Fallout 3

So much has been written about Fallout 3 at this point - I mean, holy shit, eight years old, already? - that I can't think of anything to add to the conversation beyond a couple of unfortunate Xbox anecdotes.

The first involves the worst customer service experience I've ever had. A friend of a friend came over to play Rock Band one day and just began wailing on the drums. Because the drum set was an active controller, the individual ended up pressing a whole bunch of buttons on the Xbox 360 dashboard, and before anyone could comprehend what was happening, a ten-dollar DLC pack for Fallout 3 had been purchased. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just call Microsoft and explain this to them."

Eh, no. Long story short, I spent over an hour on the phone with an Xbox Live representative who wouldn't budge on reimbursing my accidental purchase, wouldn't give me any free DLC codes to make up for it, and didn't seem to care that I'd spent literally hundreds of dollars on Rock Band DLC. Worst of all, he had the gall to say, after about an hour, "come on, it's only ten dollars," which of course is exactly why I couldn't believe he wouldn't reimburse it. Ten dollars isn't much, but it's a lot more to a college kid than it is to fucking Microsoft.

Fuck Microsoft, fuck Rock Band, fuck overzealous drumming, and fuck that guy.

Second - and I know this has happened to virtually everyone with an Xbox 360 - but a few years ago I got the infamous red ring of death. When did I get it? Yep - right in the middle of playing Fallout 3. I took the machine to a repair shop and they charged me $30 to fix it, only for it to red ring again within a matter of weeks. What was it about Fallout 3, a 2007 game, that caused our second-generation Xbox 360 to shit its pants in 2012?

For real, fuck the Xbox 360.

And fuck Fallout 3 by association. Even if it was, all things considered, a pretty good game.