Fallout New Vegas

I'm sure you've read it already but, if you didn't like Fallout 3, you won't like Fallout New Vegas.


For me Fallout 3 was a very enjoyable game that didn't carry enough from the Black Isle Fallouts. It was still a great game, but I was always wanting more. Example would be when I made a character with an intelligence of 1. i was really looking forward to him trying to communicate with others. In Fallout 1 and 2, if you have too low of an intelligence all you can do is grunt. Which I thought would be funny as hell to do. But you play the game pretty much the same way. You just lose the intelligence buffs, if you will. While I haven't tried this in New Vegas yet (My next playthrough is evil, and then I'll start goofing off) I feel that there is a good chance you'd at least see some changes. It really feels like speech is worth putting points into rather than just putting everything into gun and lockpick stats. Which is how it was in the first ones. You could pretty much beat the game without having to fire a shot. I like this amount of freedom in a sandbox RPG. Each time I can do something different.

What I love about New Vegas:
The Hardcore mode makes it feel more like a simulation and less like a shooting fest. This (to me at least) makes the shooting sections all the more fun and realistic. I will only bother with one playthrough like that, but it was still a lot of fun.

The number of quests. It reminds me of Oblivion where you can just talk to a random person and get a quest. Not always a big one, but a quest. I really enjoy this mass of quests as it gives me something to do apart from the main story line.

The number of guns. They have added so many guns into the game! In 3 you had 2 shotguns. The sawed off double barreled and the combat shotgun (which needed a way faster rate of fire). With Point Lookout you got another full sized double barreled, but still. With New Vegas I have gotten a single shot, break action 20 gauge (which seems to shoot a .410 not a 20 gauge, but whatever), a caravan 20 gauge (over under break action shotgun) and a lever action shotgun. Just for 20 gauge. 12 gauge has a hunting shotgun (love it!), the sawed off shotgun and a riot shotgun (drum fed. I've never shot it, just seen it) and I'm sure many others that I just haven't found yet. There are 9mm and 10mm guns, even the 14mm Sig makes a come back (though it shoots the 12.7mm, which is the Metric version of .50 cal. So think of the Desert Eagle. But in this case it's a gun I like). I also cam across the .223 pistol from the first 2. Which is modeled after the gun from Blade Runner. And it's so much cooler in this game than in the first 2 Fallouts. Since you get to see a 3D model of it rather than a sprite on your action bar. A few guns I haven't seen, but I don't expect to. There were a lot of HK guns in Fallout 2, that I think they'd have a harder time putting in than they did in 98. I'm missing some old favorites but I've got a lot of really cool ones in, so I'm happy :D

Weapon mods. You want to put a scope on that hunting rifle? You can. You want a drum mag on your 9mm submachine gun? Go right ahead. Want your LMG to hold 200 rounds instead of 90? Want a longer tube on your shotgun so it holds more shells? I think you see where I'm going. This is just awesome though! I can put a scope on a laser rifle! I can put a suppressor onto my 10mm pistol or my sniper rifle. It really allows you to branch out and make each gun your own. Some mods increase the damage, the magazine size, add scopes, decrease weight (which also reduces the number of action points it uses) and range. The list just seems to go on and on.

Refilling ammo. Now there are reloading benches. So you can break down those 20 gauge shotgun shells and make them into 12 gauge. Rather than just selling them like in Fallout 3. Or using the pitt add on to change them around. And this way works exactly like it would in real life, more or less. From each round broken down you get lead, the casing, the primer (minus the .22 because it's rimfire. Google it if you don't know what that means) and powder. The powder you get from the .22 is small pistol powder. Which you can't put into your .308 cartridge. And the .308 gives you a large rifle primer. Which can't be used in making 10mm rounds. You collect some of the brass from shooting, but you don't pick it all up (when I police my brass, I make sure to pick it all up. But I guess it's a bit different when the targets are shooting back at you). You can buy each part from shops, but not in large amounts. It's not something you'll use a whole lot, but you will use it. You can't reload the 12.7mm casings though. You can collect them, but you can't reload them. I hope this gets fixed, as the 12.7mm is a very rare round.

You no longer need a repair of 100 to repair a weapon to full. You'll "waste" more of whatever you're repairing with, but you don't need to have a repair of 100 anymore. That Assault Carbine can be at 100% so long as you have spares to push into it. Also there are people in the wasteland that have a repair of 100. I hated that about 3. The loss is the cost. You'll spend 5-8 grand repairing your gun OR your armor to full. The reason this is something I love is that it makes money more worth while. I had 36000 caps, 200k+ rounds of 5.56, 30k micro fusion cells, and over 1000 stempaks in Fallout 3. I had nothing to spend my caps on. But now I can keep my power armor at 100% as well as my guns and anything else I want. Making that 36,000 caps dwindle. Or, in other terms, be useful. it would be like if the XBL gamerscore got turned to real money tomorrow. Suddenly this thing that was all but useless (though cool. You can brag about it. If you have nothing else in life going for you) is worth a lot! I have 12000 caps in New Vegas. And if I repair my armor and my guns to full that's all gone. I can barely turn a profit looting. But it makes the game a lot more fun.

Thinks I like:
Weapon repair kits. Kinda like the repair hammer from obilvion they do a little bit on your weapons. You can make them at benches (making the repair skill more useful than before) and are made of easy to find gear. They are only good for one use, but they are a hell of a lot cheaper than repairs done in shops.

The Wasteland. There are plants (but not too many). There are people (an amount that makes it feel real. It felt stupid in Fallout 3. I'm sure I've talked about this already :P But New Vegas (the town) feels pretty close to a real city (all things considered). There should be more people in the casinos, and on the strip, but it's enough to satisfy me. It's not the main city of the NCR or something. It's a tourist trap for the rich.

The factions.
Gone are the simple factions of Fallout 3. Raiders are bad. Brotherhood is good. Super mutants are bad. etc.
Now you have Ceasar's legion (which is a lot like Rome. If you look back and see Rome as good, you'll probably like them. I kinda do. They get shit done!) the NCR (which is good. but not at the same time. But they are the most good out of all the factions, if you ask me), the Brotherhood (and these guys are kinda good too. But they hate the NCR. You'll have trouble being "good" with both since their interests conflict at times). The Great Khans (which are bad. But not Raider bad. it's all in how you see them). The fiends (which are bad. They are the raiders. But you could be their friends if you wanted to be evil enough). And then there are a few other gangs out there. but few have the reach and power of the ones I've listed. The reason this isn't something I love is because it makes for some really hard choices. When playing the main quest you have to kill the brotherhood. This was really hard for me to do since I grew up (more or less) loving those guys! It makes for a better game, but hard choices are still hard.

New skills system. They took out big and small guns, and made them guns. They made explosives hold things like the 40mm grenade rifle (I KNOW! I hope it has buckshot rounds. That would be so awesome! It has incendiary though so that's pretty awesome) and grenades (both plasma and normal. They explode. They go here) and Fat Man. Energy weapons holds energy weapons like the Gatling laser and the flamer (fits here better than in Explosives. Since it doesn't blow up, it just sets stuff on fire). And guns holds anything that shoot conventional ammo. Now I can put points into explosives and have it be worth something. before it never held enough to be worth it. This is something they've changed from the original games. But it's a good, no, perfect example of what needed to be done. If people want to play Fallout 1, they'll go play Fallout 1! What you want is a 3D Fallout experience. Which means some stuff has to change. This being one of them. Weapons didn't downgrade over time before, but that needed to change. They also made minimum strength to use some weapons (which was in F1 and F2). So now you need a strength of 10 to use a mini gun right. Anyone can shoot it, but the accuracy will go to shit. Which is pretty realistic.

Things I don't like:
The dialog. some people (Like Veronica) bring great human emotions. Most however fail horribly. The hardest for me is the writing or the dialog though. How many times does a merchant have to say "another satisfied customer"?! They say that in Oblivion! They probably even say it in Morrowind (Elder Scrolls 3, for those who don't know). 3 games! Really? You can't spend a little bit of your budget on new writing! And this isn't like reusing voices (where you can argue it's to save space for cooler things. like more guns). Because a sound clip of this guy saying "another satisfied customer" and this chick saying the same thing doesn't save space! Mix it up, please! It shouldn't be that hard for you guys to come up with new lines.

Things I hate:
The glitches. Black Isle was known for making pretty glitchy games. So maybe they have to keeps these glitches in the game, I really don't know. But when I have the same issues with New Vegas as I did with 3, I get very annoyed! When I'm playing and the game freezes. Sometimes it's for a few seconds and some times you have to hard resit the 360. my friend, who has it for computer, has the same issues. Though less frequent. I think it deals with the amount of memory that running the game for hours uses up. But I really don't know. Either way this NEEDED to be be fixed BEFORE it was launched. You can't tell me this never happened in the alpha and beta testing. You also have characters who fall through the ground (I cam across a spot in a train tunnel where the floor had no collisions, so I couldn't go to another room of it without falling through the floor). These I'm less angry about, because I understand that things can be missed. These are tiny. But the game freezing, under normal playing, is just not right.

All in all, if the worst complaint I have about the game is it freezing at times and the people reusing the same fucking lines, that's a pretty damn good game. If you've followed me on Twitter you'll have seen some of my random updates. Which were awesome, but too short to make a blog post. Kinda like when I found the Laser RCW (it's a laser Tommy Gun. Did you're mind just go to Futurama? Good). The first thing I do is drool, equip it and say out loud "And we can shoot them with this gun" and then point straight up and fire a burst into the air. That would be a short blog post, but it was still awesome! I didn't even know that gun was in the game when I found it on a fiend corpse. Which made it all the better.

My first playthrough I picked Boone to follow me around. For a sniper he shoots way to fast with the sniper rifle (the semi auto one). He eats up .308 like I eat up 5mm in my Assault Carbine. But anyway, I have a hunting rifle with a scope on it and I can drop people that are out of V.A.T.S. (Forever now just typed as VATS, deal with it) range in one shot. Well Boone says "Let me aim that for you next time" in a pissed off tone when you shoot your guns at "nothing." Because they are out of his Perception range he sees me as firing at nothing. So dropping people from a few hundred yards away, with one shot, and hearing the ex-NCR sniper behind me tell me to have him aim the shot next time, is just classic. It gets kinda old (wish he had other lines to say. "What are you aiming at?" "it's your ammo to waste I guess" "Well they know where we are now, nice" would all be other things for him to say too.) but I still love it. The random NPCs (mostly NCR troopers) know he is a sniper too (he still wears his 1st recon beret) and will say things like "I wish I had a 1st recon guy watching over me." it's pretty awesome! Makes it feel less like a game and more like life. Which is an important step for video games to take.

I hope to have more awesome things happen, but we'll just have to wait and see. I hope this didn't feel too reviewy and if it did, I'm sorry. It was really hard not to review this game, because I'm doing it in my head half the time I'm playing. The other half is pulling movie one liners as I kill stuff :P