Anyway, I'm contemplating whether or not I should blow up Megaton, I actually managed to bribe Burke into offering 500 caps for the job, but I still don't have a high enough explosives skill. I was playing around with the quick save and load to see how certain choices affected my karma among other things (by the way, completely broken mechanic as you can basically fly through the game as if you were using an emulator) and killing him actually increases your karma, but saving the sheriff from him yields absolutely no reward other than the crappy item drops Burke has, so that was pointless.

mentats help

Yeah, I didn't think it was substantial at all but I saw Neophyte put it in spoiler tags so I just did the same.

I loved how in the original games if you shot someone in the groin or the eyes other characters would go "Ouch, that's got to hurt!" and the characters you shot would say hilarious things like "oooh, i'm gonna get you" even though you just blew their testicles off.

I loved the way you could do that with children.

Well it's good to know they're going to include some downloadable content and official mods for this thing. Maybe they'll even make improvements to the animations and stuff. Has anyone beaten the game yet? How long does it take to play through, like a normal run, not just doing the main quests or doing every single quest.

yea it's a Betheseda game alright, I tried to look for a clip with some funky / skiing animations (like all the humanoid morrowind animations were as if they all had an anchor up their ass) but I never really found one BUT instead I found like 100x diifferent random glitches like floating mechs and deathclaws and NPCs who don't have a visible head but who do have eyes just floaring around.

There were also some that I couldn't tell if they were glitches or features like there's this corpse that starts breakdancing and flipping in the air, it COULD BE an intended thing but I doubt it it looked so fucked up.

I guess this doesn't contribute too much to the topic but man it seems almost as buggy as Morrowind and Oblivion. Is it? Still though, even if it would be bugfree I wouldn't prolly never get this since I found Oblivion and Morrowind and RPGs in general boring as all hell and this is supposed to be in the same vein except it has some fallout vibes and oblivion with guns.

one thing im kinda annoyed about is there is no YOURE ABOUT TO EXPLODE indicator. ive quicksaved like 5 times unknowing of the grenade or about-to-explode-car right behind me ._.

apart from that this is pretty fun so far. just met my first super ridiculously big mutant guy and did not fight him and ran away!! fun.

I had an unfortunate incident with an exploding car myself. I had just fought off a bunch of raiders when a Radscorpion came charging down a hill at me. I was at very low health and reacted offensively instead of simply going into my inventory and using some stims. I pulled up V.A.T.S. and targeted his stinger with my combat shotgun as it was in mid pounce. Critical hit, blew the stinger right off. Radscorpion is DEAD, and sliding down the hill past me.

Radscorpion hits car.

Car explodes.

My character died.

--

Another thing to do is to use the right thumbstick click to pick up the dead bodies of a few Talon mercs and stack them up on a burnt out car. Lay some frag mines (maybe a bottlecap mine too) around and wait to lure a roving Super Mutant in. Of course, the mutant comes in from the wrong side - but this is easily fixed with a quick shot to one of the mines.

Chain reaction. Mines explode. Car explodes. Mercenary and Super Mutant bits go everywhere.

i just realized, washington dc was a swamp before they built on it. ahaha they made dc this craggy pseudo-mountain range when it was a swamp below sea level. it's cool though, i don't mind.

They took a lot of liberty with the area outside of the D.C. Ruins (the bulk of the wasteland).  For example, they included Raven Rock mountain, which my parents live across the street from and it is in southern PA about 2 and a half hours away from D.C.  Oh well.  I'm still really enjoying the game.  I've been using the Sniper Rifle a lot to clear out areas before I even ever get there.  It's pretty easy to sneak attack critical outside of VATS with it.  If I go into VATS it makes it harder.

got my copy in the mail today... I have just entered Megaton town and is it just me or does the game feel very Mediocre.

- Character Animation is horrible, 3Th person = shit, cutscene animation is weak as well.
- Walking around is slowpaced and feels bulky.
- The environment is beautiful, however the graphics are not.. and I'm running on Full-settings.
- Battle system is way too slow, the beginning with the baseball bat was horrible...
the game just feels so cheap. maybe I need to play it more but this even feels like a downgrade from oblivion

I mostly agree with you. I never really got into this game. There are some fun choices to make, things to do, and what not, but overall, I enjoyed Oblivion more. Something about running rampantly around a lush, green environment with magic and swords is more fun than a greyscale world where everything you eat gives you radiation poisoning. The whole game feels futile, like you're basically thrusting yourself forward only to see how long it is before you die and watch the world rot. HOWEVER. It is also addictive in the most sadistic sense. Being such a harsh life and pointless existence, I have no qualms with killing other survivors, stealing their stuff, or blowing off the heads of passers-by.
Another thing, is the stealing actually works. Now if some smuck is sitting in a chair facing you, and you duck down behind the shelf that faces away from the seated guy... you can steal and he won't magically see through the wood at what you're up to. It's completely awesome. The only bug in Oblivion that made any amount of assholery annoying to do. So in a lot of ways it fixes on Oblivion's broken systems and adds some cool optional ones.

The VATS is fine once you get used to it. It's really slow at first, but once you figure out to do multiple targets in a row, the pace quickens. Still sucks against two or three Super Mutants. but w/e.

There are other tricks in combat, but it is mostly a stylistic choice. You can kill an enemy, toss a land mine on his corpse, then when you shoot a weapon out of the hands of another foe, when he runs over to scoop up that tantalizing hunting rifle...suicide by bomb, or at least a crippled limb or two.

Here's a couple of images. If you haven't been to Oasis yet, they might contain some spoilers.