Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

Finishing these Fallout 3 expansions feel a lot like homework

for a class I never wanted to take.

 

Don't lock me in a room, corridor, spaceship

whatever

 

in a game about exploring the wasteland.

 

I'll get bored and feel taken out of the core element of the game.

 

It also doesn't help that ... Fallout 3 is notorious for bugs.

Crashes.

Etc.

 

For one stretch I was averaging a game crashing bug every six minutes of gameplay.

 

Not fun.

 

Now I just play in constant fear of it happening.

Like it did an hour ago, after a prolonged gun fight (my 4,000 shootout with aliens in 6 hours)

and a tedious sequence where I had to blow up some generators (my 30th blown up generator since being abducted by aliens)

and it happened RIGHT at the area's exit.

 

There's a reason I didn't run screaming to the store to get these expansions when they came out.

There's a reason I haven't finished them in ... 3 years?

 

See above.

... the part about being locked up in a game about exploring.

 

It's like seeing hairy ball sacks when you paid to see titties.

 

Yes, I'm exploring (on railroad tracks with collapsing doors behind me and the game prodding me to constantly advance).

Yes, I wanted to leave, hours ago.

Yes, I appreciate all the new guns, armor, enemies

 

But the only "essential" expansion was the one where they raised the level cap, added an area that I could walk out of

added 10 quests

added new feats

and allowed me to play after the "ending".

 

I can honestly say that I'm looking forward to playing Fallout New Vegas, especially on PC, I'm already a little frothy over the prospect of a GOTY edition coming out (as opposed to paying $100 for the expansions and retail game individually), and playing the "totally rad" user mods.

There's a lot "wrong" with Fallout 3, and I... let me back up a second

 

First off-

this game made me -believe- again.

So did Farcry 2.

 

Alright?

That's said.

Cool.

 

But once you reach a certain level, acquire a certain build, accumulate certain wealth and arms and the game is just an easy mode murder-sweep.

 

And the complete untweekability from playing what is essentially a PC game ported (poorly and without adequate patching) to the PS3-

pretty frustrating.

I'm not the only person that has experienced catastrophic, frequent game ending bugs.

Data corruption

missing NPC's

crazy NPC's

broken quests

missing items

freezes

lockouts

bullshit in general

 

The PC version either has a mod for it, a better patch for it, or

access to the console so you can input the script yourself

and fucking fix it.

 

It's not a miracle cure, but jesus christ its a good step in the right direction. And its not like sony is primarily responsible for the fuckup- all the game versions are bug ridden and unpatched, there's too many trillion variables to manage-

but at least the PC has the necessary tools, community and knoweldgebase to defend your progress and game experience.

 

and

you get to play some pretty sweet mods.

 

Just the other day I was saying "I'd love to just wake up one night from a makeshift bed I slept on in a lean-to metal shack and hear rain pelting the roof, I'd step outside- and sure enough, it was raining in the wasteland"

or dust storms

or thunderstorms

y'know

 

something other than just night and day.

And lo and behold, some novice programmer/scripter/modeler made it so and said "here- download this- put it here, it'll rain"

 

Someone even made an in-game radio station mod that adds 90 tracks of "atomic era" pop music.

And of course...

there were a few hundred "sex mods" made.

...

you had to see that coming.

 

So...

yeah

 

I'd like to play in the giant playground inside an infinite playground.

 

I still can't find that damn campaign some amateurs were making recently though... it was Fallout 1's quests, campaigns, dialogue, map, areas, etc

 

on New Vegas' game engine...

 

how can I put this in terms some of you might understand...

 

 

uuuh

 

All of the awesome gameplay, graphical, interface, and technological achievements present in Fallout New Vegas, a game released in 2010

with an award winning, cult classic story

 

... no that doesn't really explain it.

... they put the brain of einstein, and the heart of ghandi in a robot with lazer gatling guns... and then they rubbed it with unicorn blood, and put spikes on that robot for extra awesome

 

and I can't fucking find it :/

 

Its out there.

 

Unfinished, abandoned, finished, whatever...

its out there.

 

That's been my week.

 

... The utter bottom of the barrel.

I played about a day's worth of Ring of Red, and snapped out of it, asked myself what the hell I was doing.

The rest is kind of a blur of boredom and hopelessness.