Fallout 3

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It's just Oblivion with guns. It physically pains me to play this game sometimes. I just imagine that I'm playing Oblivion: 3000 years later. The repetition of the enemies and the complete lack of dialogue depth makes me sad.

 

I thought of opening a new thread for this, but this topic seems suitable as well for my question.

I was just in a store and looked at the requirements that Fallout 3 has on the back of the box. It had a rather lengthy bit about Games for Windows - Live on it. Now, I despise having to make an account anywhere for the sake of just playing a game, so I wanted to ask whether or not this GfW-L account thing is required to play Fallout 3, or that it's maybe only required for online play (in which case I can get away with not making an account at all, as I don't play online anyway).

Can someone here answer this for me?

 

It's not required. I have one anyway for my 360, so I use it for the achievements, but you don't need one to play.

 

It isn't required during the installation either? I have this rule against games that require online activity during installlation, or games that require a connection to the internet in order to play (excluding multiplayer, of course), in that I pertinently don't buy those games. Hence this point is of critical importance in deciding whether or not I will at some point purchase Fallout 3

 

No it isn't, F3 is very user friendly in that respect (you don't even need the DVD in the drive to play the game).

 

My installation requires the DVD to be in the drive to play the game. I don't recall there being multiple installations; and if there were, I'd have picked "Full Installation".

 

Heck, it does not even ask you where you want to install it. It just installs itself in the default folder no questions asked. I also have to have the disc in the drive something I am not fond due to sheer lazyness. Because of that I tend to get cracked exes even for games I have bought.

 

I definitely have a problem with the updates on the PC version though. Everytime I install an update, I can't load any games played under the old version. When I update the game, I have to start all over again... every time! This wouldn't be a problem if I didn't have to update but I find Fallout3 VERY unstable and hope against hope that an update will allow more than ten minutes of playtime before crashing.

 

It never crashes for me, but since I've downloaded all the DLCs (Op Alaska, Pitt, and Broken Steel), the game locks up my pc whenever I try to exit the game.

 

I finally got around to buying it (I waited for it to come down in price, to be honest...and after buying my new PC in Feb I had a few other games to get through, like Oblivion and Mass Effect). Like it so far. I think Bethesda did a good job of translating the Fallout world to modern graphics. But, like Oblivion, it does fall over occassionally. I actually had to abandon Oblivion because the crashing got so bad. I played with the first character, no problem, and finished the main storyline, but on my second character I did a lot more and then started getting a lot of CTDs. I hope that isn't the case here.
I have not tried the DLC - it seems it will be released as a datadisk in the UK in the near future and I would rather have it in that format. I'm not that trusting of DLC to be honest.

 

I never had crashing problems with Oblivion, but Fallout 3 crashes on me every 15 minutes or so (often when I bust out the Pip Boy, or enter VATS). I purchased it via Steam download (they ran a 50% off special on 4th of July weekend, so I got it for $25), so I don't have any discs, and I don't know what version of the game it is (though I would assume it's the latest patch, considering the format). I'm going to download the latest patch anyway, update all drivers (even though I did so recently) and finally get around to buying more RAM, see if that helps.

But I LOVE this game. I'm only to Megaton and already I'm more excited about this game than I've been in a long time.

 

Yeah, it's possible it's down to needing a patch.
I've had one CTD in VATS and a couple on exiting the game (this happened in Oblivion as well). The worst was a complete lock-up which meant I had to hit the reset button. But (tough wood) it's been fairly stable so far.
I've got my own tin shack in Megaton now and a few nice weapons, but am constantly running out of ammo. That's the annoying thing - having to carry around a small arsenal in order to make sure I have something I can use if the ammo on my favourite gun runs out. Of course, if you go 100% melee, that's not an issue. But in Fallout, guns are cool.

 

Check the version of patch you have I had similar issues when I first got the game and then realised it was crazily out of date patch wise and then the crazy crashing fits stopped and all was happy in the waste land again... well kinda *evil snigger*

 

I just updated my nVidia drivers, Realtek sound drivers, patched to v1.6, and upgraded from 1 to 3gb of RAM. That seems to have done the trick, though I don't know which one of those was the magic pill.

 

Did the same thing, installed every patch and driver I could find. But once I updated my Nvidia drivers, that seemed to do the trick. At least, I played for about 2 hours last night with no crashing...WhooHoo!

 

After reading this thread recently decided to have a dig at a bit more or a diplomatic build with having a CHA of 9 to start off with. It actually suprised me how much it opens the game up with extra dialogue in comparison to other titles.

 

Yes, that seems to be the case. I always play do-gooder characters, so the "dropping charisma and telling everyone to eat it" style of play never works for me. I'm level 8 right now, my speech is around 30 and my charisma is at either 6 or 7. I do okay in conversations, but they always seem to fail when I need them the most (it's rare when my success percentage is above 50%). I think in my next run-through, I'll bump that up quite a bit more. I've missed out on better rewards fairly often, and while the game is still playable, I'm a "squeeze every drop" kind of player, and hate the thought that I've missed out on something.

I'm near 50 in both Small Guns and Energy Weapons, and I don't know if I see the need for big guns at this point, at least not with this build (I'm more of a sneaky/sniping type).

EDIT: By the way, I've not had a single crash (or even slowdown) since the hardware and software updates. Game runs like buttah.

 

Glad to hear your running smoothly now.

On another note I noticed how well Perception helps out in the open field for checking for nearby enemies, I normally have Perception at 9 but I almost halved it this time round and have found how often enemies can sneak up on you, I'm constantly checking my six when I run through the wastes!