Fallout: New Vegas Review
Fallout: New Vegas is in some ways like driving from LA to Vegas – it will be hours before you see The Strip and during that time all you'll see is a whole lot of desert. In fact, the post-apocalyptic Mojave looks a whole lot like the pre-apocalyptic one, except that the scorpions have become a lot larger. While this may be disappointing if you've been itching to hit the tables to try and win some caps playing blackjack, there's a whole lot more to see than the world's tallest thermometer in this version of the Mojave.
New Vegas opens with a scene straight out of a Vegas gangster flick. A man is shot by some goons and left for dead out in the desert. Unfortunately that poor sucker is you, but on the bright side you survive the attack and are nursed back to health by some friendly folk in a small village in the middle of nowhere. You don't know who tried to kill you, you don't know why they wanted you dead, and you don't know who gave the order for the hit. This is where your adventure begins, an adventure that will lead you closer and closer to Sin City, a city that didn't let a small thing like the apocalypse interrupt the party.
Fallout: New Vegas shares its universe with Fallout 3, but this adventure out West is completely separate from that of its predecessor. New Vegas is a completely standalone game and there's no particular need or advantage to playing Fallout 3 before New Vegas. You begin the game by customizing your character and his or her stats in much the same you would in most RPGs. The character and perk (skill) system in the game is the same as that in Fallout 3, which gives you a lot of leeway in designing a character that fits your style of play, be it an ugly, deadeye gunslinger or a charismatic pretty boy who can charm the gun out of a potential enemy's hands.
One aspect of your character that is new to New Vegas and has a big impact on your game experience is reputation. New Vegas and the desert surrounding it are a filled with competing factions trying to become the dominant force in the new world order. These factions run the gamut from major players in the post-apocalyptic landscape such as the New California Republic, a militaristic faction that draws its inspiration from the legions of Ancient Rome, and the traditional Fallout faction The Brotherhood of Steel, as well as numerous smaller ones trying to grab a piece of the action. Some of the factors affecting your standing are obvious – no one likes a person that shoots at them all of the time, while others are more subtle and can result from saying the wrong thing to the wrong person or helping another rival faction with a quest. Your reputation will have a direct effect on your game experience, not just in overt ways such as opening or closing quest trees or determining whether or not you're shot on sight, but also in subtler ways such as how people react to you and what they say as you walk by. It also makes deciding what to wear an important decision. Wear a legionnaire's armor and you can waltz right in to one of their camps, but wear it to a New California Republic outpost and they'll shoot first and ask questions later, even if they let you bunk with them the night before. The game is so shaped by your factional standing, that you could play through the game a second time and align yourself with different factions and have a different experience with the game.
While you can fight your battles in real-time in New Vegas, don’t mistake the game for an action-RPG. There’s plenty of dice-rolling going on behind the scenes during a fight, and while it’s still important to have the enemy in your sights before you fire, whether or not you hit that enemy and how much damage you do will depend on a variety of factors such as your weapon skills, the quality of your weapon, and the type of armor worn by your target. For those of you who prefer the more stately and slow approach to combat taken by many RPGs, there’s the game’s VATS (Vault-Tec Automated Targeting System). This allows you to pause the combat and target a particular body part on an enemy, and it will even show you what your percentage chance to hit is for each of those parts. Your ability to utilize this system will be limited by your available action points, but if you burn them all off they’ll regenerate after a few moments of combat in the comparatively messy real-time mode.
Other RPG aspects drive a lot of the game experience in New Vegas. For example, prepare to spend a lot of time conversing with NPCs. There are a lot of people to talk to and a ton of dialog in this game – not that I’m complaining about it, but you should know what you’re getting into before taking the plunge. The good thing about all of this conversation, though, is that New Vegas is populated with a lot of interesting people that you’ll want to spend some time with. The writing in the game is excellent and the voice-acting top-notch, so more than likely you’ll continually look forward to meeting the next quirky character in the game. Another RPG feature found in the game is one that is usually reserved for MMORPGs, crafting. You can build a wide variety of weapons and gadgets, make your own ammo, or cook up some of the interesting meats that you find out in the desert.
The world of New Vegas is a joy to explore, although on the downside there’s also a whole lot of nothing out in the desert. The time spent hiking between one interesting thing to the next can wear on you a bit. Luckily there’s a fast travel system in the game, albeit one that only allows you to jump to places that you’ve already visited. The atmosphere is thoroughly Fallout, and if you enjoy the series’ particular take on the apocalypse you’ll probably enjoy New Vegas’ world as well. In-game radio stations add to the mood, but they’re unfortunately very limited when it comes to their playlists. On the downside there are a couple of songs that will probably forever remind me of my time spent with New Vegas, but on the positive side there are only a couple of songs that will.
The game is not without its annoyances, though. As with just about any RPG, there are an abundance of chore-like quests filling the space between the really interesting ones. Some of these fillers are not well-designed, such as one that had me spending more time than I’d care to admit looking for a particular type of plant growing somewhere in a vaguely described area. Also, be prepared to run into the occasional broken script on a quest, although none that I encountered are so egregious that it affected the overall game. I also found the game’s save system to be annoying. Checkpoints are few and far between, and I found the hard way on more than one occasion that a single misstep or miscalculation can lead to you having to replay long stretches of the game. You can save at anytime yourself, but I felt that worrying about saving every few minutes detracted from the overall game experience
In spite of these issues, I enjoyed my time with New Vegas. I loved the game’s imaginative world and sense of humor, and it compelled me to keep playing to see as much of it as I could. If you didn’t enjoy Fallout 3 or are not a fan of RPGs in general, then you’ll probably disagree with me. Everyone else should seriously consider taking a road trip to New Vegas.
Final Rating:
88%. Viva New Vegas!