Familiarity breeds contempt or we always hurt the one’s we love. Whichever adage applies I find that games we enjoy the most we look the hardest to find flaws and be critical of. Fallout 3 was very satisfying, one of the best games in a long time, but I love to complain so here are couple little bits of wasteland dust that tickled me the wrong way.

Fallout had great gameplay, but was not free of the typical Top-heavy RPG feel. Most RPGs have this problem. Simply put, the game is challenging in the very beginning and somewhere in the Middle of the game, you become ridiculously powerful and the challenge dissipates. I remember fighting Vance and his Vampire gang. How long it took me. I had to use the Stealth Boy and pick them off one by one, occasionally having to book down the tunnel and hope that only one follows me. Post Rivet City everything seemed like cake. My caps were plentiful from then one and I could always keep my Stimpak count above 100. It isn’t hard to mash B once you get in trouble from there on out.

Acquiring NPCs that are nearly invincible doesn’t help this problem. Fawkes’s ability to sustain boatloads of damage and not blink while he wastes a party of four Enclave members before you can target one really takes the fun out of the game. I had to leave him in Megaton after awhile. Dogmeat found himself hanging out with Wadsworth for the opposite reason. I got tired of trying to protect him in heavy firefights. Sydney was one of few happy mediums for any Karma setting and she only stayed for one quest.

And was I the only one who got real sick of running around Metro tunnels. Fallout 3 should not have played like a Dungeon hack game. The repetitiveness of the rail system made it feel like I was playing Diablo in 95’ again. Ghouls, Mire Lurkers, and Raiders—oh my—it got a little boring. I want a little bit more entropy in my dungeons in Fallout 4.

Another idea that sounded great on paper, but fell short in gameplay was the ability to create special weapons. Okay Nuka Grenades were okay and the Shiskabob is the only Melee weapon in the game that really rocks. Some people like the Dart gun, but I found its uses limited. You can cripple every limb on a Supermutant but by the time I do all that, I could have rendered lifeless by emptying a few shotgun shells into him.

The rest are really gimmicky. A gun that shoots garbage. Great, was anyone really ever out of ammo in this game? If I sold my ammo supply at the end of the game, I would have had enough caps to buy Megaton. Not to mention that by the time you get the schematic and all the parts for it. You probably own a rocket launcher at least a combat shotgun, which both pack a much heavier punch. Even though it is funny to watch a Talon company merc get a bloody nose from a tin can in slow-mo, I’m not going to spend my time scrounging the wasteland for leaf blowers anytime soon.

I felt the same way about the Railway Rifle and Deathclaw Gauntlet, by the time I’ve got my hands these gems, I already had an arsenal of more powerful weapons on my person, in my locker in Megaton, hidden under Bittercup’s bed. Well, maybe not, but you get the point. Not worth the effort.

My last little complaint is that there was only one good “boss” fight, the Behemoth Mutant fight at Galaxy News Radio. Some may argue that Ant Queens weren’t bad. Fine, but think of the ending. You stand behind an 80-foot Robot that tears through dozens of Enclave while you mostly walk, then trade energy waves with a handful of Enclave, so you can fight a boss that’s wearing an officer’s uniform and no combat armor. You tear through him like paper.

Other than that, I loved it. Which concludes this rant.