Customer Reviews

Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

War...War never changes. But Fallout has over the course of its long-winded history.

It started as a spiritual sequel to 'Wasteland', CRPG that started 'Post-Apocalyptic' gameplay back in 1988 by Interplay, whose division Black Isle is behind seminal CRPG classic such as 'Baldur's Gate' and yes, you guessed it, 'Fallout' and 'Fallout 2'.

After Interplay was disintegrated, some of the people went to Bioware, some of them went on to found Troika, talented but unfortunate developer who met its demise after three original and interesting but very buggy CRPG with dissimal sales. Some of them went on to found Obsidian, yet another talented but somewhat disappointing developer whose track record includes 'Knights of the Old Republic 2', 'Neverwinter Nights 2', 'Alpha Protocol' and upcoming 'Dungeon Siege 3'.

Why am I reciting a history lesson here? When Bethesda acquired the right for 'Fallout' IP from Interplay and released its biggest financial success yet with 'Fallout 3', fans were divided into two distinctive factions and has been feuding over which is better.

Faction Red: Bethesda ruined the memory of the greatest CRPG of all time by dumbing down everything we loved about our precious franchise. It's 'Oblivion with guns'.

Faction Blue: Bethesda successfully resuscitated the dead franchise by streamlining many archaic elements and implementing new refreshing elements. It retains all the core elements from 'Fallout'. We love it.

I personally love all of them and none of them are perfect to feud over petty differences in semantics.

After court-feuding over who's got the right to the entire 'Fallout' series, Bethesda settled with the right to all future single-player Fallout game and right to license the right to Interplay to the development of 'Fallout MMORPG'. So both 'Fallout 4' and 'Fallout Online' are coming; both will be published by Bethesda and 'Fallout 4' will be also developed by Bethesda.

So with the help of creative minds behind the original 2D isometric Fallout games using the same engine and costruction set Bethesda did for FO3, can Obsidian right the wrong by Bethesda? (Bethesda still owns the IP and publishes it.) That has been the question by Faction Red.

If you are a fan of 'Fallout 3', rest assured FONV is exactly like FO3 with nothing taken away with some newly improved elements added. You will feel right at home with the game. Control, menu, movement, combat, Pipboy and VATS are all identical. What's added are new perks system, new aiming system and new NPC companion command system.

Unlike FO3, there are tons more factions now in play and you can choose to side with certain faction with consequences. Faction dynamics play much more intimate and important role, and are tied directly to the choices you have to make (think Morrowind). You cannot possibly satisfiy everyone in FONV. You'll have to actually play multiple playthrough to experience everything. Choices you make will definitely make the differrence in character interaction and will give out whopping 27 unique important quests all littered with different endings with each ending giving you various permutations (think Gothic and The Witcher), unlike the cookie-cutter, same-difference 5 endings FO3 offered. Every time you make someone beneficiary, you will make someone else unhappy. All of your choices will resullt in some type of consequences. There is no more good and evil morality play here. This time, it is a wild wild west. Everyone is a cutthroat. In fact, style of the game is reminiscent of old western movie and FO3 rolled into one.

Dialogues are much more sarcastic and darkly humorous. Voice-works are well-done by many celebrities. Characters are wackier. General tone of the game is morally even murkier and overall darker, albeit humorous on par with the first two games (especially Fallout 2).

Soundtrack once again retains the signature feel of the series by utilizing slew of retro 40s and 50s classic pop music. Orchestral score is once again done by Inon Zur.

While level-cap has been increased to 30, leveling up needs more attention because you cannot be a jack of all trade in FONV; especially in light of new 'Hard-core' mode that is included in the game. You need to hunt and cook / harvest / steal and eat, you need to drink and you need to sleep to survive or pay the consequence. You cannot carry infinite amount of ammo either. You can freely choose whether you want to play as 'Hard-core'.

You can now mod your own weapons on the work bench with more variety and freedom than you were able to in FO3.

Graphics are still competent but are aging fast now. The general tone of the color scheme is changed from green to orange. While Obsidian claims graphic is slightly improved, I think graphically everything looks little bit uglier overall, probably stemming from mismatched color schemes throughout the environment. Sometimes, the world feels like messy crayon artwork from kindergarten wall. But the world is much livelier and you now see some level of active civilization represented by glowing neons of Vegas Strip.

So it sounds like I am trashing FO3 and praising FONV to no end. Not so fast. FO 3 is still a great game but I like FONV slightly better in terms of the improved gameplay. However, FO3 is much better in depth of contents, presentation and storytelling. Morrowind and Oblivion is still my king of CRPG with much stronger community support. So what is wrong with the game?

Welcome to the bugfest 2010. It's a grand feast of technical mess; frame rate stuttering issue, game crashing and freezing, characters stuck in the environment, disappearing act of characters and items (even save-game files make the cameos in the act) are some of the widely reported bugs across the all platforms. Yes, CRPG and nonlinear, free-formed, open-ended game in gigantic scope as big as FONV will always be buggier than linear, focused games like Halo and Modern Warfare due to virtually impossible task of QA stemming from endless in-game possibilities, and yes, nothing gamebreaking, But there are tons of minor glitches that are annoying and tiresome when you play the game that gives you anywhere from 40-200 hours and upward. This is the buggiest Fallout entry.

Here's a helpful site to alleviate your potential problems.

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Another thing is everything in FONV is awfully familiar with FO3, not necessarily a bad thing in itself. Just don't expect the same kind of awe-inducing wow moment like when you came out of Vault 101 for the first time in FO3 or cinematic end-battle.

If you are not a fan of CRPG or you hated FO3, there's nothing new for you to see here. Just like FO3, this is not a FPS, even with enhanced aiming mechanics. Hit points and damage are governed by your stats. This game will be just as boring as FO3 to you.

If you are a fan of open-world game such as GTA, be warned; FONV is not a open-world action game. It is open-ended, nonlinear, free-formed CRPG that focuses on traversing and finding new places, engaging with different characters, performing quests, dungeon-crawling and "role-playing". There are tons of small, interesting and quite often excellent depiction of personal conflicts and backstories, but there's no 'save the humanity' type of grand plot and cinematic cutscenes between each level.

And if you think 'Borderlands', which is by the way solid and entertaining action game, is better than FO3, stay away from FONV. Customization of stats, leveling up, armors and weapons by themselves do not make action game like 'Borderlands' a RPG. You'll be wondering why your excellent marksmanship repeatedly proven via endless hours of online multiplayer session is not effective in Nevada / Mojave wasteland.

Last, but not least, PC version of FONV utilizes Steam, which is the most popular DRM and the least intrusive DRM currently available in the market. It offers many incentive, convenience and great pricing for older games compared to other DRM, but Steam is still DRM. Convenience of not having to worry about the actual gamedisc by using Steam is nothing compared to not having any DRM so we can install the game and put away our game for display and collection. We won't be worrying about gamedisc if DRM doesn't check the disc every five second during the gameplay if the disc is authentic in the first place. Dual release with non-Steam version after initial release or guaranteed future DRM deactivation patch will surely pacify every morally just legitimate paying customers who genuinely want to support developers but are turned off by hands-on DRM.

So why did I still choose PC version over console version?; GECK, easier patching and community support, because I expected that game like FONV would always be buggy. To Bethesda's credit, the game looks and plays exactly the same on either PC or console, barring framerate, graphics and resolution, so the experience will be identical unlike other CRPGs like 'Dragon Age: Origins', 'Two Worlds', 'Sacred 2', 'Divinity II', and 'Risen' on consoles to name a few.

But to Steam's credit, it's 'one-time only' activation through Steam and it doesn't require for you to keep the disc running in your optical drive once the game is installed. There's no constant Internet connection requirement while you play your game and there's no installation limit. And if you are into social-networking aspects of Steam, you won't have much problems. But if you are turned off by anything other than disc-based DRM, you are warned. I found myself grudgingly and reluctantly giving up to the spell of Fallout series this time but this is only the second Steam-powered game I purchased since Half-Life 2 back in 2004.

Overall, FONV is outstanding CRPG marred only by technical shortcomings and it is an excellent extension of FO3 world created by Bethesda but is also a love letter to the bygone era of glorious golden age of CRPG from the minds of the classic Fallout series in FO3's clothes. You will find many references made toward FO1 and FO2. FONV finds the sweet spot between the two warring factions (?) in my opinion. Short of bringing 'Fallout: Van Buren' to life, this is the best Fallout game you will get. So jump into the wasteland.

FONV is the best Obsidian work to date.

This Fallout New Vegas collector's edition is sick! the feel and look of it definitively worths its price. The leather-like case is tough and looks very nice. The poker chips feel like real ones, they are not made of cheap plastic, they are heavy and look very real. The platinum chip is heavy too, not made form aluminium if u thought that. The graphic novel has very good illustrations, two words: Dark Horse. In my opinion, the cards are maybe, if not, the coolest thing of the set, they are each one illustrated with a different detailed drawing and some phrases of the character represented. This collectors edition is a must have for every Fallout fan, like I said before, definitely worth the price, and something as nice as this will easily worth twice on the future so you can even look at it as an investment :D

I am a long-time fan of Fallout, having owned and completed all the previous versions multiple times. Fallout 3, while fun, was not very true to the original game, and, with the exception of the Feral Ghoul Reavers, was too easy. Fallout: New Vegas hearkens to the game play and feel of Fallout 2. Giant Radscorpions are a serious threat to the player, mutants don't just die after three shots to the face, and the voice-overs are not acted by just one main actor with a few other voices, like Fallout 3. The game flow is logical and the missions are more story-based and less contrived than Moira's tasks for her survival manual. So far I am about 36 hours into the game play and have enjoyed almost all of it, with the exception being a few video glitches, like enemies embedded in rock, or the player getting stuck inside a game surface and having to load from a previous game point, which can be overcome more easily by frequent game saves. With the addition of cooking at campfires, some of the better elements of Oblivion have been introduced. The scenery is lush and detailed, and the game play is smooth. I would give this game a 95% rating, and so have given it a 5-star rating with Amazon.

This game is quite simply incredible. It overshadows Fallout 3 in every aspect, including the things people were complaining about in that the graphics are actually much better and the wasteland does not look at all similar to fallout 3 (i have no idea what people are takling about with that). This game also has a more realistic feel and the new features everyone already knows about (so i wont go into them) live well up to the hype. The main complaint i heard about this game is that it is game-breakingly buggy with poor framerates and horrifically bad load times. I guess there is truth in this for some people, but quite honestly i am about 10-15 hrs in and i have not experienced a bad load time, a poor framerate, any freezes, or glitches; i must have hit the jackpot, fitting for vegas. Some people said that the glitches are probably exclusive to older consoles but i have the original Xbox 360 and no problems at all.

Put simply, there is nothing in this game that is WORSE off than it was in Fallout 3. People who jumped on board after Fallout 3 will enjoy this game and get the opportunity to see what the real fallouts were about; but there are also neat little inclusions from 3: two examples being Ed-E, an eyebot who came from Adams Airforce Base and the skillbook for the new skill survival, which is conveniently called the "wasteland survival guide". Old school fans who were a disappointed in the direction Bethesda took the franchise, you will feel back at home here, most importantly to me: MARCUS IS BACK BABY!!! I will go as far as calling this the REAL Fallout 3. Side note: calling this an expansion is flat out idiodic.

On the subject of the collectors edition, all the additions are neat, my favorite being the deck of cards, which is an old school looking deck with each card picturing a different person or faction. The poker chips are actually legit feeling and the Lucky 38 platinum looks awesome design wise, and suprisingly to me was actually made out of some kind of metal (i though it would be plastic). Havnt got around to reading the comic or watching the DVD yet but they seem cool. I also pre-ordered from Gamestop so i got it on time (sorry amazon shoppers)

All in all this game exceeded all my expectations and if you want to compare, it is far superior to Fallout 3. Hope for a copy that isnt too glitchy, but again, i did not have any issues.

Special edition... Okay. I guess.

Granted, there's a lot here, but the comic was sorta cryptic until I played the game, the chips are sorta just there, the bonus disk was alright, and the Platinum chip replica was alright, I guess.

Still, I got a pack of cards out of it :D

Hah, just kidding. For 20 more bucks (at least it was $70 when I payed for it), this was quite a bit more than what most games dump onto you. Granted, not much for in-game value, but it's fun to show off the HUGE chip that comes with it. And the case is slick as well; feels leather bound and the inside is lined nicely.

How's New Vegas? Well, if you liked Fallout 3, you'll like this game. If you never played Fallout 3 (or any other Fallout game, for that matter), I would go ahead and pick this game up, but open a Steam account first (Google that if you don't know what it is) because you will need it, seriously; it only comes through Steam, and nothing else. Kinda annoying, but understandable.

New Vegas is basically FO3 on steroids, with a new Hardcore mode that puts a meter on everything, ramps up the difficulty, and so on; a slicker system overall, with better aiming outside of VATS (the turn-based element of the game), and the easier-to-use Companion Wheel; and a more interesting and hilarious story that feels like it could go in any direction at any time. Oh, and the awesome soundtrack, with a mix of real 40's/50's music that isn't as well known as what we've generally heard, but great nonetheless.

Still, Bethesda REALLY needs to work on their debugging skills: even half a year after it's release, there's plenty of bugs to be found. I know the world is huge, but there are still people getting stuck in walls! Help! Overall, it's a great game that should be tried at least once, if not over and over.

As has been stated, this game has more bugs than a roach motel. I ordered the PS3 Collector's Edition. It is sitting here still sealed in the box it shipped in. It arrived on the day it released and I ordered a standard edition the same day for the PS3. It is buggy and has some different bugs than the PC version, such as not being able to pick up and item ( Q-35 gun in the Repconn Headquarters for one ). It freezes up and it is a good idea to save,save, and save some more. I have some 100+ hours when a friend gave me a copy of the PC version. I decided to see how that played ( it looks good on the PS3 and my 42" Toshiba HDTV, but it looks even better on this PC with the ati 5770 Card. I have some 60+ Hours in the PC version and it is playing out differently than the PS3 version. In Fallout 3, you could be Saintly or Pure Evill or anywhere in between throughout the game world. Not so, here, you can be all over the boards. I am Idolized in a couple of places and despised with the Legion ( not on too good of terms with the NCR either for that matter ). Wasn't real thrilled with Steam sticking their nose into my gaming, but it hasn't proven to be a problem. If they ever work all the bugs out, this should really prove to be a great game. As for any add ons, I suspect one will involve the locked gates at the Outpost on I-15. They did seem to toughen up the Deathclaws, not that they needed it. Has some interesting weapons as well plus some familiar ones. I gave it 4 stars for fun due to the bugs. I am a moderator of an online forum and a member and myself are playing this and have started a thread where we trade experiences, which are vastly different in the direction of the game. It is as if we are plying two different games, but that is the nature of it. From that stand point, it has great replayability.

I'm a huge fan of the original Fallout 1, 2 mostly and even Tactics. Fallout 3 was the first game I purchased in over 7 years, so I'm not a video game person, just love the Fallout world/games. I loved Fallout 3 but This game pays more attention to detail and has more in depth dialogue than Fallout 3, the story, fine details and dialogue were a huge deal in the original Fallout games and this game was designed by some core people that made the originals, so I'm more partial to it. Yes, the BUGS do suck...

Fallout New Vegas Collector's Edition is a wonderful RPG. The gameplay is incredibly huge and detailed world, loaded with stuff to do. Great atmosphere in Vegas Strip at Mojave. It is a little more harder and challenging than Fallout 3. The only problem I have with Fallout New Vegas is that it's a very buggy game. So make sure you always use Quicksave whenever possible. One more thing, this game does ties to STEAM. Keep that in mind. I have no problem at all with STEAM.

I don't think this is as good as the original Fallout 3. The plot is good but can be very confusing. Many location have little or nothing to do, or no challenge. Yet it is very entertaining and will give you at least 100 hours play time. I am near the end now and will replay in the hard core mode, which is a new feature and should add a whole new dimension of strategy to the game. I love to go to Vegas and have been doing so for over 25 years, so I really appreciatte the humor of having a Howard Hughes look alike running new Vegas and a Wayne Newton sound alike as the radio commentator. The geography is of course, correct, which adds to the enjoyment. A fun game. Great value for the hours of play. It is a Steam game.

Been a faithful follower of fallout from day one, didn't care much for tactics, but it was a different beast altogether. Van Bruen was cool, but didn't hold me to FO3. The poker chips were decent quality. The titanium replica chip is some kind of real metal. The graphic novel is hardback, but short. I never opened the cards or making of dvd. My copy came with the tribal pack even though I didn't pre-order. The packaging was reasonable, but nothing as cool as the lunchbox in FO3. If you liked FO3 you'll love the actual game. If not, don't bother.