What Happened? Where's the Games?

In lieu of my month-long absence, I thought I'd poke my head in here and calmly advise on the behalf of both of us: Don't Panic! (As if anyone is - *looks at minuscule follower's element* - sigh) We're still pointing our fingers at all those nasty little games that need to be beaten, and surely there's more than enough to still go around. It's just that we both needed a bit of a break from gaming for a little bit, get our minds on something else before our heads exploded from video game overexposure. Well that, and, I can't really speak for Sven, but I've just gotten busy with other stuff that's taken me away from gaming at the moment. However, I can say that I have about 10 different games that I currently have save/check points of some sort or another as I work them towards 100% completion. All I can say is that more "games beaten" are in the pipeline.

XB360 - Fallout New Vegas

Haiku Review:  

A truth: Fallout is
the nexus between sci-fi
and Cracker Barrel.

Additional Haiku:

In dystopia,
the future will make caps cash, 
clipboards plentiful.

Additional Comments:

I should probably start this by telling you my reaction to Fallout 3 a couple of years ago. I'd heard about the game--I mean how could you not, since it was on every forum, commercial, and game site--so I got it for my PC (since I didn't have a console at the time), and right away, I started getting less sleep. I played and played and PLAYED that game so much. And truth be told, I think that was one of the finest games I've ever played. Sure there were tons of bugs in the game, the story was iffy, and the characters and graphics weren't that good, really, but the world, environment, feel, music, VATS, decision-making, and so many other things made a phenomenal game--I would dare say it was a work of art.

Fast-forward to October of this year, and I get a gift on my birthday of the pre-ordered New Vegas game. I may have screamed like the Nintendo 64 kid. FALLOUT NEW VEGAAAAAAAS!!!  Got the game at midnight, played the crap out of it for two straight weeks, and, to my chagrin, though it is good, it is not as good as Fallout 3.

It's an unfortunately thing when you have to make a sequel to such an amazing game. Most of the time, it's impossible to make a good follow-up. What gets me the most is why they didn't just make Fallout 4. They had the time and resources. Surely they had the demand. Instead what we get in New Vegas is little more than a giant DLC. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it left me scratching my head, asking, "Why?"

They did do a lot of things in the game that improved upon Fallout 3. First, the faction system is really great, I think. They streamlined the menus for your companions, so you don't have to hold conversations with them in order to store stuff. You can actually have 2 companions (one robot and one human) at a time--not to mention other people you can hire or summon, which leaves you with a possible 5 person party. There are fewer skill books (thank GOD!), but the books you do find give you more points. There are skill magazines which temporarily raise a specific skill. There are better perks. There's a pretty neat crafting system in the game. There are a ton of quests--even more than Fallout 3. And there are companion quests, which I thought were the best quests in the game. There's iron-sights on your guns, which a great touch for those familiar with FPS's. They added "hardcore mode" which isn't a difficulty, but is a way of playing that is more challenging. In hardcore, you have to regularly drink water, eat, and sleep, your stimpacks heal over time, and your ammo has weight. And there's Wayne Newton as "Mr. New Vegas", probably the coolest character in the game. I've beaten the game several times now. I saved the game at a critical point where you have to decide which faction you want to continue till the end with. What I've found most impressive is how ambiguous each side is. I picked one side because I saw them as inherently good, but when you progress through the game, they're not quite as good as I'd thought. And the "bad" side actually has some positives to it. Each faction has its own motives for changing the region, each something noble and ignoble. That actually impressed me quite a bit.

So what are the downsides? Well, first of all, you aren't in Washington D.C. That may sound like a small thing, but the genius of Fallout 3 is that even if you've never been to D.C., you still know what it looks like, and the architecture has a certain resonance all its own. Plus, being in an urban environment is great for condensing game content in a smaller radius, making the game feel like there's something around every corner. In New Vegas, you have desert. There are only a couple of noticeable features, but even then, it never seems as cool or as epic. I mean, in a nuclear war, why would Las Vegas be targeted at all? It makes a lot more sense in D.C., for gameplay, story, and emotional resonance. Also, the music isn't that great. This was one of the things I was looking forward to the most. With Fallout 3, I didn't think I would like the music of the 40s, but it grew on me. And while playing the game, I actually fell in love with the genre and its stars. In New Vegas, there are some good hits here and there, but mostly I thought it fell flat. There are several very annoying songs in the game, and fewer songs in general. I found myself just turning off the radio and listening to the ambient soundtrack, which is decent. The genre of music changed to country western, and though it did convert me to a fan of the genre in general, I still hated this soundtrack. The worst was Johnny Guitar. Oh God. Another thing I didn't like about the radio is that, though I really found Wayne Newton's character of Mr. New Vegas charming and likable, overall the radio broadcast didn't quite have that epic feel that Fallout 3 had. For instance, in Fallout 3 if you do something good or bad, the DJ of Galaxy Radio notices what you did and will report that on the air, telling everyone that there is some "Messiah of the Wastes" or "Wasteland Marauder" or something like that. In New Vegas, the idea is still there, but it's watered down to just a footnote in the broadcast. Mr. New Vegas doesn't even know (or care) that it's one person out there who is dramatically changing the balance of power. So when you do something good, it's told as "some third party contractor did so-and-so." Lame. Also, the karma system is back in this game, but I don't know what it does. It seems like it does nothing at all. The faction system is really what you're going to be paying attention to. The story is pretty dumb. It's so bad that you don't even care what happens in the game. Actually, I kind of wondered what the whole point of this game was to begin with. In Fallout 3, you search for your dad--probably not original, but arguably a timeless story. In this game, you're a courier. Big freakin' deal. Who the heck even cares? The whole story in this game is that you deliver a package. Yes. That's it. Hardcore mode wasn't really that hardcore. My friends think I'm a glutton for punishment for playing games at their hardest setting, but this was extremely easy. You can even set the difficulty on very easy and still play on hardcore if you wanted. With as much food and drink available, eating and drinking weren't hard to do. Sleeping wasn't hard since you get three (yes, three) places to live. The fact that stimpacks healed over time wasn't that big of a deal, since food does that anyway. Sure, ammo has weight, but if you have companions what's the big deal? You use them as pack mules and there's no problem. But the worst part is that there are so many bugs in this game. More than I had to deal with on Fallout 3. I saw a radscorpion made from wooden planks. I saw a guy grow his fingers out like Lady Deathstrike. I even saw a person flee from me in horror, only to run into the ground, so it looked like half of a torso was skimming atop the sands. And the freezes. Good God, man. The game froze up more times than I can count. And that's what bothered me the most. It wasn't that bad since the game as a great auto-save function, but when you have to physically turn off the console when you really just want to relax and play a game--that's annoying!

I hate to sit here and write about how this compares to Fallout 3, but ultimately I have to, since it looks and feels more like a DLC than a sequel. Though I have said a lot that it does wrong, this game really is quite good. And if you liked Fallout 3, you'll enjoy this game.


Rating:  4 wooden scorpions out of 5

Nano-rant Review:

Caravan, you are the strangest, hardest, dumbest card game to ever be in a videogame. Also, stop freezing, game!!!!!!!!!!!!