Well, I figured since I recently hit the 120 hours played mark in this game that it was about time I sat down and tried to gather my thoughts on it. Now, before continuing, allow me to clarify something...
I'm a Fallout Fanboi. That's right, I'll happily fall to my knees and proclaim the Fallout series as the greatest and most fantastic thing to have ever graced a computer this side of buttersticks-and-midgets porn. The first game blew my mind completely, introducing me to the glory of post-apocalyptic awesomeness, grimdark and humor along with fantastic writing and storytelling... in an RPG environment. Mad Max was great stuff, but it was just a movie. This was a game. Not just a game, it was a roleplaying game. I was enthralled, and the game just kept sucking hour by hour by hour out of my life. It was the best thing ever... until Fallout 2, where they surpassed everything in the original while keeping everything that was already great. Humor, grimdark, fantastic characters and top-notch writing.
Then came Fallout 3, a game that initially had me going 'eeeeeh...' as I kept wondering if the universe could handle the transition into a first-person game, and whether or not it'd just be Oblivion Post-Ap. Fortunately, it wasn't... it came through. I'll still consider FO1&2 superior in story and writing, but the game was by the Brotherhood... FALLOUT in all it's glory. And it survived the transition into first person very well. In fact, it made the whole thing more immersive and you and your faithful dog (which I named various things, depending on character, but default would be Dogmeat) really was stalking through the subway tunnels, killing ghouls and wresting small treasures out of the forgotten dust. You really were battling super mutants at great monuments of Washington DC. The game received criticism for playing a bit fast and loose with the iconic factions of the previous games, but I actually found it refreshing and interesting to see them evolve and change, like the Brotherhood of Steel. The DLCs were mostly in keeping with the Fallout feel and universe, and some were grimdark enough that I once stopped and said to myself... "Right, I just grabbed a baby from a crib, shot the mother in the face and I'll be handing it over to a grim and disillusioned freedom fighter for research purposes... and this is the best possible option available to me... This shouldn't be this enjoyable."
Then came Fallout: New Vegas. At first, I thought it was just a stand-alone expansion, really. The same engine and so on... boy, how wrong I was...
Let's try to segment this a bit and tackle bit by bit.
Graphics/Visuals/Physics:
Allright, the engine is a little dated. This isn't F.3.A.R, DNF or whatever game you're drooling over recently. However... it really does work well. For a giant sandbox world, you really do feel like you're really there. The art-style working so well with the graphics engine is something that you rarely see, but when you do see it, it'll make the whole much better than the sum of it's parts. There is however a problem with this engine. It's got bugs. That's right, BUGS! It's a patchwork of an engine having been updated and pieced together throughout several games now, and that means it's got some issues at times. You'll find weird physics glitches bound to the graphics and things sometimes react very oddly to your presence. Watching a model suddenly stretch and flail around, clipping into the world and so on isn't a too rare sight.
When entering a 'cell' (which you might be familiar with as a 'grid'), you can hear items splashing into water or bounce about as they have only been positioned there, frozen in time, until you entered the area and the physics kicked in. Sometimes you'll see a corpse launch itself into the air as you shoot it, a marvelous display of a physics engine not quite managing to restrain itself from showing off.
However... for a giant sandbox game? It's fabulous. Items are really there in the world, and you can pick them up and arrange them however you wish. For instance, I decided on a whim to kill everything in Caesars camp, then pile every last body I could find in a giant heap... on top of a lot of C4 explosives. The ensuing carnage had me laughing for fifteen minutes straight.
Funnily enough, you'd think you'd get tired of watching someone completely explode or their heads detach from their bodies just from a single punch or a bullet to the face... but it just doesn't get old. It works...
Story/Writing/Worldbuilding:
This is where the Fallout universe really shines. You are a (insert a past here) and shit has happened. It's the same in all the Fallout games. You are released into a grand wide world with a hint of a main storyline and it's entirely up to you what you want to do. In New Vegas, the introduction to the Mojave Wastelands is simple... you are on your knees and get shot in the head.
What do you do about this? Well, it's entirely up to you. You can just singlemindedly finish your assignment, hunting down the bastard who did it, get back the package and deliver it. Or, you can just not give a shit, and move on with your life, just randomly explore and do whatever you want... or side with any of the multitudes of factions in Mojave, working for them and gaining their support. It's entirely up to you...
You'll probably do a little bit of everything.
The real treat is in the fact that the world is there to explore and interact with. The factions are real, the world is gritty and won't allow for too sensitive stomachs and it's a dangerous enough world out there even if you don't piss everyone off. The characters range from meh to oh my God on the impression meters, and that's in both the positive and negative sides.
The important part is that you really feel like you're having an impact on the world, and that the world adapts and shapes itself to you, as well as you yourself adapting right back.
There is some fantastic storytelling and characters in this game, but I have to say that I preferred the three previous games in that regard. The main storylines and characters aren't quite as impressive in vanilla NV as in the former games, but there's one part that well and truly shines with NV... the DLCs.
Honest Hearts, Dead Money and Old World Blues. These three DLC packs completely and utterly blew my mind with some of the finest writing and best voice acting I have seen. Especially Old World Blues. It was beyond amazing. Between Dead Money and Old World Blues you will see the heights of everything Fallout can offer. Grim and depressing grimdark reality and 'no happy ending', and fantastic humor and mindblowing characters all voiced and acted superbly.
Conclusion:
Well, it should probably come as no surprise, considering the 120 hour mark I mentioned right at the beginning, but I'm enjoying this game. It's pretty much everything I could want in a computer game, short of strategy. It's got FPS action, RPG characterbuilding both with skills/stats and with affecting the world around you, great storytelling, a huge sandbox world to explore and interact with and last but not least... it's got staying power and massive replayability.
When purely comparing the vanilla games, I'd rate Fallout 3 over New Vegas, even if New Vegas has far superior gameplay mechanics and gunplay, simply because I liked the FO3 wastelands and factions better. However, when you add in the DLCs, New Vegas goes above and beyond FO3. It's overall the best of the two games, and I will recommend it to anyone. If you like Post-Apocalyptica, this series is easily the pinnacle of the genre. If you like RPGs, this will satisfy your itch. If you like FPS... well, it's not Quake 3, but it'll still challenge you at times.
I'll end the review here, and reading back through it, I realize it's lacking a lot of specifics and tidbits that might tempt you or clarify something, but I really wanted to avoid spoilers and pretty much all the details of the game would constitute a spoiler.
Either way... this game gets a 10/10 from me. Fallout 1&2 was better, but New Vegas and the DLCs really did try to give them a run for their money. I guess I might review the DLCs a bit separately, as they're vastly different gameplay experiences.
Honest Hearts
This is the first DLC for New Vegas, and it introduces you to a whole new 'zone', enemies, a few new weapons and quests. This is the DLC that made the least impact on me, but it's also the biggest in sheer landscape and territory. You join a caravan going to 'Zion' to the north of the Mojave, in order to trade with the New Caananites. Tits inevitably go up, and you find yourself alone amongst the canyons and vistas of Zion. There's various tribes in the area and most of them want you to perform various tasks and quests for them. There's two new companions and some new weapons to be found there, along with the mutant bears you might have missed in Vanilla NV. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Dead Money or Old World Blues.
Dead Money
Can you say grimdark? Dead Money certainly can. You are plopped in the middle of a dead city, wearing a jumpsuit, an explosive slave collar and a low damage energy rifle with a few crap ammo reserves. Your task, if you should choose to accept it instead of getting your head popped off, is to assemble a crew of misfits that also are wearing similar collars, then perform a heist at the Sierra Madre casino... also dead. Oh, and let's not forget the very hard to kill Ghost People who wander the dead city and the invulnerable hologram security guards that can still do a lot of damage to you. Every character you interact with is some shade of insane, greedy, murderous and generally horrible people... and they're marvelous to interact with.
The entire DLC unveils a story to you, along with stories for each of the companions you'll recruit, that is through and through depressive, grim and masterfully told and acted. I personally have to say I really enjoyed the story and the characters, as they were masterfully written and acted. However, this is also the most infuriating of the three DLCs as the gameplay is the least enjoyable. To me, anyway. It's more trial and error than skillbased, it'll sometimes seem. It's punishing, it's enjoyable, it's sometimes scary, it's sometimes so bittersweet and heartstring thrumming that it's really impressive...
In short, it's the second best DLC so far, and I enjoyed it... even if even the best of endings to this DLC is so bittersweet and heartache inducing that you feel... spent, once it's done.
Old World Blues
... I can't stop geeking out about this DLC. It's by far the finest piece of writing, acting and laughter inducing piece of gaming I have encountered in ages. I absolutely loved and adored this DLC to bits. Imagine if you will, investigating a fallen satelite only to be whisked away to an unknown location. You wake up on a balcony overlooking the interior crater of a hollowed out mountain, wearing a patient's gown and noticing a lot of new surgery scars. Imagine then, if you will, that within the next fifteen minutes you'll find that your brain, heart and spine have been surgically removed and replaced with technology, and that you are the only hope left for a bunch of scientists that for certain interesting reasons no longer have access to things like hands, feet or genitalia.
I can't speak much of this DLC without spoiling some of the most fantastic conversations and characters I have ever seen in a game, but if you pile all the most fantastic characters you can imagine from a cheesy 50/60s Sci-Fi/Horror movie including the mad scientists, overly dramatic announcers and most hilarious sentient household appliances... what, you didn't have sentient household appliances in your 50s/60s Sci-fi universes? Then they sucked, because they're here and far beyond hilarious and awesome.
This DLC introduces all of those, some very excellent gameplay and also some of the most interesting and amusing weapons and armor in the game. I am particularly fond of the X-13 Stealth Suit which actually talks to you and injects you with Stimpaks and Med-X when necessary, while reassuring you that you can't technically overdose on painkillers. When she also tells you that there's probably no one that's ever been as unnoticed as her, you can't help but be charmed when she then tells you that you are her best friend forever.
From start to finish, this is by far the best money I've spent on a gaming experience in recent history.
Lonesome Road
I falloutgasm'd. This DLC is the 'last road' before the canon end at Hoover Dam. Lured to the Divide you and ED-E will be discovering a few very unpleasant truths about both your and his past. Does ignorance absolve you of responsibility when your actions turn out to mean the death of a burgeoning nation and it's populace? What will be the result of two Couriers facing each other underneath the flag of an older dead nation? What happens when the nuclear fire once more rises from the depths? As an experience, this particular DLC is quite linear and does not provide any grand landscapes to explore. There's very little freedom. On the other hand, it's a much tighter story-telling experience than pretty much all previous DLCs (and main game) and is gameplay-wise certainly something to desire. There's still exploration to do and all kinds of hidden nooks and crannies to find, along with some fairly spectacular loot. I loved this DLC and while it doesn't -quite- reach Old World Blues levels of awesome, it's easily just a Breather Mask behind.
This being the very last DLC that'll ever come for New Vegas, I can with confidence say that this game is absolutely amazing. Stunning. Glorious. It beats Skyrim, FO3 (when counting DLCs) and pretty much everything else I've been purchasing from Steam the last few years. Absolutely marvelous. I look at Steam's stats on how much I've played various games and it's no surprise that this is at the top by a very high margin. Several hundred hours have been sunk into this game and I don't regret a single minute of it.
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Topic: Review: Fallout: New Vegas and three (four now) DLCs (Read 4549 times)