"15 to 20 hours to beat the game.", and "Play it on Hard difficulty". Seriously? Are we even talking about the same game here? Y'all must have played the Beta, when the game was probably challenging but beatable. Playing on Normal difficulty, 20 hours deep, in-game Day 154, I finally constructed the Citizen Card, and got the Ammo Subsidy, Travel Subsidy, and Heart Starter. "Yaaay! I finally beat Level 1 of Void Bastards!" My despair from the torture up to this point began to turn a bit into hope. Yet 10 MORE hours, at in-game Day 221, I'm at only Nebula Depth 2, and I've only collected 2 out of 3 parts for the HR Computer. I finally quit out of sheer PissOffery after all the cheap death and reverse progress. There is near zero balance to the structure of combat or the so-called stealth when unlimited enemies can spawn from portals non-stop. I game to relax and have fun. At 45 years old I just cannot spend all my time, and have my real life energy drained, by a video game, especially when the game is just so cheap in the way it tortures the player. This is why I don't play online competitive shooters, because I know I'll just be continually having my ass handed back to me on a rusty tin platter with no end in sight. So why does this game, an offline single player campaign, feel like an online multiplayer competitive deathmatch, where all there is... is death... for me? Even though I may be a casual player, I do enjoy games for the challenges, puzzles, strategy, learning, exploration, and PROGRESS that many of them provide. Void Bastards? Just not fun. Every time I built that new gadget or got the next higher allotment of ammo, food, and fuel, I thought, "Maybe now I'll finally be able to compete against the swarms of impossible enemies..." Nope. They just make the very hard enemies even harder, to the point of impossible. On top of that, they throw Pirates and Space Whales and other shit that just turns any hope into frustration and despair. No.
Despite what some people say in these reviews, GOG is definitely the best place to buy Fallout 3. That being said, as far as I know, they only fixed two major issues for PC, which means GOG fixed the GFWL issue, and (I think?) the multicore crash issue. No one is perfect, but GOG managed to legitimately make this title available for many more people on PC than it was before 2017. Even after getting this version here I had issues on my Win 7 PC with integrated Intel graphics, and had to search for help. So... Thank (and curse) Microsoft for the modern PC as we know it today. Thank (and curse) Bethesda for Fallout 3. Shame on Microsoft for Games For Windows Live, ever. Period. (I'm so glad I had my head in the console gaming clouds back then. Never even heard of GFWL until 2017.) For people who purchased Fallout 3 on GOG and can't get it running smoothly... you still have some work to do. 1. I recommend if you don't already have one: a nexusmods account. There you will find the Intel HD graphics trick. 2. Gopher over at gophersvids has an excellent, although dated now, video series on successfully modding Fallout 3, starting specifically with tackling several issues that may be keeping your game from running in the first place. Even if you don't want to mod your game, I'm pretty certain you will appreciate the information from Gopher. And NO, I am not getting paid for this plug, I just think his information is fairly clear and easy to follow. 3. Another guy named Apoqsi has good information as well. 4. Do your own research, and you should be able to find the correct information to help you get GOG's Fallout 3 up and running... fairly well on your machine. 5. It will likely take time, effort, determination, and possibly some blood, sweat, and tears... but after all these steps (and probably a few more after that...) you should finally be able to enjoy Fallout 3 as it was (apparently never) intended. Thank GOG for DRM-Free!
