Fallout New Vegas Game Review - On the Internet, No one knows you're a Deathclaw.
I was over my friends house the other night and he dropped a god damn bomb shell on me, the guy who has more games than I do and plays more often than I do, has never played New Vegas, after the initial shock wore off we got to talking, it seems New Vegas is his "void game", essentially a void game is a game that everyone knows about and has played but fell through the cracks for you, mine was Metro 2033(yeah i know shut up) so I decided with the abject failure of Fallout 4 and my friend being a noob i'll review Fallout New Vegas in the mean time.
Since like all Fallout games, New Vegas is huge i'll be focusing mainly on the game play and it's aspects as opposed to it's story line, anyway lets drive right into Fallout: New Vegas
Setting
Fallout New Vegas takes place in you guessed it, Las Vegas, 200 years after the nuclear annihilation of the world New Vegas has sprung up in the Mojave Desert, it's surroundings are harsh and brutal and New Vegas serves much like the Old Vegas did with a bit of a catch, 200 years of abandonment and nuclear fallout(hah) have made New Vegas and the lands it surrounds, lawless hellholes where brutality reigns supreme, New Vegas is controlled by the mysterious Mr House and the out lying towns and wasteland are fought for by 3 factions.
The Legion, a brutal and ruthless Darwinian cult loyal to their leader, Caesar, they are currently locked in a war with the last vestiges of civil society, the NCR, the NCR act much like the army in our time and are trying to keep the peace the best they can in a lawless world, the third faction is an accumulation of bandit clans who act much like you would expect bandits to, running slaves and drugs and all manner of things.
You however are a courier, tasked with delivering a package to New Vegas, but before you can set out you're set upon by a man and his henchman who shoot you in the head and bury you in a shallow grave, you later awake in the town of Good Springs by the town doctor who informs you what has happened, after giving you a quick rundown of what happened and checking you to see you're alright, you set out into the world of New Vegas to find the man who shot you and perhaps even deliver that package.
The Mojave wasteland is gigantic and filled with dangers on all sides, whether it be human, animal or mutated beings, you need to navigate your way through the wastelands, helping or hindering as you go to reach New Vegas and find the man who tried to kill you and find out what was so important about that package that it nearly cost you your life,but like I said, New Vegas is large there is something to do on every corner of the map and things may take a strange turn wherever you go, and people will always need a hand, it's completely up to you what you do in New Vegas.
Fallout: New Vegas is all about choices, you go anywhere and do anything and also kill anyone, your choices will make a huge impact on the game and how people perceive you, and the people of New Vegas have a long memory, if you decide to go on a murder spree don't be surprised if the guards shoot on sight, that goes for all the factions and all the people of the wasteland.
Game Play
Like Skyrim with guns!, but really, the Game Play in Fallout: New Vegas is amazing, there is so much to do that getting to 100% is it's own separate game itself, it starts out like most other Fallout games, you begin in a starter area and get your bearings, but what sets New Vegas apart from others in the franchise is that you immediately get into the world and among the content almost immediately, while still having the same sort of progression as other fallouts it's very very easy to get side tracked for days before doing the main quest line.
As you start the game your main objective is to go to New Vegas, but as soon as you step foot out of the starting building you can begin multiple massive quest chains that send you in different directions while Fallout 3 had that it wasn't quite on the level as New Vegas is in terms of sending you to places or picking things up along the way and having the DLC installed makes it even more time consuming.
But first lets break down some of the main mechanics of the game.
Your character.
Like most Fallout games New Vegas has the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system that allows you to level up your attributes that increase your skill in something or make other things easier, as well as the leveling system that unlocks each level that has numerous different ways to play and determine what your main skills are in the game, i personally always stack a lot of points into small weapons, medicine, lockpicking and computer skill as no matter where you go in the game you'll probably be using those 4 skills, but they also offer a whole host of other skill talents, some very visible, some auxiliary such as decreased radiation damage, increasing your carrying capacity or even making you stronger at night.
With the expansions it's easy to get close to maxing out all of them but you should mainly focus on how you want to play the game first and maxing those out rather than playing the gambit(or don't, Fallout is all about choice) you will also want to take into consideration the late game implications, just because you're resigned to using a wooden bat right now doesn't mean you should stack all your points into melee when you could come across assault rifles in the future, but that's really the brilliant thing about Fallout, no matter what choices you make the game has a way of balancing it for your styles(but don't try and punch a deathclaw, it won't work).
With leveling comes progression in different ways in New Vegas such as the virtue system, if your character is good you can go hunt down bandits and monsters, if your character is bad you can go hunt down humans or steal from them, either choice has its upside and downside, it's really up to you to deal with the consequences and some can even lead to new areas or new people inside the game world.
Like most Fallout games there is the health system, and depending on what difficulty you play it on can be extremely crippling if you don't do it right, sure using drugs to overcome a powerful enemy might seem like a good idea now, but addiction to them can make it hard to kill anything without them, like wise exposing yourself to radiation is a good way to slowly die in the wasteland and as always having a good supply of medkits and food is needed when taking on the wasteland.
I'd personally recommend playing the game on Hardcore mode as you need to eat drink and sleep regularly to survive and things like ammo have weight so you can't stock up before you go out and other numerous changes like making stimpacks, radaway and doctors bags become less effective than in the easier difficulties, the game play is also a lot more challenging and your characters progression matters a lot more.
A World of Choices
Fallout: New Vegas is all about choices, you can go and do anything, anywhere in the game and you may need to trick people to get information or to reveal secrets of the wasteland, as well as how they perceive you, it's easy to start a fight in New Vegas with the wrong dialogue choice and the leveling skills help as well such as speech and charisma as well as bartering or faction preferences, nearly every person in New Vegas has something to say to you when you talk to them and sometimes even picking random strangers to have a conversation with can lead to new quests and impacting your world in different ways.
Most games outside of the Fallout series usually have some limitations on where the choices take you, but New Vegas really doesn't, it's possible for your to completely kill off your entire game if you're so inclined including the main story, if you want to that is you can kill off the 3 main factions in the story line leaving just you, just keep in mind that you may not be able to progress that story line any further, the same goes for all of the other quests based on your choices and sometimes you'll find out your actions in a previous quest may of blocked you from progressing any further with a new quest, it's a pretty wonderfully connected game in that sense.
While there's no limitation on what you do while on these quests there are limitations to what quests you can get, for example if you decide to side with the NCR and do a lot of their quests the Legion will hate you eventually and you'll be killed on site which makes it rather hard to talk to them and accept quests on their behalf, likewise other quests may not be available to you based on your reputation.
The Karma system in New Vegas plays a big part on dialogue and choices, how you're perceived can make or break a conversation, if you're a ruthless murderer who kills everything in sight people will probably hesitant to talk to you, on the other hand if you're a paragon of the communities you visit some people may even seek you out to get your help and can unlock things such as better stores or even followers to help you in the Mojave.
Whatever your choices are will affect your game play regardless of how you play but the great thing about New Vegas is that you can change them if you want which also makes for some interesting game play just by itself, as the game is giant and can take numerous hundreds of hours to complete you never know what a choices consequences may be further down the road, they can have minimal impact or they could even have a profound effect on the entire game.
Every which way.
Fallout: New Vegas is huge, the Mojave desert is littered with towns and communities and secrets hidden all around, it's pretty much impossible to find an area with nothing in it, you can literally just pick a direction and start running and you'll come across something eventually whether it be enemies, quests or a new town to visit every inch of the desert has content.
As i said above the game itself is huge, taking multiple hundreds of hours to fully complete with unique quests and zones to visit, coupled with the amazing expansion DLC's and it's gonna be an effort just to finish the game, most open world games these days suffer from dead zones, where the only reason it's open world is because it's a selling point, New Vegas on the other hand is a true open world experience where you never want for content.
Whilst it's impossible to name everything in the game, there are hundreds of quests and hundreds of unique locations to explore through, couple that with an extensive weapon/upgrade/health system the game feels really alive, a feat that not many open world games manage to capture, but it's also the freedom of choice and dialogue that makes up New Vegas and made it a fan favorite.
Usually it's a trade off, massive amount of content Vs Story, in New Vegas you want for neither of them and like I said, you can find quests and people to talk to in every inch of the map, even in the most secluded places where you think there will be no one, there's someone out there good or bad, it's just up to you to find them.
It's also the connectivity of the game world that makes it something special, like i stated above it's pretty hard to find a place that doesn't somehow affect the others places in the world, some being much effective than others, New Vegas for example can spark a war that engulfs the desert, the choices made by the character affect the game world in a very real and visible way, it's really just up to what you want to make it look like.
Critical Review.
For me personally, Fallout: New Vegas takes the cake as the best modern Fallout game(yeah yeah I know, Fallout 2) I don't know why Fallout 3 didn't feel as polished and involved as Fallout: New Vegas or why Fallout 4 was an abject failure, but Bethesda managed to get New Vegas just right, it's very hard to find things that actively annoyed me with the game, probably the only thing that did get to me after a while was V.A.T.S(The aiming module) bugged out every now and then and took a while to correct itself.
The open world feel of New Vegas coupled with it's content and freedom of choice makes the game amazing on your first experience but leaves the door open for multiple replays as like I said, it's impossible to do everything in just one play through, I have to guess since i didn't buy it on steam until a while ago, but i have roughly around 1,500 hours in this game over the course of it's life cycle and any single player game that gives you that amount of content is worth the price and more.
Now while not specifically a part of New Vegas, the modding community went insane with New Vegas and as it stands there is a mod for literally every part of the game, these include simple things like new weapons, right down to entire new areas and stories, the base game is around 9GB, but i manged to bump that up to around 65GB with mods, the modding community makes New Vegas a little bit more special as even if you finish the game there's still an entirely new world out there for you to explore in the form of Mods.
Subjectively, I feel this is the best Fallout game to be released, the story and quests are enjoyable and interesting, the game play and all that comes with it is extensive and involved and the world feels alive, your character goes from a lowly courier to a driving force in the Mojave Desert where your actions can alter the course of the game's history for better or for worse and the content will keep even the most hardcore player involved in the game for several weeks.
Even though it's been out for over a decade now and the graphics are a little dated, it's still an amazing experience that any fan of RPG's or open world games should partake in and for only costing $10, it's more than worth your time and investment in this amazing game.
One of the reasons New Vegas is so good was that Bethesda had nothing to do with it besides publishing it. It was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, members of which had worked on the first two Fallout games for Interplay, and was also comprised of talent from the defunct Black Isle Studios, who developed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
If there's one thing Obsidian knows, it's how to make damn good RPGs. Bethesda just needed to sit back, let them do their thing, and publish the results. Fortunately they did just that. :)
God damn no Metro 2033 yet? Dies of shock
New Vegas was as good as 3 was for me, both were done amazingly and I personally love the whole post-apocalyptic scenarios and living it inside a game. I loved fallout 4 as well and while it's had its down moments I thought it was a great game for me.
But play the Metro games mate! For me they are beautiful to play.
Oh i played Metro, but it just wasn't on my radar until this year haha, played it then Last Light, tbh i didn't enjoy Fallout 4, no idea why, just didn't feel as involved as the previous games.
I think Fallout 4 was hyped a lot too, and people these days expect much more from games. So it makes it harder to like them, I tend to lower standards and enjoy things for what they are.
Yeah i don't think Fallout 4 was gonna live up to the hype either way, plus people were expecting A LOT more in the graphics department, just seen like Bethesda shoe horned a lot of it in instead of taking time to really flesh it out
this game looks really cool, I have never played it before, But I will have to it seems. The game looks very interesting.
This was my first Fallout, and just play it a December the truth is incredible game, I had a great time with this video game. I feel that the development of its history and environment is unique and that I have not seen in other video games. Excellent review @cryptokrieg.