After clocking up a good 38-ish hours of gameplay im starting to wonder if there is any point in continuing playing?

*possible spoilers?*

The problem i'm having is that the western part of the map seems to be a no-go area for me, i get game crashes if i go anywhere near, or attempt to pass Vault 22, El Rey Motel, Goodsprings and its surrounding area. Basically the entire western part of the world map is inaccessible to me, iv'e tried everything from playing with or without the patch, clearing cache, starting new game's, reverting save's...it's like that area doe's not exist on my game disc! (getting out of Goodsprings takes pure luck
-.-).

Funnily enough i'm on my 2nd disc and still no change. Is anyone else having this problem?

Is it even possible to fix game crashes via patches? i fear this wont be fixed and i'd have wasted my money on half a game

The mid and eastern world map seem's to work fine (the odd skipping once in a while makes me paranoid im about to run into another no go map area )

F:NV is smaller than Oblivion and F:3 and the latest in the line using the GameBryo engine, surely this should not be happening....

This is a bit of a jumbled response, but its early and have been up all night:

This game seems to have alot of issues dealing with vertical mesh. Things like tall rock walls or buildings. When you get close to those mountains, many people see the game slow down and get choppy. This is either poor programming, or the game trying to push too much through the console (which could also be argued to be poor programming I suppose).

If your console is not well ventilated, then it may be locking up due to heat.

One option may be for you to delete your Xbox system cache, remove the game from the hard drive (if you installed it) and play from the disc.

Otherwise, If you are playing from the disc, then you can greatly reduce your Xbox heat by installing the game to the hard drive (if so equipped). This will keep your disc from spinning which causes the xbox to use less power, thus reducing the heat output. This game WILL cause your xbox to heat up. The game will also load faster if installed on the hard drive, which may permit the game engine to load those mesh vertical walls faster.

Also, it helps to not do alot of spinning around with your character, stay pointed in one direction as much as possible to prevent overwhelming the hardware.