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Game Review
Fallout: New Vegas
Developed by Obsidian (2010)
Reviewed by Mat, added on Nov 20 2010
Fallout 3 is one of my two favorite games ever (the other being Civilization IV). I spent over 100 hours playing it and all of its expansions. I did pretty much everything you could do with it. I loved almost everything about it. So my anticipation level for New Vegas, a non-sequel followup, was higher than the mushroom clouds that dropped on the US during their war with China. Not even the declarations of respected game sites that the game was bug riddled and broken could lessen my excitement (well, only slightly)!
The story of New Vegas starts with you playing as a mail courier in the Mojave wasteland. You get gunned down and left for dead. Nursed back to health by a kind stranger, you set off on multiple quests to figure out who wanted you dead, why, and what they’re gonna do about it when they find out you aren’t. Along the way you’ll find all sorts of factions attempting to stake a claim to control of the Mojave wasteland. Caesar’s Legion is exactly like you think they are. They take all of their dress, structure, and brutality from the history. They enslave surrounding factions and have no qualms about crucifying entire towns to make a point. Other factions include the NCR, the Great Khans, and the enigmatic Mr. House, who runs New Vegas. You’ll also see friendly, and not so friendly faces, such as the Brotherhood of Steel and Super Mutants, although their inclusion feels kind of forced since Fallout 3 took place on the east coast, it’s kind of hard to believe that both groups were a nationwide thing. Being a desert, you’ll see new monsters roaming the wasteland, such as Praying Mantis’s and mutated rats. All of the different factions, gangsters, and whatnot branch off and you’ll eventually choose sides and allow the game to play out culminating in a battle for Hoover Dam.
I’m going to probably go against the grain here, but I find New Vegas to be far more enjoyable than Fallout 3, and that’s saying something considering the pedestal I place that game on. For one, I find the main storyline far more interesting. Fallout 3, for me anyway, was about exploration and side quests. I didn’t really care about the main mission and honestly, I thought it was pretty dull. New Vegas hits you with multiple stories and ways to play that I just liked a lot better. The wealth of options is superior to the previous game. The world itself is pretty much the same as Fallout 3, even down to Obsidian using the exact same skins, but they do one thing that Bethesda didn’t really do: varied locations. Here you’ll find snow covered mountains, vaults overgrown with vegetation, giant lakes with bombers sunk at the bottom, night sand storms as you travel the wastes, and of couse, the bright lights and casinos of New Vegas itself. The environment looks very similar, but there is so much more variety and just enough new stuff to make it feel fresh. New Vegas also offers companions which follow you around and help kill monsters with you. It’s another added layer of depth that I appreciated and eliminates those lonely hours of wandering the wastes by yourself, as they’ll often speak dialogue. It just makes the world feel more populated and intimate.
The elephant in the room is the game’s notorious bugs and glitches. I’m going to be totally honest here, I’ve played the game for 30+ hours so far and I’ve only witnessed two glitches, and they were incredibly minor. One was The King not appearing. I had to start another quest and then go back to the King’s quest before he showed up. Simple fix. The other was a caravan. The traders were stuck in a rock, but I could still trade with them, so that wasn’t a big deal at all. That’s it. But the best part of New Vegas? And I can’t stress this enough: I have not had a single lockup. Fallout 3 was notorious for freezing. You’d just be wandering the wastes and the game would freeze causing you to have to restart the XBOX. It was the most annoying goddamn bullshit ever. It probably happened about 40 times for me in Fallout 3. I’ve read that New Vegas freezes for people, but I have yet to experience it at all. This alone makes New Vegas so much more appealing for me knowing that I don’t have to be a save fiend because I’m scared I’m going to lose my progress. I picked up the game after the XBOX update was released for it, so maybe that’s why.
New Vegas isn’t perfect. Three Dog is gone, in place of Wayne Newton. And he sucks. He has zero personality. The oldies songs that were such a big part of the Fallout 3 experience are here again. They’re all new but most of them don’t strike you as particularly memorable. In other words, there is no Butcher Pete type stuff. The songs are still good, but they’re mostly just background music and won’t make you want to sing along. Even though I like the different paths you can take, unlike Fallout 3, you can’t really explore all of them “at once”. When you choose one branch, it locks out certain quests, so to really get the full scope of the game, you’ll have to play it 3 or 4 more times. Since the main choice comes early in the game, you should be sure to keep your early save games so as to revisit them in order to choose a different path. I also would have enjoyed some weather effects in this one. Why can’t their be acid rain? or snow? or lightning? I did appreciate the dust storms. Those were cool. There’s also a hardcore mode on New Vegas, that forces you to have to eat, drink, and sleep regularly in order to not die. It’s essentially a “realism” mode. I suppose it’s cool to have that feature, but really….is anyone going to do that other than extreme achievement fiends?
All in all, I love New Vegas. It doesn’t lock up on me, the characters are more interesting, the environments more varied, there are more locations and quests, and did I mention, it doesn’t lock up on me. Essentially, I’ve had no problems with bugs or glitches and have been having crazy fun. I plan on going back and playing all the different paths. Definitely ask for this for Christmas.
9.5 / 10
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