How many hours have you been playing? This is what happened to me, and I've heard it's happened to a lot of other people too: I played maybe 10 hours of the game spread out over a week or two, didn't really like it. I didn't get the hype. I went back to it a couple months later and got up to 100 hours played in no time at all. It became one of my favorite games. I don't know what it is about it. I guess it's just because you have to really get into it or it just gets better later on, but I would find myself picking up the game and playing for a while, and suddenly it was 8 hours later and I had no idea where the time went. I got so immersed. I used the hunting rifle for a large portion of the game. It's really good early levels, but it falls off during later levels when the enemies are stronger. Speaking of enemy strength, what difficulty are you playing on? I wouldn't play on anything above normal. Higher difficulties only make it tedious because they just increase enemy health and damage. Fallout 3's story definitely isn't its strong point. The exploration is where it really shines. Not even doing any quests, just exploring areas. Sorry for all dem paragraphs, but I love this game and needed to respond thoroughly.