An amazing adventure that any gamer should enjoy.
Visually, the game stands out as one of the best I've seen. It's very detailed, the textures, lighting, and shadows are great. The physics are solid, but the animations are terrible. This game has the best looking people of any game I've ever played. It's the only game that has actually made humans really look human to me, and I've never seen such well rendered eyes before. The landscapes are vast and beautiful in their own right despite being barren wastelands. All that being said, this is by far the biggest mess of a game I have ever played. I thought Oblivion was the worst until I played this. The level of polish missing from this game is unexcusable. I feel like I'm playing a beta of the game, an unfinished product. It's riddled with glitches and bugs. You need to save often, really often. This game crashes more than any other game ever. My laptop with Windows Vista, 3 GB of RAM, 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo cpu, and a 256mb 8600 gt mobile runs the game on mostly high settings at about 20 frames per second. I've heard from numerous people with the console versions of the game that the problems I mentioned aren't nearly as bad on those versions.
The soundwork is fantastic. The soundtrack itself is dark and ominous, with the exception of the radio stations which play some music I'm sure some will enjoy, and it fits the setting, but it just wasn't for me. I wish there was an option to play an MP3 program like itunes through a radio station in the game, it would have been very much appreciated. The voice acting is some of the best I've heard.
The game-play is a lot of fun. It's set up like an extremely open ended shooter with no specific direction and a heavy amount of RPG elements. Don't expect to just be able to blast your way through the game, you must make good use of the V.A.T.S. system and make smart decisions about who you want to be in the game. I love the new V.A.T.S. system, it makes the game a little easy but it's so fun to use that it's excusable. This game is really, really gory, one of the goriest I've ever seen. There's an abundance of blood, and limbs or heads are removed relatively easy. This combined with the dark humor and mature subjet matter of the game really and truly make it not a game for kids. I'm all for kids being able to play whatever games they want, but there are certain exceptions, like this game, that I feel truly deserve the mature rating and therefore shouldn't be played by anyone under 17 years of age. A mature 16 year-old could probably handle it as well. The story is awesome, different than your usual save the world bit that gets thrown at you time and time again.
This is a truly amazing game. I would easily give it a higher score if it wasn't for the horrible programming that makes the game close to unplayable at some points. I'd highly recommend it if you have the patience to get past the glitches and bugs.