Fallout 3 was generally terrible. Let me explain why.
Following the events of Fallout 2, The Enclave were destroyed. Bethesda's attempts to "Re-make" the enclave and give the excuse that all of the sudden there were eastern Enclave was a desperate attempt to give the Brotherhood of Steel something to fight other than constantly repeated and stale muties. Oh. I forgot to mention that the design of the Advanced Power Armor was completely changed. I can live with change, but only if it's explained. The military-issued armor just so happen to have drastically altered designs under the exact same name, because they were in a different part of the same country. The Enclave wouldn't even have enough resources to sustain both the West and East coast Enclave armies. There's only so much Super high-tech powered armor that can survive 200+ years after being hit by several nuclear explosions.
The Brotherhood of Steel were drastically changed, and to "shield" against this point, they made the outcasts; but they did forget-all. The Anchorage expansion barely makes sense. The Outcasts want some advanced form of Military technology, so people in the past made it so you need to complete this simulation to access it.
Everything of anything was abundant. Remember how in the original fallouts, encountering a band of 4 bandits was serious stuff until you got the Power armor and Miniguns; and ammo was always horridly scarce and rare, And expensive? In the newer fallouts, as soon as you get your first SMG; all you need to do is backpeddle and fire constantly with your mounds of ammo you found in that one person's footlocker. All challenge was erased, the only remaining challenge was the horridly overpowered enemies that gave the game false-difficulty by just adding more health.
The beginning of the game was overdone. So your father magically leaves the vault by going past the abundance of guards, and the loud-ass motherloving vault door (and closing it too) so Radroaches flood the whole vault, and all of the guards lose all sense of morale and suddenly want you dead because forget reason! Our precious vault door was opened and then closed again!
Now New vegas...
You start off being shot in the head, buried alive and dug up by a robot. This is indeed survivable because Benny was using a pissy 9mm pistol and shot you right inbetween the eyes at the thickest part of the skull, so all's well there. Now all of the sudden you wake up, and immediately want to pursue the guy either out of revenge or you're just so much of a loyal courier, you just HAVE to deliver that shiny new casino chip! Even before talking to Mr. House and learning the secrets of the chip, you can talk to Benny in The Tops Casino and demand it back. Why? forget if I know what this Do-Or-Die loyalty the courier had.
Aside from that, pretty much most of the clunky, drawn out and excuse/plot-hole ridden gunk that Fallout 3 had was in the game.
