Was it worth 36 hours of playing?
Fallout New Vegas is Obsidians return to the Fallout Series since Bethesda Software took over and created Fallout 3. It’s been two years since Fallout 3 was released and I was very excited to get my hands onto New Vegas.
You play a courier in the Mojave wasteland that is trying to deliver a package but gets ambushed. You soon find out that the package contained a platinum chip and is stolen from you just before you get shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. You soon wake up and discover that you have been saved with the help of a doctor. With the help of the doctor you create your characters sex, name, and face. You also go into the process creating what kind of character you will be, with using S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points to determine your strength and intelligence and so on. After that is done you do some word association tests and even some ink blots that determine what traits you will receive. The traits are different from perks because there is a certain give and take when it comes to the traits. You then are sent on your way to get you revenge on whoever tried to kill you.
This is where the main story starts at; it is a revenge tale on bringing the man who shot you to justice. You soon realize there is a lot more going in the Mojave wasteland then you think. There is a man named Mr. House who wishes to see you in New Vegas. There are two competing factions fighting for the Hoover Dam. The NCR (National California Republic) are trying to police and control the Mojave wasteland from having it fall into the Caesar’s Legion which is made up of slavers. There are other factions in the game including Boomers, The Kings, Powder Gangers, and The Brotherhood of Steel
I enjoyed all the quest missions I was able to do. The story of Fallout New Vegas is defiantly one of its strongest points. The story is fun and engaging and it make you never want to put the controller down. I found myself playing for eight straight hours on a Saturday, I turned it off for awhile but then a couple hours later I came right back to it. The game sucks you in and it never lets go.
New Vegas retains the old karma system from Fallout 3 but it also adds a reputation system. With the rep system you can do good things to groups or towns and you will gain fame or gain infamy depending on what you do for them. I am not a fan of this kind of rep system, you do side quests for one faction and it turns out that you have to kill people from another faction. So if you try and go into the other fractions base to talk to the leader to try and get more quests they won’t let you in because you could be hated by that group. The karma system is useless in this game it does not govern any extra responses on if you have good or bad karma. It doesn’t make sense at times, like when you are trying to hack into a computer for a good cause, you get hit with bad karma. It just gets really frustrating and I wish they had ether kept the rep system and got rid of the karma system or got rid of the rep system and implemented the karma system better like in Fallout 3.
New Vegas also has companions and they are improved. In Fallout 3 I never had a companion but in New Vegas they actually help a lot. They can clear out vaults without you ever having to fire your gun, and you still get the experience points for the kills. You can have up to two companions at once; in some spots I would not even be able to get past if it wasn’t for the help of them. You can also use them as mules to carry your equipment.
The game is broken up into quests; you will receive side quests from faction leaders and quests related to hunting down your thief that stole your package. I love doing side quests, at first I was not receiving that many side quests but once you get further into the game one quest can lead to two or three different quests. With the completion of quest you receive experience points that go to your overall level. You also receive experience points for killing anything, finding new locations, hacking, lock picking, and doing a successful speech or barter commands. With every level you gain you get to distribute points into different skill that will help you on your journey. Every two levels you gain, you will be able to add a perk to your character such as Bloody Mess or Swift Learner. They have added new perks to New Vegas that will make you second guess which one to take. I often found myself stuck at these points because I just wanted all of them and trying to pick the right one can help out a lot in the way you play the game.
Guns are still the best option to survive the desert wasteland. In New Vegas you are able to aim down your iron sights, which is new to the Fallout series but I really never used it. You also have a large variety of melee weapons at your disposal. Melee weapons aren’t necessary, I barley every used them but you are able to use them in V.A.T.S. V.A.T.S. returns and still is the best way to kill anything, V.A.T.S. gives you the option of shooting a certain body part and it will give the percentage of hitting that body part. You are also able to add mods to your weapons like silencers or expanded magazines; I never found the need to use a gun with a silencer on it. Obsidian has also added workbenches; these benches are used for crafting items like ammo and chems. I found this feature to be a waste; you find so much ammo and items throughout the game that I hardly ever ran out.
Now for the bad part, New Vegas uses the Gamebryo engine; this is the same engine that has been used for Fallout 3 and Oblivion. If you played Fallout 3 then all of the games textures and bizarre goings on will seem all too familiar. The game looks just like Fallout 3, from the wasteland to the vaults, from lock picking to hacking computers, to all the buildings, and everything looks like the previous game. All expect New Vegas that is lit up with colorful lights and a gambling atmosphere. I was expecting different textures, since it has been two years since Fallout 3. I had weird stuff happening to me like; I was inside a building and I was leaving the building to go outside, well after the load screen I hear a big load crashing noise and all of a sudden the lady from the junkyard is attacking me along with some dogs and rats. I didn’t do anything to provoke this attack so I reloaded and went out the door again and it didn’t happen. So if you have played Fallout 3 or Oblivion then you are probably now what I am talking about.
The load times are bad, the longer you play the game the longer the load times are. Sometimes when you are on your way back to turn in a completed quest, you have to go through two to three load screens with each load screen lasting 30 to 40 seconds, it can get ridiculous. It is best just to turn it off for an hour and then turn it back on, and the load times will be considerably less. The game also froze on me two or three times and I had to restart my system. I didn’t find it a problem, because when it would freeze I could take a break, it is amazing how long you can hold going to the bathroom just to try to finish a quest.
All in all I enjoyed Fallout; New Vegas, it was one of the best single person experiences I have had this year and will definitely makes my top ten for the year. It is hard to recommend because of all the bugs and glitches, but if you can look past those problems you will enjoy yourself. If you have a lot of time on your hands and enjoyed Fallout 3, then you should be playing this game. If not give it a rental and if it pulls you in just do neglect tending to personal hygiene or your significant other. 36 hours is a long time to spend on one game, but it was worth it.
