Fallout 3 - Anyone else beat it?

[Impulsivity]

I really hated one thing about it. I got to lv 20, more or less maxed progression, and still had at least 70% of the game world to explore. This game needed a MUCH higher level cap ala Oblivion or Mass Effect. To max level in Oblivion took some doing since, depending on your main skills, the cap could be as high as 40 or 50 effectively; ditto with Mass Effect, you had to do a TON of side quests to hit max level as you went through.

I agree that caps were hard to come by initially, but after lv 10 they more or less flowed like water. The only limit on caps was how many NPCs had caps to trade. I basically had to go to 5 or 6 NPCs to trade away all the trash I found by the end, but I was walking around with 10000+ caps consistently by the time I hit lv 15. The amount of crap you find to sell is just ridiculous.

Overall though it was a great game, though I'll say not as good as Mass Effect. In some ways the combat was really exciting with the VATS system and all, but being limited to gun shots just felt so limiting after playing Mass Effect, Bioshock and Oblivion where there were SO many skills, spells and what have you to use. I just ran from scorpion to scorpion shooting with my plasma rifle for the last 50% of the game (since the Plasma Rifle was almost double the power of any other weapon) and it felt pretty limited. I understand that magic or powers wouldn't really fit in to this world, but more mechanics then just gun fire would have been appreciated.

I also would have appreciated more direct control over your dog and your companions again ala Mass Effect. I guess that control was less important since they can't do anything but fire their gun and/or melee attack (vs the many powers available in Mass Effect to each character) but even still, it would cut down on dumb AI mistakes.

I guess I concentrated on the bad, but you did mention all the good anyway.

Oh and the console ports of the game were vastly inferior to the PC version, so much so that it wasn't even like playing the same game when I got the PC version. The PC version looks flat out amazing, the mouse/keyboard control is infinitely better then playing with either the 360 or PS3 controller and overall its just a beautiful game on the PC. This game really shows why PC gaming will probably always be superior to console gaming, its just glorious on the PC, and once you've seen both the console versions look really half baked. If you haven't played it and have a decent PC don't waste your time with the console versions.

Oh and I did appreciate the multiple approaches to any problem. In a lot of cases you could talk your way through something with the speech skill, sneak and lockpick your way to success, hack your way through the problem or of course just go in shooting. It really did a good job of creating multiple ways to solve problems and that added a lot to the non linear nature of the game.

The glitches aren't NEARLY as bad on the PC. I did have 1 or 2 crashes, but the AI problems were nowhere near as bad, probably in part due to the much higher processor power the PC has to deal with the complex algorithms that make NPCs work.