I no I'm late to this convers but I was addicted to this game for the passed 3 weeks now and felt like putting in my two cents. I ve only played the secend fallout prier to this along with Oblivion and was pleased with the blend of both worlds. I felt It was slightly lacking in storyline content considering It took me close to a year of solid play to fully unravle every mystery of Fallout 2 were as 3 too me till now(3 weeks),yet I did find Fallout 3's main sorry line to be more griping than its predisesor with the implementing of SPOILER your father and his death and all. SPOILER OVER

Favoret thing:
From some one that loves millitary games and RPGs the one thing that stands on out the best in this game is when your walking along the top of a hill or high point and you see in the distance a small settlment. Looking at the terrain and objects surounding it(cars,trucks,bolders,ect.) along with the weapons at your disposal you can plan your aprotch not knowing wether or not its hostel which I havent had the pleasure of doing in any other game. Wether I plan to stand on a far hill side in the hidden position and pick them off one by one with the sniper rifle or get up on the large rock face closest to them and tose a couple hundred frags,nukas, and plazmids desimating all in there so called save haven. To to say the hell with trickery and blow open there gates with a Miny Nuke from a Fat Man and then charge in with my Assult rifle(or plazma cant alway make up my mind on those 2) and gun down the suvivors HAHAHAHaHahaha!sigh.
Just something fun to do.

And now some hints for beginners:
when making your skills make sure you Enginering is 35 so you can do the defusing the bomb quest so you get a how in megaton to store your spare parts for making homemade weapons which are usually better than the conventional with the exepthing of the dart gun.

Also focus on getting you small guns up first as they are the most used weapons in the first half of the game due to there abundancy which alows for free reparing by yourself.

as for perks you can only have 20ty so think hard on each one. I know its temping to get one like here and now that instanly lvls you but having perks that increase your combat efishancy or adds to your skills or attributes are far mor worth it in the end cause ones your lvl 20 the only way to rase those skills is from clecting bobble heads and reading books o and a bobble head hint the streagth Bobble head is in the Republic of Dave on the shelf in the Museum of Dave your on your own for the others.

O and So you dont make the same mistake I did with the Strickly Business quest Which was this guy told me to go out and inslave ppl which was wrong cause my first char was a good boy so I thought I would be better to shoot him in the head and lay waste to Paridise Falls and free the slaves. But the hint is if your worried about attracting bad karma from this quest just do the quest then do what I did because for every slaver killed and slave freed you gain good karma and you dont evan loose Karma for stealing from the slavers shops.

And another quest I screwed myself on Is SAVE 30 NUKA COLA QUANTUMS for the nuka cola challenge quest. I turned all myin into nuka gernades to desamate...well every thing. so remember to save 30.

The only things I found wrong with this game were not in the actual game play itstelf but in the unexpected freezes and random character glitches were some characters sudenly suspend in mid air. Although this isnt to often aslong as you stay on the path of the main Quests,but if your like me and enjoy searching the farthest depths of a game world you'll end up seeing alot of this. And Im not sure if it would be a factor but my ver is an Xbox 360 Verson of the game.

Final last minite thoughts:
Fighting raders=FUN
Fighting Supermutants=challinging FUN
Fighting weak animal(Mole rat,dog,ect.)=quick target practice
Fighting Strong animal(DeathClaw, Rad Scorp)= Frustration from wasting ammo and time after running bacwards shooting wildly and still managing to get pumiled in the process.

So theres my 2 cents on Fallout 3.