I think Fallout 3 is GOTY material, easily. And I'm not finding it all that hard really. Once you level up a few times, you can start exploring more, which is the way it should be. The developers make sure to keep you within certain boundaries when you first start by handing your ass to you if you go too far. What fun would it be if you could walk all over the map with zero effort?
Spend some time building your character, fighting enemies close to home, and gathering weapons and ammo. You need to be properly armed and protected before heading too far out into the wastes. I haven't played in about two weeks, but I'm at level 13 or so, and there haven't been many situations where I wondered into something and got killed unless I was stupid and didn't pay attention to my surroundings. You can't just run around; you need to observe carefully.
If you're not too far in the game and don't mind starting over, I highly recommend you emphasize the intelligence, strength, and endurance attributes during the baby builder. Having a high intelligence gives you more skill points to distribute when you level up, endurance helps you survive battles more easily, and strength will allow you to wear heavier armor and gather more items to sell when you're in town. As for skills, I recommend Medicine, Science, and Small Guns as focus points. The higher your Medicine skill, the more you recover when using stimpaks, which is priceless. I go out into the wilds carrying 50+ stimpaks (they don't weigh anything), and each one gives me about 85HP at my current level. I can fight all damn day and still have stimpaks to spare. Science will help you hack the terminals (very tough to get around without that).
And I think the character creation at the beginning is one of the most innovative ways I've seen to create an RPG character. I was thoroughly entertained throughout.
Fallout 3 is all about atmosphere, and if your intention is to blow through the game, you're going to miss so much good stuff. It's definitely an explorer's game, no doubt. Not a game for run-n-gunners. I can't believe the sheer number of locations I've found so far, and I've only covered 30% of the map, if that.