It amazes me that at a time when so many great games are being released there are still so many paying attention to Bethesda's new title.

It also amazes me that nobody recognizes their marketing ploy. They've been pulling every single trick in the book since those first exclusive magazine scans:

-The first thing they announced was Liam Neeson's voice acting. Completely relevant to the fans of the original!

-Then came the teaser trailer, a knock-off of Fallout 1's intro, which I actually liked, and confirmed Ron Perlman as the Narrator. Too bad it also heavily hinted at the decision to go first person and ignore the previous gameplay.

-After that, the exclusive magazine scans, revealing Lucas Simms, that awful reused model from Oblivion, the bald and completely different muties, the first person/third person perspectives and the idiotic as hell portable nuclear launcher.

-Then, lots of other magazine screenshots later, they started inviting "game journalists" to their company. No, not the fans, those fan sites were never contacted. That makes me sad, specially since Todd Howard has been answering in interviews that they pay attention to the fans and that the fans aren't really that evil, as if there were some kind of interplay between the fans and the devs (besides the official Beth forums).

-Then these journalists were showered with cakes, and bobble heads. And big events. And they flew the journalists over and paid all the expenses.

-Then the first gameplay videos. Showing the poor animation, the way VATS truly worked (like a GOD button in an FPS), and Todd's awful voice.

-Recently, there were/are all the release events at the game shops, and then there were that army of Brotherhood of Steel in real scale, the special edition of the game with the crappy pipboy, the dreaded bobble-head, etc.

What does all of this amount to? Bethesda have been buttering up game journalists and reviewers since before any gameplay footage went public. They've been pulling for that "GOTY" award since the beginning of the year, and people are all eating it up. I've only see one article complaining about the way they gift the gaming sites and shower them with crap.

Am I the only one that sees what they are doing here?

I'm fighting a losing battle. Blackcats just got Fallout 3 for PC, and the Xbox version has been there for two weeks. I already know how the game ends, a poor twist ending that I won't spoil for the sods that decided to plunk their dollars in this game.

Hard to believe there are people buying Fallout 3 when there's so many quality gamesbeing released, from Dead Space to Little Big Planet to Fable 2 to Red Alert 3 to Far Cry 2 to Witcher's Enhanced Edition and so many other great games that are barely worth a mention on this site because everyone's a console fanboy and the only retro they believe in is the 8bit kind of retro.

Cue the fanboys.