My review of Fallout 3

Pros: -Immense game world with a lot of very original and mostly very fun side quests
-Largely good graphics
-Largely good storyline
-Good writing
-NPCs have a lot of character
-Fallout spirit and atmosphere mostly respected faithfully
-Most environments and buildings are really great, very fun to explore
-Some truly great NPCs that compare really well to those in Fallout 1 and 2
-Works well as an FPS/RPG hybrid
-Good combat system and gunfights
-Stats system works well, the changes that they've made mostly add to the experience without dumbing down the game
-Great DC ruins and locations
-Game is extremely addictive

Cons: - Music could've been darker, the soundtrack sounds too much like generic Hollywood stuff
-The game isn't dark/gritty enough
-The engine and interface are still too similar to Oblivion
-Way too many items to manipulate, it's like 3 times as bad as in Oblivion. You don't exactly stand a choice to loot the most valuable items constantly either, so constantly checking everything to pick the best items gets very annoying.
-VATS doesn't always seem that efficient, when it only gives you very little chances to hit an enemy it's better to simply aim yourself and shoot... however it can get you out of trouble if a dangerous enemy is too close
-Ammo is too hard to get a hold of
-Items get damaged too fast
-Ending narration sucks. They don't even tell you the aftermath for all the little sidequests you did, all the significant NPCs and communities you've saved. What's the appeal of doing all the side quests then?
-Sometimes the pacing is way too slow
-Post-apocalyptic environments look mostly great, but they also get very generic

All in all, I think this game deserves something like 8.5/10, and perhaps more if you loved the hell out of Oblivion.

What's the difference between the Survivor Edition and the Collector's Edition?

Nigger.

<a href="http://www.prizerebel.com/index.php?r=829070"><img src="http://www.prizerebel.com/images/banner30.gif" border="1" width="468" height="80"></a>

Prize Rebel failed to deliver.

I enjoyed FO3, in a different way than I enjoyed 1 & 2 though.
However, it pisses me the fuck off that in FO3 having an INT of 1 or 10 gives you the same dialogue.

Shit was hilarious when the only options you had were:

1. Hnnrhr
2. Ooh? Agh, ag!
3. *stare blankly*

I had to become addicted to mentats just to progress through the game, was worth it though.

The Survivor Edition is the Amazon exclusive version of the Collector's Edition. It includes everything in the Collector's Edition, but comes with a Pip Boy 3000 clock. Unfortunately, these things run on atomic batteries, and any regular batteries (3 AAs just to tell time, not even an alarm) will result in the display becoming dim after about four days, leaving the batteries totally drained in about a week.

tl;dr: Survival Edition is $50 more for a clock that requires a weekly battery replacement.

I beat it and have been just exploring (cheat to unlock all the markers)

anything I should see/do before I put it down?

needs more guns, esp. energy weapons