First, anyone with 2 brain cells can figure it out how to aim and shoot a gun, yeah it will be bad at first but over time u learn.

Learn to live with the idea that F1andF2 will never come back.

Plus a range from 0-100 dont represent nothing.

Plus u dont know what preview skill your PC have since he is a advlt already.

My favorite in early FO3 was to hide behind corners and vat in face then they came around.

Your spread was dependent on you gun skill, reminds me a bit of Morrowind combat at low level.

I actually wondered if I had done something wrong like using 9 mm ammo in the 10 mm gun as bullets went everywhere

However its kind of realistic somebody who had never touched an gun before has problem hitting even at close range in a fight.

But at melee range the gun worked well.

In FO-NV I only used vat at moving enemies at close range, it made it easier to do headshots on moving enemies.

Hunting rifles and sniper guns had low spread so they worked well outside of VAT.

Shotguns in FO3 had an 5-8x sneak attack bonus outside of vat, an bug made they do the crit bonus for each bullet who hit however only once in vat. I preferred the laser shotgun from the pit, only 5x but low spread so you could use it at longer ranges

And at higer levels you got aim assist, so fun aiming just over an group of enemies with venegance and do headshots on all enemies

You think fallout 1 and 2 are hard? Maybe they hold your hand less but they're easy too lol

Its harder than on FO3+, simply for the fact that you rely on AP. FO3+, you can just go FPS.