hi i have been watching these forums from time to time its been KILLING me holding out to play new vegas for this long, it was so hard to hold myself from not buying this from day 1 but i knew there would be a lot of problems till it was patched up, at first i was gonna wait about 3 months after game of the year edition was released to finally buy it and get a lot for a little money but i just cant wait anymore haha, my question is when i get this game (after psn is back up) will it let me download all the patches or only 1.5? if it doesnt let me download the previous patches it would make no sense but i remember some people on here saying once i new patch is out u cant download the old patch

It will download all patches at once. You can't choose a specific patch you want to get, and you will get all previous ones along with any new one.

As long as your ps3 has an internet connection, it'll automatically download the patches when you start the game. It doesn't matter if PSN is up or not.