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Jesus someone needs to take a chill pill. To me, you're just like one of the headcases over at NMA who get worked up over a simple game because YOU disliked it. The nazis of RPG gaming world I call them because they like their RPGs nice and pure.

My entire point was that Fallout 1&2 made critical mistakes too - you can sugarcoat it all you want, but they exist. Come on, criticising FO3 for mistakes made in FO1&2? Seriously? If that doesn't reek of massive pink glasses I don't know what does. Not to mention the "copy & paste" design which you seemed to be blind to in FO1&2. Or the bugs in FO2. Or the situations where you can get stuck. Or the corruption of savegames. Or the crappy AI of team mates (seriously). etc. etc.

And I tend to be a lot less forgiving than instant unavoidable death because that's about the biggest gaming sin you can make - argue about that all you want, but you won't win on that account. No game should have instant death. The criticals should have been capped in the first place - a 250 damage critical from a weapon that normally does 15 damage? SERIOUSLY? I stick to what I said - at least combat in FO3 was more predictable.

There's plenty of stuff FO1&2 did wrong - and if you're going to criticise FO3, at least criticise it for NEW things it does wrong. And just go to the core of the problem, which you claim to see so clearly despite rambling off about this and that small insignificant flaw. I'll tell you what the major flaw in FO3 is: it tried to cater to too many people. That's it. End of story.

I do agree with the stats though since this was a logical result of the above - I would have liked them to have a bigger impact on the game as well but it was to be expected like I said - but it doesn't make it a terrible game. Not everyone is so anal about stats!

I know proper and balanced stats add a great deal of depth to a game but I never expected the game to have hardcore stats in the first place - I doubt it would even be possible in a non-turn based game. No Bethesda game ever had convoluted stats anyway. Bethesda even said in an interview that they didn't want more casual players to stumble over stats and while I can see why (there's a reason they're one of the only developers still making games for over TWENTY years) I don't agree with the decision either but all that doesn't mean FO3 can't be enjoyable as long as you don't EXPECT it to be similar to FO1&2. If they HAD catered to people like you, it also wouldn't have sold anywhere near the amount it did. I'd rather have FO3 than no game at all, thank you very much.

In the end FO3 is a very different game, one which I enjoyed because exploring a real true world is just fun to me. For me atmosphere, exploring & a good setting is what RPG are mostly about (and that includes meeting people & doing quests), NOT STATS. That's the TRUE meaning of RPGs and I felt FO3 did justice to this. If you don't enjoy it, fine. But don't call it a crap game simply because it's not a pure RPG in YOUR sense of the word. And I feel sad for you if you think you can degrade people simply for being more forgivable of certain elements than you are.

Oh, and calling Planescape Torment hollow trash? That explains why you feel the way you do. Incidently, few people will agree with you.