... and this time through I'm actually really enjoying it.

A friend on Twitter suggested that it's better approached as a free-form sandbox game rather than as an RPG, so this time rather than doing my usual RPG thing of following the main questline and doing sidequests when I need a break, I just headed off in a random direction to explore. And it's incredible to me just how much better an experience it is that way. It seems all I needed was a little change in perspective to appreciate the game--it sucks as an RPG, but apparently is amazing as a sandbox exploration game.

This is the second game this year I've gone from disliking to loving, just by making a slight adjustment in the way I approached it. The other one was Postal 2, which I originally hated, but ended up having a lot of fun with the second time around when I stopped looking at it as an FPS and started looking at it as (again) a sandbox game.

So has anyone else had experiences like this? Where you go from hating a game to loving it, just by thinking about/approacing it in a different way?

That's definitely the best way to play it.

I've been replaying Fallout 3 off and on the last week or so. I love just walking around and watching crazy shit happen.

Last night I watched a huge raider fight vs. some scavenger caravan through my sniper scope without even getting involved. It's always hilarious when both sides have missile launchers, and when the fight goes on for like 5 - 10 minutes.

Then walking in the city, I hear some gun fire, then a bunch of cars explode on the other side of a wall and it rains super mutant pieces on me. When i walked over and checked the other side of all the wall I couldn't even tell what happened, just smoking cars and fire.

I find the things like that is what makes it so entertaining to play.

Yup, similarly with Postal 2 which I tried to play as a regular FPS back in the day but hated the experience, then I picked it up on GOG and challenged myself to get through the game without killing anyone, which was both challenging and fun (nevertheless, I failed to do a perfect pacifist run). I'll give it another go once the expansion lands on GOG.

Also back in my pirating days I tried Wing Commander 1, 2, and Privateer and brushed them off quickly, but after I bought the series on GOG and gave them a fair shot, those became my favorites, especially Privateer. I found Privateer fairly difficult to get into initially, but after a while it really grew on me and now it's one of my all-time favorite games.

That's the only way to play it.. ;-)

Having played & loved the original Fallouts, i would be very dissatisfied if i treated F3 like a cRPG. Instead, i treated it like i treated a TES game; wander in a random direction and find what's there to be found.. And one brings another and the hours pass nicely (maybe you'll be frightened when the clock counts the first hundred hours!).. and that's it for me in F3, a great immersive exploration game set in a post apocalyptic world.

ps. Three Dog rulz1! :D

It took me time to adjust to diablo-like RPGs. I disliked Baldur because of its hack-and-slash nature (it was more about dungeon cleansing than about the roleplaying I was hoping for), and then I played Neverwinter Nights fully expecting a baldur-like battle game. And I liked it a lot. I came back to Baldur later, and quite enjoyed it.

There are also games that I've disliked unfairly for similar reasons, but without giving them a second chance. I'm sure Alpha Protocol is a great action game, with nice branching elements to change slightly each mission map's setup. But I played it expecting a true RPG. So, I didn't enjoy it much. Had I known in advance what genre it belonged to, I might have appreciated it more.

Anyway, my default approach to RPGs is the sandbox one : I tend to ignore main quests as much as I can. So, I didn't have that specific issue with Fallout 3 or Morrowind...

I have to get back to this one. I installed a crapton of mods, played about 2 hours into it, then left it. A looooong time back. Must try again, and this thread gives me some incentive. +1

I should give it another try (fallout 3) I love the game but after a while of playing it I find it too depressing because of the darkness. Now New Vegas I can play all day long but I stopped because of some bug that corrupted my save but now I have the copy with all the dlcs and patches!

OMG it's Oblivion with gunz!!! ;)

I played and loved it on release. It was later surpassed by New Vegas. But I did approach it more as an ES game from the get go. Just like I didn't expect Skyrim to be Baldur's Gate (and enjoy both depending on how my mood strikes me) I never really expected FO3 to be like its isometric turnbased predecessors.

From what I remember though, the "big" quests in the game were somewhat more akin to FO1/2 than to the myriad side flavors. Sure there were some "short" quests but I thought a lot of the major side quests were fairly open ended and meant to be "stumbled on" more than following a beacon from point A to B. Though I could be wrong / misremembering.

I've restarted F3 myself recently, but man I still hate all that stuff before you get outside. I think part of it has to do with the voice acting. It just doesn't do it for me. I hate listening to the kids, I hate listening to the whiny teenagers, I hate the way all the adults talk as if we're fragile little things. I'm keeping the volume off until I'm outside.

If you're ok with using Steam (or waiting for GOG to get it), you should give Postal 2: Paradise Lost a try. I didn't do a pacifist run, but it seems like they tried a lot harder to give you different interesting ways to complete things nonviolently. Yeah, I hate that stuff too. I would have liked if they did the Morrowind thing instead.

Gonna give it a shot as soon as it comes to gOg in the next week or two. ; )



But seriously, that would be a great thing.

And yeah, I also tend to wander off away from the main story quests because I know that these games always pack in a bunch of little details here and there, to be found if you simply go look elsewhere.

I kinda disagree. That's how I played it originally, and the story ended up completely messed up ; I couldn't find in me the fortitude to go through it.

I picked it up again some time later, tried to closely follow the plot, I ended up spending an even less enjoyable time ; droped it again.

Point is : not following the story is a better experience in my opinion too, but it still was a bad experience.

My opinion about F3 is that the places that are 'empty' are really nice, but as soon as 'content' and NPCs and assets get packed in one place, it doesn't look good in any way. This is the most flawed game I ever played.

that is exactly how you need to play it. just wander, get lost, get killed etc etc. I have played the game a bit and i'm always surprised when I find something new.

Fallout 4, Novermber 10th!!!!! <3 <3

Well, from what you've written you don't really disagree that this is the way to play it - you just disagree that the game is at all enjoyable. :P