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@k00pa: I can attest to this – Steam provides a much better user experience in general.

@Dr. Azrael Tod: Yeah, you are right. It’s unfortunate that my legal copy of Half Life 2 is merely a long term rental. I really love Valve games and I do not mind Steam but I have no illusions about what it is – it’s really just an on-demand service.

So both Live and Steam are bad from that standpoint. It’s just that Steam offers a better end user experience.

That said, you can play Fallout 3 DLC offline if you move your saved games over to a different folder. I can’t understand why they didn’t automate it – perhaps Microsoft wanted to keep people signed into Live at all costs.

Also, I think that the “Game of the year” box is/will be bundled with some of the DLC’s allowing you to bypass Live altogether. Or at least that’s what I heard.

@Zel: I know NMA.. and i needed it allready multiple times ;-)
There are multiple Bugs in Fallout 1&2, making it impossible to do some quests. One of them is the Boxfight after wich you cant leave the arena, another one is a small forest-area in F2, where you have to find something (right after the start) whenever i visited this area the game just crashed.

Of course most of this bugs are gone after installing the latest patch.. but you have to get the patch (and dont tell me its ok because some fans provide what should be provided by the one who made money with it)
And course i could have saved the patch to DVD and ripped an image of the game right to the same… but in some countries it would be illegal to do this (in Germany for example if there is “working” copy-protection – wait.. if it works, wouldnt it be impossible to do it illegaly?) and DVD+/-R/RW still wont be readable more then 3-4 Years.

so…you could find a fix for every mentioned problem. But its a lot hazzle.

You can play the Fallout 3 DLC without an active internet connection (though you need one to buy and download said DLC, obviously). It requires moving some files around, not unlike the savegame trick Luke used. You can find the detailed instructions on the Fallout Wiki.

I didn’t know Microsoft was selling full games through their Games for Windows Live platform. They’re only providing a somewhat easier mean to release and sell content. You can still play the original game without an internet connection, as creating an offline profile doesn’t require any.

I don’t quite understand what you mean by problems with Fallout 1&2, they work fine in XP and the (official and unofficial) patches are easily available at a certain fan site. You can always download them and keep them on you HD along with the CD images, or burn both Fallout games plus patches on a DVD if you want to be able to install them on a train.

Games bought via Steam, or any other digital distribution, I agree with you though. It’s naive to think the companies providing them will never go out of business or will support their games for an infinite amount of time.

@k00pa: I think the problem with both steam and Microsofts DLC would be that there is no possibility to play these games if you don’t have any internetconnection at your pc…
of course we know that today every gamer has to have a flatrate dsl or better… but what if not? What if someone wants to install a game while going from a to b via train? What if this exact computer is generally not connected to the net? What if you are on a LAN-Party without any internet-access?

Even better: What if you have bought any game like this and the publisher is gone? How will you get your bought copy?
This Problem isnt exactly new… i allready have big Problems to reinstall Fallout 1&2… not becaus of missing CDs, more because of missing Patches without both games are nearly unplayable. But with online distribution this all got much worse.

And dont tell me this wont happen cause microsoft or valve wont go out of buisiness… it allready does!

Windows live is something that I hate. I hate drm, but if I want to play my new game, I can install drm.

But the windows live! It is Microsofts steam clone. And I hate it.

Steam is actually pretty good. Example statistics/achievement systems works well. And the steam cloud sounds good, it just need more games that supports it.

@Zel: Yeah, but other games using it doesn’t make it right. It is a nasty piece of malware that does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy.

Also, I always welcome people with differing opinions. I’m looking forward to hearing Fallout 3 complaints from someone who was a fan of the original. :) I like the game so far, but I do admit it is not perfect and I will talk both about the good parts and the bad parts – and since I will be trashing parts of it, I won’t mind others doing the same.

@Dr. Azrael Tod: Yup, it’s a ripoff. They should really have a big sign on the box that says “the game ends abruptly after you finish the main quest”. It seems that if you postpone doing main quest missions there are tons of non-linear sandbox content in this game.

But you are right – they should have added the option to continue playing in the patch rather than in a DLC.

@Luke Maciak: So all i have to do is buying additional content over crappy Micro$oft Systems to make this game worth its money? (of course only if we ignore the bugs, DRM, weak story opposed to 1&2 and the fact that i then wont be able to play this game offline)

SCNR