I'm about 6 hours in. I've played it almost non-stop since I rented it last night.
The game *is* Oblivion with guns, for the most part. The melee combat, from what I've seen, is very Oblivion-esque. Of course, the gunplay is a different story.
Overall, it took everything Oblivion was/is, put it in the Fallout universe, and made the core gameplay (from Oblivion) a lot better due to the implementation of XP, Perks, VATS, and of course the writing.
The writing is far more Mass Effect-esque with more consequences than typical games that I'm used to.
A good example early on in the game (spoliers) :
The first *big* decision comes when you go to Megaton. There are about 5 different quests swirling around, each with different choices.
One of which involves interaction concerning the still-active nuke in the middle of town. Most knew about this quest: Goodie twoshoes will disarm the bomb for Lucas, or utilize the evil path of detonating the nuke for Mister Burke, and wiping the entire town off the map.
You also have the ultra-goodie path of informing Lucas that Burke wants to detonate the nuke. Lucas thanks you and asks you to come along for some 'Wasteland Justice' - In which, the end result is that Burke shoots Lucas in the back when he's leading him off to jail. That was a total shock for a good-karma related quest, since the hero dies a pretty brutal death. Of course, you do get a very nice assault rifle out of the deal from Lucas' body, so it's all good.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
