Dear Bethesda Softworks,

It was with eager anticipation that I purchased Fallout New Vegas last October, hoping the game would be even half as great as Oblivion and Fallout 3. Right from the start it was clear the game had major problems. I'm not just talking about the constant lag. I'm talking about having to restart my PS3 after every twenty minutes or so of play. But I loved the games your company had created in the past and so I stuck with you. Eventually, after a series of patches, the game even became playable. And the tragic part of this all is that Fallout New Vegas IS a great game -- or at least it would have been if your company hadn't pushed it out before it was ready like a six ounce baby born four months premature.

I put up with the lag and the crashes because I loved the gameplay. And then the DLCs started to come out and the game reverted to the same piece of garbage it was on release. All three of the previous DLC caused problems for my PS3 and caused consternation for me. But Lonesome Road tops them all combined. The silo sequence was great, no lag, game didn't crash even once. Then I got outside and now I can't go more than 90 seconds without the game crashing, requiring me to completely restart. VATS freezes the game. Blowing up the warheads freezes the game. Aiming a scoped weapon freezes the game. Being attacked freezes the game. Interacting with ED-E freezes the game. Appearances by the Mysterious Magnum freezes the game. And yes, sometimes just walking down the road freezes the game.

Before you go assuming there is something wrong with my PS3, I assure you, there is not. After experiencing these problems I popped in GTA4, works fine; Assassins Creed, works fine; Madden 12, works fine; Dragon Age II, works fine; Homefront, works fine; MLB 11 The Show, works fine. It seems that games from every other major developer for Sony work just fine, all except for yours.

Getting back to Lonesome Road, let's look at the release date 20 Sept. 2011 -- that's almost a full year after Fallout New Vegas was released. Your company had a FULL YEAR to work on this DLC and this is what you deliver? This garbage!

I wish there were some way I could just delete Lonesome Road off my PS3 and get my $9.99 back from your company. Frankly, I think you owe everyone who bought this piece of hardware-killing garbage a full refund and an apology. But I know that will never, ever happen. I for one am done with your company and your products and I will not purchase another. Lonesome Road was the last loathsome straw that broke the camel's back. I know a one-person boycott of your company is inconsequential to you. But I assure you that now and in the future I will go out of my way to influence people to avoid your products like the plague -- and that includes Skyrim. Because even though you claim Skyrim won't have the many problems pandemic to FNV, I now find your word about as trustworthy as that of a crooked politician. Congratulations on becoming the Anthony Weiner of the gaming world.

And now I'll bid you adieu and in the future stick with developers who create games that are NOT awful and who do NOT cheat their customers out of hard-earned money by releasing shoddy, bug-ridden, hardware-killing products.

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. I tried playing with a level 50 character and that didn't work out so well. Thought it was due to how large the save file was, so I started it over with a level 25 character (the recommended minimum level for this DLC). Nope, does the same thing. In fact, it pooed the bed quicker the second go-around -- which means something ain't right. The base game works fine, other games work fine, so it has to be an issue with this particular DLC.

Woof. Something's got to be done about this, stat. :cryvaultboy:

The embarrassing thing is that we keep paying for this crap. These same kinds of problems have existed since the first Fallout 3 DLC.

I just turned off my PS3 in disgust after trying to finish a battle that got so laggy it became unplayable.


It's hard to stomach Fallout's same old problems again after just finishing Infamous 2 - which was a gorgeous, smooth, rock-steady joy even in the middle of battles with dozens of highly-detailed enemies on screen.