Fallout: New Vegas User Review

Fallout: New Vegas puts you in the boots of a dead courier. Well, maybe not dead but pretty close in the opening sequence. You are found and brought to a local doctor where you answer some questions on the GOAT exam...whoops, I mean some psychological questions. You also get to build your character's father's....wait no, your characters features and spend some points in the SPECIAL areas by reading from a childs book....no wait, a game machine like the ones that test your love by measuring grip. You wander around for a while talking to people and taking on a few little quests and once you leave the vault...I mean town you can confirm that your lone wanderer...I mean courier, is to your liking.

Okay, I'm done with the veiled Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas comparisons. It's roughly the same game. The graphics are the same, the glitches and bugs are the same, the company that made it giving exclusive DLC rights to the 360 is the same. It's all the same. I distinctly remember these yellow little leaflets on the ground in Fallout 3, I even went back to play Fallout 3 for a bit to find one, and you know what? The EXACT same art image is in New Vegas. So, that is where we come to the graphics score. I am going to be incredibly harsh here but it's only out of love. The graphics suck. Period. There is no reason to have the exact same art and character skins and EVERYTHING from Fallout 3 in this game. Sure, on your travels you're going to see a few new enemies but that's it. This is Fallout 3 in a new location. That means you are going to be playing a two year old game with two year old graphics.

The similarities don't end there though, oh no not by a long shot. Do you remember enemies clipping into the scenery so bad that you couldn't shoot them? Do you remember deathclaws falling into the floors and when you went into V.A.T.S. you had 0% chance of hitting anything because they were just not there? Remember getting stuck in the environment yourself and having to reload from a previous save and pray it wasn't too far back? Welcome to Fallout: New Vegas where all of that crap still applies. I had to fast travel back and forth and rest for 5 in game days to get an enemy unstuck enough from a wall to kill it and finish a quest. Frustration doesn't begin to describe the feeling I had.

The gameplay. What can I say about this except that it is the exact same as Fallout 3 with one exception. The companion wheel. But to be fair all the companion wheel is, is the dialogue tree in a graphic wheel representation. You can't pull it up at your leisure, you have to walk up and talk to a companion, and then you are given the option to "talk to" the companion which gives you the old interface with options like "discuss your tactics" and "show me your inventory". There are some new weapons, and from what I have found, my repair score doesn't effect my ability to repair my gear. If I have a repair score of 17 (which I did at first) I can gather as many 9mm pistols as I can find and repair one to perfect. I'm cool with that, but it makes repair slightly less useful except that it you find anything in the world that needs to be fixed you'll wish you had upwards of 60 points in it. Actually, there is another aspect of the gameplay that is different and a bit refreshing, and that is crafting. You can go to a camp fire and if your survival or science is high enough, and you have the materials, you can make better items. You can reload ammo if you have the requisite skill and material, and you can craft weapons, again. So, if you liked the gameplay mechanics of Fallout 3 then you'll like this.

Sound, this is one of the shining diamonds in this otherwise drab and dirty piece of coal. This come with a caveat though, I have a 7.1 SS system that makes everything sound better. I do love the crack of the rifles, they just sound like they have the proper punch to them. The voice acting, from what I have heard seems pretty spot on as well. You can hear the emotion in the actors, maybe because they game has a depressing feeling overall, being in a wasteland, and the actors being depressed to be working on such a mediocre game.

The controls are exactly what you would expect from Fallout 3.5 and even though I read somewhere they were going to be making the third person view more useful I dare Bethesda or Obsidian to come to my house and show me a difference. The iron sight aiming does make aiming outside of V.A.T.S. a lot easier though so props for that. Your character doesn't seem to have weight in this game much like FO3. When you are in third person view it seems like you just glide along moving your legs, that is until that invisible pebble buggers up your forward progress and you are stuck spinning in circles trying to figure out how to get unstuck.

There is a tonne of stuff to do in this game and it can keep you coming back for much more if you can excuse the bugs and glitches, and who knows, they might even release patches that do something this time around.

So in conclusion, you are presented with a huge open wasteland and there is going to be a terribly large amount of things to do in it, but you're going to be feeling a sense of deja vu the entire time. If you really loved Fallout 3 then you will like this game too. It isn't a bad game, it is just dated and we've done it all before. And shame on you Bethesda for going to exclusive DLC route once again and alienating a large portion of your audience.