NMA is the oldest still-functioning Fallout fansite. From what I hear nearly everyone there hates Fallout 3 for the same reason why people here criticize it. There were other Fallout's before Fallout 3 and Bethesda changed many things when they bought the franchise, the vast majority of it was not an improvement.
The inherent problem with video game reviewers is quantity of games, they have to play many different games in short time spans. They play just enough of the game so they can get an opinion of it, this is never a good way to judge a games story.
The bolded is opinion. The only part I think you can say with certainty that BGS did demonstrably worse was the writing (which includes the lore violations and continuity issues, which are bad). I thought the writing in F1 & F2 was great, but I thought every single other aspect of the originals were less enjoyable than F3 and FNV. IMO, F:NV is comprehensively superior to the originals. And I am not some neophyte, FPS-loving BGS bot. I just think the originals have charm, but are dated and tedious. Opinion.
And trying to invalidate the reviews by questioning the process is weak. F3 received, as Metacritic puts it, "universal acclaim", and it wasn't because the reviewers didn't spend enough time with it. The new Fallouts are definitely different than the originals, but some people can't wrap their heads around the notion that different =/= inferior. Just because fans of the originals
think the new iterations, especially F3, are categorically worse does not make it immutable fact.
I generally refrain from using cliched, inflammatory meme-ish language, but some people really are just butthurt that BGS turned
their game into a different animal, and can't or won't recognize opinion of the new direction that doesn't mirror their own as valid.
I'm also tired of the "play the originals, then you'll know why..." line. I played the originals after the newer games, expecting some sort of epiphany, but what I found were two games that while very good, were just as flawed (though in different ways) as the new games, and two games that I enjoyed markedly less. If I spend a quarter of the time playing the originals as I did playing the newer games, I'd be crying from the tedium. This opinion, I suspect, stems from the fact that I have no nostalgic attachment to the originals or some romanticized, preconceived notion of what Fallout "should" be.
Fallout 3, on it's own and judged as the sum of it's parts, is a great game. I don't know why some people can't just say "I didn't like it" or "it didn't meet my expectations" instead of casting categorical aspersions.
To the TC: not everyone hates F3 (not even close), it's just those that dislike it the most congregate in places like this and to a greater extent nma (which really is a venomous hive of pathetic, butthurt babies, honestly) to find like minded people and in the hope of making their discontent heard (ostensibly in the hope that someone who matters will hear their pleas and move things back in a direction they more like the originals). Because F3 (and to a lesser extent F:NV) are flawed I can appreciate much of this sentiment, but a whole lot of it is simply malcontent and sour graqes.
/rant