i think you need car to move around the map !!!!
Those are my old-school creds.
But enough of that.
I enjoyed the Fallouts as true RPGs immensely, and I enjoyed Oblivion immensely for what it is: a gigantic, story-driven, beautiful sword and sorcery action-adventure with RPG elements.
As expected, Fallout 3 does not fully capture the pervasive (and intellectualized to the level of design philosophy) gallows humor of the first Fallout games, the setting of which was a fictional 1955 wherein the US actually had gone go toe-to-toe with the Ruskies. And it was, ultimately, a blackly comic take on a Cold War America: a country paradoxically at the peak of its power, prosperity, cultural cohesion and happiness while under constant threat of annihilation.
Fallout 3 mostly abandons this dark satire (if one could call it that) for a self-seriousness somehow matched with cheap laughs and cynical gore. The only real sparkles of the original Fallout games are to be found in the disquietingly grinning face of Pip Boy and in the other microparodies of 50's pop-culture peppering the game.
And, yes, it's true: the game isn't a Fallout game by Fallout standards.
And, you know, that's OK.
But the game isn't even Oblivion, Oblivion Improved, or Oblivion Lite.
It's Oblivion Diminished.
Fallout 3 has viciously utilitarian and therefore perfectly bland dialogue, rather like Bioware on a deadline; it has a much smaller and zoned world-- the true huge, open expanses (full of stuff) of Oblivion are not found here; there are lots fewer quests and locations; the animations are visually underwhelming and character movement has its flaws (prepare to clip and get stuck on world geometry); it has poorer textures; it has poorer models; it has a shockingly lean in-game radio selection (think of GTA4's radio and reduce the content by 95%); it has less narrative, which is also more poorly constructed (one main quest instead of four, and it is shorter); it has lots fewer sidequests; NPCs do not follow up with you when a quest is completed-- this is tremendously unsatisfying; the Pip Boy does not track quests you stumble upon randomly, you have to commit the details to memory if you can; the combat system is unsatisfactory in either its action or RPG manifestation (gunplay is terrible and VATS is a travesty); the cartoon physics and gimmicky gore are clearly trying with all their might to dazzle to the least cerebral of gamers.
'Real RPG' or not, Oblivion was gigantic and magical.
Fallout 3 is neither.
The single most impressive moment of Fallout 3 is when you first emerge from Vault 101; the HDR fades and you get a stunning view of the wasteland with a very impressive draw distance. In Oblivion, you left the sewers; you were greeted with gorgeous expanses of green flora. Now, brown is OK. I like brown. Landscape doesn't have to be green to be beautiful (and in a way Fallout's wasteland most definitely is beautiful).
But, unfortunately, this intentional dazzling of us with improved draw distance is perhaps the most memorable moment of the entire game.
In Oblivion our first look at the best foliage in any game ever was a kind of promise of what was to come in the rest of the game. And Bethesda delivered on that promise. In Fallout 3, however, this moment of first entering the gameworld is nothing more than a great big, 'Look at my technical achievement!' This vista of ruined landscape is breathtaking, but it promises nothing beyond itself, which is good, because the game doesn't deliver.
The short of it is this: Bethesda abandoned themselves making Fallout 3. They jettisoned their wonky and wobbly charm, epic scope and thoroughness for narrow vanilla, mass appeal and mass-market.