Fallout: New Vegas

I have withheld my opinion on Fallout: New Vegas thus far, so that I might get a proper appreciation for it.  My initial response was overwhelmingly positive, and I wanted to make certain that that response stuck, before I went on about it here.

It is safe to say that it is still quite positive.  It is not without caveats, however, so let us get them out of the way first.  The game is buggy as all Hell.  This is a grand tradition for the Fallout series, and one that is not as appreciated as the over-the-top violence or black humour (which makes a welcome return after the overly dry Fallout 3).  The opening moments of the game, where you build your character, did not progress properly for me.  I had to fight my way through them, but eventually was able to play.  However sounds were not syncing up correctly, a problem for which I found the only remedy at the time was to elevate the New Vegas process to "Above Normal" priority in the Task Manager.  This made the audio behave correctly, but slowed the game down, and caused momentary lock-ups of ten to fifty seconds every five minutes or so.  I am a dedicated enough Fallout fan that I fought through the game this way for several days before I found another fix -involving a patch for a completely different game, from a third party, which, mysteriously, fixed the problem.  I also had to do some other tweaking.  Keep in mind that my computer is a rather old single-core machine, and while it has 4 GB of RAM and a thoroughly modern graphics adapter, there is only so much it can be expected to do.

Problems aside, the game improves vastly on Fallout 3.  First of all is the opening.  The tedious Vault sequence is gone, as are the metros and most of the waist-high picket fences that rendered them unavoidable.  It is a vast leap of logic that someone with a sledgehammer and a LAW rocket cannot somehow bypass a wooden fence (such a fence made me give up on the quest in Fallout 3 to reach the National Archives, since it would have required yet another trek into the metro), yet it is not too far a leap of logic for a mountain face to be unclimbable from a certain side.  However many mountains that are unclimbable do not appear as though they should be, although it is not quite as bad as the debris piles in Fallout 3 that were sometimes not even as tall as the player, and covered in convenient handholds.  The unpleasant sting of running into a blatant invisible wall remains.

The weapons are much more realistic and satisfying to use, and there is a greater variety in both weapons and ammunition.  While there are still some gripes, such as .357 and .44 magnum rifles that use pistol rounds, there is nothing along the lines of the absurdity of the Fallout 3 "Hunting Rifle" that used .32 calibre pistol rounds.  The variety is quite refreshing, with several different submachineguns and pistols as well as many different lever- and bolt-action rifles, which makes sense as these are common arms that one would expect ordinary citizens to own and thus be prolific.  The most important thing, however, is that every one of them, from the Browning Hi-Power you are handed at the very start, to the incredibly powerful anti-material rifle you can find, are satisfying to use.  The game now models proper iron sights for most guns, as opposed to Fallout 3's "zoom in a bit" aiming, and each weapon actually has a different sight picture, such that how easily they are aimed becomes a genuine factor in choosing your arms -just as it is in real life.  You can, of course, still shoot from the hip, but you will be less accurate.

Being something of a firearms nerd, I could go on for several more paragraphs, about how the ability to re-load your spent casings is so enjoyable, and about how it's quite satisfying to find that a .45/70 Government round kills most things in one shot -as you'd expect it to, but instead we shall talk about the plot.  Fallout: New Vegas' plot is 180 degrees opposed to Fallout 3's non-plot, which only re-hashed the plots of Fallout 1 and 2 (they quite literally took the plots of both games, shook them up like a cocktail, and called the results a plot -instead of saving your vault from thirst and becoming an exile for doing so, but ultimately saving humanity by ending the mutant threat, you become an exile from your vault to find your father so he can save the wasteland from thirst with the GECK from Fallout 2, and in doing so save humanity by ending the mutant threat, AND saving them from thirst at the same time, even though thirst isn't even a threat when you consider you can build a water filter capable of removing radiation from water out of simple materials) New Vegas' plot has you a courier mixed up in a huge plot for the control of a major civilization centre.  You're shot in the head and left for dead, but a mysterious benefactor saves you.  There are far more possible draws into the story line, especially for those of use who chose to role-play their character as more self interested -if you act in your own self interest, it's quite reasonable to want to find out why you were shot, and quite understandable to seek revenge upon the party who shot you.

In addition to more possible draws, there are more possible outcomes.  While I haven't finished the game yet, it is quite clear I can cast my allegiances with any of several groups who are vying for power, or even shake things up by seizing power for myself.  Another winning moment is the discovery that while one of the groups is clearly more "evil" than the others, amongst the remainder are no clear "good guys" with whom you should side, and that the main plot is only one of several true moral choices that are encountered by the player for their character to make.  In fact even the most "evil" of groups have leaders you can speak to, and stories behind them, that make it clear that be they unwholesome and in some cases despicable, they are still people, not just mindless enemies.

Of dubious use are a few new features that nonetheless serve to deepen the game; you can now disguise yourself as a member of certain factions by wearing their uniforms or signature styles of dress.  This can be useful for certain endeavours, but at other times it can be crippling, as many of these disguises are otherwise useful suits of armour of some sort that you might want to wear sheerly for protection.  It is quite possible to inadvertently provoke violence by wearing the wrong clothes, and, due to the virtue of almost everyone being killable (a quite commendable feature in an open-world game) and your NPCs being competent trigger men,  mung up quite a few quests, in addition to possibly permanently attracting the ire of the faction you wronged.  There is now also a "hardcore" mode that makes certain, subtle changes that aim for a more realistic game -you require food, water, and sleep, almost everything has weight (except the money of all sorts, and certain quest items or items whose weight would be incalculably small such as cigarette ends and hypos of drugs), and if you find yourself crippled it will take more than the jab of a hypo to cure yourself of your condition.  (strangely, if you find empty hypos, they weigh a pound a piece!  They must be glass-and-metal horse-euthanizing antiques to weight that much!)

Ultimately Fallout: New Vegas is an exceedingly good time; it is what Fallout 3 should have been and feels connected to the Fallout universe in a way Fallout 3 only tried too hard to be.  It is not without flaws, but it is a worthwhile experience.  The flaws do not immediately strike you, nor are they glaring (technical flaws aside -they can be overcome), and things happen much more naturally.  If you're a fan of the series, or of FPS and RPG games, or post-apocalyptic media, you should definitely purchase it; it will be an enjoyable experience.