Believe it or not I like both games about equally, if not for the same reasons. My review relates to the PC versions of both games.
Fallout 3 was ambitious in my view. Leaping from 2D to 3D is never easy for a videogame series, and Bethesda put in a good effort. It's not perfect. The main story is very short for an RPG, the morality is too black and white, the writing is questionable in certain places... oh, and without fan made mods and patches, the game is more unstable then a drunk person attempting to ride a unicycle. If it isn't the crashes, it's the physics bugs, or getting stuck, or shooting invisible walls caused by object hitboxes being way too big.
Still, it's a game I still play because I like the mix of FPS and RPG elements. And it's rather easy to mod which helps to get more enjoyment out of it.
As for New Vegas, it trades ambition for refinement. 90% of the graphics are recycled from Fallout 3. It's literally to the point where I could nab a screenshot of the overworld, or a building, from both games, and even an expert on both games would have difficulty figuring out which is which. Sometimes while playing NV I think for a moment that I'm playing Fallout 3, and vice versa. However blatant graphics recycling aside, New Vegas has a different tone, a much better thought out story, and a few of the gameplay mechanics have been changed. More importantly a lot of the bugs in Fallout 3 have either been dealt with, or minimized. Oh it still likes to crash without mods to optimize cell loading, but the physics engine doesn't spaz out as much, I haven't gotten stuck, the invisible walls are less of a problem, and the radio works right. On the flip side there are countless minor bugs, some amusing, some funny, and some annoying. New Vegas also has a larger map, a better companion system, a well thought out faction system, and multiple, well thought out endings.
Overall it and Fallout 3 are worth playing even today, but you had better get familiar with installing mods and be prepared for the game to crash to desktop at the drop of a hat.
Fallout New Vegas vs Fallout 3
Believe it or not I like both games about equally, if not for the same reasons. My review relates to the PC versions of both games.
Fallout 3 was ambitious in my view. Leaping from 2D to 3D is never easy for a videogame series, and Bethesda put in a good effort. It's not perfect. The main story is very short for an RPG, the morality is too black and white, the writing is questionable in certain places... oh, and without fan made mods and patches, the game is more unstable then a drunk person attempting to ride a unicycle. If it isn't the crashes, it's the physics bugs, or getting stuck, or shooting invisible walls caused by object hitboxes being way too big.
Still, it's a game I still play because I like the mix of FPS and RPG elements. And it's rather easy to mod which helps to get more enjoyment out of it.
As for New Vegas, it trades ambition for refinement. 90% of the graphics are recycled from Fallout 3. It's literally to the point where I could nab a screenshot of the overworld, or a building, from both games, and even an expert on both games would have difficulty figuring out which is which. Sometimes while playing NV I think for a moment that I'm playing Fallout 3, and vice versa. However blatant graphics recycling aside, New Vegas has a different tone, a much better thought out story, and a few of the gameplay mechanics have been changed. More importantly a lot of the bugs in Fallout 3 have either been dealt with, or minimized. Oh it still likes to crash without mods to optimize cell loading, but the physics engine doesn't spaz out as much, I haven't gotten stuck, the invisible walls are less of a problem, and the radio works right. On the flip side there are countless minor bugs, some amusing, some funny, and some annoying. New Vegas also has a larger map, a better companion system, a well thought out faction system, and multiple, well thought out endings.
Overall it and Fallout 3 are worth playing even today, but you had better get familiar with installing mods and be prepared for the game to crash to desktop at the drop of a hat.