Just one thing to clarify, the cars were run off of a nuclear engine, so, yes, they would explode in to a gorgeous little mushroom cloud even after 200 years of decay. wonderful engineering that Fallout universe wot?

and I totally agree about the food and ammunition thing. i think that the best i’ve ever seen a post-apoc scavenging was in a great series by James Axler, Deathlands, you had the main characters with MAYBE enough ammo for 3-5 firefights, possibly two extended battles. then having to resort to stealth and melee to finish off the stragglers. it was handled wonderfully, as your enemies would theoretically have been living in the same location for quite awhile and all but exhausted their supply of ammunition, therefore allowing you the advantage as you blast away at their manic melee rush.
i think a greater focus on melee combat would have been fine, but then again, what would have been changed from oblivion then? if oblivion had not just been made, or if Bethesda (no matter how well of a job they’ve done) had not been the developer of Fallout 3, a more realistic weapons platform could have been established, with a greater focus on stealth and melee combat, with only few of the factions in-game resorting to firearms (brotherhood, enclave, outcasts, large raider groups, etc…) you see this occur in several encounters, one comes to mind, whereupon you approach a baseball field with several raiders/slavers occupying the benches, and they run at you wielding baseball bats and screaming. i found it entirely realistic (as far as i could imagine approaching a post-apoc baseball field) and rather humorous.
I don’t know where I was going with this tangent, and I would be rather surprised to find if anyone actually reads this comment, but it felt good to get my thoughts out on paper. :)

@Zel: Yup, that was my way of dealing with Supermutants early on. I would either run up to them, or sneak up and unload couple of shotgun rounds in their face.

Also, that’s how I defeated the Behemoth at the GNR plaza. I took Jet, Nuca Cola, and Psycho, run up to him and unloaded 6 or 7 blasts from the Alien Blaster right in his face. He went down immediately. :)

I also like the Mysterious Stranger perk wen a dude shows up in your VATS sequence and finishes off your target.

It is not always that easy though. If you are careful you can kill your victims by just popping out of the cover and taking pot shots at them. But I found out that if I exposed myself to much they would actually charge at me, or run up and lob grenades at my location.

I agree about the settlements. You’d think that after 200 years people would rebuild some of the ruins or at least remove some of the rubble. Most of the places however look as if the war happened only few months ago and they just haven’t gotten around to removing all the rubble and debris from their living quarters.

I mean, Rivet city could actually look much nicer if someone actually cleaned up all the shit from the floors. Tenpenny Towers is a proof that you can make a building look nice and presentable with enough effort. Unfortunately hardly anyone bothers.

I was expecting to run into some farms but they are nowhere to be found. You can see Brahmin herds here and there – most notably in Arafu. But that’s a far cry from a working economy.

@Mark Harding: Yup, the dog seems to be smarter than most of the human companions. He also rapidly regenerates health between battles so you don’t need to waste stimpacks on him. That said, he did start getting in the way at higher levels. Nowadays I just leave him in my house in Megaton.

@copperfish: I still have to find the Dunwitch building. I actually looked it up and it is on my list of places to go before I move forward with the main quest. :)

I just started the Broken Steel DLC. What I’m finding great about it is that it gets me back into the game. For example this http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Dunwich_Building I missed completely before and I’d never have found it if the Broken Steel addon didn’t have me heading over to that side of the map. It’s great that I’m letting myself get sidetracked by bits of the original game content without even touching the addon’s quest.

And Feral Ghoul Reavers….very nasty.

Good to read your F3 impressions.

I’m still playing with my first character which I started several months ago. On the whole I’m enjoying the game but of late only dip into to it once or twice a fortnight for an hour or so.

I’m not finding treasure everywhere! I love making bottle cap mines and find the componants pretty sporradically (sp?) and it’s the same with ammo. I’m never flush with ammo unles I’ve just spent practically all my caps at a trader. Personally I like it this way.

All of my companions have gotten themselves killed by running off in the direction of every single F-ing red dot on my radar, shooting wildly, barking or yelling “Awww Hell Yeah!!!”. WTF? Why isn’t there an option to have them just NOT react to enemy presence. It’s meant that I haven’t been able to ambush baddies. I had to always keep one eye on the radar and, if I noticed a red dot, quickly order the gimp to stay put whilst I tried to lure baddie towards their location. Like I said, all of my companions so far have met their demise, usually within a few days of pairing-up with me, through this annoyingly suicidal behaviour.

I absolutely loved the combat droid companion (forget his name). Paid 1000 caps for the thing, then he almost immediately gets waisted by a group of raiders and a creature (one of those large aggressive bastards) which I hadn’t even noticed. I just happend to look behind me and realised he wasn’t there anymore….

I haven’t bothered with the NPC companions, so I don’t really have anything bad to say about them. I tried to save the dog from the two raiders that attacked it, but it died. I guess the stupid AI used by the NPCs during escorts fits a dog’s intelligence, especially if it just growls instead of running right into trouble.

I agree with you on V.A.T.S., it’s fun to see the different cam effects, although the death sequences get a bit repetitive (my favorite is the “follow the bullet” cam from a sniper rifle). It makes the game a bit too easy though, since you’re invincible during the time spent in V.A.T.S. Early on, you can just run up to melee range, launch V.A.T.S and shoot a couple of shotgun shots between the eyes of your victim. When you get a long range weapon, you can hide, wait for your AP to regenerate, go out, shoot in V.A.T.S., and go back into hiding to kill pretty much anything without getting hit once, since the AI won’t chase you or flush you out.

Settings wise, it’s different but I’m okay with that, since it’s set on the other side of the USA. I just wish they had made bigger settlements and some sort of food production facilities to make the world more believable. Best not to ask too many questions about how Bethesda’s post apocalyptic world is supposed to work though…