I know I'm a bit late to the party here but my 2 bottle caps..
I've been a fan of fallout since 1997 when the first game came out, and to me fallout 3 felt a bit flat. It didnt have the subtle humour, or dark romance of fallout 1 & 2. It felt like oblivion with guns kind of.
Fallout: New Vegas is, to me, brilliant and easily the best fallout game since FO2. Between the NCR and Caesar's Legion, Followers of the Apocalypse and Great Khans, New Vegas places you right back among some of the iconic post-apoc factions that FO1&2 made so memorable.
The storyline has loads and I mean LOADS of choices. Side with the NCR and make New Vegas a territory of the republic...side with the Legion and bring harsh, totalitarian order, side with Mr House and keep them both at bay or...kill Mr House, kill Caesar, throw the NCR general off the side of Hoover Dam because of his smart lip and rule New Vegas yourself (ya that's what I did lol).
Maybe I came along late enough that the bugs were ironed out cos apart from a couple, which I was always able to work around or get a player-made patch for - everything was super.
The music shit me off no end, it was repetitive and out of place. My advice? Ditch it and replace it with Johnny Cash, and the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly :mrgreen:
There are a ton of great community made mods for it too, including one that lets you play whatever music you like on the radio, and still have the douchebag announcer speak between songs so you can hear him comment on how you're fucking up the wasteland lol.
For me at least, was one of those games I kept staying up til 5am playing, for like 2 months.