I'm on my second playthrough now, in Recruit mode, and I have this weird feeling that with time (and maybe a few patches, maybe even fan-made, though I've never ever heard of anyone doing much in the way of fan-made patches for UT3-tech games) it can grow into a cult neoclassic like VtMB is these days.
Sure, the AI acts weird, the sex scenes are tame, but the story is fun, the pop-culture references (including ones so weird for Moscow, you'd think they were randomly Googled, but THEY WORK) are enjoyable, the story's flexibility is insane, and the fact that every little complete sequence of good OR bad decisions you do gets rewarded by a punny 'perk' that gives XP or some weird bonus to skills or price drops - that tells you that Obsidian did work through a lot.
It's normal for a game of this magnitude of choice and consequences to be this glitchy on release, that thought has become default in my mind already (and was the only reason I gave FO3 enough review doubt to play it). Or have none of the people bashing AP played the unpatched Fallout 2? Has it really been this long that everyone's forgotten that it was bashed for the exact same thing every thing Obsidian ever touched was bashed for? (recycling assets, crazy glitches rendering parts of the world uncompletable, differently-polished parts of the game, etc., etc.)
Yet these days, when people (especially in this part of the world) say they like Fallout, chances are they've never even played the original game once.
This doesn't really exonerate the stealth bugs because MGS, while not being a completely serious affair, IS a very procrastinatively detailed bible on how to build a stealth game. You do remember the crazier features like "Sure, you got spotted, but if you manage to shoot the radio out of the guy's hand, he won't be able to call for backup"? AP has moments like these, sometimes (like setting people on fire can cook off their grenades, meaning that you can't actually go crazy with phosphorous shotgun shells... at least not at CLOSE range), but it also has moments like 'alarm tripped because a guy from across all the level has seen your arm sticking out from behind cover'.
But then we pause and remember that the lastest 'proper' AAA-level stealth game to get to the PC, Splinter Cell Conviction, also wasn't entirely faultless (and, in my personal creepy opinion, not even as polished as AP), and you get perspective. It's unfashionable to expect a game be faultless out-of-the-box, these aren't the --- wait, I've just realised, it ALWAYS was unfashionable to do that! Can you name at least three AAA-grade games that didn't need two or three patches just to kill the choppy framerates and fix graphical issues? And if you remember that AP isn't really AAA (and, unless I've bonked my head too badly recently, never was intended as one)?
The game is fun, it's got memorable characters (most people would probably automagically think of Heck, but I'd rather think of Sis, fetish-fuel, whee!), and while it falls into the same logical trap as Mass Effect did with the 'sure, when you think you're choosing a kind answer, you might actually be doing so... emphasis on MIGHT', it does let you make your Mike Thorton anything from a bumbling rookie to a vicious misogynistic bastard with a LOT of stops in-between. And every variation will have an impact on the hows and whos of killins for every level with more than a simple "situation A/situation B" choice most of the time (the American Embassy is pretty much the only completely A-or-B situation in the entire game). It achieves what was promised, as far as I'm concerned, so yeah, I'm gonna keep on enjoying it, and probably replaying it every once in a while once the years have gone by too.
N.B. For clarity's sake, though, I suppose I should mention that I still think that the best non-stealthy rogue-operative themed TPS evar (as well as the best non-sci-fi TPS evar) is kill.switch, that shovelware Renderware-tech Splinter Cell wannabe. Because IT IS FUN, and that's what really matters.
