Game Review: Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas, follow up and temporally-concurrent sequel to Fallout 3, now set in Nevada's Mojave Desert.

NOTE: I only play on maximum difficulty, or in this case, Hardcore mode. Hopefully you'll realise my sheer gaming excellence and virility far outweigh the self-aggrandisement of this statement. Hardcore mode in any game is for Titans like me amongst the softcore men.

First the obvious: the game is almost identical gameplay-wise when compared to Fallout 3. It's still the same combination of first person shooter with role-playing game elements. The RPG elements have been tweaked to increase the importance of skills (e.g. explosives, speech, barter) and decrease the importance of SPECIAL stats (charisma, strength etc); the idea being that you can't just pump all your points into charisma and have awesome speech skills because of it. The game forces you to specialise rather than be a jack-of-all-trades like you could in the prequel. I guess they thought that a power-armoured super-soldier who could talk, sneak or shoot their way out of any situation broke the game somewhat.

Graphically there's very little difference between New Vegas and 3. There are a few more character models and some new baddies but other than that it's the same. However, NV is vastly superior in terms of atmosphere and setting - the Strip, the desert and the rural locations are far more interesting to behold than anything from 3 - it was the greatest relief to not have to spelunk through the same rancid sewer systems over and over. It took me 6 hours to encounter the first sewer, and having progressed another 12 hours I've yet to have the misfortune of further sewer surfing.
The desert is also more densely packed than ever - there's no more pressing down the forward key with a nearby paperweight and then going for a can of Schweppes Traditional, returning and finding Mr Wanderer halfway to the destination - only 10 or 15 seconds in any direction will arrive at something new, like a gas station, raider encampment or hapless town. It's a little strange that a desert would provide far more entertainment than a game set in Washington DC. I guess not having every building being a shade of gunship grey is a big plus.

NV suffers from the same problem that 3 had when it comes to voice acting - there are like 4 guys who do every voice and they were all recruited from the Naruto-dub studio. There's nothing wrong with the quality of the voice actors but the fact that Lieutenant Asshat sends you to Seargeant Jerkoff and they BOTH have the same voice is as cringeworthy as dead baby jokes at an abortion clinic. The worst situtation was in an army camp where two pairs of troops were chatting, all with the same voice. At first I thought there was something wrong with my audio but it turned out that there were several Tyler Durden situations going on.

In 3, aside from health you also had to worry about radiation - too much of it and you would lose health and eventually die. Evidently some genius at Bethesda Softworks thought that having to watch a geiger counter was awesome gameplay fun and decided to put in several more of the same - dehydration counter, starvation counter and sleep deprivation; meaning that if you don't sleep, drink and eat like a regular person, you can't play due to a bad case of deaditis.I know it's more realistic but I came to Nevada for some good wholesome post-apocalyptic raping and pillaging, not a lesson in mad survivalism in the wide west. For a game so obsessed with drinking water, it doesn't provide many ways to get water - I seem to spend all my time drinking out of toilets. Like I said, I play this game for fantasy, not reality.

The music is far superior - there isn't too much variety but the music is laid back and really sets the scene of a rustic desert country who have an identity; by the time I'd finished playing Fallout 3 I'd heard "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire" so many times I think I'd have rather listened to Simple Plan, Black Eyed Peas and Justin Bieber on repeat.

My last thought is that in this game, this guy's limbs are made of wet tissue paper - geckos, rats, hollow-point bullets, missiles, golf clubs, base jumpinig without parachutes, bear traps and soft mountain breezes are capable of breaking your limbs equally well. It breaks the immersiveness when (and this has happened to me) an angry praying mantis the size of a shoe can fracture your skull and give you a concussion.

Still it's good fun. I do enjoy watching guys perform biforcatory splits because I sneakily planted a live frag mine in between their buttocks. I also persuaded a guy to build me a laser-armed sexbot and a machine gun that fires grenades, so I'll just enjoy myself for now :)