Fallout: New Vegas

[Mr. Analog]

Just popped it on and watched the intro vid.

Now, I don't know about you guys but I'm a little worried about the setting, it seems much smaller than F3. I know there are about the same number of factions (maybe more) and the map is as big as the Capitol Wasteland but... I dunno, this seems more like DLC than a whole game so far.

Obviously when I get into it I'll probably change my tune...

The new art assets are great so far

Now swing baby, dig?

[Mr. Analog]

I finally figured out what was buggin' me.

New Vegas seems less "epic" in scope. In Fallout 3 you're basically either the hero or the villain of the DC wasteland, you go around doin' stuff like finding the Lincoln monuments' head or actually getting your hands on an EDEN creation kit or the freakin' Magna Carta.

I think the other thing I'm going to miss the most is just the empty feeling you got when navigating the various "cells" of the destroyed city. I found that the most interesting part was exploring the city, I didn't care as much for trudging around the open wasteland finding middle-of-nowhere shacks or random settlements.

Arrgh, I wanna be at home right now getting into the groove with this game.

[Mr. Analog]

Okay, well the game sure sucks you in and the way the side-quests hit you is much more branch like, every time you try to help someone like four other things come up, so there's lots to do, that's for sure.

I am sort of zipping along though, I'm really close to finishing a couple more quests.

I'm finding that what worked in Fallout 3 works here just as well (stealth + repair + guns, maaaaaaaybe lockpick), I'm pretty much pwning all the NPCs so far.

I picked off a fortress of bad guys with the "varmint rifle", which is more or less a pea shooter... surprisingly the rest finally came out when I depleted more than half their number, finished 'em with my double barreled boomstick.

The setting is fun, you get a real old West feeling (at least in this part).

The character dialog is great and the voice acting is much better, the logic behind a lot of the situations is a little screwy though (I don't want to blow any plot so I'll leave that there).

It's much harder to anticipate when you'll need to use certain buffs which is annoying, all it means is that I'll be hoarding buffs and never using them.

Books you read don't give permanent bonuses anymore and the buffs from certain foods goes away really fast now.

When you're putting your character together there's a psyche test that is supposed to figure out your bonuses but if you don't like it you can change it (it's basically the same as when you left Vault 101 in F3, kinda cheesy, I just picked all the @%&# I know works).

So far things are interesting but the side quests are much more insistent than in F3, it's pretty darn hard to rip through the root storyline.

Also, I'm not enjoying the long desert walks, sure the scenery is nice and there are one to two random encounters per trip (sometimes funny things) but it's boring as hell and seems to draw the game out. Maybe it's more interesting in hardcore mode where you need to eat/drink/sleep and worry about ammo weight or maybe it's even slower that way :-/

Ah well, at least the music is good...

[Melbosa]

I really really really gave it my best effort, but I guess I just don't care for the setting or game play.  I really did try this week!!!

[Mr. Analog]

Well, I really got sucked into things when more than one faction started clashing, there are SO many paths you can take it's sick.

The Mojave still seems MUCH smaller than the Capitol Wasteland and other than about 3 or 4 major set pieces there isn't a lot of WOW! factor.

Getting involved in the Vegas Strip is much more organic than I thought it would be, SO many options! And of course dealing with The King in Freeside was just brilliant!

I think my next character will be female though, so I can play as a badass stripperiffic astronaut with a laser gun hahaha!

So far my character is Mr. Nice Guy, I wanna play a baddie though too, ring-a-ding-ding!

[Mr. Analog]

Blaaaaaa had to work almost all day but finished New Vegas... I was disappointed with the final battle AND the ending.

YARR SPOILERS AHEAD!

Okay, first of all I thought the Mr. House storyline was pretty good but damn does it drag you through some @%&# (i.e. forget making friends with any one faction, you'll make enemies of the Legion, NCR, pretty much everyone, eventually).

The final bit warps you to Hoover Dam where you slog through clumps of heavily armed goons, Mr. House wants you pushing buttons and eventually you will let loose his army of upgraded securitrons. They will escort you to the Legion camp and park themselves outside the gate (apparently they are afraid of the big bad Legate Lanius lurking inside).

There are only a few guys in the camp, get rid of them all before talking to Legate. The speech tree is pretty frustrating, you need to have 100 in either speech or barter to get away from him without a fight, so most likely you will be fighting him and @%&# is this bugged as hell!!

First, he moves super fast, second he has a Final Fantasy Sword (i.e. it's bigger than he is). So your only bet is ranged BUT the whole Legion camp is basically a warren.

The only way I could beat him was by finding a ledge over some water, he couldn't get to me if I was on the ledge and I could take potshots at him with my Gauss rifle, eventually he got stuck on terrain and I shot him -literally- in the ass (haw!).

At this point you should save, because there's another stupid part right after (ho boy!)

As you are about to leave the Legion camp the NCR waltzes in (where'd all those securitrons go?) and you're approached by General Lee Oliver, once again, unless you have 100 in speech, barter or science don't bother with the speech tree (other than for laughs I guess), as soon as the little chat is out of the way RUN back and to one side and let the securitrons (they're back now, smoke break's over) whack the NCR goons (this means holstering your weapon and wearing something light you can move fast in, armor will not help you here).

Once you're done peeing your pants, a securitron wheels up with Mr. House's face on it talk to him to start the cutscene.

Now, I'm not necessarily upset with the ending per se it's dynamic so the scenes / narration you'll see will be based on your adventures, but they're all very binary from what I can tell (you saved this faction, yay! You didn't save this faction, boo!) some stuff wasn't even mentioned (ZOMBIES... BUT IN SPACE!!).

I wrapped the game at just over level 20 in 28.2 hours, it probably would have been faster if I hadn't dumped points in crap like Science/Explosives and just kept it all in speech/guns/repair (seriously, get speech up to AT LEAST 85 or forget about diplomacy and focus solely on weapons.) I did the final mission with no regular stimpacks and 9 super-stimpacks (which, my character had a problem with and would become super lethargic after using one).

Conclusion:

I had a lot of fun with this and there is going to be a lot of replay (though not as much as Fallout 3).

If you like exploring ruins you are going to be disappointed, it's a desert and most of the interior sets are pretty small. One thing that was a constant annoyance was the mountains, you can only climb so far up them and sometimes the paths are not easy to find and you end up wasting a lot of time dilly dallying thinking a mountain pass is going to lead you somewhere useful (or safe).

At the 2 to 4 hour mark the game really starts opening itself up, so many factions and possibilities you can literally go in just about any direction once you get past Primm. This all goes downhill pretty fast as you get closer to endgame, options close off and your path becomes more set in stone.

NPC battles only go two ways: stupidly easy or hard as @%&#. Animals, bugs and low level mutants (ghouls, centaurs, etc) are just walking XP, raiders/powder gangers/sadists are more or less item bags that sometimes shoot back. With a high enough perception and a sniper rifle you'll be able to get past stuff like that with ease (just bring followers to absorb loot). Some encounters are just stupid (i.e. multiple giant wasps, swarms of high level nightkin, Legion assassins, etc) I mean really, in some parts you'll be heading to a map marker for 25 minutes and get killed just before reaching your goal. Again, high PER will help you here because generally when you're WAY out in the wilds you'll get @%&#ed over by some tough foes, so best just to avoid them and/or save often.

There are only a handful of scripted events in the game, nothing to write home about really (most of them you can do right away in the first 8 hours or so).

There are some REALLY annoying level designs that, depending on your sense of direction, can lead to death and annoyance or easy resolution and free stuff (REPCONN basement was the WORST for this; if you go one way down a hall you can resolve the side-quest without firing a shot if you have 2 stealth-boys but if you go the other way prepare to get raped!

GLITCHES, New Vegas is RIDDLED with them. The end boss fights aside (which worked in my favor I guess) there's all kinds of stuff that @%&#s up ALL THE TIME. Getting stuck on geometry, having friendly NPCs decide you are a foe for no reason, followers that won't carry apparel (because they can't wear it), scripted conversations with dead speech trees (guy will run up, camera will zoom in for speech and you only have one option: to end the conversation). NPC pathing is bad, better than Fallout 3 but still unacceptable (again, see how I beat the boss above). I had the "Miss Fortune" perk and every now and then she'd come in and incapacitate a foe for me (thanks lady!) but then I'd get stuck in the VATS slow-mo (a couple of times I had to quit the game to get out of it), VERY annoying if you're close to the end of a mission. Side-quest item spawn locations, man I got screwed out of this a few times (mostly helping the Brotherhood of Steel) a gun is supposed to show up in an area, it was INSIDE a rock (or rather half-inside) I had an NPC not even show up to one mission and had to find an alternate way of resolving it using an online guide.

The other major glitch activity is frame rate drop, MOST of the game ran fine, but there were a couple of instances where (for no discernible reason) the frame rate would drop to unbearable levels. At first I thought there was some other process running outside the game but after some logging and reading on game forums I found that New Vegas actually has a few points where the framerate just inexplicably drops.

Another nitpick here isn't so much game mechanics but it broke immersion for me in a big way; NPC voice actor changes during different speech sections. I spent some time chatting up Sarah Weintraub trying to get into her vault suit and out of nowhere her voice completely changed timbre (may have even been a different voice actor), after that I started noticing it more and more, especially with the passive dialog. That really popped the bubble for me, especially since the character wasn't like, out in the boonies where I'll never go, she was right smack in downtown Vegas, right next to the NCR HQ of course I'm gonna talk to her!!

Now ALL THAT aside, the writing, missions and world is AWESOME. I never EVER thought I'd be salvaging a B-29 bomber (yes, the WWII kind). I never thought I'd help shoot friendly ghouls into space or have to choose whether or not something that could be a weapon should be a weapon. I enjoyed making friends and I enjoyed making enemies. It was a fantastic journey, one I'm sure I will make a few more times.

[Mr. Analog]

So I got a surprise in the mail today! It's a statue of "Yes Man".

This is an extremely limited run and I guess I was early enough to get one!



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Lazybones]

Neat

[Melbosa]

So I got a surprise in the mail today! It's a statue of "Yes Man".

This is an extremely limited run and I guess I was early enough to get one!



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Gratz!