Ok, so, first things first: I don't think Fallout 3 is a bad game, it's a fine game. I have heard many people, however, say that fallout 3 was BETTER than new vegas, and I literally can't think of a reason why anyone would prefer 3 to new vegas, besides these 3:
 

1. WAH WAH BUGS UNOPTIMIZED WAH

2. Nostalgia! or REVERSE NOSTALGIA OH NO

3. OBSIDIAN SUCKS/I HATE GOOD WRITING/WAH IM A BIG CRYING BABY IN THIS ANALOGY

 Ok, so, first things first: I don't think Fallout 3 is a bad game, it's a fine game. I have heard many people, however, say that fallout 3 was BETTER than new vegas, and I literally can't think of a reason why anyone would prefer 3 to new vegas, besides these 3:
 

1. WAH WAH BUGS UNOPTIMIZED WAH

2. Nostalgia! or REVERSE NOSTALGIA OH NO

3. OBSIDIAN SUCKS/I HATE GOOD WRITING/WAH IM A BIG CRYING BABY IN THIS ANALOGY

NV would have been worlds better in both story and world if not for the ungodly amount of release day bugs. That is the only issue I think held the game back. 

" NV would have been worlds better in both story and world if not for the ungodly amount of release day bugs. That is the only issue I think held the game back.  "

idk, I liked the world better. The music, the DC setting; I liked the monuments in the washington mall, I thought that was awesome. I do think that the game systems are much improved in NV however (ADS, etc.)

So, you basically tried to shoot down every main complaint that people may have about NV. Good job trolling, "broski".
 
1. I don't know about that; I had it on PC and it was a buggy mothershitter until I beat it and sold it. Literally, unplayable. Patches didn't do shit for me, and I ended up having to console hack items to pass quests. EDIT: I uninstalled a while back, so I don't know about what the current state of the game is like. Since I finished it already, I don't give a damn.
2. I played both of the originals (including Tactics), 3, then NV. I thought the writing was shit-awful as compared with the originals; 3 had a bit of licence since it dealt with a completely different region, and was pulled off decently. I found myself not respecting a single gang in the game, unlike the classics.
3. If anything, you're the crybaby. Opinions are opinions, and here is mine.

I love both but F3 was better. A lot of it had to do with me getting extremely excited for it, doing research on all its features, finding leaked footage, etc. Also i think i like it better because the idea of fallout with the bethesda touch was new at the time. FNV was good because it was more of the same and also a few new additions, but thats really all it was for me: more of the same. And New Vegas had a bunch of shitty stuff too i.e. companions, changing the leveling system, 10x as many invisible walls, and so much more. I love both but if I had to chose, Fallout 3 is the best.

Fallout 3 came out first and like Jeff said the first one you play is the best. There had not been a proper Fallout game in years and it did a great job of bringing Fallout into this generation and remaking a beloved franchise. NV came out 2 years after 3 and honestly it was more of the same just a different coast. Its not that NV is a bad game its just more of an expansion pack than a proper sequel.

they still making dlc for new vegas?

I played Fallout 3 three times without a freeze.  = playable
I could not play New Vegas for more than 20 minutes without a freeze. =unplayable
Even after patches.

I liked the DC Wasteland quite a bit better than the Mojave. FNV had great gameplay tweaks and a better story, so they both have their strong points in my mind. I will say though that the bugs were pretty ridiculous. I can handle almost any kind of bug with minor to no complaints but losing all my saves after 10 hours was disheartening at best.

" So, you basically tried to shoot down every main complaint that people may have about NV. Good job trolling, "broski".  1. I don't know about that; I had it on PC and it was a buggy mothershitter until I beat it and sold it. Literally, unplayable. Patches didn't do shit for me, and I ended up having to console hack items to pass quests. EDIT: I uninstalled a while back, so I don't know about what the current state of the game is like. Since I finished it already, I don't give a damn.

" they still making dlc for new vegas? "

I'm with you on this one, unlike other things. I'm someone who enjoyed Fallout 3, but not nearly to the extent that some other people did (for one, I still think Oblivion is the superior game of the 3 Gamebryo open world things), but I found pretty much every aspect of New Vegas to be way better by comparison. Yeah, the world isn't as big and it still has the Obsidian pedigree of being buggy as all hell even after patches, but I generally found it to be a better written, better paced, and more interesting game than Fallout 3.

NV had features that I would love to have in three, but the problem was that a lot of what I loved about 3 was taken out or nerfed (nerfed, in a single player game) for the sake of building many characters as opposed to building a character that can do what you absolutely love yet cover the little niche things (lockpicking, hacking, speech checking, etc.) without compromise. 
 
At best you can build a character with 6 of the 13 skills maxed out in NV. In 3 you can literally make a perfect character by having all skills and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. maxed out. Yes, it may seem a little game breaking, but all in all it comes down to what perks you pick. If I wanted to build a melee character I'd just pick the Pyromaniac perk so that the Shishkebab* melee weapon can be the file's Excalibur, yet I didn't. I picked a lot of sneak/critical stacking perks that make me end fights before they even start. 
 
I don't hate New Vegas. I clocked in 100+ hours myself, but at the risk of sounding even more like a brand/era loyalist bitch I'm just gonna end this by saying that NV was fun, but a bit of a bummer. A biiiiiiit of a bummer. =/ 
 
*edit

I completed the game start to finish on the PC (I started playing day of launch) and only had a couple of crashes with no significant issues. Also Fallout 3 was pretty damned buggy as well so I don't think that's an effective argument in favor of Fallout 3 when the story telling and overall world of the Mojave Wasteland was just done much better than Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland (i.e. a lot of the dudes that worked on the game at Obsidian also worked on Fallout 1 and 2).

Way to respectfully represent both sides of the argument  

" Way to respectfully represent both sides of the argument   "

It's still broken on console and Fallout 3 did basically everything NV did first so it's better just like everyone likes COD4 more than most of its sequels.  Ughh, run on sentence.

DC was a much more atmospheric and diverse place to walk around then New Vegas which is desert, small shitty town, desert, small shitty town. Rinse repeat, the story in Fallout 3 was a lot greater, you were playing the game to save the whole wastelands and improve the world. In New Vegas from the 8 hours or so I have played your are just hunting down some guy that shot you. I don't like the graphical changes they made for New Vegas and the side missions you would stumble across while venturing through the more diverse DC waste lands I found to be more fun and engrossing. Also Fallout 3 has Point Lookout which is a fantastic exp pack. 
Edit: I am currently playing NV and like it enough to finish it, I also bought the DLC. In no way is it a bad game but when compared to the third I found it a bit lacking.

There is no nostalgia, because I first played Fallout 3 only a few months before New Vegas came out. For me personally, it was probably because I was burnt out on that style of game since I played the hell out of 3. NV's fault is probably from not expanding and improving on the systems enough. It is really just more of the same stuff. Also, I thought the large number of side-quests was gonna be awesome, but there is really nothing pushing you to do any of them. I beat the game and haven't touched it since and I've probably not experienced more than 50% of what is in it.

Are they competing for some sort of award that I'm not aware of? 
Play the one you like better. 
Let other people play the one they like better. 
 
If I must try to convince you, I would say that Fallout 3 conveyed a post nuclear world better than New Vegas. Having the Strip (with power, none the less) and abundant drinking water throughout the game kind of took away from the "fallout" part of it.  

I preferred New Vegas to Fallout 3. I was late to playing Fallout 3 so maybe I missed the Hype train that got everyone so high on the game. The big difference for me between the two was the writing. New Vegas's writing was way better then Fallout 3. Much funnier and wittier, and much more intriguing(Wild Wastleland led to several moments which were better then anything in Fallout 3), which helped made the game great for me. Too bad they botched launch left a bad taste in so many people's mouths. After the first few patches the game ended up running perfectly for me.  Still they're both pretty damn good games, and I'm glad I played both. 

I have to agree that most of the bugs are fixed by now, and that people shouldn't be afraid to play this, but the problem is stability and performance issues, which apparently will get addressed in the next patch (Within a few weeks, and probably prior to the release of the next DLC). As it is now Fallout 3 is a better game for me, but this will change, probably.

I just kinda felt like I was playing an expansion pack to Fallout 3.
Sure my impression probably would've changed as I got further, but the glitches and crashes forced me to put it back on the shelf before that happened.
 
I'm sure I'll get back to Vegas at some point and I'm sure I'll have a blast, but F3 grabbed me at hour one and didn't let go until hour 120.

I'm sure you could have done this without being condescending.

" ...it still has the Obsidian pedigree of being buggy as all hell even after patches"

I'm definitely opinion 2. I was so blown away by Fallout 3's originality when I first played it. Once that wore off, I didn't have any desire to revisit the Fallout world in New Vegas.

" DC was a much more atmospheric and diverse place to walk around then New Vegas which is desert, small shitty town, desert, small shitty town. Rinse repeat, the story in Fallout 3 was a lot greater, you were playing the game to save the whole wastelands and improve the world. In New Vegas from the 8 hours or so I have played your are just hunting down some guy that shot you. I don't like the graphical changes they made for New Vegas and the side missions you would stumble across while venturing through the more diverse DC waste lands I found to be more fun and engrossing. Also Fallout 3 has Point Lookout which is a fantastic exp pack. Edit: I am currently playing NV and like it enough to finish it, I also bought the DLC. In no way is it a bad game but when compared to the third I found it a bit lacking. "

" Way to respectfully represent both sides of the argument   "

" @TimAllen624: By your logic a sequel should always be completely different then its predecessor, a sequel is a sequel for a reason God damn it. "

Much like DA2 compared to DA:O, New Vegas lacks a compelling central driving force plot wise compared to Fallout 3.  New Vegas does a lot of things better, but the lack of that one thing has caused me to not actually finish the game yet.

I liked how the DC ruins felt like freaking ruins, New vegas is neat but I like my wasteland apocalyptic, not thriving. Also, the subways made going into DC a guided experience so you didn't encounter anything too earlier, but still encountered new things, in New vegas I literally jumped about 3 hours ahead just buy visiting the strip because I didnt want to wait. Its still a toss up on which games better though. Everyone should enjoy both.

" @Badhands said:

" DC was a much more atmospheric and diverse place to walk around then New Vegas which is desert, small shitty town, desert, small shitty town. Rinse repeat, the story in Fallout 3 was a lot greater, you were playing the game to save the whole wastelands and improve the world. In New Vegas from the 8 hours or so I have played your are just hunting down some guy that shot you. I don't like the graphical changes they made for New Vegas and the side missions you would stumble across while venturing through the more diverse DC waste lands I found to be more fun and engrossing. Also Fallout 3 has Point Lookout which is a fantastic exp pack. Edit: I am currently playing NV and like it enough to finish it, I also bought the DLC. In no way is it a bad game but when compared to the third I found it a bit lacking. "

Really? I thought the Mojave Wasteland was actually much more atmospheric than DC. It felt much bigger and emptier (which is a good thing).  And I remember the building designs in 3 being extremely repetitive. I almost gave up when I got to the Capitol because I was so tired of exploring subway stations D: "

"Much like DA2 compared to DA:O, New Vegas lacks a compelling central driving force plot wise compared to Fallout 3.  New Vegas does a lot of things better, but the lack of that one thing has caused me to not actually finish the game yet. "

No offense, but you come off as a prick in your OP. It looks like you want a flame war more than you want an actual discussion about this. 

" DC was a much more atmospheric and diverse place to walk around then New Vegas which is desert, small shitty town, desert, small shitty town. Rinse repeat, the story in Fallout 3 was a lot greater, you were playing the game to save the whole wastelands and improve the world. In New Vegas from the 8 hours or so I have played your are just hunting down some guy that shot you.

I really think that each game has strengths over the other. I like the faction system vs. karma, and the overall variety of stuff in New Vegas is better. On the other hand, I feel like there are WAAAAY too many guns in NV, and the amount of ammo types is infuriating (this seems like a minor complaint, but FUCK INVENTORY MANAGEMENT). I also felt a lot more comfortable just exploring in FO3, whereas alot of NV doesn't really seem to make sense unless you follow the main quest set. I also hate a lot of the voice acting in New Vegas. Oh yeah, and there isn't as much weird crazy stuff in NV. Like, remember that vault full Garys? I prefer more things like that.
 
There are other points that I could raise, but on the whole both are fine games. I don't think that one is really superior to the other. I've been playing NV for the last 2 weeks, so I've been thinking about this topic pretty hard.

I miss all the weird/unique shit in Fallout 3, but for the most part, I prefer New Vegas. I can only imagine how much better Fallout 4 will be on the Skyrim engine(and Skyrim of course).

I preferred New Vegas far more. Fallout 3 felt dull and uninspired like many of Bethesda's games, and the writing was terrible to boot. The story was basically bad Fallout fanfic wrapped around a juvenile "young kid from tiny town saves everyone!" plotline with freaking Bible quotes in there to make the "good/evil" choices even more hamhanded, if that was even possible. Not only that, but you could become a totally broken murdermachine with no real weakness. The whole thing felt like it was put together by people who had skimmed a Fallout wiki and decided to make a game.
 
In New Vegas, I could look past the bugs because it presented a more interesting and nuanced setting with funny and sharp writing. It was a story about a man looking for revenge and getting caught up in something bigger. The way you affected the Mojave Wasteland and the lives of its people felt far more meaningful than the dead unsalvageable Capital Wasteland of FO3. The story felt far more like proper Fallout as well, with Super Mutants and raiders depicted as more than BOOGEDY-BOOGEDY HERE'S A BAG FULL OF BODY PARTS. I felt more hatred for the Legion than I ever did for the FO3 Super Mutants or the Enclave (who had no reason to be in that game, since they were destroyed in FO2).

The way the map is laid out in New Vegas makes it feel too crowded. There are too many people. In Fallout 3 when I emerged from the Vault I felt such a sense of being a lone guy in a vast wasteland, all alone with only the clothes on my back. The Capital Wasteland is just so well designed, the way the towns are placed, the vast stretches of waste with little places hidden here and there. I spent countless hours just wandering which shows how affective the map layout really is. The game calls you the lone wanderer, and I did wander, completely outside of any promptings from the story. 
I loved the music in Fallout 3. I actually downloaded all the songs from the game that I could find and I still listen to them sometimes, but the old country western stuff in New Vegas just doesn't catch me like it did in 3. 
I think New Vegas actually has more interesting and funnier characters than 3, but overall I enjoyed the story in 3 more. I know that a lot of people hate the story in 3, but I really loved it. Maybe it's because my father had just died the year before the game came out, and it just resonated with me in a very emotional way. Not to get too sappy, but I felt like what happened in the story was exactly what happened to me. My father left me without warning and went very far away, possibly never to be seen again. This is a real idea to me because at the time I still believed that I may see him again when I die (although I no longer really believe in an afterlife). 
All of this to say that Fallout 3 was the right game at the right time to me. It is in my top three all time favorite games. While I like New Vegas, something about it just sometimes seems "off". I've only put 15 hours or so into the game. When one of my companions disapeared, yet the game said he was still there, I had had enough with the bugs. I haven't played it since before the patch was released. My plan is to restart it again after I finish Dragon Age 2. 

I like Fallout 2 better than any other Fallout game, but I think as far as the "new' games Fallout 3 was the better game, because there are not as many bugs as New Vegas, release day or or not and FO3 was just a bigger game and I think it had a better story. 

I throw in with the No Mutants Allowed crowd: Fallout 3 is a poorly written mess compared to New Vegas, and for me that's one of the biggest issues. Simply compare the main quests: Fallout 3 is about turning on a water purifier. New Vegas is about settling a major power dispute between warring factions in order to shape the face of the Mojave. 3 just doesn't stack up with New Vegas. 

Every part of F3 was more interesting. The quests in F3 were far more interesting. 
 
Also- starting with your characters birth makes them feel like your own unique individual instead of just being dumped into the shoes of some random guy that got shot. I shared stories of my Fallout 3 play-through with friends way more than New Vegas.
 
Not to mention that the Capital Wasteland is far more interesting and apocalyptic compared to what was nothing more than a desert. There's a lot of subtle object placement too. The world felt lived in, not just the product of some computer code. One example is the elaborate reference to Snatcher. New Vegas just felt slapped together in comparison.
 
And F3 had Three Dog so it automatically wins. 
 
I still like New Vegas. Technically in terms of gameplay features, New Vegas is a better game. But I prefer the experience of Fallout 3.

Fallout 2 is still my favourite.

How about this, just a few months before New Vegas came out, I played so much Fallout 3 that I don't feel like playing anymore, probably ever. Seriously, I did just about everything that game had to offer, got 1750/1750 on the Xbox, collecting all of those stupid bobbleheads... I just don't feel like playing anymore Fallout.

LOL, did you just say that the bugs in New Vegas were fixed? Surely you're joking. New Vegas is an absolute train wreck of a game.