The game is the best, GOTY definately. But has one very annoying flaw.
HUGE
Story is very very "grab you and not let go"ish
Theres plenty of side quests to find and do
There arent many quests compared to oblivion, but the size of the quests is amazing.
Very open-ended character development
It made me laugh
The Bad:
Combat system could be improved on
I get two major graphic glitches (dont know if its just me)
It crashed 4 times during play
The Ugly:
No continue feature when you finish the game (this really dissapointed me)
--------------------------------------
So yeah, its finally here after 4 years in development, and being taken on by one of the best RPG developers in the business.
The main thing that will grab any player of this game (even the fallout fanboys) is the sheer scale of it. Im not sure how big the world is, but its big. And its not like theres nothing there, everywhere you go there will be a ruined town, maybe a makeshift town made by wastelanders, a town run by raiders or super mutants. Or another vault free to explore.
From the get-go your gunna get grabbed by the story and it wont let you go. Right until the very bitter end. With a very large amount of endings, i heared about 20.
The side quests available are not that easy to find, but when you find them it will take you a while to complete them. You dont have to do them but its advisable or you will finish it too quick, like i did, just going straight through the story.
Each time you level up, which is relatively easy. You gain 2 options to level. One is a basic kind of stats. But its not like "strength" or whatever, its about 19 options ranging from science, to big guns. Improving one lets you become more skilled. Science allows you to hack harder terminals, big guns increases your damage with..well big guns!
Throughout the game, various bits actually made me laugh. Despite the setting and time of the game, such as...!SPOILER! a underground city of children (all children seem to have a bad mouth but meh), or fawkes, named after Guy Fawkes, a good super mutant fighting for good.!END SPOILER!
A dissapointing part of the game, is the combat system. It was the same with oblivion really. No skill is really needed, just repeatedly hit the trigger. Even easier if you just use the V.A.T.S system. Around near the end of the game, or just around a specific area, i got a very annoying graphic glitch. Water just stuck to the crosshair until i looked a different way. This was near the jefferson memorial. And another near Arefu bridge.
Again something else annoying, my game crashed. I dont know if it was my 360 or game, but it hasnt done it on other games.
Ok, now to the very very annoying part of the game, the part which i loved about oblivion. When you finish the game, you cannot continue playing the saved game. I cant describe how much this annoyed me. I was ready to continue questing, finding everything, doing side quests all that stuff, but no matter which ending i got, i just couldnt (this made me start again not so bad but still). So yeah, this is very annoying. Maybe possible in a patch?
Beside those few bad points, it still deserves a 10. Maybe an 11. It is a great game, and should very well the game of the year title.
(Long review AGAIN, but what the hell.)