Great atmosphere and storyline but too many tedious 'go get this' missions and 'chopped' content to sell addons.
What is really great about this game is the actual world scenario you're in. The 'Fallout' world is immersive and compelling and you actually find the outside world interesting to explore. The actual storyline is very good but the main storyline seems far too short. In fact unfortunately it's another of the many games that 'remove' content and missions so they can flog you the add ons. There seems to be about 30% of the main storyline missing and without all the side quests you can do would be way too little. They have also clearly limited you to just lvl 20 with option to lvl 30 once you buy an addon another example of the rip-off culture creeping into the gaming world of the big software houses.
Leveling leads me to another gripe in this game and I also mentioned it in the Oblivion review. When you level all the creatures generally level up with you (although it does become slightly easier). This is done so you can supposedly do any mission at any level and not find it too hard but then I think what's the point of leveling up? The whole point of leveling up and gaining new skills is so you can tackle the harder missions too hard for lower levels. In fact I probably could have easily done all the main missions within a few hours with no side quests and I almost completed the game without realising after only doing 4-5 side quests. I got to the penultimate quest and after reading a game-wiki realised there was only one left so ended up having to purposely do all the side-quests.
The VATS targeting system is very good and definitely very satisfying blowing someones head off but you can't help thinking it's there because the manaul FPS is very very poor. In fact without the VATS system the ratings would suffer hugely. Any thing you fight you always end up having to do it from close range to get a decent shot making weapons like the shotgun a must.
A good thing about the game is the Karma and is certainly an improvement from Oblivion where you get jailed and fined if caught in possession of stolen goods. In fact being bad generally isn't so much of a hindarence and is certainly more enjoyable. And the radiation/health/sleeping element is very good too where you can heal yourself on the cheap but become radiated in the long term.
There are options to build your own guns too but as far as I can see are totally useless. Most the schematics I found were for useless stuff I didn't really need and finding the equipment needed to build them was not only hard but a real chore especially when there are so many free guns dropped by enemies. These drops allow you to repair your guns which is a good feature of the game.
One thing that has been repeated by many who have played this game is how slow it is to get going and I know of a few who got fed up after the first hour or so and couldn't be bothered. I certainly found it tough to start and only after running around Megaton for hours and getting to know it, did I find it more enjoyable. Something that has been repeated on these reviews alot is how Megaton is hard to navigate around and it seems strange that they used this as a starting location for the game. It's something that's repeated lots in the game though; where you have to navigate through a maze of corridors to find certain rooms.. Rivet City is an absolute pain in the backside trying to find certain rooms.
It seems there are many flaws to this game and there are. It's quite understandable with a game as big as this but for every flaw there is also something that makes up for it. The game like Oblivion is very well made with good interaction between characters, good atmosphere and good inventory / menu system.
I think for me it doesn't quite get the 90+ because of the main missions. They're a little boring and don't develop how you'd expect but mainly because they aren't tied with any other quests you can do. It certainly would have been better to make them gradually more difficult for lower level players meaning the side quests actually have some value. Leveling up would certainly have more value as you'd think 'yes now i'll kick your ass' rather than just a generic difficulty based on player level. I know next time I play many of the side quests will be too long and boring to even consider for the sake of a few caps and XP.