Loved this until the end. The pre DLC ending where your forced to either die or kill an npc when you have a mutant friend that would survive and was indebted to you completely goes against the freedom of the original games and utterly ruins the game.

Still a great game but nowhere near as good as the first two in my mind.

I'm with you. However I spent a lot of time in FO3 cause I was a little more interested. However I too think it's just an ok game, and there was nothing great about it. I'd say it's mediocre and worse than Fallout 1 and 2 by a bunch, seems to be the case with every game this gen it seems.

Honestly, Bethesda hasn't made a worthwhile game since Morrowind. They have just started releasing very mediocre games.

Well, I love it's atmosphere and gameplay. The side missions are awesome. I just got adicted to the game. And that's besides the bugs. I've played the pc version and is buggie as hell. Despite that, I never saw the over 50 hours I've put into this game.
Personally I like it better than Oblivion, but that's because of the evironment. I just like the Pos-nuclear scenario.

Lol lol lol.  I got a 360 on offer with 2 games of my choice.  I chose fallout 3 and  Pro Evo 09.  Played Pro Evo once and couldn't be bothered.  I love Pro Evo but after playing it for over 8 years I realised I had had enough of football games, especially as it was effectively the same game from year to year.  So started playing Fallout 3.  Had never heard about Fallout 1 or 2 (not a PC gamer) but picked Fallout 3 as it got great reviews.  Played it for like 2 hours and boy did I regret buying a 360, or at least the 2 games I picked.  After not playing it for a few days I went back to it and invested serious time with it.  Boy what a game.  I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE IT.  One of my top ten games of all times and that dates back to the NES era and over 300 games.  This game is just too good for words.  Buy the way use VATS if you want to really enjoy the game (at least that is how I enjoyed it).  As a FPS I did not enjoy it at all. 

I really liked the game but honestly the game was extremely depressing, of course I'm talking about the atmosphere, not the gameplay itself.

I tried to play 1st time and failed... didn´t liked..

I tried again weeks later and failed again.... after one years I decided to try more one time and before started playing I´ve read some website tips and youtube how to´s...

Welll... after understanding better the travel mode of PIPBOY (I didn´t know before that you can open the map and fast travel... ),... so, there´s too many details you should take a look before playing, will make the experience of exploring more gratefull...

Now I am playing serious, I am just in level 7, doing all secondary missions and leting the search for my father a little ahead...

I am getting hard moments trying to get the documento from national museum overcouded of supermutants... great game!!

So... just in my 3rd try I got playing the right way and I am addicted to it...

WTF... I was playing at my note... this F$#@ game made me buy a new PC... i7 860 + ati 5870.. just to play this m$#@ game with full detail level..

So.. try again but before trying, take a look at some videos at youtube and hint on some websites! good luck.

k, been playing fallout 3 for 4 hours now, i have to say that im starting to get hooked into this game. lots of stuff to do, did some exploration, some quests, killed some bad guys and such,
i now understand the amazing appeal it has.
i'm leaving now, gotta blow some mutated-things heads, thank you people for enlightening me T-T

EDIT:

Zen: i will, this weekend i'll probably spend more than a couple of hours in it

I've played Fallout 1 and 2, several times this year.

Considering your consistant bias and arrogance, I'd wager that most of the people you'd count amongst your friends would be PC elitists, so their opinions are in my opinion, biased.

I'd bring professional reviewers and current standards into this argument, but you'd just find some way to degrade them by implying that they lack knowledge that you somehow magically and secretly hold because you game on a magical PC instead of a shithouse inferior console machine, but the truth is, your supposed superior knowledge stands in stark contrast to the obvious emperical irony that you are completely blinded to one side of the argument due to your pious biased towards the PC platform and against the competition.

Biased post based on platform preference.

lol, come back after 10 more hours and tell us how good it is then.

While I also disagree with the notion that you should dislike Fallout 3 just because you've played the first games (IMO, the game is very dislikeable on its own), let's be honest here.

Everyone is biased, especially when you're dealing with polarizing video games like Fallout 3.