One thing that all games have in common is that it's so easy to gain karma. You get it from killing normally hostile enemies such as raiders, highwaymen, and other humans that attack out in the wasteland. You get it from doing certain quest solutions. In New Vegas, you gain karma from killing fiends and feral ghouls, making it difficult to beat the game with anything less than good karma.

It's almost as if the game creators intended for you to be the hero of the story. In fact, from what I've seen in previous playthroughs, any negative karma you gain can be nulled by defending yourself against the human enemies of the wasteland. In Fallout 3, this only applies to certain creatures and humans with the karma level Very Evil. Fallout 1 didn't have all that many quests that gave you bad karma. Mandatory tasks such as getting the water chip, joining the Brotherhood of Steel, and blowing up the Military Base and the Cathedral all gave you good karma. The only way to truly rack up the evil karma is by going on a killing spree, massacring entire towns. Killing people seems to be a faster way to lower your karma aside from stealing and hacking owned terminals in New Vegas if you want to get Ain't Like That Now.

The last few times I played Fallout 2 as an evil karma character, most of my evil karma was gained from killing the Shi in San Francisco after formatting the emperor computer. That's the only way I've ever been able to beat the game with the Devil Spawn title. In the first game, I found that most of the evil karma I get from completing the evil quests is negated after blowing up the Military Base and Cathedral, so I don't have a low enough reputation to blow away the overseer at the end. Unless I sneak past all those mutants or have the Childkiller title.

Why is the karma system of these games so flawed? How can you be evil if there is so much good karma to gain?