I had the opposite reaction. Fallout 3 was too small a scope. I felt like I was just walking around doing stuff. In New Vagas I had an actual reason to run around and fight. It was nice.
I don't exactly remember because it was 2-3 years ago but it wasn't memorable. I remember the dialogue being (please go over there to get me 20 nuka colas because I love nuka colas).
I just remember it wasn't good. It's bound to be not good because of the nature of the game.
Just opened it up (could have gotten it earlier but asked for it as a Christmas present so that it wouldn't interfere with my studies lol)...so far my one complaint is that it froze mid combat and I had to restart.
Edit: A lot of the dialogue is fairly flat, but I can look past that.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
There are hotkeys in the game, on the PS3 you have to go into your inventory and press the triangle button. To activate what you have done, just toggle the d pad up or down, which freezes action, and you can choose whatever spell or item that you hotkeyed. This is of course if that was what you meant by hotkeys.
When on the favorites menu you can hotkey something to the left and right D-pad by scrolling to the item in the favorites menu that you want to hotkey and press and hold the left or right D-pad for on the fly switching without pausing anything. You only get 2 hotkeys obviously, so choose carefully.