Rob's Fallout: New Vegas Review

I bought Fallout: New Vegas on black Friday last year, knowing that it was plagued by many frustrating (if not nightmarish) technical issues and that a patch was "on the way". To pass the time, I decided to finally go back and finish Fallout 3 while waiting for the fix. It soon came out and by the time I had beaten and explored the Capital Wasteland to my satisfaction, the Mohave was ready and waiting for me to dive right in. Many, many hours later, here is my review of Fallout: New Vegas...



Glitches - Aside from your standard fair corner traps and geometry glitches, this game caused the Xbox to freeze multiple times. Fortunately, its fun enough to reset and keep playing and SOME of the glitches I could actually exploit for personal gain. I found that each time I turned down "Fisto's" advances, I got 10 bottle caps, and if I traded mantis legs back and forth with my companion, I got free XP! I advanced one level using this method then swore never to exploit it again like any good gamer should.

Unscorched by Nuclear Fire - The first thing you'll notice upon stepping out into the world of Fallout: New Vegas is, well, COLOR! The sky is blue with birds circling, plants are struggling but growing, neon signs buzz on and off, and even the dirt seems to have more red in it. While it still maintains enough washed out tones to convey a bleak future, New Vegas is nowhere near as oppressive as Fallout 3 and provides plenty of lush variety to break up any monotony while wandering the wasteland.

Xander Root and Broc Flower (Plants) - Anyone who has played Oblivion knows the joy/agony of harvesting various "snod grasses" and "bumble fruits" in order to combine them into some amazing concoction. Unfortunately, the formula normally turns out to be a half effective health potion that rarely benefits you enough to justify the space in your inventory. However, it ultimately adds value to exploring the world and it can be fun stumbling upon a cluster of barrel cactus fruit, especially in hardcore mode.

Hardcore Mode - In this mode you have to eat and drink to survive, ammo has weight, and medicines take several seconds to work rather than affecting you instantly. Even though the game "recommends" playing with this turned off, I found it made the game much more believable and loot far more valuable. I definitely recommend this mode of play. When I was more excited to find purified water on an enemy than ammo, I felt immersed.

Ammo and Reload Stations - Fact: There are way too many types of ammo in this game! Did you need 12mm or 12.7mm? or was that 20mm? Maybe you have 9mm ammo but you only have a 10mm gun!? What then? Well go break your ammo down at a reload station and reassemble it to work with your current gun! That's fun....right? Wrong!! Give me pistol, rifle, and shotgun ammo in small, medium, and large and stop there. I'm trying to save Vegas, not join a gun club!

 Moseying Around the Strip (Uneven Pacing) - Nothing breaks immersion like realizing it would take you more time to walk to a goal 50 feet away than  fast traveling to one 50 miles away. Fast travel is a great solution to otherwise tedious gameplay, but that's only when it's used! Sadly, the core city area of Fallout: New Vegas, the Strip, does not take advantage of this feature and suffers for it; having five adjacent areas in a line that you must walk through, back and forth, one gate to the next, to complete important missions for its residents.

Vault 22, Ultra Lux, and Other Great Quests - New Vegas definitely shines above its predecessor by providing an amazing variety of self contained adventures that are about far more than collecting items or delivering something from A to B. In contrast to the homogenous world of Fallout3 (excluding Oasis), the locations throughout the Mohave stand out and provide perfect backdrops to the stories and quests within. One setting was so disturbingly well executed, I swore I could smell stale air and dried blood when I entered.

Hoover Dam, Red Rock, and Other Ugly Areas - For a game that does atmosphere so well, there are times when it seems as if all of the effects have been shut off and your stuck looking at a sheet of repeating textures. Hoover Dam, as important to the story as it is, looks like something out of SW:Jedi Knight.

Disguises - I loved the idea of putting on enemy armor, infiltrating their base, trading with their vendors, gaining their trust, and ultimately bringing them down through subversion. Sadly, this is far from reality. Disguises barely ever worked, and when they did it wasn't in my favor. NCR would open fire on me for having the audacity to wear Brotherhood of Steel power armor around them, even though their own heavy soldiers wear the same exact armor! It would have been better if Obsidian had never even bothered with this function.

Companions - Yay! My companions can fight along side me and carry all of my junk! Boo! My companions kill people I don't want them to, turning friends into enemies,  and attack aimlessly, calling down thousands of deathclaws upon me! And while companion quests can be fun and rewarding, they can also be a headache to figure out. Sometimes it's even unclear how to begin a quest.

NCR vs. the Legion vs. Mr. House vs. Me - The main story in New Vegas is far more maleable than Fallout 3's. Everything hinges on the impending battle over control of Hoover Dam, and from the beginning players can choose a side: either the currently occupying North California Republic, the invading Caesar's Legion, the native Vegas inhabitants lead by Mr. House, or taking over for themselves. No side is perfect, every side has its appeal, and even after carefully weighing my decisions I still don't know if feel my choice was the best one. Searching online, I only found raging forum debates over which choice is the best. It seems there can be no true winning. Maybe that's the lesson you have to learn to live with in a world where war...war never changes.