Wow.
Glad I play the PC version. I'm told it had its bugs too, and a lot of them are clearly supposed to be endemic to the entire game regardless of platform, but I just did not have these kinds of problems.
On rare occasions, I would see a critter stuck on a railroad track. Aw, it caught its widdle footy onna split-up tie. *BAM* Yay free XP!
I NEVER had a hard crash happen. Ever. Before or after the "Big Patch". With or without running tons of mods (which I currently do).
"Save Often, Save Well" has been my gaming creed for RPGs since the '80s. I rarely needed to backtrack more than a couple saves to deal with the worst plot-advancement issues. Though I DID get locked into fighting for Yes Man when I WANTED to fight for the NCR, because I ignored the flavor text preceding a particular mission that said "do this and you're locked in". As a result, I ran the anti-assassination mission for NCR, and succeeded, but still couldn't launch their side of the Hoover Dam battle. With the Big Patch, of course, you now get a popup telling you flat-out that continuing to work for Faction A will turn Faction B entirely against you...
So, yeah. Played, enjoyed, sorry you didn't...try a PC next time. -