Tigranes

That explains it - Boone was just awesome for a long time. I'm hitting lv14 now and getting 75 Guns myself, and feel like the enemies I'm facing now are finally a match for him. And yeah, they are way too hyperactive, I can't sneak inside buildings at all if they're around.

Boo did you go in with NCR? I found that with them they're strong enough by themselves, alone it's pretty brutal to jump into their dormitory buildings. But then I have 4END.

Actually, I think FNV is quite clearly a more darker gameworld than DAO, I don't know how you could look past the fact that there's a lot more ruin, loss, hopelessness, cynicism, antipathy, etc. DAO's attempts at epic-dark was actually counterproductive for such a purpose.

I've only got the .dll fix & MT UI, and won't change anything else for my first playthrough, but the bases seem like the best bet, yes. I'm sure there will be similar mods going on by that time, but I plan on seeing if I can reduce XP gain, stimpack/ammo drop rate and hike up store prices.

I've finally reached Freeside at level 13, after some additional exploring to stumble on Red Canyon. Impressed with Papa Khan / Legion setup, it really feels like a Roman emissary out to discuss with the Hun at the head of his table. Also like the Followers springing up, and so forth - I really liked the line wehre they realise people can't just raid old hospitals for stimpacks forever, they'll run out of those things. I'd also agree on the slower levelling thing. Never touched the GECK but surely a universal modifier is somewhere?

Exactly, cazadores were really really annoying, until I learnt to stick Boone on them. I'm sure I've missed all sorts of goodies, but I'm still going on my 10mm Pistol & magnum - and I just sit and watch as Boone takes care of at least 2 cazadores before they even get to him, even at their crazy speed. All I need to do is use VATS to get the rest in the wings as Starwars says. The robots might have been challenging, , but I picked up Robotic Expertise, and I avoided the nightkin in the using Stealth Boys. Otherwise, no real combat challenge yet since early game.

Yeah, I thought I'd go wacky on the second playthrough. I've tagged Speech, Sneak & Guns this time with a liberal investment on Science, next time I'll probably do something a bit weirder as well.

OK, as usual, I always read how people spend 50, 60 hours and then get disappointed. Map-wise I am now nearing the Strip and I've probably clocked in 25 hours or less. Still not bad, but I feel like I'm missing something - Boulder City had one quest, there was nothing to do at Camp Golf besides talk to a couple of people, same with Hoover Dam. Maybe I'm meant to come back later? The game balance also seems to have the all-too-familiar tipping point. I'm level 12 now and similarly to FO3, when after Level 10 you were really a god (a particularly rich God, at that), there's not too much challenge going on. Granted, it's probably because I have two companions, but I expected more from Hard/Hardcore. I'm hoping things will change when I start fighting more organised peeps, though. Currently going back to the areas I've passed through and exploring the nooks and crannies more. I think after my first playthrough I'll fiddle with the GECK and see if there's an easy way to increase prices of everything in the stores by 25%, reduce all ammo drops by 25%.

It's what happens when you have Gamebryo, tack on shooting mechanics, tack on a weird "turn-based" system, break the said system in multiple ways, add slowdowns and slow-mo kills, try and balance it all, then spend 5 minutes on PC animations (I mean, just try and jump anywhere complicated). FNV fixed the invulnerability during VATS and such, but it was never going to be able to overhaul.

I think some degree of schizophrenic dialogue / "hey guy we met 20 mins ago you're a buddy now" is simply inevitable in the current generation of nonlinear RPGSs. Whether it be Gothic/Risen, Bethesda games, Bio games, FNV. Cant, I agree with you on debris so far, but I'll say two things - firstly, that it's probably an easy way to keep the atmosphere & art direction going consistently across the game (i.e. every once in a while something dilapidated or messy sticks out at you and reminds you it's Fallout), and secondly, FO1 & FO2 probably couldn't do this because of the engine limitations. Walking around would have been hell if FO1/2 houses had as much crap inside, whether ordered or messy. I think FNV has the Fallout look spot on, + its own Vegas stuff - though I suppose I may reconsider after I see the Strip & more of the Legion, who knows. So many object designs are carried over, but more than that, the wasteland in itself looks just like it does in the FO1/2 videos, and in fact there were a lot more places in the originals that would have looked totally weird in 3D first person (San Fran, well, that looked weird in 2D too, Arroyo...).

Or it could be that 5%? I can never see what's going on in VATS anyway due to the idiotic camera, so I don't know.

Ah, one of those. Still, it's no small thing to hear your voice on C4... Mediaworks are going through a major revamp of that channel and it might well become a big player, as well.

Let me guess, the Warehouse voiceover dude died? Go for it, sounds awesome for something out of nothing.

I think in terms of cleaning clutter the one thing that's stuck out at me so far is how in Primm, even though the Nashes return to the Mojave Express building, they don't even move the dead guy right outside. He was well placed for atmospheric effect when you first get there, not so much when Ruby is having a stroll right nearby. We'll let you go this time Cant but there's a lottery waiting for you if you continue your evil posting ways...

The Sociological Gallery of Anime Visuality continues:

The Pipboy is the single worst RPG interface in the last 5 years, at least. It's even worse than Oblivion, in that at least that one didn't lag and flicker and jolt every other time you opened it. Seriously, it's FOUR CLICKS to turn on/off the radio, four + scroll for a stimpack. You don't even have to change the whole thing. Just let people map I to pipboy inventory, M to map, etc. Maybe Obsidian didn't have time but I can't believe some people give this one a free pass, it's like saying King's Bounty had a good story. Anyway, my playthrough continues, and I've just reached Novac. Caravan is officially too easy, and it almost feels like a money-making cheat at the moment, so hopefully some better players turn up. Hardcore Mode's food/sleep/water meters are very loose (probably a reaction from Spirit Meter complaints) but hardcore + hard is suitably challenging for a terrible shooter like me. Hoping to level up then repair a certain robot.

Don't you dare, we're using your brain juices for good things.

You mean the bargirl? She only had a grand and I got it off her in two games. Currently I'm just using a deck of black cards only + all colour J/Q/K, and really it's just way too easy to use the more frequent jqks to destroy any pile they build while gradually racking mine up. I don't know if the difficulty increases when you play better people but right now it's way too easy because the opponent never seems to sabotage your pile in those ways. I've playedd, probably not yet 10 hours, got to Primm, Nipton & Outpost and surrounding areas. Still, I agree with mkreku that it's way too easy to get rich already - in fact the economy is pretty much identical to FO3, where there's so much things you're constantly struggling to stay under the weight limit if you have low/mid strengths. That's disappointing - hardcore mode should also have, say, had a 25% reduction on all ammo you find. I don't mind stimpacks so much since I'm really really horrible with FO3/FNV combat. It's ridiculously crap/boring as well, though NV seems to have fixed FO3's worst faults (invincible VATS). All the complaints about Alpha Protocol is a joke - at least there, if you get it, the combat works, here it's more like Arcanum combat where you just switch between modes to exploit the advantages of each. That said, the game is very very fun and very good. Dialogue isn't amazing so far but it has its moments, and in places like Nipton there are story moments that really work quite well. Will have to wait and see if the Legion are too Romany or not. But in stark difference to FO3, and a lot more like FO1, each settlement & town makes sense in its own way. I just wish it had gone outside its comfort zone a bit on things like the economy above, but then as a spinoff game you can't expect too much reinventing the wheel.

All agreed, the one thing I found was silly is that although it's better than FO3 (where, well, everything is rock and sand), the world still should have recovered a lot more. One of the reasons FO3 was so dour for me was because I was so sick of the landscape - it makes both gameplay and setting sense for the world to have a little more colour and vegetation now. As for human settlements the FO world seems to just have terrible wrecks (80%) and then impossibly super-clean areas (original BOS, etc).

So for GD, Enoch and the like, as the Reps look set to get the House majority, what does this mean for the Tea Party movement? Is it really a vindication & victory for them and their 'soccer mom leaders' like the media is suggesting, or, (as I suspect, given the way the media is raving) is it more complex than that? Can we demarcate between "traditional" Republican votes/gains and radical Tea Party ones, or is the Tea Party as a new / independent movement overstated? To be honest, being a dumbarse about politics as a field, it's really difficult to make heads or tails of which policies are right and what party stands for what. Just seems like increasingly, even if you're fairly educated, trying to work out exactly where each candidate stands and, more importantly, how likely they will be able to carry through their promises, is just too much to bother with if you're not keyed in. And of course that's where my greatest concern with US elections post-Bush comes in - the absolutely massive role a select few individuals & bodies play in agenda setting & opinion leading.

Worked for me on PC, you start at zero but when you raise then that's the sum and they seem to match it.

Fallout 3 ran okayish for me, so I was hopeful, and indeed FNV is running great so far. Only ~5 hours, though, and I used the .dll fix from the very start.

OK, I can't figure out how to play Caravan. It tells me first card determines suit, second card determines direction. So if I put down 3 of Clubs for first card, shouldn't I be able to put down 5 of Clubs for second card, for instance? But I haven't been able to EVER place two numerical cards in one pile. It'd be nice if "illegal move" tooltip/popups were ingame

Multicoloured Joseph!

So I'm watching a TED talk on what video games tell us about the way we learn. To a general academic/professional audience so some of this is obvious obvious, but I thought you know, isn't it about time that 'obvious' stuff translated into some common-sense, practical applications. To start off, I'm thinking why can't we have the experience bar / progression / satisfaction model in games/RPGs, and, just like how it's been translated into web sites, social media sites, etc, it can't be planted in, say, an online university student services system. i.e. You are enrolled as an undergraduate student, and you are given an avatar that you can customise, all the basic functions, etc. In the true spirit of new media/video games, all actions that contribute to your academic progress (or other means of progress, if you go to Duke University or something) are arranged into a quantified matrix - if I simplify it, 10XP for attending a class, 100XP per GPA point, etc. I mean, so much of academic achievement at high school/undergrad level, esp. in the US, is quantified already - SAT scores, etc. This wouldn't take those things over (as I think student ability is too quantified already, and that's very problematic), i.e. your XP wouldn't determine your final GPA, but balanced between irrelevance and overrelevance, it would be a nice way of stimulating and motivating students, and more importantly, orienting them towards a strategic university life of achivement and effort. What I mean there is that in so many developed world universities everywhere you now see a mass of often middle-class students who just can't be arsed. The very general counter-intellectual trends post-50's that has given birth to the Nerd stereotype (which has seen a small setback, but hasn't yet been the kind of resurgence of the geek that Bill Gates spoke of), the whole environment of party-based socialisation, etc, etc - there are so many social reasons for university students to be conditioned into saying assignments are what you do the night before, B is an awesome mark to have and university classes are there to be flunked. Seems to be that in middle, high and undergrad levels transposing the XP system and introducing a quantified reward/value system for productive actions could potentially have a role in rebalancing this 'hip-chic' orientation. Of course, some part of me rebels from an innate distate of such instrumental applications of quantification, but just thinking... Edit: Finishing the video, I have to point out that #4: Feedback is so very important. I think one of the greatest injustices about education today is the discourse surrounding it. Though this is changing in areas, so many people don't recognise that "studying", just like "building" or "running" or "woodworking", is a craft. There are methods you use, there are proficiencies you develop, there are key skills that you pick up. Instead, so many people continue to just think of it as 'being smart' - if you study a lot and you are smart then you will do well, so if you don't do well either you're not very smart (very demotivating) or you're not studying enough (equally demotivating). And one of the most practical solutions to this at the moment is creating better feedback loops at all levels of education. From what little I've seen as a university tutor and student and private tutor, feedback often doesn't work because; (a) many students don't read feedback. This is because while other processes, like research or bibliographies, have been highlighted as important throughout their education, but they usualy don't learn how to read feedback, respond to it, and integrate it into future assignments. (b) feedback is often castrated because in many places teachers are discouraged, to varying degrees, on being too critical, overwhelming the kid with too much feedback, etc. If feedback can become more immediate, more modulated, more calibrated...