So, I'm cool now, right? I bought the game. 64 dollars left me feeling a bit annoyed at it, and the very weird character-building intro made me scratch my head some, but...
MAN does this game rock. It's like Oblivion, except without the SUCK. The missions all seem strangely important, and if you play the game like John Wayne, being the righteous, kind-hearted gunslinger, it seems to just WORK really well that way.
The atmosphere is great too. I'm far more interested in exploring a scarred and barren wasteland if that wasteland is one I recognize--slaughtering bad guys in a desolate elementary school is far more satisfying than doing the same in "Generic cave 23/1000" in Oblivion.
I just finished the "Blood Ties" mission, and MAN that was a cool little bit of sidestory. I'm back in Megaton and am at a loss of where to go next, but since getting lost in the world is so much fun (when I don't have crab monsters trying to eat me), I don't mind so much.
My one annoyance is why they bother to have a hooker in the game who offers to sleep with you, allows you to pay money for such a thing, and then there's absolutely no even vague HINTS at sex. A bit of a let-down, really.