I keep reading all of the lauding reviews with forgivable acceptance of technical issues. Not to go on and on but I am blown away at how it seems like everyone is wrapping up their impression of the game around 20 hours. If they actually played through they'd find the meltdown the rest of us are encountering. I'm not talking a couple reviews...I mean a littany of good reviews. I was praising this game up until 40-50 hours, but my enjoyment fell off exponentially until I arrived at my state of total unplayability. If I were a lip flapping critic, I'd be hardpressed to give a final score of a game until it's complete. A great disservice to consumers.
Potential score 9.0
Current score (?)

i got to 4 hours then got the dlc glitch. pure bullll[censored]tttt

Maybe they got the game I got. Haven't had a single game-breaking error, just some minor inconveniences in overlooked areas.

How far in are you? I'm at 68 hours and still haven't started mr house.

Completed one play through in 40 some hours, following the Legion quests, that was my "get a grasp of the game" file. Also had a character who had moved halfway through House/Yes Man's quests, but killed that character, am now 15 hours 30 mins into a second playthrough, haven't started the main quest at all, outside of Victor in Goodsprings.

I've encountered buildings with interiors that are much larger than the exteriors (design, not software/hardware), areas where dropping items are funked, some areas of lag (most fixed by installing to harddrive) and two rare and non-repeatable freezes.

I also have not ran into a damn glitch and everyone else here seems to be the most unluckiest people I have ever known. :sadvaultboy:
I feel for you people though because I have had issues with previous games that no one else had any issues with

My roomate is having few problems and he is ing my xbox but off the same disc (I'm installed on the hd)
Part of my theory is the game simply can only figure out so many alternatives and it begins to bug out with different conflicts (even political ones). Even at best performance my room mate is experiencing similar strange inconsistencies in plot and faction response. He's 33 hours in. Some people are having issues early on with corrupted files but my profile simply freezes as soon as I enter combat (8-10 hours of gametime saves) which I am reluctant to backtrack and miss or experience new idiosyncrasies (my plot has progressed with mostly no issue except at Helios One)
I got 24 achievements before it went into meltdown

The only gaming journalist i have heard speak about the unplayability of FNV is Jessica Chobot on the IGN Girlfight Podcast, i was so pleased someone in the gaming industry stood up as a gamer and gave Bethesda a piece of her mind.

I've put in over 70 hours on my NCR toon, finished the game once, went back to an earlier save to do side quest stuff and I'm about to finish it again (saved just before the final fight). Through all that the worst problem(s) I had was not being able to do ED-E's quest, but he was still a companion. Not being able to finish the BoS quest line (but I could still progress with the main story). For some reason when I started the President quest at Hoover Dam tonight a bunch of my reputations went wonky. Finishing the president quest made me "Accepted" even though I had been Idolized for nearly 30 game play hours, also a bunch of factions weren't showing up at all (including CL). However, as soon as I killed the first CL in Hoover Dam all my reputations righted themselves. Other than that I've had the usual arms over the head glitch and some graphical anomalies, but that's about it.

So yeah, it's entirely possible to have played through the entire game, at least the main story without any real issues.

I also have yet to have a problem other than random little glitches with the pip boy and enemies getting stuck in rocks. Hell, those problems went away after I downloaded the patch. I've played a good 60, 70 hours. I haven't even done half the quests yet, either. (I'm a svcker for collecting things from the wastes )

I feel bad for those with problems but I don't believe this bug stuff is a wide spread as most of these posters make it out to be.

I think the Review Sites play the game through in the most direct way first. Very likely the game company provides them the linear path to finish the game. I will not be surprised they get copies of the game before the release date. Otherwise how can they publish a review within 24 hours of the release on a game than takes 3 times as long if you play the most straight forward path.

Just thought I would throw this out there. Most game review websites or gaming review anythings actually can get any game a month before release; sometimes they are invited out to the game company's headquarters and given a few hours or a couple days to play the game well before its released to the public. I was friends with the people who ran a game news site called Genesis Device and the owner of the site went up to Ubisoft in Canada to play the Farcry 2 game a month before the release.

I am sure they came across bugs in these special arrangements. And I am sure someone will be there to look at it and document the issues as well.

There's no "the rest of us." On the forums here, we're almost on a 50/50 split for issues/non-issues and if you take into account the actual sales ratings (sitting pretty at about 1.5 million) compared to actual complaints on the major boards (use Google), then at least a slim MAJORITY aren't experiencing major issues. I've seen a few glitches myself (nothing truly gamebreaking, fortunately).

The pressure to finish reviews is like every other job with a deadline: gotta get it out there ASAP. I imagine they're playing the MQ and some of the major sidequests and basing the review on that.