Fallout: New Vegas

Nuff said...



My review is too short so here are some extra words for padding.

Pros:

• Great story, perhaps better than 3's
• Interesting characters
• Some new additions to gameplay (sights, mods)
• Deep expansive open world
• Less drab graphics than 3's
• Great RPG elements
• Multiple factions

Cons:

• Not allot of differentiation from 3
• Still can't explore after completing game
• Graphics still look pretty bad

Verdict: Fallout NV is sort of a Fallout 3.5, but it is still great game to play that improves on a number of things. Still a good game.

8 /10.

In my honest opinion, this is the best fallout game. The lights of new Vegas, the multiple endings, the soundtrack, all the different settlements and the reputation system within the settlements. This game has it all! The wild wasteland trait really adds some great references in the game aswell

After the mega-hit that was Fallout 3 a follow up was inevitable. Fallout: New Vegas attempts to recapture the shock and awe of Fallout 3, while adding a little spice in the form of new locations, gameplay, and the karma system.

As the name suggests Fallout: New Vegas takes place in a post apocalyptic Mojave desert. Your character is a courier who is shot in the head and left for dead. Luckily a friendly robot digs you up and takes you to a town for medical support. Once you're back on your feet you need to find out who shot you and why and retrieve the package they stole from you. But it's not that simple when you've got two major armies battling for control of the area, raiders, gangs, and countless wasteland critters in your way.

One of the things that sets New Vegas apart from Fallout 3 is... well Vegas. Unlike the rest of the Mojave, Vegas was never hit by the nukes. It still has the lights, casinos and sin of the old world attached to it. This attracts more than just tourists. Several military forces are pulling for control of Vegas and Hover Dam, and your choices will decide the winner.

Gameplay is similar to Fallout 3. You have guns, explosives, melee weapons, energy weapons, and even your own two fists to take care of the bad guys. The combat can be played in real time or in V.A.T.S. When using V.A.T.S. the game is paused and you select body parts to attack. Their chance of hitting and the enemies health are displayed. V.A.T.S. requires action points which are replenished in real-time combat, so you'll be using both evenly. The game can be played in first and third person, although first is highly recommended. When it comes to exploration there are no vehicles, which mean you'll be walking everywhere. Luckily once you've discovered an area you can fast travel there. Each time you level up you get to increase your skills. Skills determine how deadly you are with certain weapons, how tough you are, the locks you can pick, and the people you can trick. Every other time you level up you pick perks. Perks give special abilities to your character. Perks are unlocked depending on your current skill level with different skills so it's recommended you play through a second time to experience everything.

The other big gameplay feature is your karma and reputation. Karma is your personal choices on how to handle situations. Stealing and killing civilians will lower your karma while helping others will raise it. Different groups treat you differently depending on your karma but it's not as important as reputation. Your reputation is how much different groups like or dislike you. The more a group likes you the higher the discounts you get at their shops and the more support they'll lend you against foes. The more a group dislikes you the higher the prices the at their shops and the more likely they'll be to put bounties on your head. In makes you think twice about who you double cross. You won't be able to be friends with everyone so certain quests will be locked, so it's again highly recommended you play through a second time.

The graphics are (for the most part) amazing. Character models look great and it's breathtaking to climb a steep hill and see the Vegas strip shining for miles over a bleak and destroyed wasteland. The occasional texture fade-ins and unblinking eyes of NPCs break the realism.

Fallout: New Vegas sounds perfect, but it's not. The game is riddled with glitches. Some small like invisible walls and clipping, some big like hostile NPCs and and game crashes. If you save often it won't be a problem but it's still annoying.

All in all Fallout: New Vegas is an impressive game that any fan of shooters, role players, or gambling would be a fool to miss.

When this game came out I had never played Fallout before, but a lot of people I knew (IRL or internet) were excited for it and I started listening to them talk. What I heard was a lot of positive but also lots about bugs, glitches, freezing and just how much time it consumes – ie similar to what I had heard about Fallout 3. Since then I picked up FO3 for tiny money and loved it despite the very occasional freeze-up in my 100 hours or so playing! Despite this, I let the negative things about NV put me off picking it up for a while before eventually getting it.

As before I find that Fallout delivers me a massive gaming experience with so much to explore and do that I get totally immersed in this world despite me not really being a big RPG fan. At time of writing I have played the game for around 130 hours and still have a couple of the DLC sections I want to do. It is also worth saying that this time is with one character. As with FO3, you have a main storyline but you also have endless little side questions, many of which are linked to the story but a lot of which are simply optional. In terms of the story, it is much better than the previous game and I did find it interesting to follow along, although not so interesting that I tried to rush it – having played the previous game I knew that the story would wait for me to progress it. I also benefited from knowing that there was a specific point in the story where you do have to make a decision to align yourself definitively with one of four factions – so I put this point off for as long as possible so that I can make a save here (as the exploring and discovering is a massive part of the game for me, repeating 80 hours for the sake of a different ending doesn't appeal).

However I did like the way that different factions do treat you different. In FO3, the karma thing makes a difference but not a massive difference. In NV it makes things much more engaging that, if you decide to attack NCR for fun, then don't expect them to keep giving you missions and smiling at you – they will attack and you may find you go so far that you remain enemies throughout. I enjoyed this and, as I play middle-of-the-road, it was fun keeping everyone more or less onside by doing side-quests etc. As before, exploring may not look fun to someone watching you play, but it is fun to never know what is coming and find locations that might just be a burnt out car with some stuff – or come over the hill to find the city of New Vegas illuminating the skyline. Indeed I enjoyed the side quests so much that I had done 80 hours and the majority of them before I even went to Boulder City (which is early in the main story).

The game looks and feels the same as FO3 and it is a little disappointing that graphics haven't moved on since then, but only a little – the game quickly makes you forget superficial details like that with how enjoyable the gameplay and world is. Those that were excited about the strip will have been disappointed to find that it is quite a small settlement with only a small number of buildings, but personally I liked it as it was only ever going to be an oasis in the desert and not a massive city. I also very much liked seeing it from afar at night and its location was perfect for that. The audio design was improved from FO3. OK we have more star voices in small roles, but for me the main thing was that more voices were used for characters you don't interact with, whereas in FO3 all males had the same voice and phrase.

I didn't dare play hardcore, but this game was enjoyably tough even in the normal mode. Enemies seemed harder and some of the tougher ones were scattered around nicely – although I missed my dartgun at first, I was glad that the Deathclaws remained a challenge throughout, and couldn't just be slowed down with one dart. The only downside of playing for so long and doing all the side quests before advancing the story was that, by the time I did finally get around to choosing a side and fighting at Hoover Dam, I was such a high level that I was pretty hard to stop; but personally the handful of actual story missions were just a small part of the game when you consider the wider world.

Overall Fallout New Vegas did it for me again. A huge world with so much to do – yes visually it is essentially a mod of FO3 but this only bothered me for the first few seconds; after that I was off out into the wasteland, making moral decisions, exploring, helping out towns, setting up murderous old women, leading a cult to their salvation and keeping all factions on my side. Crashes and glitches for me were probably 1 in 15 hours, which I can happily live with in exchange for such a great game.