Customer Reviews

Fallout: New Vegas

5 star:		(129)
4 star:		(84)
3 star:		(57)
2 star:		(38)
1 star:		(63)

 

 

To most gamers, like myself, the Fallout franchise remained completely off the radar until Fallout 3 in 2008 despite previous hype. Even with the strong feeling that Bethesda Game Studios just copy/pasted the gaming template from Oblivion onto Fallout 3 and just made everything look crapier, Fallout 3 still captivated many new fans to the franchise ultimately leading to the strong number of pre-orders and subsequent sales of Fallout: New Vegas a few weeks ago.

After obtaining the game on release night and putting in almost 70 hours since then (it's November 11th as I type this, so I've had it for only a few weeks, you do the math), I can safely say I will easily put in triple the amount of hours before I'm done. To compare, I put in over 200 hours to get 100% completion on Fallout 3. Fallout: New Vegas is a great game that I will continue to enjoy till I get 100% completion... but the game is not without its horrible faults.

Let us begin!

Story

For those of you new to the Fallout franchise, the game's setting takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States where the government has fallen and nothing but lawlessness and tribal feudalism rules in the nuclear fallout (hence the name). Fallout: New Vegas (Hereafter to be referred to as "New Vegas") has the player assume the role of a courier that has been ambushed by mobsters and tribal gang members, is left for dead, brought back to health by a sympathetic town doctor, and sets off on a journey to track down your attackers. As you progress, you realize that your trivial venture of revenge is marginal compared to the grander scheme of things at work and that you will play a pivotal role in its conclusion.

Among the vast Mojave wasteland are several main factions vying for power; the two primary powers being the New California Republic (NCR), dedicated to bringing back the world of democracy and individual liberty, and Ceasar's Legion, dedicated to the principles of "Pax Romana," or the assimilation of all things to the central national identity of Rome... at all costs. However, despite the seemingly obvious lines drawn between the forces of good and bad, ultimately siding with either faction is not as easy a decision as it sounds for either side has their clearly distinguished pros and cons and contain hidden sides permeated by greed and ambition. For instance, while the Legion may be extremely draconian akin to the same level of brutality as the actual Romans were, they completely wipe out all disease, purify crops, and stabilize crime while the NCR does not.

This is only the tip of the iceberg pertaining to the overall plot and background, but it's obvious that the dichotomy of good versus evil is not nearly as black and white as other games such as the Light and Dark Side portrayals in Knights of the Old Republic.

Game Play

To say that New Vegas' game play and environments were inspired by Fallout 3 would be a gross understatement. The controls are identical to the point where I started playing as if I had just popped in another expansion pack to Fallout 3. The interface and even the main menu, personified by a wrist-mounted Personal Information Peripheral or "Pip-Boy," is also identical minus a few minor adjustments such as the adding of attachments to weapons or the utilization of special ammo.

Players can equip special ammo such as incendiary rounds or hollow points for added effects on targets and can even install special weapons parts such as scopes and barrel rifling. This allows more customization, not to mention makes New Vegas feel much more like a true scavenging experience by allowing the player to scavenge for parts.

Similar to Fallout 3 (you'll hear this a lot), the player can gain experience points of XP to move from level to level and attain perks that enhance your character. However, unlike Fallout 3 where perks are awarded every level, New Vegas grants them every other level or so. To me this was especially irritating as maxing our your character in Fallout 3 was one of the biggest highlights since you can go from absolute weakling to "I'm the Juggernaut!" in under 30 levels flat with little thought to planning your character. In New Vegas, with only 15 perks to attain throughout leveling, you REALLY have to plan ahead. By the way, experience awarded per action or kill is the same in the Very Easy difficulty as it is in the Very Hard... wish I would have known THAT about seven hours in!

Now, at this point I must state how you can gain perks through in-game "challenges" such as killing 75 `abomination' enemies such as Death Claws (easier said than done). This doesn't really make up for the fact since you'd need a player's guide to even figure out how to get what rather than spending 10 hours shooting random enemies and downing 25 buffout pills in a day to "see what happens."

Another nice addition is the inclusion of followers. Granted you could do this with a few characters in Fallout 3, but not to the extent and control as New Vegas... but not without a price (see bulletined glitch section below).

The newest big addition to the game play from Fallout 3 was the introduction of "Hardcore mode," where you have to stay hydrated, fed, and well rested less you become another statistic in the Mojave Wasteland. I thought this would be a fun challenge and I wanted the 100 point gamer score achievement (Bleep-bloop!) but, after trying it for a few hours, I said the proverbial "forget this" and stayed in Very Easy for the remainder of my gaming experience. Since when does drinking a soda make you more thirsty?! Granted it makes you need more water in the long run, but not in the immediate aftermath of enjoying a nice, chilled, irradiated Nuka-Cola! I just kept yelling out "BS" and stopped playing in Hardcore mode, which I probably will not pick up less my inner S&M is reawakened by solving the Lament Configuration

Overall I enjoyed the game play and still log in waaay too many hours when I should be either working out or enjoying time with my lady by inviting her over for "cake." However, all my praise cannot be complimented without addressing the looming miasma that is the stability of the game mechanics, or lack thereof.

Anyone reading this that has played Fallout 3 will cringe when anyone mentions the word "glitches." Fallout 3 was EXTREMELY glitchty. The glitches ranged from poor walking animations to dialog lock-ups (especially when installing the Broken Steel expansion pack), to flat-out system freezes during loading screens that corrupt the auto-save data. New Vegas not only inherited these traits but it seems as though the glitch gene has mutated into something far more sinister like the Ebola virus meets a the worst computer virus known to man (aka Windows 95).

Where to start? There's so many glitches to cover, it's not even funny. How do I adequately explain all the BS I had to deal with in under a page? I know! Bullet format!

1: The rendered layers of the lock picking and computer hacking minigames often loaded wrong placing the background over the game itself, making playing them near impossible until your turned off the system and reloaded (hereafter to be referred to as "reboot policy" because you`re going to see it a LOT).
2: Followers, if they fall far enough behind, will get `stuck' in the environment and if you're not paying attention you will lose them. I had to retrace my steps several times and lose valuable time to find my followers. It was just annoying.
3: You can get stuck in the environment just as easy as your followers. Twice have I gotten irreparably stuck in the environment that I had to resort to reloading the auto-save file.
4: As you play for a while, you'll notice the loading to gets progressively, and ridiculously, LONG. I conferred with a lot of other players and this seems to plague most gamers regardless of what system they're running. Simply refer to the reboot policy and start over again... and again.
5: This may be me but several times the NPCs missed their ques and the quests didn't continue. For instance, I was trying to recruit a warring tribe to fight against Cesaer's Legion and couldn't because the second-in-command missed his mark but, since I saved LONG after figuring out how to get the no-Khan-left-behind game engine to see the gaming trigger dancing right in front of them, I missed my opportunity and had to resort to something else to complete the quest.
6: Is it just me or does the automated aiming system (VATS) unable to shoot over rocks even though you're clearly aiming above the rocks?
7: Repeating dialog. Sometimes those pesky card-carrying union NPCs get so nervous about being "disenfranchised" by their local order of Teamsters that they didn't notice that they're repeating their lines in critical dialog over and over and over. Reboot policy.
8: Auto-save freeze. This is probably a 1/10,1000 thing but I've had it happen three times when the game froze during auto-save and corrupted the saved data. To avoid any complications I had to rely on the Chicago-style of saving (early and often) less I lose up to several hours of game play in a corrupt save data.
9: Faction reputation glitch. "Good, bad, or somewhere in between," you are judged by each faction by how you deal with them. However, I've heard two complaints about factions just randomly attacking the player for no reason at all. My little brother, for instance, was "idolized" by the New California Republic and stopped a high profile assassination attempt but, for some weird reason, still gets randomly attacked by NCR troopers at a critical point in Hoover Dam meaning he cannot progress in the game.

In short, New Vegas has more glitches than a Walmart.com kiosk that runs Windows 2000 while the website is optimized for Windows 7, utilizes a Pentium 2 processor, and has been running for foru years straight (District Manager Kristi! Please, for the love of GOD, get our systems upgraded!!). Many a night, like last night with the excessive loading times, I found myself cursing out loud to the screen and discovered that trying to beat Call of Duty: Black Ops on Veteran was less stressful (review coming soon!).

Graphics

They are virtually unchanged from Fallout 3. The character graphics are still a solid mash of rendering akin to World of Warcraft. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as the game itself is insanely vast, particularly the environments. One look around outside and one will see just how much effort was redirected from character and weapon designs to the actual environment. It is the 1960s Rat Pack era Mojave Desert with the mobster themes. All the same, the graphics are nothing truly to marvel at.

Music and Sound

Also virtually unchanged as the music is direct copy/paste with a few new additions such as the NCR music at Hoover Dam. This means you get treated to hearing the same wandering music and horn blasts as long as your system won't crash.

The biggest differences in the sound is the voice cast and licensed tracks. The voice cast is completely different so you don't hear Generic Voice Actors A, B, C, or D speaking for 60+ different characters... instead you have Generic Voice Actors E, F, G, and H speaking for 60+ different characters... and Mathew Perry of Friends.

I liked how Ron Perlman reprised his role as narrator, and Michael Dorn is ALWAYS a welcomed voice actor among video games (Loved him in Saints Row 2). It was interesting having Mathew Perry, an actor typically reserved for wussy roles, serving as a sinister and malicious gangster that tries to kill you... twice. Wayne Newton (aka Mr. Las Vegas) plays the perfect role as "Mr. New Vegas," a DJ that broadcasts Frank Sinatra among other Vegas favorites that seem more suited for Kill Bill than new Vegas. BTW: is it just me or do all three radio stations play the same thing?

Overall

Overall, the game play is virtually identical to that of Fallout 3, debatably placing New Vegas in the realm of a highly glorified expansion pack. This is not necessarily a bad thing if the game can stand up on its own, which New Vegas does despite its copy/paste appearance and extreme array of glitches. It's still super addicting as my number of logged hours prove. However, given the extent to which the game is made and the amount of hours needed to beat the game, replay value is actually lower than one would think. Most gamers, even hardcore ones like me, despise doing highly tedious tasks over, especially if they take a few hours. I only played through Fallout 3 twice and that was for achievements, a feat I believe I can recreate with New Vegas.

All in all though, despite its abundance in shortcomings, New Vegas does pull itself off as a great RPG in the Fallout arsenal.

Fallout: New Vegas is a a great game marred by some bad programming. And that does not even make sense because Obsidian only re-skinned the Fallout 3 engine for the most part with a few minor upgrades. Bottom line is they puched it out to meet a deadline they knew they were not ready for.

The game itself is good but the programming is merely a few steps above unplayable. In less than a week after launch they had to patch the XBOX 360 version to deal with like 200 bugs that were (as Obsidian states) "not present during testing". Bullcrap. And there are still issues that make the game absolutely frustrating to play.

* The game leaks data constantly causing lagging and freezing issues that require a restart of the system every few hours of playing.
* Many people I know have issues with the game randomly freezing during an autosave which corrupts the save file.
* People are experiencing autosaves into bugs (stuck in walls for 1 example) that you have to go back to a previous hard save which can result in loss of hours of progress.
* my brother had an instance where he was permanently stuck in the V.A.T.S. auto aim feature... he could walk around & everything but he could not close the system down.

Technical issues aside the game is great... awesome story that is (in my opinion) more realistic than Fallout 3 and pretty believable. 4 factions fighting over the still functioning Hoover Dam is more plausible than converting the Jefferson memorial into a plant that can purify irradiated water into drinkable water.

Vegas was not directly hit in the nuclear war the franchise is built around so there are a lot less mutated critters running around. The occasional radscorpion, big bugs, cougar viper hybrids, the occasional super mutant and ghouls... but mostly different gangs of normal people.

They added the option of true Iron Sight aiming and they cut down on the slow-mo kill cinematics... but I'd personally like to have the option to turn those cinematics off altogether.

Basically I was ok paying full price for this game but I cannot wait for all the technical issues to taken care of.

I bought this for my son and he has enjoyed it as a follow up to the other Fallout. Unfortunatly, the game locks up and needs to be rebooted fairly regularly which takes away from the game play. Not sure what the problem is, but others seem to have had the same issue. Had we not pre-ordered the game, I don't think we would have purchased this game knowing what we know now. Hopefully a patch or software update will be released to fix this otherwise great game.

I have to say i am a huge fan of fallout 3 and New Vegas doesn't disappoint. However For the first time I can remember I am going to shelf a game for a few months because of the issues it has.

Shame on you Bethesda Studios for selling a game that needs massive patches to keep it from freezing and lagging and failing to load games. This really upsets me that it is this bad. If you don't believe me google "New Vegas bugs" this is pathetic how far from "gold" this game truly is.

I have gone as far as to give this game 2 stars is based on how annoyed I am that Bethesda Game Studios has announced they are releasing downloadable content when the game has the issues that still need to be resolved.


New Vegas is a good game with solid game play and a pretty decent story. There are plenty of reviews that talk about the game play. I am not discouraging anyone from buying this game all i am saying is wait till xmas to play it.

THE GOOD:
As far as story and atmosphere are concerned this is the best Fallout since the first 2 games. Fallout 3 was pretty good, but this blows it away and then some. Graphics are the same as Fallout 3, but the Mojave Wasteland is much more full of life and full of things to do compared to the Capitol Wasteland. A+ in that aspect.

THE BAD:
I spent 50 wonderful hours playing only to have my 2 saves become unloadable. It just freezes when I try to load any of them and I am waiting for a patch to hopefully fix it so I continue playing. There are also serious frame rate issues randomly and also after playing a while the load times become very long. Some times the game will hard lock the entire console. It is very frustrating. There are other random bugs and glitches which aren't a big deal really, but the game crippling issues outweigh the good for me. I feel pretty ripped off currently. (Yes, I've tried clearing my caches.)

THE UGLY:
Obsidian knew about these serious issues before releasing the game and chose to release it broken regardless. Not a good way to treat consumers or a great brand such as Fallout. There is just absolutely no way they could have missed these obvious crippling issues during testing since almost everyone becomes affected by them once you reach "The Strip".

I loved Fallout 3, and was very excited when I heard New Vegas would be available as a follow-up. I'd heard about a few bits of trouble here and there, with freezing and whatnot, but it wasn't enough to deter me from purchasing the game. At this point, I wish I hadn't, because I am now unable to load any of my save files.

What did I do to deserve this? Well, I went into Vault 3. That's right, that's all it takes--this game is so broken that simply entering this Vault is enough to render your save files unloadable. I've tried everything--all three saves I have are corrupted, and refuse to load at all. After googling the problem, some players recommended deleting the current patch. I tried this, and all three save files refuse to load.

If that wasn't bad enough, the official advice from Bethesda is even worse--they recommend "loading a point before you went into Vault 3, and avoiding that area until the game is patched." There are apparently other areas/quests that cause issues to this degree. Part of me feels like I'm somehow responsible--like maybe I should have been keeping separate save files for every 5-10 hours of playtime in case something like this happened. Then I remember that SUCH AN IDEA IS RIDICULOUS, AND I SHOULD BE ABLE TO COUNT ON MY GAME NOT BECOMING UNPLAYABLE FOR NO REASON AT ALL.

Please take my advice, and don't buy this game. This happened after 50+ hours of playtime, which I've now lost. It MIGHT be fixed if/when they put out a patch; however, at this point, I'm writing my game off as dead. If this was a toaster, microwave, or car, the product would've been recalled for a full refund. All of the reviewers who post reviews talking about the glitches but giving the game 4 stars anyway either a.) have some different standard for games, where it's ok that you can't finish them or b.) haven't played long enough to find out just how bad it is.

This game should not have been released. It's a greedy money grab by people who were looking to cash in on the Christmas market. I've played betas with fewer problems. Don't be suckered out of your money like I was.

The gameplay is fun, but there are literally thousands of bugs, hundreds of which are major. Many game breaking and story breaking issues. Unplayable areas. Crashes. you name it. Honestly this doesnt even feel like beta, its an alpha release that the publisher pushed out to make money and there is absolutely no quality control on it. You're getting robbed if you buy it.

I love this game ill just say that right out there....Having said that the reason why I rated the game 3 stars is because of some serious problems. First what they did right. 1. Character customization feels much improved from fallout 3. All my characters are different and they look different, fight different, and talk different. For me this makes for a huge replay value because each play through is different. 2. Companions are worth getting. I remember my companions dying or just getting in the way all the time in fallout 3. Here we gain much greater control over how they react and attack so you can use tactics. Also companions don't die (unless you are playing hardcore) so when you get overwhelmed by rad scorpions they just fall unconscious and wake up when you finish the fight. 3. Guns. They really did this one right. Guns can be customized and certain weapons have base skill levels needed to use them effectively. You can still use them but they are not as accurate. This once again allows you to customize and make the characters very good at certain things. A huge improvement is ammo can be reloaded. Your character collects your brass and you can reload your ammo in some instances better ammo can be reloaded with a higher powder load so buying ammo is not as much of a chore.

BAD THINGS.
1. Game crashes. Yes it happens often and sometimes every time in certain places. 2. LOADING. Even loading the game onto my xbox the load times are still pretty long. There is a bug in the game that the longer you play the longer it takes to load into different area's. The demand on the xbox also increases with time until the game is too laggy to play. This can be fixed by restarting your xbox but very annoying. 3. Quest bugs. Yep sometimes the quests just fail or you make one choice and the game thinks you made another. I was playing as a good character allied with the NCR when an NCR soldier ran into the building I was in and said I would pay and the whole building went hostile to me.

If you are looking for a game to spend some time with that you can enjoy this is for sure one of them. If they can patch these bugs up it would make it much much better but until they do it can be frustrating. If you liked fallout 3 or if you like 1st person shooters and RPG's you will enjoy this.

In the first few hours of gameplay it seemed Obsidian made a worthy successor to Fallout 3. However once you get some hours into the game you begin experiencing bugs everywhere. Bugs with graphics where objects spawn inside of other objects and very slow framerates. Gameplay bugs where allies began attacking your companions and quest bugs that cause them to fail or not allow completion. Then there are the horrid load times.

Some of the performance glitches can be cleared up by either quiting and restarting the xbox or deleting the system cache. Other problems, such as broken quests, require loading earlier saves and consulting the FNV wiki on what the workaround is.

In comparing this to Fallout 3 I'm reminded of the cliche 'Less is more' as most of the new features don't really add much gameplay value. The exception being the companions. They don't die unless you are in hardcore mode and there is more interaction with them. Each companion has a unique perk that can be very useful.

In retrospect I would have bought this 6 months after release with the expectation many of the bugs would be fixed.

I assume this must be in written on a white board in the offices of Obsidian somewhere.

I'm not going to say anything you probably haven't already read. The game is very, very good. In fact, it has the potential of becoming my favorite game ever. However, until it gets some significant patching this game will be one of my biggest frustrations. (Sigh... such unfulfilled potential.) But the sizable number of "minor" glitches kill any of the all-important immersion experience in this game. Then there are the more rare, but still regularly occurring total freeze ups which can only be solved with a total reboot of your Xbox.

The truly infuriating thing is that the folks are Obsidian are no doubt putting the final touches of some downloadable content. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the DLC for Fallout 3 and don't mind the idea of enhancing my FNV experience. However, they're efforts should be fixing this broken product - the one I paid $80 for (Collector's Edition) rather than trying to milk another $15 - $20 out of me for DLC.

Insult was added to my injury when the only patch released thus far was simply to fix glitches that could be exploited by players for an unfair advantage. I never take advantage of such glitches so I don't care if they go away. But when the patch leaves many, many issues untouched I realize where the company's priorities are.

I beg you Obsidian. Please step up and fix this game. Make it as good as it could be.