Finally, I get it. For months I've been wondering what all of the fuss about Fallout 3 was, and now I know. I was excited enough about the game prior to its release that I preordered the crazy Amazon-exclusive special that, in addition to the regular special edition, shipped with an extremely cheap and breakable lifesize Pip-Boy 3000. Playing the game for the first time, though, I got incredibly frustrated with the combat and, exactly as I did the first time I played Oblivion, I quit just four or five hours in.

The recent arrival of the Operation: Anchorage DLC got a bunch of people in the office excited for Fallout 3 again and so, since Wrath of the Lich King is no longer occupying my every spare moment now that my hunter has tamed Loque'nahak (don't ask), I figured I should have another crack at it. I feel better about the choices I made when customizing my character this time around, and since worrying about inventory space tends to be something that I let ruin games for me (WoW included) at times, I made a real effort not to pick up every single item that wasn't nailed to the floor. The real reason I'm enjoying Fallout 3 a lot more now, though, is simply that I'm using the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS) that I mostly ignored previously.

Call me crazy, but when I played Fallout 3 for the first time I was under the impression that I should play in real-time or using VATS. It never occured to me that these two very different systems, neither of which is good enough to use exclusively, could become something quite special when used together. Long story short, I'm about eight hours into the game now and loving every minute of it, and that includes the hour or so that I've spent in Anchorage.

So, now that I'm getting into Fallout 3, it looks like I'll be neglecting the rest of the games that I've been playing lately. I'll still be finishing Afro Samurai at some point, I'll inevitably end up visiting Knothole Island in Fable II sometime soon, and my death knight will become my third level 80 character, but for the moment I'm all about the Fallout 3.

First come first served:

X360: FRK8G-HCG4Q-4VDPC-Q2C44-HM9G6

PS3: P7LA-K4BD-LG2L

PS3: BJF2-A2B4-PCF6

I offer no guarantees as to the quality of these downloadable games, but two out of three ain't bad.

This is cut-and-pasted from our reviews blog.

So, last week I told that you that we were launching a new reviews-related feature, and about five minutes ago we did. After the Fact: Reviews Revisited is a way for us to update our reviews (without actually changing the original text or score) as games evolve after their release. This is a response to us noticing that our reviews, while accurate on day one, are becoming outdated as patches and game "updates" become more common.

For example, we mention in our Battlefield: Bad Company review that the game doesn't have Conquest mode--that's no longer accurate, since it was patched in at a later date. There's now an After the Fact entry to reflect this on the review page and, if you look around the site, you'll find that we've got the ball rolling with updates for several other games as well. This is just the beginning, of course, and while we're not planning to post entries for every single update that's released for every single game, we're definitely planning to cover stuff that we think potential buyers of games need to know in order to make a well-informed purchasing decision.

Oh, and if there are any updates worth covering that we haven't yet posted an After the Fact entry for (there are a lot right now, of course), feel free to let us know via our new afterthefact@gamespot.com email address. We'll get to them as quickly as we can.

(This post contains FABLE II SPOILERS.)

I've been playing a lot of Fable II lately. As is invariably the case when I pick up one of these black/white, good/evil, hero/villain, dark/light games for the first time, I've been making "good" choices from minute one. As a result, my hero in Fable II is revered as a saint (complete with halo), his nickname is Chosen One, and last night he officially became the most famous person in all of Albion. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though... my hero has contracted two STDs after engaging in extramarital relations and, last night, he unwittingly became a bigamist.

How do you unwittingly become a bigamist? I'll explain.

As much as I love Fable II right now, the game is certainly not without its problems. I've yet to encounter any bugs that have brought my progress to a halt thankfully, but my in-game families have been nothing but trouble.

Family attempt #1: Early in the game I chose to marry one of the mob of generic-looking females that was following me around Bowerstone. I moved her into one of the few crumby houses that I could afford and we had a son. Everything was going ok. She never really liked living in our marital dump, but I was sending her more than enough money to make up for it. One day, when she suggested we take a romantic walk somewhere, I agreed. Taking said walk through bandit country, though, was a mistake. They attacked, she died, our son was taken away by the authorities before he was ever big enough to make it out of his crib.

Family attempt #2: Bored of the Bowerstone women, I decide to look for my second wife at the gypsy camp. She's a real looker, and I'm confident that she'll appreciate the high standard of living that I can now afford to give her. We move into the most expensive Bowerstone home that I can find, we have a son, and we're incredibly happy together. Then, without warning, she disappears without a trace. Our infant child is left alone at the house, and though I visit often and keep sending money, my gypsy wife is nowhere to be found.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, for a short time before she disappeared completely, I was able to trigger wife #2's appearance at our marital home by inviting other women into our bed there. She never suspected a thing despite encountering many of the women as they left, but I never really felt good about using adultery as a way to keep our marriage going. Plus, it stopped working after I'd done it three or four times anyway.

Eventually, I decide to go and look for her at the gypsy camp. There's a clone of her there with the same name, but it's not her. While out on a quest days later I was informed via an insensitive pop-up window that she had divorced me and that our son had been taken away by the authorities. I never saw either of them again.

Family attempt #3: By now I'm at a point in the game where I know time is about ready to advance 10 years, so I hastily find myself another bride in the hope that, one day, I'll get to see one of my kids grow up. The well-dressed Bowerstone jeweller, she'll do. I give her a ring, I take her home, we make a baby girl, and I immediately head out on a quest that will keep me away from my new family for almost a decade.

Upon my return to Bowerstone, I eagerly head back to the house expecting to be greeted by an excited family. The wife isn't working at her jewellery stall, so I assume she's waiting for me at home. Nope. She's nowhere to be found. My daughter is now nine years old, but she's incapable of doing anything but standing where her crib used to be and staring blankly at the wall. Have I failed to do something I was supposed to as a father, or has Fable II simply failed to do something it was supposed to as a non-broken game?

I return to the house countless times in the hope that my little girl will have come back to life, or that her mother might be around to explain her condition to me. It's not to be, and because my family is technically still living there (but can't be interacted with in any way) I'm unable to sell the house or rent it out. Checking my hero's stats it appears that two of my three wives have died--I assume number 3 was one of them since she hasn't been seen in years, so I head out for:

Family attempt #4: Of the three failed marriages that I've had so far, I think the gypsy woman was my favorite, so I head back to the camp to find her clone. She's one of those girls who's easily impressed; I woo her with my "thumbs up" action, and moments later she's asking me for a ring. Not a problem, I always carry several around with me.

Family #3's home is still a no-go area, so I purchase another, equally nice house in Bowerstone, and waste no time moving the new wife in. We have a baby daughter, I visit as often as my busy heroing schedule allows, and everything is great. When my daughter grows up, it becomes apparent that she's black, which neither I nor my wife are. No worries, I'm sure she didn't cheat on me or anything, probably just a skin pigmentation gene that skipped a generation or something.

At this point, I consider family #4 to be a long overdue success story. We've been together for a while, their demands on my time aren't really interfering with my quest, and I think I'm sending them more money than they could possibly spend. It all went a bit pear-shaped last night, though, when I returned to Bowerstone after what I can only assume was some kind of update via Xbox Live.

Upon arriving in town I'm greeted by my excited daughter and some of her friends. Great! This is exactly what I was promised when Peter Molyneux showed off Fable II families for the first time all those months ago. My daughter is white now, which is a little strange, but since she's the first of my offspring to make it beyond the cradle I'm not gonna complain.

I visit the wife, give both her and my daughter the gifts I found them on my latest quest, and then, in the hope that I might finally be able to do something with the house that family #3 was residing in, I pay it a visit. The wall-watching daughter appears to have gone the way of her mother, which is to say that she's vanished without a trace, so I figure I'll finally be able to move a tenant in and make some money.

Before I can reach the front door, my missing-presumed-dead daughter runs in to greet me. There's still no sign of her mother, and as awful as it sounds I have mixed feelings about the little girl's showing up alive and well. Given the absence of her mother I guess I should really have stayed to look after her, but ultimately I decide that just making sure she has plenty of money should suffice and then head out on another adventure.

I don't get far before the missing-presumed-dead wife, her mother, shows up as well--as if nothing had ever happened. She's missed me, she has a gift for me, and she's blissfully unaware (as was I at the time) that I now have two wives living in the same town. That fact didn't go unnoticed by everyone, though, because wife #3 also has a note for me. It's a blackmail letter from someone who knows I'm a bigamist and is demanding 2000 gold to keep his mouth shut.

So that's it. I'm a bigamist. My reputation and my halo are intact for the time being, but now that I've paid the blackmailer his 2000 I'm just waiting for a note demanding an even bigger sum of gold somewhere down the line. I think I'll have to move one of my families out of the city to a farm or something--seems like I own half of Albion at this point, so I have plenty of properties to choose from.

Tune in again next week for the tale of how I accidentally got engaged to one of the traveling game masters and had to lure him into the woods and shoot him to stop him following me around and sarcasitically congratulating me on my marriage to the gypsy clone. Actually, I guess that's the whole story.

Oh, and if you're interested in seeing what my hero looks like, he can be seen killing ghost pirates at the end of our video review.