So yeah totally realize that this is coming in a little late but it is really a result of all those things that interfere with your free time such as holiday vacation, a new semester at school and wanting to play the new games I have received rather than write about slightly older ones. You know what for once I am not going to reiterate why I wrote this series of blogs if you are interested (doubt it) you can check out one of my previous ones however I’ll just say it comes as a result of game of the year list envy. Enough of all that hogwash and excuses though I want to talk about the last game I played of 2012. A game I sunk more hours into than I expected and a game I’ve been trying to tackle since 2010, Fallout: New Vegas.

My interest in Fallout comes from a friend of mine who has been pretty reliable recommending me gamer related stuff (including Giantbomb so thank him for these massive blogs ha ha, also he is Peter on the site if interested in stalking) however his one misstep was with Bioshock which he swore I would love. For no discernible reason except that I wasn’t into the atmosphere (I know someone is like WHAT the atmosphere is awesome) and the plasmid/gun combo wasn’t doing it for me either. Honestly I can’t pin own exactly why I stopped playing Bioshock and normally I’m a dude who has like a 5 hour grace period for a game to hook me but after only an hour or two I decided I wasn’t interested and called my friend and gave him shit ha ha. Back then I was broke and still traded games in and I was all you better redeem yourself and give me a real suggestion, he mentioned Fallout 3. Another winning suggestion. I had no knowledge of the series but quickly adapted to the huge setting and new mechanics (despite an early setback of being pissed off because on the first “go to the grocery store mission” a big group of Talon mercs were waiting for me and blew me apart ha ha). Soon enough I was scrounging the world for missions and more story to expand my Pip-Boy’s info about the dilapidated place I now found myself in. A year or two after finishing the game I realized there was a trophy update for the game and went back through collecting the trophies for the pure enjoyment of it. This was even better because there were a few sidemissions I had missed which turned out to be some of my favourites. But anyway on to New Vegas.

I picked up New Vegas soon after it came out an amidst all of the hub ub about it being broken. While playing Fallout 3 I couldn’t even remember it crashing that often (I imagine it did but with no serious harm one) so I figured the game would be a bit buggy, maybe a bit annoying but not enough to distract me from playing it. I was wrong. So the first time I played the game about 5 hours and found the game had made me reset 3 times already, I was super frustrated and had not been able to really immerse myself in the new world yet. Hearing about all the potential patches I said fuck it I’ll wait and moved on to something else until then. I believe I waited a year and then gave the game another try. This time I played the game for 13 hours (I know because I still had these saves when I went to play this last time) and the game crashed eight times. These may sound like exaggerations but after the first time I actually counted to make sure I wasn’t crazy. In my 13 hours with the game I wasn’t having a ton of fun yet as I was constantly saving, fearful of losing progress. I want to reiterate that I rarely if ever walk away from games incomplete but I said fuck this shit again and moved on. Until the end of 2012 when I felt like playing an RPG, which I think had something to do with all the fallout (ha ha) following the release of Skyrim from the previous year. People went nuts about that game and I wanted to play a similar style so I looked in my backlog of games and said one last time or never again.

I realize I’m harping on the technical issues with this game a bit much, however, this is one of the only games (the other being Halo for PC, but that was my crap PC not the game itself) which was so buggy it actually effected my interest in playing it. About thirty minutes in I had my first crash (tried to drink while a “complete mission” tag was scrolling across the screen) and I inhaled and ploughed through it. I didn’t count the number of crashes this time, mostly cause I didn’t want to be so distracted by them as to lose my interest in the game again. And with the exception of one spot (going from a campsite across a big valley toward Red Rock) being completely broken, I’m serious tried to find a way around but the game crashed no matter which way I came at it. The game was eventually fine and I could sort of stop worrying about saving every ten minutes. But yeah sorry about that whole tangent but that was my initial experience and as you can see not a very positive one which was a shame because I was predisposed to liking this kind of game.

The main plot of the story was in some ways superior to that of Fallout 3 and from many people I have heard this is the strongest point of reference versus Fallout 3. I agree to a point and I liked the new faction interaction stuff at play in the game. However, I did feel as though the characters were weaker on the whole than in Fallout 3. There was no real charismatic force such as Three Dog, no companion who I liked as much as Fawkes (although Lily was super interesting) and no character as heartfelt and earnest as your dad from 3 (also Liam Neeson people c’mon). However, there were some people and moments which much be brought up as bringing some great highlights to the game. One of the most horrible things was when in my first ending playthrough with the NCR I disconnected Mr. House, his screams of “you should have killed me!” and the horror of what I had done to this guy made me go wow I’m a complete dick for no real reason. The Boomer society was also interesting as well as their overall “goal” of dropping bombs from the sky, and how the Brotherhood of Steel was shown as vulnerable and out of date with society when previously they had been simply the badasses in 3. The stuff about the individual endings of each main story faction were sort of meh, the “final boss” characters of the Generals were not really developed despite the whisperings about Lanius. The conclusions mostly were unsatisfying, and I know it is Fallout so there will not be happiness but they played out exactly as I guessed with the exception of House and Independent. I was like if Legion wins there will be awful brutality but everything will run and be prosperous, if NCR wins the little guy will be rolled over and their bureaucracy won’t be efficient, yup that’s about right. I think I preferred the more simplified ending of 3 where no you do not save the entire world but you do bring light to the territory by purifying the water.

Cutting through all the bullshit about bugs and endings I think my biggest gripe with the game is the forgettable sidequests in New Vegas. In Fallout 3 I can name some of my favourites off the top of my head, the vampire mission, the awesome tree people mission, the giant ant mission to a lesser extent etc. In New Vegas I can’t recall quests of that calibre at all. If you are thinking hey that guy didn’t look, I did I borrowed a guide and tried to find the best sidequests…there weren’t any really. Thinking hard I can maybe say the cannibal hotel but that was sort of anti-climatic and maybe the bomb threat but once again was sort of whatever. I mean the Fallout games have hours and hours of missions to tear through but I was honestly expecting just a few gems in there to think about later and I was disappointed about the lack of them.

I’ve been bitching a lot but getting across my love for 3 and my disappointment in New Vegas must be stated, however, I wouldn’t have played 80 hours of this game if I thought it was crap so I’ll talk about what was cool. This includes looting corpses and finding awesome stuff, I actually loved a lot of the weapons in this game including the anti-material rifle (goodbye alpha deathclaw muhaha) the Q plasma rifle and (although from the OWB dlc) Jeb’s plasma (I forget the exact name). VATS and causing random mayhem is still a blast, running around picking fights with mutated animals, ghouls and fucking Powder Gangers (seriously f those guys) is super enjoyable, looting them for goods for caps still great. This game almost had an excess of stuff so that I had a ton of money by the end of the game but it was still super satisfying.

One of my favourite parts of Fallout was still in play in New Vegas, that being of discovering vaults. I love going down into these godforsaken places and reading about what awful experiment when wrong (best in New Vegas being the plant vault and the political death vault). I must also say that probably my favourite piece of content I played from New Vegas was dlc. After asking you guys your opinion on the best NV dlc I went with Old World Blues and was delighted. The story, characters, voice acting, loot and comedy were all gold. I even loved the base they gave you and the silly personalities given to the objects in it (toaster and book chute made me lol). It is a FUCKING shame that the rest of the side quests weren’t as great as this content and it makes me sad to think that there are people who will play NV and not this great piece of content, if you are on the fence don’t be get this dlc now.

Alright this blog got huge so I’ll move on to the trophy section. Um the trophy section wasn’t great, had the typical do damage with each kind of weapon and other BS like heal with food which was tedious to get. I sort of wish they had more side quest trophies to encourage people to play more of their game but maybe they realized they weren’t strong quests either. Overall not super hard just time consuming getting the different endings etc.

So there it is New Vegas is a game with some major issues but is still a Fallout game an if you loved 3 you should play this game if only to scratch that itch for looting goodness. My biggest gripes are with the poor side missions and the fact that this game was borderline broken for an extended period of time, I would’ve finished this game in 2010 if not for this fact. Thanks for reading if you managed to make it. I’m not sure if I’m going to continue this series into 2013 as people don’t have time to read these gargantuan things. I’m thinking maybe make them shorter or cease this madness. Anyway so far in 2013 I’ve played XCOM and now am going through Playstation All Stars. We’ll see if I feel like talking about em. Once again peace out renegades.