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I was getting a little bored of Doom 3 (okay, that's a lie, I was getting frustrated with a room where giant plasma-shooting aliens had me in a crossfire while the cieling kept slamming down to crush me) so I installed Fallout 3. Somewhat to my relief, it did run on my laptop. Of course, it crashed halfway through character creation, when I hit 'tab' to bring up the pip boy.
But there was a patch on the fallout site, and after installing it and reloading from the autosave just before that point, it didn't crash right then. In fact, it didn't crash the rest of the night. I thought it was fixed.
...but no, this *morning* when I tried to play a little before work I got two crashes and a progressive memory leak that gradually lowered the framerate until the game stopped moving entirely. Over the course of a *half hour*.
The game itself is pretty frustrating -- you have to use the VATS to accomplish anything, because the real-time combat combines the worst features of FPS and role playing games -- you not only have to have your crosshairs positioned exactly over the enemy (or for melee attacks, to be really really REALLY fucking close to them and then hit them with the swing) but you also have to pass a skill-based to-hit check. Really, there's no point even bothering to fire if you aren't using the VATS, you just waste ammo.
There also doesn't seem to be any way to predict when you'll get the 95% chance to hit the enemy's head and when you'll have a max of 31% to hit any part of their body -- I mean, distance figures into it but it apparently isn't the only factor.
I'm about three hours into the game, and haven't found anywhere to rest yet, except maybe by spending 120 caps hiring a prostitute. I'm pretty sure that this isn't GTA and that prostitutes aren't the only way of getting healed.
Anyway, my health is getting really low, and I'm trapped in the back of a ruined supermarket which just respawned an entire set of the enemies that I fought through on the way in... the robot I hacked to take care of them turned on me and trapped me in the office... all my food is irradiated and I only have seven shells for my shotgun. I don't know how long I've got before they find me...
But there was a patch on the fallout site, and after installing it and reloading from the autosave just before that point, it didn't crash right then. In fact, it didn't crash the rest of the night. I thought it was fixed.
...but no, this *morning* when I tried to play a little before work I got two crashes and a progressive memory leak that gradually lowered the framerate until the game stopped moving entirely. Over the course of a *half hour*.
The game itself is pretty frustrating -- you have to use the VATS to accomplish anything, because the real-time combat combines the worst features of FPS and role playing games -- you not only have to have your crosshairs positioned exactly over the enemy (or for melee attacks, to be really really REALLY fucking close to them and then hit them with the swing) but you also have to pass a skill-based to-hit check. Really, there's no point even bothering to fire if you aren't using the VATS, you just waste ammo.
There also doesn't seem to be any way to predict when you'll get the 95% chance to hit the enemy's head and when you'll have a max of 31% to hit any part of their body -- I mean, distance figures into it but it apparently isn't the only factor.
I'm about three hours into the game, and haven't found anywhere to rest yet, except maybe by spending 120 caps hiring a prostitute. I'm pretty sure that this isn't GTA and that prostitutes aren't the only way of getting healed.
Anyway, my health is getting really low, and I'm trapped in the back of a ruined supermarket which just respawned an entire set of the enemies that I fought through on the way in... the robot I hacked to take care of them turned on me and trapped me in the office... all my food is irradiated and I only have seven shells for my shotgun. I don't know how long I've got before they find me...
