WorstUsernameEver
But best title ever!
And the third rolls in.
GameZone, 6.5/10. <blockquote>Despite Obsidian’s fan-service, Fallout: New Vegas is a heaping pile of bugs. Common sights are characters falling through the world, single-digit framerates, frozen enemies, sound effects cutting out, and characters that change voices mid-conversation. I’ve had reputations reversed and weapons disappear from my inventory, only to go back to normal an hour later, and my two companions are currently stuck inside a room in New Vegas. The latter might be for the best anyway, as they kept shooting up the joint.
I have also come across a handful of broken quest-lines that have no requirements for reputations, and all parties involved are still alive. Quite simply, no dialogue options are given to finish the quests. Worse, is the constant freezing. The game has now frozen nine times and turned me into an obsessive saver, since one of these freezes happened during an auto-save and corrupted my data.
Looking purely at the new features of Fallout: New Vegas, I want to entrench myself in the Mojave wasteland and never return. Obsidian Entertainment has bolstered the series with an array of fantastic additions, including crafting and Hardcore mode, but it’s hard to appreciate them in light of incessant bugs and unfulfilling quests. Fallout: New Vegas was a valiant effort, but it’s back to the vaults for me.</blockquote>1UP hasn't published its review but shares some first impressions:<blockquote>At this point I believe I'm about half-way through the main quest of the game so I can't weigh in on how the rest of it plays out -- I've only had the game since Friday, and the PC version stopped working due to Steam not registering it correctly so I had to start over again on the PlayStation 3. It is safe to say that the story resonates much more than the "go find your Father" storyline from Fallout 3. Obsidian is known for their writing and story telling ability and it's showing in spades so far. The voice acting and characters are also top-notch, but the one character that stands out for me so far is the aforementioned securitron, Victor. Never have I felt a better kinship with a robot since HK-47 from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He tends to pop in from time to time during my quest and probably has something left to contribute to the story.
The game's structure is also paced really well (so far), starting players off in the city of Goodsprings a fair distance from the city lights of New Vegas proper. Since your main goal is to seek out information regarding the men responsible for leaving you for dead, the story takes you south as you begin to meet the other inhabitants and learn about some of the many other factions, particularly the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion who are both vying for control of the Mojave Wasteland. While my encounters with both have been limited thus far, I've decided to side with the NCR on every occasion helping my Reputation with them while turning me into a marked man for Caesar's Legion. The Legion, for you Fallout aficionados, was originally going to appear in Black Isle's Fallout 3 but that project was canceled. It's nice to see some of the plans they drafted up a number of years ago finally make it into a Fallout game.</blockquote>Same with Rock, Paper, Shotgun that complains profusely about bugs:<blockquote>I’m only about four hours into Fallout: New Vegas, and while I’m enjoying myself, I’ve already come to one saddening conclusion. It’s a bit broke.</blockquote>Strategy Informer, 8.5/10. <blockquote>The real gem in this game though has to be Hardcore mode. Naturally, if things are seeming too easy then you can always up the difficulty level, but Hardcore mode really focuses the extra challenge. Everything, including Ammo, has a weight. You must make sure you eat and drink enough, as well as sleep (you have metres that you need to keep an eye on) critical wounds can only be healed by the Doctor, and so on... Whilst you get a special reward for completing the game on Hardcore from the off, if you're unsure what to expect, our advice is to play the game on normal, stockpile loads of supplies, and then give it a try. It truly takes the gameplay experience to a whole new level, and definitely one of the better additions to the game.
And yet, for all its brilliance, it seems that Obsidian didn't learn the lessons from Alpha Protocol quickly enough. Whilst the code is nowhere near as bad as SEGA's modern-spy RPG, there's enough glitches to to be very noticeable. The game out-right froze on us half a dozen times, forcing us to restart our Xbox, although we had the prudence to save regularly anyway. There's sometimes a serious lag/slow down, although these only last a couple of seconds due to it either sorting itself out... Or crashing. Even loading times - not something that we normally pay attention too - can take up to several minutes. Whilst Fallout 3 and the DLC had a history of buggy initial releases, you'd think Bethesda, and especially Obsidian, would know better.</blockquote>Xbox 360 Achievements, 90/100. <blockquote>The story, sadly, just does not seem as gripping this time around and this is mainly down to the fact that it can play out in a number of ways depending on which faction you choose to shack up with. Last time out you were tracing your father and, although you could choose a good or evil slant on events, you still had that as your overriding goal. Here, things seem a little less focused and the lack of a central character to act as your main objective harms things somewhat. Luckily you can still have plenty of fun along the way and the people you do run across - from the slightly menacing Caesar to the enigmatic Mr House and everyone in between - power events forward depending on your own personal tastes. Whether you choose to side with slavers, powder gangers, the NCR or anyone else is entirely up to you and you can improve your standing with each faction independently of your karma level, which results in new quests, store discounts or even instant attacks if you are uniquely hated.
[...]
My only real issue is the fact that vast swathes of the Vegas desert seem, well, deserted. Fallout 3 had a bunch of minor locations that would never even by highlighted on your map, such as little baseball fields, drive ins, huts and hidden caves, but they would often hide awesome loot and fun little stories that had no real link to anything. That side of things seems to be toned down here, and most locations you can discover will show up on your map with little to see or do in-between. It's not a major gripe, as there is still plenty on offer, but it does seem to have taken away some of that personal touch and randomness that made the last game so great. In better news though, the trademark humour is still present and correct and the breadth of missions on offer is still impressive. From helping ghouls launch into space, to luring someone into the sights of a sniper or even negotiating with a crazed mutant that is in the thrall of... a cow skull? The inventiveness is impressive and will always bring a smile to your face.</blockquote>Bit-tech, 8/10.<blockquote>
Enabling Hardcore mode is just a single button press, but the effect it has is dramatic, almost making New Vegas closer to a survival game than a shooter and making things such as radiation and drug addiction, which are other mostly a non-issue, feel like a bigger part of the game. Even the ability to disguise yourself, which is of negligible use and more often than not involves you forgetting you're posing as an outlaw when you stroll into a Ranger base, becomes useful. Many of the new features are only really required on Hardcore mode in fact, giving the impression that it should be the default difficulty option.
What really makes Hardcore mode so important though is it complements the world as a whole, which flicks alternately – almost schizophrenically – between being brutal and deadly or colourful and alive. Even the area itself expresses that mix, with the bleak Mojave desert contrasting brilliantly with the fully-functioning New Vegas strip where players can play cards. Much of the humour is derived from these contradictions – the futuristic cowboy robots in a world of such inhumanity is proof of that. Hardcore mode fits perfectly with that, bringing micromanagement to a game otherwise about epic scale and creating a breeding ground for those previously mentioned moments where Obsidian's vision shines through the limits of what they have to work with.
Unfortunately, while there are rays of light that manage to break through, the clouds still make up the majority if the view. Tonally and conceptually New Vegas feels like a return to form, but the tone isn't always consistent and the execution is sadly lacking, grounding New Vegas closer to Fallout 3 than the Fallout 4 it could have been. </blockquote>The Guardian, 5/5. <blockquote>Familiar problems, such as regular crashes – I've had to switch my Xbox off using the power button roughly once every two hours so far – and a lack of signposting for irrevocably game-altering decisions can be frustrating, though perhaps understandable given the huge scope of the game. Getting into the habit of regular saving is more important than ever.
These however are small niggles in a overwhelmingly impressive - and simply huge - gaming experience. The map, though similar-sized to Fallout 3's, seems more jam-packed than ever – New Vegas is less a sandbox game than whole beach to play around in.
That "just one more mission" feeling that lead to entire evenings and weekends lost exploring the last wasteland is more apparent than ever. The simple thrill of finding an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere packed with exciting new gear is hard to match.</blockquote>Multiplayer MTV provides no score. <blockquote>If it weren't for the bugs, I'd say that I enjoyed "Fallout: New Vegas" more than its predecessor. It's an incredible journey and one that I can't seem to stop playing, even after I finished working on this review. My sincere hope is that Bethesda and Obsidian work quickly on patching the larger bugs in the game, because once those are fixed, players will be treated to one extraordinarily fun gem of a game.</blockquote>MSN, 5/5. <blockquote>Rather than spreading settlements out miles apart, there's a greater concentration of things to go and check out. As a result, you waste less time pointlessly traipsing around, and focus more on the mission-based meat of the game.
[...]
Yes, the character visuals are starting to look a little dated now, and yes, the need to painstakingly forage for supplies can sometimes be irksome. But the payback is the fantastic array of tense, involving quests awaiting you, and the embattled combat encounters that punctuate the action. It's a grim struggle, but in the most satisfying sense.</blockquote>Videogamer.com, 9/10. <blockquote>For everything it did right, Fallout 3 did a lot of needless tinkering with the universe that Black Isle so carefully established. Aside from a few minor references, New Vegas almost completely ignores Bethesda's approach to the license; on the other hand, it's also packed with nods and winks to the plots of Fallouts 1 and 2. There's mention of The Hub, Modoc, Navarro and countless other locations from the California-based parts of the universe. You'll encounter branches of organisations and descendants of characters from the earlier games, and all of these appearances are handled with intelligence and care. Super Mutants are no longer depicted as mindless monsters, and the Brotherhood of Steel are correctly portrayed as self-important isolationists, rather than the Goody Two-Shoes they were in Fallout 3. Most touchingly of all, there are sly references to things that were planned for the cancelled Van Buren. It's amazing to spot these details, especially when you know they'll go unnoticed by the majority.
[...]
All in all, Obsidian has done a remarkable job - in all areas except one. Aside from its many achievements, New Vegas is notable for being one of the buggiest video games I've ever played on a console. Fallout 3 wasn't exactly a poster boy for glitch-free design, but New Vegas is far worse: during the course of my 25-odd hour playthrough, the game crashed my Xbox no less than five times - it may well have been more than that, but I stopped counting. I also encountered quite a few moments of utter weirdness: at one point someone disappeared into thin air halfway through a conversation, and on another occasion I walked through a door to find an NPC being mauled by rats - an NPC who was at least half a mile away from their usual spawning place.</blockquote>
GameZone, 6.5/10. <blockquote>Despite Obsidian’s fan-service, Fallout: New Vegas is a heaping pile of bugs. Common sights are characters falling through the world, single-digit framerates, frozen enemies, sound effects cutting out, and characters that change voices mid-conversation. I’ve had reputations reversed and weapons disappear from my inventory, only to go back to normal an hour later, and my two companions are currently stuck inside a room in New Vegas. The latter might be for the best anyway, as they kept shooting up the joint.
I have also come across a handful of broken quest-lines that have no requirements for reputations, and all parties involved are still alive. Quite simply, no dialogue options are given to finish the quests. Worse, is the constant freezing. The game has now frozen nine times and turned me into an obsessive saver, since one of these freezes happened during an auto-save and corrupted my data.
Looking purely at the new features of Fallout: New Vegas, I want to entrench myself in the Mojave wasteland and never return. Obsidian Entertainment has bolstered the series with an array of fantastic additions, including crafting and Hardcore mode, but it’s hard to appreciate them in light of incessant bugs and unfulfilling quests. Fallout: New Vegas was a valiant effort, but it’s back to the vaults for me.</blockquote>1UP hasn't published its review but shares some first impressions:<blockquote>At this point I believe I'm about half-way through the main quest of the game so I can't weigh in on how the rest of it plays out -- I've only had the game since Friday, and the PC version stopped working due to Steam not registering it correctly so I had to start over again on the PlayStation 3. It is safe to say that the story resonates much more than the "go find your Father" storyline from Fallout 3. Obsidian is known for their writing and story telling ability and it's showing in spades so far. The voice acting and characters are also top-notch, but the one character that stands out for me so far is the aforementioned securitron, Victor. Never have I felt a better kinship with a robot since HK-47 from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He tends to pop in from time to time during my quest and probably has something left to contribute to the story.
The game's structure is also paced really well (so far), starting players off in the city of Goodsprings a fair distance from the city lights of New Vegas proper. Since your main goal is to seek out information regarding the men responsible for leaving you for dead, the story takes you south as you begin to meet the other inhabitants and learn about some of the many other factions, particularly the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion who are both vying for control of the Mojave Wasteland. While my encounters with both have been limited thus far, I've decided to side with the NCR on every occasion helping my Reputation with them while turning me into a marked man for Caesar's Legion. The Legion, for you Fallout aficionados, was originally going to appear in Black Isle's Fallout 3 but that project was canceled. It's nice to see some of the plans they drafted up a number of years ago finally make it into a Fallout game.</blockquote>Same with Rock, Paper, Shotgun that complains profusely about bugs:<blockquote>I’m only about four hours into Fallout: New Vegas, and while I’m enjoying myself, I’ve already come to one saddening conclusion. It’s a bit broke.</blockquote>Strategy Informer, 8.5/10. <blockquote>The real gem in this game though has to be Hardcore mode. Naturally, if things are seeming too easy then you can always up the difficulty level, but Hardcore mode really focuses the extra challenge. Everything, including Ammo, has a weight. You must make sure you eat and drink enough, as well as sleep (you have metres that you need to keep an eye on) critical wounds can only be healed by the Doctor, and so on... Whilst you get a special reward for completing the game on Hardcore from the off, if you're unsure what to expect, our advice is to play the game on normal, stockpile loads of supplies, and then give it a try. It truly takes the gameplay experience to a whole new level, and definitely one of the better additions to the game.
And yet, for all its brilliance, it seems that Obsidian didn't learn the lessons from Alpha Protocol quickly enough. Whilst the code is nowhere near as bad as SEGA's modern-spy RPG, there's enough glitches to to be very noticeable. The game out-right froze on us half a dozen times, forcing us to restart our Xbox, although we had the prudence to save regularly anyway. There's sometimes a serious lag/slow down, although these only last a couple of seconds due to it either sorting itself out... Or crashing. Even loading times - not something that we normally pay attention too - can take up to several minutes. Whilst Fallout 3 and the DLC had a history of buggy initial releases, you'd think Bethesda, and especially Obsidian, would know better.</blockquote>Xbox 360 Achievements, 90/100. <blockquote>The story, sadly, just does not seem as gripping this time around and this is mainly down to the fact that it can play out in a number of ways depending on which faction you choose to shack up with. Last time out you were tracing your father and, although you could choose a good or evil slant on events, you still had that as your overriding goal. Here, things seem a little less focused and the lack of a central character to act as your main objective harms things somewhat. Luckily you can still have plenty of fun along the way and the people you do run across - from the slightly menacing Caesar to the enigmatic Mr House and everyone in between - power events forward depending on your own personal tastes. Whether you choose to side with slavers, powder gangers, the NCR or anyone else is entirely up to you and you can improve your standing with each faction independently of your karma level, which results in new quests, store discounts or even instant attacks if you are uniquely hated.
[...]
My only real issue is the fact that vast swathes of the Vegas desert seem, well, deserted. Fallout 3 had a bunch of minor locations that would never even by highlighted on your map, such as little baseball fields, drive ins, huts and hidden caves, but they would often hide awesome loot and fun little stories that had no real link to anything. That side of things seems to be toned down here, and most locations you can discover will show up on your map with little to see or do in-between. It's not a major gripe, as there is still plenty on offer, but it does seem to have taken away some of that personal touch and randomness that made the last game so great. In better news though, the trademark humour is still present and correct and the breadth of missions on offer is still impressive. From helping ghouls launch into space, to luring someone into the sights of a sniper or even negotiating with a crazed mutant that is in the thrall of... a cow skull? The inventiveness is impressive and will always bring a smile to your face.</blockquote>Bit-tech, 8/10.<blockquote>
Enabling Hardcore mode is just a single button press, but the effect it has is dramatic, almost making New Vegas closer to a survival game than a shooter and making things such as radiation and drug addiction, which are other mostly a non-issue, feel like a bigger part of the game. Even the ability to disguise yourself, which is of negligible use and more often than not involves you forgetting you're posing as an outlaw when you stroll into a Ranger base, becomes useful. Many of the new features are only really required on Hardcore mode in fact, giving the impression that it should be the default difficulty option.
What really makes Hardcore mode so important though is it complements the world as a whole, which flicks alternately – almost schizophrenically – between being brutal and deadly or colourful and alive. Even the area itself expresses that mix, with the bleak Mojave desert contrasting brilliantly with the fully-functioning New Vegas strip where players can play cards. Much of the humour is derived from these contradictions – the futuristic cowboy robots in a world of such inhumanity is proof of that. Hardcore mode fits perfectly with that, bringing micromanagement to a game otherwise about epic scale and creating a breeding ground for those previously mentioned moments where Obsidian's vision shines through the limits of what they have to work with.
Unfortunately, while there are rays of light that manage to break through, the clouds still make up the majority if the view. Tonally and conceptually New Vegas feels like a return to form, but the tone isn't always consistent and the execution is sadly lacking, grounding New Vegas closer to Fallout 3 than the Fallout 4 it could have been. </blockquote>The Guardian, 5/5. <blockquote>Familiar problems, such as regular crashes – I've had to switch my Xbox off using the power button roughly once every two hours so far – and a lack of signposting for irrevocably game-altering decisions can be frustrating, though perhaps understandable given the huge scope of the game. Getting into the habit of regular saving is more important than ever.
These however are small niggles in a overwhelmingly impressive - and simply huge - gaming experience. The map, though similar-sized to Fallout 3's, seems more jam-packed than ever – New Vegas is less a sandbox game than whole beach to play around in.
That "just one more mission" feeling that lead to entire evenings and weekends lost exploring the last wasteland is more apparent than ever. The simple thrill of finding an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere packed with exciting new gear is hard to match.</blockquote>Multiplayer MTV provides no score. <blockquote>If it weren't for the bugs, I'd say that I enjoyed "Fallout: New Vegas" more than its predecessor. It's an incredible journey and one that I can't seem to stop playing, even after I finished working on this review. My sincere hope is that Bethesda and Obsidian work quickly on patching the larger bugs in the game, because once those are fixed, players will be treated to one extraordinarily fun gem of a game.</blockquote>MSN, 5/5. <blockquote>Rather than spreading settlements out miles apart, there's a greater concentration of things to go and check out. As a result, you waste less time pointlessly traipsing around, and focus more on the mission-based meat of the game.
[...]
Yes, the character visuals are starting to look a little dated now, and yes, the need to painstakingly forage for supplies can sometimes be irksome. But the payback is the fantastic array of tense, involving quests awaiting you, and the embattled combat encounters that punctuate the action. It's a grim struggle, but in the most satisfying sense.</blockquote>Videogamer.com, 9/10. <blockquote>For everything it did right, Fallout 3 did a lot of needless tinkering with the universe that Black Isle so carefully established. Aside from a few minor references, New Vegas almost completely ignores Bethesda's approach to the license; on the other hand, it's also packed with nods and winks to the plots of Fallouts 1 and 2. There's mention of The Hub, Modoc, Navarro and countless other locations from the California-based parts of the universe. You'll encounter branches of organisations and descendants of characters from the earlier games, and all of these appearances are handled with intelligence and care. Super Mutants are no longer depicted as mindless monsters, and the Brotherhood of Steel are correctly portrayed as self-important isolationists, rather than the Goody Two-Shoes they were in Fallout 3. Most touchingly of all, there are sly references to things that were planned for the cancelled Van Buren. It's amazing to spot these details, especially when you know they'll go unnoticed by the majority.
[...]
All in all, Obsidian has done a remarkable job - in all areas except one. Aside from its many achievements, New Vegas is notable for being one of the buggiest video games I've ever played on a console. Fallout 3 wasn't exactly a poster boy for glitch-free design, but New Vegas is far worse: during the course of my 25-odd hour playthrough, the game crashed my Xbox no less than five times - it may well have been more than that, but I stopped counting. I also encountered quite a few moments of utter weirdness: at one point someone disappeared into thin air halfway through a conversation, and on another occasion I walked through a door to find an NPC being mauled by rats - an NPC who was at least half a mile away from their usual spawning place.</blockquote>
