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.

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.