More of the same. That's the thought that kept coming to mind whenever I played through this game. I put somewhere between 15-20 hours into this game and mostly critical pathed it.  My experience was fun, but never fully engaging or as exciting as Fallout 3 was.  The addition of modding your gun was entirely lost on me as I never did it once and I never had any incentive too.  The warring factions part was interesting, but I cared very little about either of the factions and I ended up just pulling a Yojimbo and playing both sides to serve my own needs.  I also went through the entire game without encountering a companion to recruit.  I acknowledge that I didn't actively seek one out, but if throughout the entire course of the main storyline I didn't even encounter one of them, then that certainly seems odd to me.  Another thing that irritated me? Corazon. That's all I have to say about that subject.  Overall, I enjoyed the game, but it was underwhelming.  They say war never changes, I guess neither does game design....

More of the same. That's the thought that kept coming to mind whenever I played through this game. I put somewhere between 15-20 hours into this game and mostly critical pathed it.  My experience was fun, but never fully engaging or as exciting as Fallout 3 was.  The addition of modding your gun was entirely lost on me as I never did it once and I never had any incentive too.  The warring factions part was interesting, but I cared very little about either of the factions and I ended up just pulling a Yojimbo and playing both sides to serve my own needs.  I also went through the entire game without encountering a companion to recruit.  I acknowledge that I didn't actively seek one out, but if throughout the entire course of the main storyline I didn't even encounter one of them, then that certainly seems odd to me.  Another thing that irritated me? Corazon. That's all I have to say about that subject.  Overall, I enjoyed the game, but it was underwhelming.  They say war never changes, I guess neither does game design....

I played a good deal more of it (around 70 hours), but that isn't much when you consider I put around 150 in Fallout 3. It was definitely less interesting.

Sounds like you missed out on many epic things in that game brah
 
I think this calls for a second playthrough, I mean c'mon, no Boone? WTF were you doing all those hours?!

It does come across as an "expansion pack" at first glance, but I really do think New Vegas is a much better game overall than Fallout 3. It pretty much plays the same, sure, but there's a whole load of little touches where it excels over its predecessor. For one, the main plot really goes above and beyond what we saw in 3. 3 was too simplistic, the Brotherhood were the "good guys", the Enclave the "bad guys."  The Legion in Vegas does come across as cartoonishly evil, with all the slavery and wholesale slaughter of innocent people, but there's clearly no distinctive 'good' alternative between the NCR and House, who are both clearly working towards their own aims rather than out of the goodness of their hearts. I guess I just prefer stories where things are morally grey.
 
What really makes Vegas shine is the dialogue. There's a lot of great characters in the game ,and you really did yourself a disservice if you didn't chat to everyone you met. This is why you might have skipped over the companions, as apart from Lily and Raul, none of them are really out of the way when you're doing the Main Quest. You probably walked right past Cass, Boone, Arcade and Ronny without even noticing them, and they all have great stories to tell if you journey with them. There is an amazing amount of alternative content if you go out there and look for it, and a load of interesting people and situations to find along the way.
 
The only thing I really miss from Fallout 3 were the random encounters. It was so fun to be walking past some random ruins when out of nowhere an Enclave Vertibrid drops some shock troopers in your path, or a herd of mad Brahmin come charging across the wastes towards you, or you find a bunch of Raiders in some brutalistic initiation ceremony. Having dumped a good 100+ hours in Vegas over a few characters I now feel that I've seen it all. I know exactly that I'm going to be ambushed by Raiders when I head down the road towards Nipton, that no matter which character I play as, I'm always going to find a Blind Deathclaw sitting around in the middle of Primm Pass. It's a shame, but it just makes me want more content for this great game, I really enjoyed Dead Money and hope the other bits of DLC are just as good.

It's probably also worth noting that I put no skills into weapons, so at times the game was frustrating. All the comments here make me want to start a new game with a more sensible character and just skip the main storyline.  Thoughts?