Get the vanilla game. I have the vanilla plus dlc and you CANNOT avoid the bugs! My nephew started a new game it froze at least twice and closed to the xmb three times! He did not play any dlc this happened in about 4 hours time. So my humble opinion is too buy the game used then if they patch the broke loadable content you then can download and only be out 20_30$. But if you haven't played it yet the vanilla is solid,I just deleted the dlc and I been trying too crash the game and I can't. Give it a shot the game ruled till they broke it!

Ok thanks. I think I might just get the original with no add-ons. I have around 80 hours or so on the original for a friend's XBOX 360, and I encountered a few bugs/glitches along the way. That's to be expected, some freezing/glitching eventually occurs in most games. Now I have to figure out if the GOTY Oblivion for PS3 is worth buying, I've heard it has its bugs, as well as the supposedly "gamebreaking" vampire glitch.

Decisions...

Get it just avoid vamprism it kinda lame lot's of baby sitting. Always carry a cure disease potion and check your status tab after fighting vampires if you got poly hemo somthing drink up. Shivering isles is worth the price of addmission!

I am on Mothership Zeta DLC, the damn thing wont work, it hangs at the part where the aliens start probing the character. Any advice? Bethesda sells broken products. Point Lookout was also very very buggy but i managed to finish it. It hanged on me more then 20 times. Zeta wont even get past the beginning part. Damn DLC doesnt work. I want my money back!

Create save right before you get abduucted then reload.Might take a couple tries but you should get past it. Then it's pretty sooth after that since indoors alot less freezes. Also pray they patch the broke loadable content! Seriously I know need to make quaterly earnings and whatnot but releasing half finished content and not peep that there looking into it just bad business. Will not get refund from the ps store i'm out 50 quid. Worst of all it breaks the game it'd one thing be if dlc areas were buggy, then the normal wasteland get,s screwed and you can't use your gear in vanilla areas.

No communication to me indicates no interest in creating a patch, as there is no logic to being silent unless nothing is happening.

Where as saying they were working on a patch would be widely welcomed even if the patch was a while off and result in a lot less complaining about releasing a GOTY version with near all of the bugs in the original still intact.

Companies live by the strength of their brand and to PS3 users Bethesda have become synonymous with buggy games and with no interest in fixing them. Sadly I feel that Bethesda just take the money and run, displaying little or no interest in their customers.

2 issues for me kill the game, massive slowdown in framerate and freezing while in vats mode. Fallout 3 : Bugged Out This Year Edition.

No way. I am not a repeat customer to businesses that sell shoddy merchandise, and then do nothing about it when there are legitimate widespread complaints. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. I will not give them the opportunity to burn me twice.

I called Bethesda's UK number (As featured in the back of the game booklet) today to complain about my GOTY freezes/frame rate catastrophe's and general PS3 system lock ups. The general gist of their generally unsympathetic view point was as follows...

Everyone who has PS3 problems (And I'm talking those, who like me have invested 150+ hours playing through the main game and are now trying to expand the gameplay with the extra quests: Point Lookout etc) must do the following. Regardless of well worn save files with all your XP and character features, you MUST try starting a new game and create a NEW Character. You are advised to take that character through to the Capital Wasteland after leaving vault 101 THEN try to get into the downloadable content and get as far as you did when you started experiencing the problems in your former game saves.

If you find that this has solved the problems...um, you will just have to svck it up and accept that you have lost all your previous XP. You'll still be able to enjoy all the other downloadables but will have to play all the way through (AGAIN) if you want to play Broken Steel.

You could ring them back and complain that the GOTY corrupted your previous save files/ruined your experience of Fallout 3...but they will ask if you have done the above. The more people who flag as having tried their advise and are unhappy about the overall outcome then complain about it, then the more chance that the company will look into the situation.

They may well dismiss your problem as a hardware issue. I would advise making sure that you have your detailed records of what went wrong and your attempts to resolve it before logging an Utterly p***ed off" call to support.

Sadly, the helpline seemed to take the really nonchalant stance of telling me that the bottom line was this.

IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY WITH YOUR PURCHASE, RETURN IT TO THE RETAILER YOU BOUGHT IT FROM!

Cheers, Thanks. I feel so valued as a customer of Bethesda products now I've spent about ?77 on Fallout 3.

Finally, I asked if there were any intensions of patching the dodgy PS3 GOTY edition and the word was " There is no word from the development team regarding this matter"

You can make of that what you will, I was told that I might spend an indefinite amount of time waiting for a patch that may never come or I might find peace returning my game to the shop I bought it from.

Sorry, that's as good as it gets for now.

Too far along, and this is a RPG where the goal is to gain XP & gear while doing the quests...so starting over won;t really pay off with more game fun. I think it would be more like grinding to get back where you were before, because of the collectables. I think I will just play other games. That sounds like more fun.

Bethesda already forgot fallout 3, for my part today i returned the GOTY from the shop, was hard but finnaly he took the game and gave me my money, he said he will contact bethesda, well its not my problem now, with the money i will buy a REAL PLAYABLE game.

I started FO3 again from scratch with the GOTY edition. New character and all. I played the main storyline, and did some ancillary quests to get myself beefed up before going to PL. That's when the game became truly unplayable although crashes happened before that.

So, new games with new characters is not the answer.

oh what a bunch of bleeding hearts. Though I rarely justify such arguments as you get's your moneys worth out of it. but, I've spent copious amounts of time on Fallout, and while it is very buggy and can just randomly quit the odd time. it is no reason to go on endless rants, especially now that we have all the DLC. I've been able to do everything in the DLC so far glitch free, although since receiving the who dares wins quest the game froze quite a lot, after i fast travelled to the chryslus building and after i encountered the raiders wearing power armour at the enclave outpost, it would freeze.


But i managed to fast travel out of there, and have been able to continue with the game. I just started playing on VERY HARD with my level 20 vanilla character (Bethesda patched the game save incompatibility for Canadian GOTY copies.) I'm thinking about getting broken steel with over first, then it might be less buggy... after.

Bleeding hearts? Do you understand what that phrase means?

bleeding heart
n.
1. Any of various perennial herbs of the genus Dicentra, especially the Old World D. spectabilis, having arching clusters of pink to red or sometimes white, heart-shaped flowers.
2. A person who is considered excessively sympathetic toward those who claim to be underprivileged or exploited.

I would much rather Bethesda say, "Sorry about all the problems with the PS3, but it turns out it's a crap machine to develop on, and so due to the cost of correcting the problem, we've decided to ditch the platform all together. Given that it is 'possible' to finish the game by reloading, we will not be creating a patch. Terribly sorry for Sony's crap machine, but Fallout 3 demands more memory and processor power than we have access to on the PS3, so instead of trying to dumb down the experience, we've elected to abandon it all together. Given that you are able to read this post, you must own a PC and therefore should repurchase Fallout for that computer and thus absolve your PS3 problem. Yours truly, Bethesda Development."

How's that?

If the first version of FO3 were like the GOTY edition I might buy that. Oblivion played fine. I also might buy that if every other game I own for the PS3 froze,crashed,lagged and bugged out, which they do not.

Do not blame the PS3 for this issue.

It would be incorrect to say the PS3 does not have adequate processing power. It does not use memory the same way a PC does, so does not need as much. So saying these things would be a sign of not understanding the archetecture if a programmer made that excuse. The guys at a company like Naught Dog would be on the floor laughing if another developer said these things. The cell processor's stregnth is how many things it can process simultaneously. But it requires doing thecoding differently with the software to take advantage of that. The best PS3 games out there expolit this to great effect, and they run very smooth when made by programmers that understand the architecture.

I wasn't trying to be technically serious. I was just poking Bethesda.

I think they're in a pickle here. They obviously have created a problem that is tough to fix. They've admitted to some magazines behind the scenes that it does have to do largely with the save file technology, but at the same time, they are running out of processor resources during normal game play. Like you suggest, it's all related to trying to create a single tree of source to run on all machines. They clearly have fallen short of this goal being a reality. And clearly after reading PC and XBOX experiences, many of the terminal problems exist on all branches of the source code for all platforms.

The first stage is understanding the problem. The second stage is possessing the brilliance to create elegant solutions to correct those problems. Brilliance lies in the resolution, and I'm yet to see a single indication of this ability.

ok, gotcha. Sorry for taking you too literally. I hear what you're saying. I bet it is a tough deal when people are screaming at you for not giving them the DLC, and then having fundamental problems with the port after saying it will be delivered. Easy for me to say, because I am not in some executive board room, but I think cooler heads should have stepped up and made the decision to pull the plug on selling the PS3 DLC before they put it out there as is. I think everyone will agree we don't judge a game on how we would like it to work, but rather on how it actually does work when we play them. And when the big companies release a game, we trust them that it will at least work, even if the game is a dud gameplay-wise. We might expect lot of problems from someone's bedroom shareware, but not from large compnanies selling software. It's insulting, because I'm sure they knew how poorly it worked, but us unsuspecting customers didn't.

exactly how i feel if you can't port it fine but don't release it if it doesn't work i can live with out it especially because if to delete it too make the core work.i'v been trying to get running decent but have failed! should bouht borderlans at least i would be playing instead of complaining

I agree with both of you 100%.

And as I pointed out earlier, Bethesda are not the only company to "no comment" patch requests. EA was quiet about a The Sims 3 patch after launch, and Terminal Reality said nothing about a patch for the PS3 version of Ghostbusters until the day it launched.

That doesn't make the lack of communication okay, but it doesn't mean a patch is not being developed either.

To which I would reply, "Then outsource your PS3 ports to Naughty Dog, co they've staffed with professionals who actually know what they're doing."

I'm trying to clear every location on the map now at level 29. I had no real issues with Anchorage none with the first part of Broken Steel going through the Rockland Car Tunnel. That is where I stopped the GOTY add ons and moved back to hitting up te rest of the wasteland map locations. I want to clear every location on the map except for the adds on. I just have locations in the southeast corner to go. I just cleared Falls Church, Red Racer, Arlington Cemetary and Dolce's. No locks ups, no issues ran smooth. I just have some locations in the south East (downtown), Pitt, Lookout, Zeta and finish Broken Steel after Rockland. So far my lock up and issues have been at Jalbert (still locks up everytime), Fort Independance, Betheda Ruins and some north western wasteland travel. No issues anywhere else all though I was ready to throw the game againest the wall at one point with the Jalbert, Bethesda and the north west lock ups. Once I got back down town I am enjoying the game again and my BP is falling.

Glad too here it's running decent for you! Couple of questions, what's your save file size?,what firmware are you running? are using any special save techniques,such no auto save never overwriting an old save etc?

Version 3.10 112 GB/149GB, 14 saved games all 13mb each. (Game Settings: PS Upscaler - Normal, PS Smoothing - on)

I was having locks up trying to enter the Bethesda Ruins. I deleted all but one save file including all my non used save files from other games. Then with some heavy jerking and stopping made it inside Bethesda, then no more issues with the ruins. This did not work for the Jalbert area I am still locked out. Most of the time I overwrite but now I will overwrite for a while then delete. Auto save on or off, rebooting has not made a difference for me at any of the three trouble spots. Independance seems to lock up if I teleport and rush right in to trade. If I teleport and wait a second or two it will do nothing or quickly stutter but not lock up. Auto save makes no difference in this area. Last night I didn't have much time to play but hit up a building across from Falls Church no issues. I am at level 29 on normal setting. I check everything, take everything, save or sell everything. Right now I somehow have built up 900+ stimpacks from laser weapon trades. I stick with Plasma, Vengance, Xualong and Gause for weapons. I will probbly venture back into the Broken Steel quest over the weekend.