Customer Reviews

Fallout 3: Game of The Year Edition

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

Original review published 10/14/2009:

I pre-ordered this game from Amazon and it arrived right on the release date! I was very happy with that.

Now, I had already been an owner of the base Fallout 3 game, and when I found out the GOTY edition was going to be released, which included all five "expansions" (Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout, Mothership Zeta), I knew I had to have it! This is especially considering PS3 owners had to sit back and wait while XBOX360 owners had them available months and months ago. Each of these expansions were selling for $10 for 360 owners, but now we can have the original game ($35) plus the DLC ($50 total) for $60 (total savings of $25). Not too shabby.

People have a few concerns with loading time, crashing, and save files not carrying over. I haven't experienced any issues with crashing (my original Fallout 3 crashed once in my 30+ hours of gameplay), but perhaps I can help shed light on the other two concerns.

1.) Long load times - When I first exited my house in Megaton, the game took about 2-3 minutes to load. This is *much* longer than usual. However, this is because the new content is initializing. Instantly, Point Lookout and The Pitt showed up in my quests. Next, I fast-traveled somewhere and again the load time was 2-3 minutes. Upon arriving at my destination, the remaining three quests (Broken Steel, Point Lookout, Mothership Zeta) became available. After this, load times were back to normal. Also, there were some frame rate issues at first coupled with the game freezing for one or two seconds periodically, but this ceased after about an hour or two of playing. I attribute these issues to the new quests being available and the game syncing up with your particular save game.

2.) Save files not carrying over - This is a regional issue. In the U.S., most players are not having difficulties. However, in Canada, I'm hearing a lot about how they only have an option to start a new game in the GOTY edition. This is because they played the Canadian version of the original Fallout 3 and it appears that saves generated by certain Canadian editions of the game aren't being recognized by the GOTY Edition. This is obviously a glaring problem for Canadian players, so we can only hope that Bethesda releases a patch to address this issue.

All in all, each DLC quest will add anywhere between 3-4 hours of additional gameplay (so about 15-20 more hours total). There are also new enemies and weapons introduced. The most significant DLC is Broken Steel, which adds an additional 10 levels to achieve, 14 new perks, and 6 new achievements to unlock, and probably the largest addition to gameplay time. As for sheer enjoyment, Point Lookout and The Pitt offer great excitement due to their intricate story lines and engaging environments.

If you are a PS3 owner and Fallout 3 fan, this is the compilation that you've been waiting for! More missions, more guns, more enemies, more perks, more hours of fun! Even if you own the original copy, I would advise you to re-sell it and pick up a copy of the GOTY edition. Also, keep in mind that the issues people are having are only a patch fix away. I feel these are rare (or just misunderstood), and your gameplay experience will not suffer in the least. The 2008 game of the year just got better in 2009!

UPDATE (1/28/2011): It's been over a year since I wrote this, so I thought I would update this review with some new insight.

Freezes. Oh my goodness, this game has frozen at least once every time I play this. When I first wrote my review, I had a little over 30 hours logged. Now I'm up to 52+ hours and have only a few more quests to complete before I finish the entire game (DLC included). However, I don't know if I'll be able to play anymore.

The game freezes mostly during combat. After I shoot an enemy, the game will come to a halt. At first, I would just restart my PS3 for a short-term fix. If I hadn't saved recently, well, too bad. The worst was when I started Operation: Anchorage. I had played for about 45 minutes without saving before the game froze. All progress lost.

After awhile, I realized that the game didn't entirely freeze. It's peculiar, really. The game will just stop working for perhaps two or three minutes before starting up again. This is beyond annoying, though. To go along with the freezes, I often run into some serious frame rate issues. I'm talking like one or two frames every few seconds or so. This usually happens right before the game is about to freeze.

Some theories correlate the constant freezing to the size of your save file. I can see a connection. As your game time raises, so does the size of your save file. At the start of the game, it might be 3.5 MB or so. Mine currently is over 9 MB. I've heard that people with 19 MB save files run into freezes every 10 minutes. That is unacceptable!

It really is a shame. This game is super fun, and the add-ons offer so much more to the original game. I just wish I could play it for more than half an hour before I have to turn off my Playstation out of frustration due to the constant freezes. It just takes you out of the immersion of the game. How sad.

To start off, I loved the base game of Fallout 3, I got it when it first came out, and sure it had its fair share of problems, but it was still great.

And so the story continues with 5 new DLC's, which add new items and locations to your already large choosings.

But alas, this game feels as though little to no testing was done in the game. It is plagued with glitches, frame rate issues, lag issues, freezing issues, amongst other annoying problems I hadn't experienced in my initial Fallout 3 experience. I believe that the game froze my PS3 at least 15 times across all 5 DLC's, this also included exploring some areas from the the original copy. These problems occur often, inspiring a new found hatred for the game. To be short, the problems are terrible, annoying, and large in number.

But despite its problems, the game does manage to do a lot of things right:

1) You can use you saves from the original copy if you still have them!
2) New weapons and items are (mostly) very useful and powerful
3) Point Lookup continues the game's-experience with many side-quests and sandbox gameplay
4) The level cap is raised to level 30.
5) The game can now continue after the main-quests are over!
6) You can find a lot more ammo for the Alien Blaster!
7) The quests from the DLC (while they are nothing special) add a few more hours of gameplay
8) $110 worth of games for $60 is a great deal!

The DLC's are solid, but are not great. They feel like the main game's side quests to me, as they feel unimportant, but the rewards are worth playing for. My favorite weapons and apparel are from the DLC including: Winterized Power Armor, Tesla Cannon, Gauss Rifle, Samurai Armor, Samurai sword, Auto-axe/ Manopener, infiltrator/perforator, tribeam laser rifle, double barreled shotgun, level-action rifle, Alien Disintegrator I would have like to have seen more length and depth to each DLC, as no single DLC took more than 3 hours to complete (with the exception of Point Lookout's side quests and exploration)

I'd be hesitant to recommend this to anyone but hardcore Bethsda and Fallout fans, until a patch comes out that if not eliminates the problems, at least minimizes them.

The game works great until the game save file exceeds ~8MB and the cached game file exceeds about 6GB. When that happens you run into constant lockups, temporary freezes, and horrid frame rates whenever an enemy comes near you.

You've seen the reviews. I don't have to tell you how great this game is, but Bethesda should flat out be ashamed for releasing the game in this state. I own both consoles, and much prefer getting things on the PS3 because I trust the hardware more than I do on my 3 time replaced 360, but in hindsight, I should have gotten the game for the 360 instead. If you own both consoles, that one seems to not have a freezing issue, most likely because it isn't relying on a game file cache on the HDD.

I feel like I wasted 60$ on a game I can't even finish because of lockups...

Thank you Bethesda! You've got my money... now what?

First off let me say im a fan of Oblivion, that being said what the hell was Bethesda thinking of releasing a game for $60 dollars that you cant even play all the way through??? Dont they have testers that test this stuff out?? There is absolutely no reason for theses freezes, slow downs to be happening; i cant even play the game it locks up so bad.

Bottom line...

A game is a good game not just because it is made well, but because you can also PLAY THE GAME!! (basic unwritten gamer rules) I dont care if it was the best thing in the world, if I cant use it or play it, its not worth jack to me.


and where is Bethesda in all of this?? they are not talking, no apologies nada on there web site?? Do they even care??


So look if you wanna wait for a patch or whatever for the PS3, if they are even gonna make one, go ahead wait you'll probably enjoy the game and thats assuming that it does make the game playable, but if you are like me and expect a full price game to in fact work and function hows it suppose to, then you will be VERY disappointed. I don't even wanna play the game anymore its that frustrating and there are alot other games out there that will not potentially harm your PS3. So buyer beware and also....

...if you still keep trying to play and need to restart the game after a freeze up, do not switch off the PS3 from the back, I was reading forms and there were a few people who damaged there PS3's doing that. They were saying hold the power button for 3 to 5 seconds in the front and the ps3 will restart.

I'll start first by saying that I am a huge fan of Fallout 3. I logged more than 100 hours over the course of about a year playing the game and I never really got tired of it. When I originally reviewed Fallout 3 I gave the game 4-out-of-5 Stars. The only major detraction I found in the original game was the ending. Thankfully Bethesda saw to revise the ending for the "GOTY" edition. So needless to say, I expected a good game to get even better.

So I decided to go ahead and purchase the "Game of the Year" retail package instead of downloading the individual episodic content. The "GOTY" edition of Fallout 3 comes with all the content released on the Playstation Network and XBox Live packed on the disc - Broken Steel, Operation Anchorage, The Pitt, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

Unfortunately for PS3 owners it seems that once again we're getting a sub-par product. Shortly after booting up the game and starting the "Broken Steel" content I encountered some terrible frame-rate issues and eventually game-ending freezes that required a reboot of the PS3. These same issues have progressively gotten worse with each new episode. Parts of Operation Anchorage are borderline unplayable. I'm dreading the next quest - The Pitt because of the same problems.

The worst part of this all is that my regular copy of Fallout 3 rarely froze. Now even when just exploring the Wasteland - not even doing anything related to the GOTY content - my game will freeze. I would say in any given hour I'm restarting my PS3 on average 2 or 3 times. Over and over.

I really can't believe that any company would stamp their name on such a poor product. Bethesda should be ashamed to have released this product as is. As others have said, until there is a patch, STAY AWAY!

This game is amazingly well written and the gameplay is very engaging, but it has to be the buggiest piece of software I have ever used. On my brand new PS3 Slim it freezes after approximately every hour of play time.

This has been an issue for a long time and is well documented across the internet. Don't just take my word for it, do a search and see for yourself. Furthermore there has been no acknowledgment of the problems from the developer, Bethesda Softworks. And it doesn't appear that they have any plans to issue patches any time soon. Some people have even speculated that Bethesda has simply moved on to the next version, Fallout: New Vegas, and is no longer planning to patch the buggy and unplayable GOTY edition.

You've been warned, buy at your own risk.

fallout 3 would easily be one of the greatest games ever made, had it not been for the insane amount of bugs and glitches it contained. in it's current state, the game is broken and frustrating. the fact that bethesda would release a game in this state to the public not once, but twice is criminal. if ps3 released a console this broken, there would be class action lawsuits from thousands of angry buyers. i, for one, will never buy a product from bethesda again. they got $120+ from me and they won't get another penny.

even with the original release, i experienced tons of glitches, lots of freezing and plenty of restarts resulting in hours of lost game play. the glitches and freezing i experienced during the majority of the expansion packs, however, made all the b.s. i went through on the original release seem like a mere inconvenience.

throughout all the expansion packs (with the exception of mothership zeta, which i didn't bother playing because i heard that was the worst of the bunch) it seemed i couldn't play for longer than 10 minutes without out freezing or extreme lag... and when i say extreme lag... i mean EXTREME... like entering V.A.T.S, selecting my targets, hitting X and then waiting for as long as ten minutes before anything would happen. if i was lucky, i could get up, get a sandwich, let one of my pugs out and get back to the game just in time for it to un-freeze. i'd say a good 50% of the time, however, there was no recovery and i would be forced to restart my system resulting plenty of wasted hours and more than likely extra stress on my system. personally, i found "the pitt" to be the worst. i experienced the least amount of issues during "operation: anchorage" though i still had my share. especially towards the end.

i have heard many people come to bethesda's defense. the biggest excuse i hear is that "people need to let this stuff slide. with a game of this magnitude, they shouldn't expect perfection..."

bullcrap.

i don't think anyone's expecting perfection. i have no problem with the minor glitches (having raiders spin in mid-air after they're shot, having enclave soldiers shake violently on the ground after they've been killed, finding a vicious dog embedded in the street) i can let that stuff slide, no problem. things like the lagging and freezing, however? not acceptable. at all. i shouldn't have to interrupt my game play every ten minutes to save just because of all the freezing.

what's even more unacceptable is that bethasda hasn't / won't even address the situation or issue an apology to the thousands of fans they've duped out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

the freezing and lagging didn't just happened in V.A.T.S. it frequently happened when i would try to enter a room (especially in the pitt). it would happen when i was walking from point A to point B. sometimes it would even happen when i was standing still doing absolutely nothing.

it really is a shame a game of this caliber is so flawed. a game completely worthy of 5 stars will forever live in my mind as a 2 star game.

This was my first time playing any game out of the Fallout series and I was simply blown away. Gameplay is highly addictive as you can easily lose yourself in the Capital Wasteland. The story unfolds quite nicely as well. I know Fallout purists fault 3 for being derivative of the earlier games, but from the perspective of a newcomer to the franchise, this title is probably one of the games I have enjoyed the most on my PS3. I would put it right up there with Bioshock (probably my favorite). A must have if you are into RPGs or anything that has to do with post-apocalyptic story-lines.

Where the experience sours is the constant freezing issues. I was hesitant to buy the game in the first place because of all of the horror stories I had read of the game being unplayable due to it freezing. I sucked up the $25 and took a chance and was not disappointed. At first I thought myself to be lucky: I experienced no delays or freezing issues. An occasional graphics glitch, but nothing game-breaking. As I progressed, however, I started to notice more lag and when I began playing the DLC, that is when the game really froze. Even in the worst situations where I was forced to turn the unresponsive system off, I would be able to progress in the game after doing so.

Through my own research online I basically found out that each save file can easily exceed 15 MB when nearing the end of the game. You have so many items and the map is so huge that there really is no way to ensure no freezing, but there are a few work-arounds depending on severity. The first would be to just press the PS button on the controller. Sometimes that will unfreeze the game. The second is to delete the GAME DATA, not the GAME SAVE DATA, but the GAME DATA. That actually helped quite a bit--the game would freeze, I would hit PS or reset the system and before booting Fallout 3 again, I would delete game data and I would be good to go. Between those two methods I was able to complete the game 100%, all trophies, side-quests, weapons, armors, etc, etc.

For me the positives of this fantastic game out weigh the technical drawbacks. Would it frustrate a lot of people? Surely. I consider myself to be a patient person so for me I was willing to put up with the freezing simply because I really wanted to finish the game. It is a great game to experience, worth every penny despite its faults. Would definately be 5 star if not for the freezing.

Having owned and enjoyed the original Fallout 3, the best course of action was to avoid buying the 5 DLCs and order the GOTY instead after selling the original. This way I didn't reward Bethesda for its literally dissing the PS3 community as a second class group for so long when it came to Fallout 3.

After becoming an instant Bethesda fan due to their fantastic Oblivion, I fell out of love because of their most unfair treatment of the PS3 community. Even before the initial release, an announcement was made that the Xbox was going to get a number of downloadable expansions which the PS3 would never get. Many months later, when Bethesda had a change of mind and announced that the DLCs were going to be finally available for the PS3, the release dates came and went as Bethesda needed a few extra months to fix bugs.

When the DLCs finally started to appear at the PSN store, right before the GOTY release, I decided that it made no sense to spend on 5 DLCs about the same amount it would take to purchase of a brand-new GOTY copy so I sold my used but well-cared-for Fallout 3 copy for about half the original price and I pre-ordered the GOTY - I am happy now because I got a great expanded and cleaned up game.


THE GOTY CONTENTS

There's nothing too fancy about the GOTY other than it comes with the 5 expansions not available for the PS3 gamers for about one year.

- Broken Steel
- Operation: Anchorage
- The Pitt
- Point Lookout
- Mothership Zeta

In addition, the GOTY fixes some bugs, adds some code optimization and it expands trophy support to the expansions - the original PS3 version lacked trophy support altogether but it was added later via an online upgrade.

I am happy to report that the GOTY fully recognizes the games saved with the original Fallout 3. I am also happy to report that, after about 10 hours of GOTY play, I've encountered no bugs and haven't noticed any problems - I am playing it on an old school (PS2 compatible) 60GB PS3, upgraded to 320GB.


THE EXPANSIONS

I just got the game so I'm currently happy playing Broken Steel, picking up the story from where I left it many months ago - since the original story was about to end prematurely with the heoric death of the main character, I had no choice but revert to a previously saved game and go on side quests, some quite quite interesting, leveling up, getting to know the landscape and waiting for Bethesda's much delayed additions.

Broken Steel, besides changing the plot in a way that keeps the main character alive - doesn't make much sense but let's not talk about it much - it increases the level max from 20 to 30, adds new perks and adds some some REAL big, kick a__ weapons - ever dreamed about shooting down those menacing vertibirds? Think Tesla Cannon?

This is where I am now, on Broken Steel, for the a few hours already, helping to make the world a better place and happy I went with the GOTY.


THE GAME OVERALL

I'd rather not repeat what has been said so many times already about the PS3 version. Great reviews can be found at Fallout 3


OVERALL IMPRESSION AND RATING

For anyone new to Fallout 3, buying the GOTY is a no-brainer because you are guaranteed to pay more if you buy the regular edition, even used and then spend some more on the DLCs. For those who bought the DLCs, there's probably nothing in the GOTY worth buying it.

I am giving Fallout 3 GOTY a 4-star rating and I would recommend it as a 'buy' for giving us a good story told with humor but not fully taking advantage of PS3's superior capabilities. I give Bethesda some credit for releasing the GOTY on schedule, simultaneously with the Xbox and the PC versions. I don't know about anyone else but I'm in a forgiving mood today, after a few hours of expanded Fallout 3 play.
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P.S. - I understand that Fallout 3 is supposed to be a superior RPG but, if I had to have ONE and only one RPG for my PS3, it would be Bethesda's Oblivion in a heartbeat, without hesitation. Fallout 3 would be my second choice.



NOTES AFTER THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS OF GAMEPLAY

There are major problems with Broken Steel. Toward the end of its last quest, it's impossible to engage the enemy in combat without the PS3 crashing. Mine crashed every time I tried that.

Without going into details, I will say this: get your self as many Stealth Boys as you can possibly get BEFORE starting and be prepared to tiptoe around enemies carrying flame throwers or, if your console behaves like mine, you won't be able to complete this quest.

I haven't encountered any other stability issues yet but I will write about them if I do. There was a little bit of a slowdown in the beginning, probably attributed to the game updating itself from the 'regular' edition to the GOTY. It's hard to tell whether those who begin with GOTY are experiencing the same. After maybe 30 minutes of play, there were no more slowdowns beyond Fallout's typical slow saves and loading of save points.

There are too many bugs in relation to F3 GOTY extra content. (Operation Anchorage, The Pitt, etc.)
Freezing, failed loadings, frame-rate drops, and so-on.
Bethesda as issues regarding programming software per the PS3. That is evident over the past many years.