even want to imagine what unarmed would be like.

[Guest catsonearth]

i think the melee in this game generally sucks. why waste your time swinging at an enemy like ten times when you can just do one or two shots to the head and be done with it?

 

frankly, sometimes you just gotta stand and bang. going mano y mano with a super mutant while wearing the deathclaw gauntlets (or whatever they're called) is sometimes effective and quite satisfying.

 

my problem with the melee is the same problem i have with the 3rd person view (and a problem carried over from oblivion) - it doesn't have any weight to it. it just feels like you're a flabby bastard flailing your arms about hoping an elbow will catch somebody's jaw. you don't have any control over it. same feeling when you're in 3rd person. your body has no weight to it, it doesn't look or feel like you're actually standing on whatever surface you're standing on.

 

this is an area where they could take some tips from assassin's creed.

[Squee]

i think the melee in this game generally sucks. why waste your time swinging at an enemy like ten times when you can just do one or two shots to the head and be done with it?

 

frankly, sometimes you just gotta stand and bang. going mano y mano with a super mutant while wearing the deathclaw gauntlets (or whatever they're called) is sometimes effective and quite satisfying.

 

my problem with the melee is the same problem i have with the 3rd person view (and a problem carried over from oblivion) - it doesn't have any weight to it. it just feels like you're a flabby bastard flailing your arms about hoping an elbow will catch somebody's jaw. you don't have any control over it. same feeling when you're in 3rd person. your body has no weight to it, it doesn't look or feel like you're actually standing on whatever surface you're standing on.

 

this is an area where they could take some tips from assassin's creed.

 

True. But doesn't this mean that they would have to make an entirely new engine? Because it seems as if there's no such thing as balance in this game. When a creature walks up the hill to get a hold of you, it walks as if nothing is in its way and as if it's walking on flat land. In Crysis and FarCry2 they've added a balance-nerve to all the characters which means that if they run around the corner they'll actually lean toward towards towards corner as they come around.

[Guest dild0]

anyway,best game of the year for me so far tied with Mass effect. i had a lot of fun playing it,finished it the other night.nearly 70 hours of gameplay,level 19,but i'll take one of the last savegames to continue solving other quests once i've finished dead space too.

 

Christ, how did you go 70 hours and not get to level 20? I was level 20 for ages, felt like there wasn't enough levels.

 

yeah i thought the same..i really don't know why. btw there's a mod on fallout3nexus.com (same as tesnexus),which increase,or better,toggle the level cap off. so you can reach lvl 40 and so on.

 

i think the melee in this game generally sucks. why waste your time swinging at an enemy like ten times when you can just do one or two shots to the head and be done with it?

 

frankly, sometimes you just gotta stand and bang. going mano y mano with a super mutant while wearing the deathclaw gauntlets (or whatever they're called) is sometimes effective and quite satisfying.

 

my problem with the melee is the same problem i have with the 3rd person view (and a problem carried over from oblivion) - it doesn't have any weight to it. it just feels like you're a flabby bastard flailing your arms about hoping an elbow will catch somebody's jaw. you don't have any control over it. same feeling when you're in 3rd person. your body has no weight to it, it doesn't look or feel like you're actually standing on whatever surface you're standing on.

 

this is an area where they could take some tips from assassin's creed.

 

True. But doesn't this mean that they would have to make an entirely new engine?

 

they really should do it.

[chim]

I suck at FPS and RPGs. I want to like it but I keep getting killed. Look, stop shooting at me! Then I press V but fuck I have a frigin baseball bat, what do you want me to do against 3 people sniping at me? They are 100 feet away. Same for Mass Effect, or KOTOR (similar titles).

 

 

This is like 5 minutes outside the vault. All the time. I guess I can start pressing F5 each minute instead.

 

i wouldn't try to brave the wastelands fresh out of the vault if i were you. head to the nearby megaton and build up a little XP, get some decent weapons before you go marauding about.

 

On my second playthrough, I looted all the ammo and crap in the vault before I went out and to the left. No problem at all, I was killing raiders, saving big town and killing super mutants very early on. Fun!

 

I have more money, ammo and crap than to know what to do with now, mainly because I loot everything of interest.

Sell ammo you don't need like energy cells, railway spikes, sell crap like conductors, sensor modules and cartons of cigarettes.

 

I've been doing alot of good stuff on this playthrough, as opposed to my last one where I ended up with the title capital crimelord. Figured I wouldn't become instant pariah as soon as I did something bad, so I wiped out tenpenny tower. Got me ammo, weapons, armor and 2-3K cash. Good times.

[Squee]

Is it possible to meet up with your "girlfriend" from the vault again later on? I was kinda expecting this, but it hasn't happened yet...

[Blir]

Is it possible to meet up with your "girlfriend" from the vault again later on? I was kinda expecting this, but it hasn't happened yet...

 

It's possible.

[Squee]

Is it possible to meet up with your "girlfriend" from the vault again later on? I was kinda expecting this, but it hasn't happened yet...

 

It's possible.

 

*touches self*

[Squee]

[Guest abusivegeorge]

lol

[Hoodie]

i encountered a game breaking glitch :/

 

at some point, people's faces started disappearing, so that they were just floating eyeballs and teeth surrounded by hair. then a big grey square would pop up and a bunch of brown lines would point to some people when i looked at them, causing immense amounts of lag. i don't know how to fix it and it has me really disappointed.

 

i think i'm gonna have to end up reinstalling it, which is a pain in the ass.

[Squee]

EDIT: 4 days ago they announced that they're working on a patch for all consoles (including PC) :)

[lumpenprol]

I was rabid about this game until I got to the end. Wtf, damn. To get so close to greatness and then fail. Seems to be par for the course with Bethesda.

 

Sucks because with maybe 1 month's more worth of work, the game could have been an all-time classic. I have no idea why they don't just fill their "dungeons" with a few more scraps of story, a few more special items, a few more unique characters, to make it all seem worthwhile.The few audio logs that you find out and about are great and add immesurably to the immersion factor. If I'm going to spend hours going through desks and cabinets, logging into computer, picking locks, at least put some good stuff in there to find. 70 bottlecaps and some ammo is an insult. I've gone all over the map and have found maybe 5-10 random "diaries" of people that tell a little snippet of story - some guy locking himself in a closet, a guy tracking another guy, etc. It would probably take them 4 days to have doubled or tripled this number. Here's an idea, maybe have one of these corpses have a key, or an item, with a note, telling you where you have to take it or who you need to talk to. These sorts of quests are the bread and butter of rpgs. But they really are few and far between here. And please, add some personality to your NPCs. No more vallegirls. Every major NPC in Fallout 1 would have eaten any of the cardboard NPCs in Fallout 3 for lunch.

 

Whatever, it's still very worth playing for what is there, but the whole thing needs more balls and character. If you're going to put drugs in, put in dealers and users, drug dens, the real sense that there's a drug trade and drug economy. If you're going to put in hookers, put in bawdiness and humor too. Ah well. They just need better writers. The framework is there.

[Guest Iain C]

Yeah the main quest was shit. Still seems a bit odd to discount all that mad enjoyment you described a week or two ago just because of some poor scripting in the final act. You weren't talking about the brilliance of the story before, lumpy.

[Guest Iain C]

Actually you weren't really talking about the main quest at all in your post - my mistake, i'm drunk. I will articulate a decent response when i'm sober

[Guest Gary C]

I've only just completed the mission in which you meet the father again, encounter the Enclave, and end up with the Brotherhood. I've spent so long doing the side-missions and generally fucking about (exploring random places, trading and arming up). So how much longer do I have left? I feared that whilst I was fixing the pipes that I was about to complete the game, I'd like to know so I can continue levelling up a bit.

[lumpenprol]

Yeah, I guess I wasn't really clear...I was really disappointed with the ending, which made me more judgmental about the side stuff too. Visually they nailed it and far exceeded my expectations, but it's still pretty empty-headed.

 

Yeah, I did a ton of side quests and was level 20 before I even went to Little Lamplight/Vault 87. Once you've ended up with the Brotherhood there's not much more to go.

[Guest Al Hounos]

got my copy in the mail today, popped it in, and didn't get up from my seat for six hours. (had to eat dinner.)

[Squee]

I couldn't agree more with, lumpenprol. I know the game is supposed to be post-apocalyptic and you're supposed to be one of the few survivors but COME ON! You're completely and totally isolated and you're lucky if you actually get to meet anyone for hours. And no I do NOT what to go through thousands of train stations just to get from Point A to B. I want to through the desolated Washington, and I want to admire the destruction the bombs have caused and not wander around in the dark opening boxes only to find an empty bottle and some pins. And then when you leave the train station you end up somewhere else.

They should have made the map a bit smaller but added more details. I've played 20-25 hours so far and I'm gettin tired of not choosing my own path to walk. I have come across so many blind alleys that wandering around exploring has become a pain in the ass.

I'm putting this game up for sale.

[lumpenprol]

I didn't find it quite as frustrating as all that, as I find exploration particularly exciting, especially in abandoned places. One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of the Fallout series. My problem is Bethesda don't seem to fully understand how to set up a story, and they don't seem to know what keeps a player going. Suspense and the promise of a payoff are what keep the player going. It's sad that I can think of only a few instances where they actually used this dynamic successfully in the game. One was the "naughty nightwear" delivery, where you have to find a key, then open a box, then pick up a package to be delivered...but in the end I think the reward was only 300 caps. The Dunwich building is another example of a more carefully plotted experience. You can tell a designer spent a bit of time crafting the gameplay there - the environment is severely dilapidated but it strikes the right balance between disorder and linearity, and it has sequential taped logs along the way that help to heighten the suspense. But there again, the payoff is underwhelming. It really isn't that hard to fix this issue - better writing, better characterization, logs and rewards placed carefully along the way that help you to reconstruct a story...It's the last 5% of the game design that makes the game world really come alive.

 

One of the better examples of how they didn't fully think things through (barring spoilers about the ending) is Little Lamplight. OK, they decide to make a community of kids who got stranded in a cave when the atomic bomb hits. They've been surviving off eating fungus, and have a social structure where once the kids reach a certain stage, they are exiled to Big Town to live among adults. A bit of a stretch, and derivative of Mad Max 3, but ok. They even have several audio logs that help flesh out the story. So far so good. But how does the number of these kids keep getting replenished over 200 years? Are the kids breeding with each other and having children (sick, but logical)? Are their numbers solely replenished from drawing in other abandoned kids from the wastes? It's an intriguing question the answer to which could make the experience more interesting. Maybe they keep a couple of adults for breeding purposes, that would be Fallout-y. Or maybe the player could go out on a search party with a few of the kids to find other kids. Even just a few audio logs talking about how they were having trouble finding new kids to keep their community populated would help solve the riddle and flesh out the game world, make it seem less artificial. It's just that last extra layer of thought that seems so often to be missing. The simple answer is that Bethesda doesn't have anyone on the staff who is writing and thinking on the same level as the original designers.

 

Part of the problem is these days developers still feel they have to pander to the lowest common denominator, so they have to underline everything - go HERE, do THIS...it's a bit depressing for an adult gamer who expects more from his rpgs.

 

In any case, I wouldn't dissuade anyone from getting the game as despite its shortcomings it still stands head and shoulders above all other games out there at the moment, imo.

 

Incidentally Squee, you know you can fast travel once you've visited a place once, right? I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the subway system myself, just went through once to find a new spot, then fast traveled every time I had to revisit that spot. It's not that bad.

[Hoodie]

the dunwich building was so disappointing. i was expecting a battle with some strange lovecraftian snake creature and all i get is a nice looking pillar and weird ambient noises. such a let down.

[lumpenprol]

the dunwich building was so disappointing. i was expecting a battle with some strange lovecraftian snake creature and all i get is a nice looking pillar and weird ambient noises. such a let down.

 

Yeah...buildup was good though.

[Guest Echo]

 

lol