Does anyone else think Fallout: New Vegas is way, way too hard?

I am excellent at Fallout 3, and after completion of that game, I thought I'd give NV a go. So I got the game, bring it home and start playing. Ok so at first it's pretty familiar. Nothing much has changed. There's a card game that's new and a few touches. I'm liking it so far. I do some side missions. I'm about an hour in, so then I go and explore. That's when I started getting pissed off. I get gang raped by ******$ radscorpions over and over again. I throw dynamite, I use the shotgun and the magnum. NOTHING seems to drain their health. I die like 5 times so I try another route. Same deal but with these annoying, flying little fuckerz. All that happens is I die, die, die, die, die, and die some more. It's frustrating as HELL because these types of enemies are nothing in F3.