It's classic Bethesda, full of graphics glitches that remind me of Arena, huge areas of mountain that weren't finished. Tons of game crashes, VATs is now real time so it's possible to get killed during VATS without being able to do anything about it. The perks have been reworked, no more skill boosting perks, with the real-time VATS (whats the point now?) melee/unarmed gets a huge shaft, as does explosives. Energy weapons apparently have no armor penetration so later game they suck too from what I've read (didn't bother with energy at all). Leaving the players with the option of guns, or guns
Ammo has been reworked a bit, you can take apart bullets and shotgun shells, although even with the hand loader perk (gives you all special ammo recipes) I found myself just using standard bullets as I didn't notice any difference when changing to AP, or HP rounds. You can now make repair kits to fix your weapons, although this requires collecting about 15lbs of junk to do it.... Survival now lets you cook food, which unless you play hardcore is a total waste. Hardcore isn't harder, just more annoying as you have food/water/rest levels and ammo has weight, hey why not have the player crap and piss or die of intestinal problems too?Playing it as a FPS using guns works well (whats VATS?), and it has the usual interesting stories and side quests, its even more possible to forget the main quest than in F3. It seems like more skills get used than in F3 too, not just wep/speech/lockpick/science. NPCs while still near retarded are immortal now, which is nice for when they inevitably stick their head in front of your .50 cal sniper rifle as you fire...
All in all even with all the lame ammo/repair/npc/load times crap which really is in no way an improvement over F3, this game would be enjoyable if it didn't crash constantly. Hopefully this isn't a problem for PC people who give the game a look.
Tim~
