OK, so I made the mistake of buying Fallout 3.

(No, that's not a typo. Fallout 4 has just come out, and is insanely 
popular. But that means that Fallout 3 is now old hat, and thus very 
much cheaper.)

All things considered, it's just as well I did! Because every time I try 
to play the game, I just get my arse handed to me on a plate.

Does anybody here know anything about the game? I'd be surprised if it's 
actually *designed* such that only 2 hours in you're supposed to get 
completely decimated every few minutes. Seems more likely that I'm just 
playing it wrong.



So I managed to leave Vault 101. It took several deaths to get that far. 
I get the feeling it wasn't actually supposed to be that difficult. But 
- as ridiculous as this sounds - I was chased by guards and beaten to 
death. I couldn't discover any way of sneaking past them; the door I 
need to go through is *exactly* where the guard is standing, so I don't 
really see how I can get past him. And he calls all his buddies over, 
and we run around in circles until I stop moving, at which point I get 
beaten to death. (It takes a while, mind you.)

Eventually I discovered that it's possible to actually equip a gun and 
*shoot back*. Not sure if I was actually supposed to murder the guards 
in cold blood, but there seems to be no other way to proceed.

Next I'm supposed to pick the lock to open the door. The game marked the 
lock as "very easy" (not just easy, but *very* easy), and yet I failed 
miserably, not even coming close to unlocking it. Fortunately, if you 
hunt around, there's a key. Then you're supposed to hack the security 
terminal inside. Again, marked "very easy", but after multiple attempts 
I still failed without ever coming close. Again, fortunately the correct 
password just happens to be in the desk directly next to the terminal. 
(So... exactly like in real life then?)

I'm not actually sure what the point in Vault 101 existing is. I mean, I 
left the vault, and I'm presumably never going back there, so everything 
that just happened was basically a total waste of time. Now I'm outside, 
with a few items in hand. It seems like the game could have just started 
there and nothing would be lost, but hey...

So first you have to go to Megaton. That took a big of figuring out. I 
followed the radar and *found* the structure easily enough. But I had 
assumed that all living entities were hostile, so I kept avoiding the 
front door because there's people there. Eventually I overcame that and 
went inside though.

So the mayor comes over and talks to you, and you have to go defuse the 
bomb before you can do anything. I find it interesting that the game 
*strongly suggested* that this wouldn't be possible, and yet it was 
trivially easy. I don't know if there's a random component and I was 
just extremely lucky, or what. But anyway. Next you have to go visit the 
supply place, and the girl in charge orders you to go do a series of tasks.

The first task is to go to the Super-Duper Mart and see if there's any 
food there. So I got there and went inside, and... well, there's a hell 
of a lot of people patrolling around inside, and I'm fairly sure they 
aren't friendly. I doubt my BB gun is going to do much damage to these 
guys. Besides, the place is *clearly* empty except for a few million 
empty bottles and cans. So there's obviously no food here.

So I walked all the way back to Megaton. But apparently the game seems 
to think there definitely *is* food to be found, and won't let me abort 
the quest until I find it. So OK, walk all the way back again. So maybe 
it's one of those challenges where you have to sneak all the way into a 
place without being seen? Surely it looks like if anybody does see me 
I'll be more or less instantly toast.

But it really, really looks like there's no possible way past all the 
patrolling guards. They're everywhere! Including directly in my path, 
with no cover to hide behind. And while I'm trying to scope all this 
out, one of the guys *does* see me, and charges straight at me. And this 
is where I learned two things: First, in spite of his yelling, nobody 
else in the building seems to care. Second, most of the shots he's 
firing miss me completely, and the few that do hit cause almost no 
damage at all. It's a bit like being gently tickled.

So I kill [almost] everybody in the place, and manage to sneak into the 
hidden room at the back. [Not sure why I'm still sneaking, but I guess 
I'm not 100% sure they're all gone yet.] I manage to find some medicine, 
but there's still no food to be seen anywhere. I hear some more guys 
come in while I'm in the hidden room, so presumably this is going to be 
a big ambush when I come out... nope, everybody is just ignoring me. 
Except when they're attacking one at a time.

So I take everybody out *again*. And now I've searched almost the entire 
building. Still no food. Just as I'm leaving, I notice a small area 
right beside the front door, that I had ignored because it's way too 
easy. There's nothing there. Oh, except at the very back, there's a 
fridge... oh, which actually has some food in it. Huh. Who'd have 
thought? (I wonder who the **** is generating all the electricity to run 
the lights on this post-apocalypse when all the overhead power lines are 
down?)

The next task was to get radiation poisoning. I wondered around the 
wilderness for hours trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to 
be doing. And I quickly learned something very important: There are 
people *everywhere*, and it's extremely hard to avoid them. Particularly 
galling is that there seems to be no way to run, so if you do meet 
people, you more or less have to just let them kill you and restart 
again, because you can't run away before taking excessive damage.

It turns out, I didn't actually need to do any of that. Just stand next 
to the bomb in Megaton for five minutes. Job done!

The next task is to collect some mines. Which was easy enough; the hard 
part is walking half way across the wilds *without* being shot to 
pieces! But anyway, I managed to pull that off without too much trouble.

But then she wants me to do chapter two, and now I'm really stuck. I 
cannot seem to make any further progress, no matter what I do.

She wants me to test some kind of animal repellent. But I can't get to 
the spot marked on the map without dying. I discovered that apparently 
you can actually use the map view to fast-travel. I made the mistake of 
fast-travelling to the Super-Duper Mart though, and immediately got 
attacked by a large pack of dogs. But that's nothing; then I went 
towards the river, and a large team of humans started shooting me. So I 
quickly crossed the river, and got shot at even more. There were only 
two enemies, but no matter how much I shot at them, they just wouldn't 
die. Eventually I exhausted all my health supplies and died.

So instead, I tried to go further north to cross the river. But I'm 
walking through the empty wilds, and suddenly out of nowhere a voice 
next to me says "please help me, I'm wearing a bomb!" And as I turn to 
look at him, a guy jumps out of the bushes with a flame thrower and 
kills me. I honestly don't know how it would be physically possible to 
prevent that death.

So I tried going further north. But then some kid runs up to me and 
tells me how "fire ants" have taken over his town, and begs me to fix 
it. So OK, I go in there and I see a giant ant. And while I'm trying to 
shoot it... it sprays me with *fire*. I guess I should have seen that 
coming, eh? Well anyway, I managed to kill about three of them, but the 
forth one just WOULD... NOT... DIE... So I did.

I've replayed this section multiple times now. It seems if I go too far 
north, I get shot to pieces, and if I go too far south, even if I'm 
still quite a way from the town, the kid still somehow finds me and 
forces me to fight the ants. I have no money, so I can't buy anything. 
And I have nowhere near enough ammo to survive, considering that my 
bullets seemingly do little to no damage at all. (Not that I can even 
*hit* anything half the time!)



I did have a look at an online guide to Fallout 3. It didn't really help 
that much.

First of all, it asserts that trying to evenly spread your upgrade 
points among all abilities is a doomed strategy, and you have to pick 
one or two and focus only on those. Oops. Oh well, I'm not replying the 
game from the beginning now! I do find it kind of annoying that it makes 
you pick stuff right at the beginning before you have any idea what it 
does. E.g., "strength" sounds like a really important thing, but all it 
*actually* affects is how much junk you can carry at once. Hardly worth 
the points I sank into it!

They urge you to use V.A.T.S. constantly, for everything. Clearly I'm 
using it wrong. So every time enemies are near, the game is constantly 
nudging you to turn on V.A.T.S... So I press V, and the game pauses and 
asks me what part of the target I want to hit. So I say, uh, head. And I 
press Accept. And the game unpauses, and nothing happens. So... what was 
the point of that, exactly?

They warn you to kill weaker enemies with melee weapons to save precious 
ammo. (Apparently ammo is extremely rare in this world.) Heh, hey, like 
that's gonna work. I thought the entire idea of a gun is so that you can 
kill them while they're still far away. If they get close enough to 
touch you, it's basically game over.

One thing the guide didn't explain, which I desperately wanted it to, is 
what the *hell* all the damned abbreviations mean! Given the setting, I 
presume "RAD" is the obsolete pre-SI radiation dose unit. But what the 
heck is "CND"? "WG"? "DR"? "VAL"? "STR"? "EFF"??? Why is the entire UI 
in code?!

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