Hello folks, today I'm going to be doing a review of Fallout: New Vegas by Obsidian Entertainment on behalf of Bethesda Softworks. And to do this properly, we're going to have to go back in the history of the company a bit, to explain what bethesda softworks does with most of it's titles.
The first game I ever played from Bethesda Softworks was Elder Scrolls: Arena. Arena was a bare-bones game, which was one of the first to try perspective 3d, much like doom. It had a entire rest/regeneration system, mana and health, stats and the whole kit and kabootle. It was also ball bustingly hard. You start the game being mobbed by rats, goblins and other unfriendlies, and you're first quest is to fight your way out of the dungeon in which you're imprisoned...
I should also touch on Bethesda Softworks history of releasing glitched games. To my knowledge, absolutly every game released by this company has at one point or another a fatal glitch that will doom the game. Arena, Terminator 2029 and Daggerfall had savegame glitches that would corrupt everything if you saved in the wrong place. Morrowind has some texture and coordinate issues. Oblivion has the AI screwups. But by far and wide, Fallout 3 was far and wide the best for strange stuff.
You had ragdoll physics issues. You had collison issues. Savegame corruption issues. Texture muckups. The works. It was also one of the most Kick-ass games to be released by bethesdasoft in a while. So, what went wrong with this one?
First, it's not made by bethesda softworks. This game is crafted by Obsidian Software. While it contains alot of the old Black isle team, the batting lineup of the old RPGs seems to have changed for the worst.
The first thing that kills this game by far and wide is the acting. It's pure and utterly godawful. Fallout 3 was immersive with it's voiceacting, making believable characters and situations. It really helped that absolutly everyone had a voiceacter, making the expirience that much better. Fallout: New Vegas has... a team of wanna-be voice acters. Just look at the character sunny smiles. The ater is bored, and obviously putting no emotion into it whatsoever. And this is the tutorial! This is one of the first things the player sees. Now on the flip side, the voice acting for the doctor is spot on, even though the volume cn be somewhat troubling at times.
The next thing the player sees is the massive map. When I saw this, I had an expectation of what Fallout had brought to the table, massive Capital wasteland full of buildings to explore and caves to spelunk. What greeted my eyes? This. Only half of the bloody map is used, and even though they cut back on the ammount of space, New Vegas still feels... sparse. The towns that you come across are mostly borded up, and once you hit the actual strip(the place that should be most hevily populated), the actual number of internal locations totals at most, about seventeen. This is from fallout 3's almost innumerable ammount of buisnesses and houses that the player could spelunk. Yeah, sometimes there would be a good amount of houses that were boarded up, but it at least felt like you could go almost anywhere.
Truthfully, though, it's probably the games utter sparsness in buildings that makes it feel like this to begin with.
Dialogue in this game is pretty good, taking alot from fallout 3 but keeping the same level of immersivness. Expect the capital wasteland to be mentioned quite a few times, as well as old friends and foes. The story is just great once you get into it, and there's alot to see and do quest wise... just don't expect anything like the previous title. IT's a good story, but like the last one, its incredibly short and ends on a blank note. And yes, like the previous one, once you're done the main quest in vanilla, the game is over.
Art in this game... except for two of the new creatures, it's all just recycled from Fallout 3. There's very few new textures, and even all of the new hats are just recolors of the Pre-War Hat from fallout 3. The weapons are more varried, and the new ammo system gives you alot of flexibility, but at the same note is also much, much more frustrating. If youre used to changing weapons when you see that ammo counter reach zero, this might not be the game for you. I found multiple times that I had other sets of ammo and just didn't know it.
They've added a mod system for weapons, and brought back fallout 3's style of blueprint discoveries, although it's overshadowed by a cluttered and confusing crafting system. Much of the new options aren't explained, and I found myself usually going back to the fallout 3 standard of loading up on stimpacks and hoping for the best. once you bulk up on the survival skill though, campfires can be somewhat a lifesaver, if you cook the right things.
The reloading bench, I'm guessing, is usefull to some people. I couldn't find a use for it. In fallout, I carry around three or four different weapons, and if one runs out of ammo, I switch. I don't like the fiddling with the bench, and find that the time it takes to get anything done on it is... bulky.
I also wanted to touch a bit on random generation in New Vegas. If you think that things our going to be like fallout 3, where everything has a chanc of being beatable, you're dead wrong. One word. Deathclaws. Wearing full T147b Power armor, 100 guns level twenty eight character with 7 agility and 8 strength, wielding a souped up Plasma Caster, I was able to kill a total of two deathclaws before being thurouly disembowled. This isn't balanced! I'm almost as high as I can go, and I'm still taken out by bloody deathclaws! How the frig do you kill them in this game! Ten fat men and a holy hand grenade?!
Beside all of the glaring problems, this game has some bang up writing. Conversations are fluid, and some of the options you can choose are downright hillarious. They've tried to include every situation(If you kill the Legate in TOWN and live, the Ceaser scolds you for it), and they do a pretty tip-top job... for the most part. There are some sections which are still a bit wierd, but that can be expected.
In summery: If you're a fan of fallout, and you have every other good RPG on the market, this is worth a shot. The story is good, and for all of it's glaring glitches, problems and slopy work, it's still a good game. I sincerely hope Obsidian Software picks up it's act, and the next project they work on they actually devote 110%, instead of the 62% we've seen here.
This is Mr.DKI, signing off for Knight Reviews.
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