Like a beautiful woman...with schizophrenia.
The Bad: Story doesn't hold up to Fallout 3, graphics are mediocre, load times up the ying-yang, crashes, freezes, resets back to PS3 main menu, choppy-as-hell frame rate, and 10 billion other glitches I don't have the patience to list. This game is broken all to hell.
You'll find lots to like about FONV. It's got alot of great things going for it. But what is completely unacceptable is the amount of glitches and bugs this game has. Everything about it is broken and unstable. Everything.
Enemies float in the air, while your bullets fly right through them. Hostiles will treat you as friendlies, then attack you awkwardly after the AI catches up and realizes you're an enemy. Enemies won't see you. You'll get stuck in the wall, and so will your enemies, and so will your enemies dropped wepons. It will completely freeze up your PS3 to the point where you have to turn off the main power in the back. And much, much more.
This game averages a crash every hour or so for me so far. Only way I've learned to cope with it (somewhat) is to make sure I save every few minutes.
And that really removes you from the game when all you're concerned about is the damn thing screwing you over constantly.
When it is running though, this game is amazing (if you can accept the frame rate stopping every 30 seconds, and making you wonder if you just walked into another random crash).
At this point I need to justify my reason for even giving such a broken-down wreck a passing score.
The main reason is that this game is tough to give up on. It's got lots of inventory for you to manage, lots a chacaracter customization options, and ALOT for you to explore and find. It's a massive game with a massive vision, but it's just a shame they shipped it in as poor condition as they did.
This game is also guilty of copy-and-paste houses and buildings from FO3. Fallout 3 was quite unstable too, but not half this bad. But still: it is an amazing game. It's fun to play. I can't highly recommend it, but if you have the patience, it'll pay off. RPG players will enjoy this, but I can not forgive the glitch fest that this game is.
FONV is like falling in love with the hottest chick you've ever seen, then discovering she's got Level 10 schizophrenia.
Is she going to kiss you the next time you see her? Or will she lick the side of your face and hit you with the toaster? No one knows.