I hear ya. To be perfectly honest though I haven't had the slightest problem with Securom with this game yet. But that's not saying much.


I found a way to work around the locking up btw: playing the game in windowed mode, for some reason, circumvents the issue. I played for 2 hours straight yesterday without any problems where it was maybe a half hour max every time before. It's not ideal but on a 22" it's not a huge deal either...but I sure do hope they release a patch for this crap soon.

The game itself, though: awesome. So much fun. I mostly spent time in Megaton yesterday, getting to know the town and the people there and finding out as much as I can. I hacked a few personal computer terminals with my 1337 science skill and went through the local doc's patient files for some dirt. I robbed the local armory blind (but not without a fight), I found a dealer to sustain my habits and I helped the town with some technical issues.

Believe it or not, I've got no less than three addictions already: to jet, to psycho and to plain ole' Scotch (or was it vodka? forgot). I sure hope I don't get caught out in the wasteland for too long without a chance for resupplying because going through 3 withdrawals at the same time isn't going to be pretty. For now, I just frantically steal and scavenge to buy more dope and occassionally take a hit to stay 'in the zone'. What's cool about the karma system is that every time you steal something or access a terminal you aren't allowed to access you suffer a small karma hit. EVEN if no one knows you took/did it. Makes sense really, as karma and rep aren't the same. Don't worry though because going to people's homes stealing small junk (food and shit) isn't going to plummet you into moral depths too fast. I've stolen a LOT of shit so far and am still 'good'-ish karma-wise.

Contrary to what you might expect, I haven't killed that much yet. I even think I only really killed one innocent person, and even then she attacked me first. Mycharacter isn't evil, more morally volatile. In fact, he reminds me a lot of Gaius Baltar: he's extremely intelligent but also morally flexible and hedonistic. So much for the BSG reference.

I left Megaton looking for another place now, and found the remnants of an old highschool where a raider group set base. I smacked the shit out of them with my sledgehammer, baseballbat and spiked brass knuckles. It's extremely rewarding to see you do a critical on someone with a sledgehammer in slowmo...head comes right off. VATS is great fun with guns, in melee the camera pov is sometimes sketchy tho.

I might tune up difficulty too, because apart from a robot and a giant radscorpion I met I pretty much smashed everything I encountered so far with relative ease. Raiders, especially, seem to be made out of marshmallow fudge.

lol, sounds good. There's a decent chance I'll be finishing FC2 this weekend... I'll pick up Fallout 3 then. I figure if I alternate the two I can keep them more fresh without getting bored.

btw... speaking of securom, I got the attached. Fucking securom. As you guys may know, I work in the IT world... process explorer is a task manager replacement... it basically improves the utility of task manager 1000x. But securom considers it a hacker tool or something. Cock monkeys. I only had to close the open instance, but still, come the fuck on. I wonder what they'd do if I had Visual Studio open and latched into memory.

Just a quick post to get this clip up of my character smacking the shit out of a Mutie in VATS with his power fist, somewhere out in the wastelands. Too bad I didn't do a critical and rip his head/arm off, tho!

Gotta love how the raider (guy with the club and mohawk) is looking at the super mutant's corpse for a second, it's almost as if he's going "dude!" and then hits me in the head. Don't know wtf that raider was thinking really, if I can take down a mutant in close combat I'm sure as hell gonna rip his head straight of his body.

Oh and nevermined the attire...cowboy hat, sideburns, reinforced Vault suit. I look a lot different now (got a mohawk and a ridiculous civil war-style 'tache...I even found a dude who's willing to perform full plastic surgery on me!)

I love this game. I'll post screens at work tomorrow...can't be bothered now.

hm...weird, not working for me. Not sure why.

Strange, it works for me here at work. And this is hardly an optimalized no-holds-barred wonder machine.

Man, I hope they fix the memory leak thing for this game soon because it is fucking ace. The irony is that, apart from the game locking up my system in full screen every 20 minutes, I haven't really found a single other bug in there yet. So it's not like it's the buggiest game ever, not by a longshot. It just has one HUGE bug (bugzilla) haunting it. God knows how that one snuck past QA and game reviewers, tbh.

So I highly recommend you get it, but don't be surprised if the game gives you shit by crashing/freezing all over the place before a patch comes out. I can tell you that I've spend a LOT of time playing in windowed mode without any problems but I can't guarantee anything. Still, I shouldn't have to play in windowed mode. That's ghey.

All tech issues aside: the game is a classic. There's no way you can't love it as an RPG and/or Fallout fan. My character is now some sort of twisted robin hood constantly hopped on dope, and I got me an awesome robot sidekick. The freedom you have is real, to any 'workable' extent...I just went deep into the ruins of Washington DC (infested with super mutants) and found the old Vault-Tec HQ, broke into the mainframe and downloaded the location of half a dozen other vaults than my own yesterday. Perhaps it was part of a quest I didn't find yet, perhaps not, either way I could go there and do it all the same. Tight.

I could tell you so many stories already but I won't, I feel like a spoil sport already. If you have a decent rig and are prepared to be frustrated by the game's technical imperfection, you simply must play it. It's been a while since I've been this enthusiastic about a game. Anyway, pic time...quality is crap because of converting from bitmaps.

Views from the wasteland. Some are at night and might be a bit dark.

more

random stuff

I found this Russian guy's lovenest inside the city ruins...apparently all he ever does is drink, screw and kill.

I got this game Saturday night and have played it pretty heavily. FYI, I have no crash bug... I can play for hours full screen with no issues. I did get a BSOD yesterday, but it was the first crash I've had.

Anyway, this is my first Fallout game so I wasn't so sure how to spend perks and SPECIAL skills and all that. I ended up investing in one of the perks that lets you boost your SPECIAL scores, so now I have a perception of 10 and an intelligence of 10. I forget what my skills are like, but I'm a little over 50 for lockpick, small arms, lasers....not sure what else. I'll try to pop some pics when I get a chance.

I'm playing 'good' this time through. Next time I'll be going evil.

*spoilers*
I chose not to nuke megaton... instead I disarmed the bomb, so now I've got mercenaries trying to kill me regularly. Thanks TenPenny, you bastard. I also have an apartment as a result.

Have you found the 'vampires' yet? I found them as part of a quest to deliver a letter to some kid. Do you know what the karma-neutral solution is to that quest? I started waxing all the 'vampires', but was taking karma hits so decided not to go that route.

Heh, cool. I defused the Megaton bomb too, FYI, but I did contemplate blowing it for a while. 500 bottlecaps is a lot of money at first...At lvl 11-12 my karma is 'evil' ("Capital Crimelord") and I've been "very evil". Dunno why really, because apart from some stealing and petty extortion I've mostly been a good boy. Well, there WAS that business at Tenpenny Tower...but that was part of my plans as "man of the people" and not necessarily EVAL. Imho. But maybe I just have a sick moral compass.

10 perception? You picking off enemies from 100 metres away? I'm boosting energy weapons right now because I found a kick-ass plasma rifle, and because it'd fit my character's uberintelligence.


*Spoiler*

I know which quest you mean - I think - but I have trouble finding the bastards. Arefu, the small town on the brigde end right? I found the bodies and made a medicine diagnosis, but somehow I can't find the Family.

What level are you? Which towns you been to? Already ventured into DC itself? (inner city I mean)

What do you think about the game and universe so far, anyway? I can imagine it takes a while to get used to it...and the positively humongous amount of items (clothing, weapons, scrap, etc) combined with the open world can perhaps make it feel like you're just plodding along directionless at first.

Where the f**k is my copy of the game.

Damn it was in the mailbox, guess i shoulda checked first.

lol@peltz

*spoilage*

regarding vampires, yes, Arefu is where I picked up that quest...sorta. The family is in a subway on the other side of the river. It shows up as an option on the map. I forget the name... Moldavia or some crap (it's not that, but it's apparently the name of a Hungarian town, but a subway stop). There're some traps and crap.

I haven't uncovered many towns. Tenpenny towers and rivet city are placed I can see but have never been too... too bad, too, since I have a shitload of loot but emptied the chick in megaton of money a long time ago. Sucks too, I don't even have enough cash to buy the house upgrades.

For the most part I wandered around between Arefu, just over the river and megaton. However I'm now into Chevy Chase, right outside the radio station as part of the quest. I killed myself with a fat boy. :p So we'll see where I go from there. I'm mainly using the laser rifle at the moment, though I also use the .32 hunting rifle pretty frequently. Ammo is my maine limiting resource. I'm not sure of my level... I took some screenies of my character at home... I'll post em eventually. My perception is actually 9, my intelligence 10. But hacking is difficult... picking locks is easy. Go figure.

Here are some piccies