Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

I bought this so i could have a good version of the game, but in this case it's still broken

This game is one of my favorite RPGs, I have always loved this game and GOG has released it without the "Games for Windows Live" issue that plagued its original release. Buggy of course, it is a Bethesda game after all.

A better story than FO4 with more "choices" that affect the story outcome.. Not as good as FONV, but still a great game.. Also if you find the game randomly crashing on you, then while the game is running via Task Manager limit the CPU cores to 1 or 2... running FO3 with 3 or more CPU Cores will cause the game to be unstable and crash..

Fallout 3 was the first Fallout-game I've played, so I didn't have any expectations that a fan of the series might have. While I don't own it on GOG (yet), I've played it a ton. A lot of the common criticisms are very valid in my view: The game is kind of dull, the main story line is very weak. The combat goes from far too easy and dull to annoying-hard, not difficult-hard, to outright buggy mess. I still give the game four stars, because it got me hooked in other ways. Where the game shines is in exploration and countless little side-stories it tells. The optional quests are usually far more engaging than the overarching plot, involving weird, funny, spooky, sad and interesting fates of people, both before or since the apocalypse. This is further emphasized with countless little details to be found by snooping around: While there is some copy-pasting going on, much of the world seems hand-crafted and you will often come across hints to past tragedies or odd little happenstances, even completely devoid of quest-association. There is some very haunting imagery here, if you walk around, look at the ruins, skeletons burnt with nuclear fire, old baby strollers, various items left in not-at-all-random places - and if you think about what they tell of. These are the sorts of experiences that really stuck with me. There's a lot to do, see and explore here, but if you expect a well-crafted, cohesive story, sadly you'll have to look elsewhere. Interestingly, some of the DLC are far, far better in this regard than the main game. Broken Steel adds a proper finale. Point Lookout is a great, spooky adventure and delivers an additional huge area to explore. The Pitt is amazing, grimy and sad. The remaining DLC is in my opinion tolerable, but not great. Mothership Zeta repetitive and slow, while Operation Anchorage attempts and largely fails to be a different kind of game entirely. In short: Come for the world, go out and explore. Stick around for most of the DLC. Forget the plot.

New Vegas is technically the better game story-wise. It's probably the better RPG. But Fallout 3 will always have a special place in my heart. I still remember getting the Xbox 360 version's GOTY edition for my birthday years back. I remember playing it again and again. Enjoying all the wild sidequests, meeting memorably characters, clearing out raider camps with a hunting rifle. The soundtrack. The atmosphere. It still holds up, all of it. The main quest is pretty weak, and it does coast a lot on Liam Neeson's star power, but it's not impossible to enjoy. It's still better than Fallout 4's main quest. Gameplay is fun, loads of possible builds, lots to do. DLC is firmly a mixed bag--Operation Anchorage makes you a total gamebreaker after a Call of Duty campaign; The Pitt has some interesting ideas and weapons; Point Lookout is good old fashioned Lovecraft fun; and Mothership Zeta is so brutally tedious it's not even funny. All that said, though--this is a solid, solid game and the fact that the GFWL drm has been removed is jus the icing on the cake.