It Doesn't Want Me to Like It, but I Still Do
I've sworn at it, I've angrily left the room and gone for a walk to cool off, I've relished in thinking about all of the horrible, horrible things I could say about it, but in the end... I just love the game too damn much. No, I'm not talking about Super Meat Boy. I'm talking about Fallout: New Vegas, a game that has been fighting me tooth and nail since I first booted it up. It's a testament to how much fun the game truly is that despite its best efforts, it can't make me dislike it. Every technical problem it throws at me I bear, only because I want to keep playing it regardless. It crashes, its frame rate tanks, it deletes my saved game data and my opponents seem to have an incredible talent for levitation – yet, I keep playing.
The gameplay in New Vegas doesn't blaze many trails. Newly added gameplay mechanics such as crafting, weapon modding, iron sight aiming and Hardcore mode aren’t particularly interesting, nor help the experience. I only bothered with customizing my weapon once I had more money than I knew what to do with, and crafting I didn't bother with at all. Iron sight aiming, while a nice addition, is fairly impractical as the AI makes targeting moving objects unpredictable and difficult. On top of that, since your accuracy is decided more by formula rather than by actual shooting prowess, it doesn't feel particularly satisfying - unless of course you are two or three feet away from your opponent, in which case you really ought to just be using vats and clicking on their head. Finally, Hardcore mode serves more to annoy the player than add any sort of depth.
What New Vegas has improved upon however, is the companion system. I played through most of New Vegas with companions and never felt they got in my way. If they did, I simply instructed them to stay where they were as I went ahead temporarily. To add to this, the newly implemented faction system is impressive for the sole reason that there are simply so many factions to meet, aid or destroy.
Much like its predecessor, Fallout: New Vegas excels thanks to its wealth of compelling characters, with enough content to last months. Populated by characters of all types - perhaps more so than Fallout 3 - I found myself able to relate, despise or sympathize with them all. The amount of quality voice acting present in the game completely blew my mind, making the conversations you have and actions you take feel impactful. Completing quests is also an incredibly satisfying experience, as it provides an opportunity to learn more about the characters and the story behind them, rather than seeming like a mere exercise in gaining XP. Obsidian clearly put an enormous amount of work into making the characters both engaging and genuine.
But then your game crashes. And after restarting to find your quick saves have been overwritten - costing you hours - you’ll be delighted when your frame rate inevitably drops to a slideshow. If things finally manage to recover, you might be lucky enough to witness your enemy’s glitching out and getting trapped in a run animation, rendering them invincible and utterly unable to move. In total, the game crashed on me seven times. A bizarre glitch caused it to overwrite all quicksaves and autosaves with earlier versions every time I exited the game. This meant that each time it crashed before I made a hard save, I lost hours of progress.
Essentially, I played about a third of Fallout: New Vegas twice, just accounting for the time I spent re-completing quests after a crash - and this was on PC, the so-called ‘superior’ version. In addition to outright game failure, New Vegas is populated with industry classics, such as getting trapped in geometry and enemies no-clipping through walls. At one point, whilst attacking a group of enemies and eliminating what I thought to be all of them, I began to walk away only to get shot and killed, unable to find the gunman. It was only after reloading the save that I discovered him - suspended in the air two storeys above me.
What kills me the most is that despite how crippling these issues were...I kept playing. These bugs don't outright break the game or make it unplayable - but they certainly try. It's a testament to how good New Vegas is that I can overlook all of its shortcomings and suffer the abuse, just to keep playing.
+ Incredibly diverse world and characters
+ Huge amount of quality voice acting
+ Engaging storyline
- Unimpressive gameplay additions
- Substantial technical issues
