Fallout 3 on the PC...

[MinionZombie]

I'm thinking of getting Fallout 3 on the PC, rather than the 360 (a few reasons, can't be arsed to explain), but I've read numerous reviews which bark and moan about a variety of problems - freezing, poor optimisation, save game breaks etc. Was wondering if any of you fine folks here knew about any of this apparently kerfuffle with Fallout 3 on the PC...

[ProfessorChaos]

just wait a few months and get the GOTY edition on the 360....i think it's gonna have all 5 DLC's included.

[EvilNed]

First off: No, never had any serious problems with Fallout 3 on the PC. If you machine can handle it, then by all means of course YES! Second off: Agreed with the Professor. Wait for the GOTY. You'll get all the extra stuff thrown in.

[MinionZombie]

Hmmm ... GOTY edition ... sounds like a smart plan. Perhaps I'll get Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway for the PC (it's only a fiver now) - the main reason, aside from needing something to play right now (due to the vast void of nothingness until the onslaught of Xbox360 games come September/October/November - I've got FOUR pre-ordered for cripe's sake) ... ...but also because I wanted to see about my few-months-old rig, my monster Quad Core, you see when I first got it, it would crash within 5 minutes of loading up Crysis every time, and it would crash (i.e. the whole computer would just freeze, so I'd have to turn it all off by holding down the power button) also when playing STALKER: Clear Sky. I wanted to test the rig out again with a new game to see if it's still giving me that problem - you see I had the guy who built it take another look at it and it's far improved compared to when I first got it - but I still get the odd freeze-up, usually at some point within every 5 to 10 hours of gaming. No idea why - clearly whatever he did to it mostly fixed the problem, or rather made it far less frequent and far less certain - but I still get the odd freeze-up (I had one or two while playing Crysis again in February, but since then I've not played any games on it - I've been too busy using the rig to edit an educational DVD, and never had any more freeze-ups until the other day when I had a freeze-up using Sony Vegas to render out a piece of video). So - put simply - with this current project getting close to completion, and with sod-all games to play right now until October time, I wanted to see if it was still freezing-up so I could then get back in contact and get the computer back in the shop before my year's warranty runs out. Hence - looking for a game to play, but was worried about Fallout 3 in case the game's stability could confuse itself with my computer's possible problem. By the way - if anyone has any ideas regarding my computer's problem, do chime in. ... So, with waiting for the GOTY edition (wise advice lads), perhaps Hell's Highway is an idea as it's only a fiver on PC.

[Tricky]

Go for the PC version chief, it will look better than the 360 & you'll be far more privy to mods,patches,add on packs etc As for brothers in arms hells highway, i bought it with high hopes it would be as good as the first one which was awesome,and in places it is, but a lot of it is pretty linear with blatantly obvious scripts & triggers, and the plot has gone far too over the top & sentimental with all the "i never wanted to be a squad leader" "war is terrible" stuff, while at the same time glorifying it by showing slow-mo close ups of germans heads coming apart when you snipe them,or slow-mo limbs & entrails flying all over when you hit a bunker with a bazooka or grenade Also the ghosts of characters killed in the previous games keep showing up in the middle of firefights, I think its meant to be the main character suffering from PTSD, but it just seems a bit weird in a brothers in arms game when the original game set about being a historically accurate portrayal of D.Day & did it well! By all means get it for a fiver & enjoy having a blast, but dont expect the goodness from the first one. As for your PC crashing, i'm not sure!i'd be inclined to remove all the drivers for your hardware & do a fresh install of all the latest ones, and even a clean install of windows if its not a driver/hardware issue. What video card do you have? If its an Nvidia one, the 190.38 drivers have been leaked ahead of release, they're only supposed to work with the very latest Nvidia cards, but this site has tweaked them to boost performance on all their cards which is good news for me & my 8800GTX, a lot of people on the ArmA 2 forums are swearing by them for that hardware eating monster of a game! http://www.guru3d.com/news/geforce-f...-7--vista--xp/

[krakenslayer]

Hmmm ... GOTY edition ... sounds like a smart plan. Perhaps I'll get Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway for the PC (it's only a fiver now) - the main reason, aside from needing something to play right now (due to the vast void of nothingness until the onslaught of Xbox360 games come September/October/November - I've got FOUR pre-ordered for cripe's sake) ... ...but also because I wanted to see about my few-months-old rig, my monster Quad Core, you see when I first got it, it would crash within 5 minutes of loading up Crysis every time, and it would crash (i.e. the whole computer would just freeze, so I'd have to turn it all off by holding down the power button) also when playing STALKER: Clear Sky. I wanted to test the rig out again with a new game to see if it's still giving me that problem - you see I had the guy who built it take another look at it and it's far improved compared to when I first got it - but I still get the odd freeze-up, usually at some point within every 5 to 10 hours of gaming. No idea why - clearly whatever he did to it mostly fixed the problem, or rather made it far less frequent and far less certain - but I still get the odd freeze-up (I had one or two while playing Crysis again in February, but since then I've not played any games on it - I've been too busy using the rig to edit an educational DVD, and never had any more freeze-ups until the other day when I had a freeze-up using Sony Vegas to render out a piece of video). So - put simply - with this current project getting close to completion, and with sod-all games to play right now until October time, I wanted to see if it was still freezing-up so I could then get back in contact and get the computer back in the shop before my year's warranty runs out. Hence - looking for a game to play, but was worried about Fallout 3 in case the game's stability could confuse itself with my computer's possible problem. By the way - if anyone has any ideas regarding my computer's problem, do chime in. ... So, with waiting for the GOTY edition (wise advice lads), perhaps Hell's Highway is an idea as it's only a fiver on PC. Honestly mate, if you're only getting one lock-up for every 5-10 hours of gaming, then, in my experience, you're doing better than about 99% of PC owners. I only really play Fallout 3 and Burnout Paradise these days, but in both games I'm lucky to get two hours straight without some kind of crash to desktop or whatever. The only solution I can find is to save often. I'm used to it though, it doesn't really bother me. By the way - ten straight hours of gaming? Dude, I'm jealous, you must have a lot of time on your hands!

[EvilNed]

I couldn't even finish Clear Sky because A) it was too buggy and B) it was too damn hard. It's super hard, compared to STALKER.

[MinionZombie]

Ned - I played Clear Sky with a trainer on, so I had God Mode etc, that's the only way I'd play it. Even playing it I saw how insanely hard it was even on the easiest setting - the constant onslaught of fire that finds you like that *snaps fingers* (kinda like the super accurate enemies in Battlefield Bad Company, but 100 times worse). Clear Sky wasn't as good as Shadow of Chernobyl, it has some awesome new areas added in, but the last couple of levels are a let down (especially the final level which is just naff). The swamp level added in at the start of the game is the best bit of CS really. ... Tricky - had a look at Hells Highway on YouTube (just some gameplay footage, rather than reviews which I'd already seen a while back), and it looks a bit boring to be honest. It'd be a rental for me, not that I ever rent games or movies anyway, lol ... so I'd probably rather put the fiver towards Fallout 3. Speaking of which - anyone know if, along with having the GOTY Edition option, if they're going to release a disc with just the five DLCs on - say for those who already own the original game? I ask because I really wanna play Fallout 3 on PC now - especially considering the vast, yawning chasm of a gaming drought that I've got going on right now (the GOTY edition, unhelpfully, comes out on Oct 30th - the same day that I've already got TWO other games pre-ordered for, which are buffered either side by another game each as well! ) ... Kraken - hehe - I mean 5 to 10 hours gaming time added together. I think I'd explode if I played a game that long without stopping. I once played GTA IV for 3.5 hours and I was fashed afterwards. Then another time, back at uni, while all my mates had classes on the Friday, I had a day off, so I just sat there and played Need For Speed Underground 2 all day ... needless to say I felt sick, my head ached, and I finally felt what claustrophobia is like (the main part of my room was 6ft by 8ft, you see - a whole day of that is a bit much ). Anyway - my main concern is the freeze-ups, which suggests something wrong with the actual computer (nevermind CTD's - that's a game specific issue in my experience, and I've had those with Crysis and STALKER). Surely one day having to power down with the power button after a freeze-up will fuck the hard-drive, right? If it's something that can be solved, then I'd really like it to be solved in the next few months before the warranty runs out, you see ... and if I got Fallout 3, then I'd log all my playing time and note down whenever I got a freeze etc. ... To be honest, I might just get Fallout 3 now ... it's the only game out now that I really quite fancy.

[EvilNed]

As far as I know, the only thing that's really dangerous with powering off by just pressing the button is that all your unsaved work is lost. I have a friend who works with computers and he busts a bunch of myths for me once in awhile. Now I can't remember that exactly, but there's not a huge problem. Infact, the last time one of my hard-drives went apeshit was when I powered off the computer just as you should. It's more of an overheating problem than anything else. Hard-drives are sensitive to heat and they generate a shitload of it. As for a little bundle with all the plug-ins in it? Unlikely. I was in the store the other day and saw TWO of the plug-ins in one pack, and it was overpriced as hell. So I just went home and managed to "fix" them all on the internet through magic. I'm all for buying games, but that price tag was just ridiculous.

[MinionZombie]

Yeah they're bundling the expansion packs together - there's "one" and "two", so I assume that'd cover all the DLC. As for hard drives - my folks' computer had a shutting down problem, as in it would get so far, and then not fully power down - so you'd have to hold the power button till it went off - that eventually caused a hard drive failure, but that's during the shut down process, so I assume that must be a bit different to the computer being on the desktop say, or in a game, and having to force it to power down. Also, Ned, a question - which version of Fallout 3 are you using, or what patch are you running on - and have you experienced any of the PC problems you hear a bunch of people banging on about online? And another I just thought of - does the computer need to be online to get the game installed? My rig is strictly an offline rig by choice, and by the simple fact that the wired modem is downstairs. ... It seems like PC games are becoming buggier and buggier as the years go by - I hear a lot of bad chat about FarCry 2 in that respect, and GTA IV is a classic example of a piss-poor PC version. *sigh*

[EvilNed]

I haven't played the game in maybe six months, but if I had any patches, it was probably just the first one. Infact, I don't know how many of them there are right now. I'm gonna play it again soon, but prob. not until august cause I'm busy til' then. As for it being activated by internet? No, I doubt it. Since Fallout 3 is primarily a Single-player game, I doubt it. I know I didn't activate my game by internet. I'd actually test it for you right now if it weren't for the fact that I have to go to Stockholm in an hour. But in any case, me, myself? I had no problems playing Fallout 3 on the PC. The game might have CTDs occasionally, I can't remember, but what I do remember was that I had a fucking blast and there were no bugs that impeded on my fun, like in say, Clear Sky. And no, I can safely say that it's not activated by the internet because I'm holding the package right now and it doesn't say anything of the kind.

[krakenslayer]

No, there isn't any internet activation needed for Fallout 3, I have successfully installed and run the game on a PC with NO internet access whatsoever, so I know it for a fact. Actually, there is little to no DRM in the game at all, you can even run it without the disc in the drive so long as you configure the shortcut to point straight to the fallout3.exe and not the default fallout3launcher.exe (although you'll need to put the disk in if you want to change any settings in the launcher).

[Tricky]

It seems like PC games are becoming buggier and buggier as the years go by - I hear a lot of bad chat about FarCry 2 in that respect, and GTA IV is a classic example of a piss-poor PC version. *sigh* I cant say I had any problems with FarCry 2 from installation to finishing the game,I didnt suffer from one crash or major bug! Its great fun to play (if somewhat linear at times), and you wont have played in a more beautiful open game world,plus it auto-updates everytime you start it up if your connected online so you dont have to search out all the patches yourself.If you see it going cheap pick it up,its far more worthwhile than brothers in arms hells highway I agree PC games are often very buggy on release though,its like if they dont meet their deadlines they just release the game anyway & fix it later with patches & so forth after the forums get flooded by bug complaints, so you essentially buy an incomplete beta version of the game & dont get to play the finished product for months & by that time you've already given up on it,some developers are better than others,& some should be investigated by trading standards for selling unfinished tripe

[MinionZombie]

Ned & Kraken - good to know about the not needing an internet connection. Tricky - I almost bought FarCry 2 a few months back for a tenner, but ended up getting Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on the 360 instead (also for a tenner). I'm thinking I might just go and buy the normal Fallout 3 game - that way I get to play something now, and I've never really been a DLC type person anyway. I've rarely played expansion packs, and I doubt I'd have the time to play Fallout 3 and five DLCs. I could just get the expansion packs somewhere down the line when they're in the bargain bin instead. ... Tricky - indeed, the trend of releasing buggy games on the PC is a real turn off to me these days, after getting into the ease of mainstream console gaming (prior to which I had a sustained period of PC gaming for about a decade or more). As for those griping about Fallout 3 problems, I assume they must have hardware that's lower down the requirement list or whatever (or have certain softwares installed that conflict - I did find a list of tips for ensuring a stable playing experience as well). Anyway, if I can remember correctly, my rig is basically: Windows XP 4gb RAM Intel Quad Core 9300 nVidia GeForce GTX260 (896mb) nForce motherboard (forget the numbers ) **EDIT** Sod it, I've ordered the stand-alone game - I figure there will be an "all DLCs in one" released at some point (looking at the options available currently in the UK), and then that'll come down in price - plus, if I don't like Fallout 3 (although that's unlikely), I'm not as invested as if I had gotten the GOTY edition, it gives me something to play now, and well ... there we are. Will let you chaps know what I make of it once I get it, which should be by the end of the week.

[ProfessorChaos]

trust me dude, you're gonna love fallout 3. hours upon hours of fun.