The problem is that they are first person shooters that want to be RPGs. When it tries to be an RPG, the populations are sparse and the world seems empty and filled with cardboard cutouts, and when it tries to be a shooter, the mechanics fall flat, such as shooting through people at close range, or having to shoot people five thousand times in the face to kill them.
Caesar and his Praetorian Guards, once stood there, while I unloaded what seemed like hundreds of armor piercing rounds out of 'This Machine' directly into their heads. They are armed in football gear. Caesar isn't even wearing a helmet.
I guess what I mean is, the shooting behaves like Borderlands when it wants to be like Gears of War, and the RPG elements are like, well, Oblivion, when it wants to be like Fallout 2.
Damn, though, do I love the game.
But seriously, don't get the DLC. This first one, Dead Money, especially. It adds absolutely nothing of value to the story arch, to the setting. Hell, even to your armory. The whole thing can be summed up roughly as a Ten Dollar Big Lipped Alligator Moment. You go in, you do the thing, you leave, thinking, 'Well, that happened', and none of it matters. This is not Broken Steel, or The Pitt, or Mothership Zeta. Hell, this isn't even Operation Anchorage. It's a package of ten dollar nothing.