6. Unforgiving Difficulty And Occasionally Terrible Combat
A lot of the reason Fallout 3 never got to the higher realms of gaming's must-play elite where Skyrim comfortably resides, is down to some extremely unforgiving difficulty early on. Now, fans of the series will simply scream "Tough sh*t!" before going off for a Nuka Cola caps-scavenge, but for a wider audience accustomed to more refined animation and a learning curve that doesn't throw you off a cliff and ask you to fly, it's very off-putting. The base combat in Fallout 3 - through taking it from its isometric, more contemplative origins and into first-person - means that every encounter is a largely confusing mess of diving in and out of VATS mode, being told you've broken a limb, wondering why bullets aren't meeting their targets and forever juggling a handful of items and hot-key shortcuts - all only to die and restart a mile away. Difficulty in games has shown to be a widely varying thing that's very hard to get right without feeling unfair. Titles that make sure their mechanics are sound before throwing you to the wolves like Bloodborne, Super Meat Boy and Axiom Verge do it perfectly, whereas new-age Fallout and its unreliable, shaky approach most definitely does not.