New Vegas Review

[Hurlshort]

Why haven't you bought the game yet, Slowtrain? GET IT NOW!

 

Seriously though, it is fantastic.

[Malcador]

Probably should get this. Or maybe hang on until the GOTY edition is out in the future.

[Slowtrain]

Why haven't you bought the game yet, Slowtrain? GET IT NOW!

 

Seriously though, it is fantastic.

 

Just busy with a lot of RW stuff at the moment. Probably won't get a chance to sit down with it until the holidays. I am looking forward to it somewhat though. Which is rare for me in regards to games these days.

[Monte Carlo]

Slowtrain: There's an at start perk that I take that basically comes with the caveat that it makes the game sillier/stranger. To be honest, I think the balance in New Vegas is a little less slapstick than Fallout 2/3. I think the depiction of the wasteland is certainly serious enough, but there's enough of the zany humor I liked in the previous titles to make it fun.

 

As long as my companions don't suddenly burst into a version of "The Lumberjack Song", then its probably OK.

 

Face it, that would be awesome.

[LadyCrimson]

Yes, I think the game could be more stable. The engine could be less clunky. The inventory, good Lord yes the inventory, could be more user friendly. There are a lot of things that could be improved theoretically, but the game is so good as it is that I don't really care much about the things that, often only after reflection, I dislike.

That right there is how I feel about it all, as well.

My 1st chr became unstable enough to crash so often it was terrible but my 2nd chr, for whatever mysterious reasons, has been much more stable in terms of crashes so I'm good in that area. Everything else is sometimes a bit annoying, but nothing that bothers me enough to make me think 'omg this sucks.' I've never meant a perfect game and I don't think I ever will. The gameplay in NV is awesome and that's what I keep diving in for.

 

Something I've been finding amusing is how doing things out of order produces funny situations with dialogues that are obviously meant to have been read after you've done other things. Doesn't break anything, it's just funny for a chr. to tell me I've done something that I haven't etc.

[Slowtrain]

Face it, that would be awesome.

 

 

Well, Fallout all ready has a Monty Python pop-cultural reference, so why not go for broke.

 

However, I demand equal time for Benny Hill, England's single greatest gift to the world.

[Hurlshort]

I had my first crash, and it is consistent. Every time I enter the Brotherhood base, I crash.

[Slowtrain]

I had my first crash, and it is consistent. Every time I enter the Brotherhood base, I crash.

 

 

DId you try fast traveling around the world a bit and then coming back? IN FO3 that always seemed to work to clear up my location specific crashes.

[Hurlshort]

I had my first crash, and it is consistent. Every time I enter the Brotherhood base, I crash.

 

 

DId you try fast traveling around the world a bit and then coming back? IN FO3 that always seemed to work to clear up my location specific crashes.

 

Yeah, I've tried coming back three times. I guess I can just avoid them, it is only a side quest. I might have borked it by doing something else in the quest chain first.

[Slowtrain]

I had my first crash, and it is consistent. Every time I enter the Brotherhood base, I crash.

 

 

DId you try fast traveling around the world a bit and then coming back? IN FO3 that always seemed to work to clear up my location specific crashes.

 

Yeah, I've tried coming back three times. I guess I can just avoid them, it is only a side quest. I might have borked it by doing something else in the quest chain first.

 

 

That sucks. Glad its not a game-required location. At least it gives you something new for a replay.

 

Guess it's to my advantage to have to wait awhile to the play the game anyway. Give them a chance to get the thing patched up a bit.

[WorstUsernameEver]

That's fairly weird. Suck to hear that Hurlshot. Personally I haven't had many freezes or crashes but the Ultra-Luxe was definitely much more prone to those than the rest of the Wasteland. Fairly sloppy job Obsidz.

[Cantousent]

That's a bummer, Hurlshot. One thing that kept driving me crazy is that the BoS attacked me every time I used their secret passphrase. I tried all sorts of stuff. Finally, they let me in when I switched out Boone for Veronica since I remembered she'd told me she was BoS before I had her hit the bricks. Bingo! When I thought back on it, though, I was wearing NCR armor, and the Brotherhood was probably hostile for that reason. I'd switched out the NCR armor for regular Combat armor when I switched out Boone for Veronica, so that probably did the trick right there. The reason I'm saying this is, maybe using the password to get in puts them in a hostile state and that's what's crashing your game. No matter what the reason, having a consistent game crashing bug is bad. For shame, Obsids.

 

Meanwhile, to balance all my fanboy commentary, I would like to point out some things that irritate me. As I've said, I love the game and would recommend it to anyone based on my own personal experiences, but there are still things that do nag at me from time to time while I play.

 

First of all, Karma. Some folks simply don't understand that, for players who really want to be the good/bad guy, Karma is a reward in and of itself. On the other hand, I find that my rep with various factions does the trick. It's still cool, for players of my bent, to see various states of golden boy goodness on my character sheet. So, while I don't necessarily need Karma in the game, it's works. Nevertheless, Karma, because it relies on an outside judgment of morality, poses a lot of problems for me. For example, stealing is bad. Sure. I can accept that. However, when I suddenly find myself killing the Van Graffs in self defense, I don't see any point in calling it stealing any more. They are all dead and I consider the loot I get to be the spoils of war. I didn't go in to murder their sorry, ignorant asses. They attacked me and I turned them into puddles of glowing green goo. Just like I take the loot off of all the raiders who attack me, I think the Van Graff's place should be fair game. There are factions that I consider hostile from the very start and feel no guilt in smiting offhand. Those factions can change from game to game, but I don't think I'm stealing when I purposefully go into a Legion camp and put them all six feet under and then subsequently loot their camp because we are currently in a state of war. I would feel the same way if I chose to help the Legion and ransacked an NCR base. This is why I more and more like the idea of leaving the morality of any action up to the player. Nonetheless, my goodness on the Karma scale is so high and my need to take stuff that would impact my Karma is so slight that it's not a big issue. It's just something I think should be handled differently. Plus, I don't think Karma, even as a holdover from previous games, would cause much of an uproar by its absence. In my case, it would probably make my heart grow fonder of the game.

 

There is one thing that I found.... not so much irritating as... I dunno? There is a quest line where I thought the devs should have made the Fabius Maximus character the better choice. I mean, he had a fatal flaw that made it so the player was almost forced to take action if they wanted a good outcome, but games press the player constantly to take action where real life wouldn't always reward it. Put a quest line in there and the player is almost compelled to do it, but the fact is that sometimes it is better not to take action right away and, often enough, not to take action at all. It's kind of hard to explain without specfics but I don't want to put spoilers in this thread.

 

I don't think the player should get exp rewards for picking locks, hacking computers, etc. It encourages folks like me to hack the terminal but leave the door locked so I can also get an exp reward for picking the lock. ...Or not taking the password off a corpse because I know I can hack the terminal and then go back to pick up the password. I have held for many years that the player should get rewards based on the outcome, not on the method. Still, unlike Karma, which most folks would probably not miss in gameplay, I think getting rid of the exp rewards for trivial things would actually make a lot of players angry.

 

Anyhow, most of these things are more or less philosophical arguments and so by and large pointless. The things that New Vegas got right in terms of philosophy by far outweighs what it got wrong.

[LadyCrimson]

I've definitely found it ridiculous to think that the NCR, or bar/store owners or whatever, who keep telling me how awesome I am, would mind if I took some soda's out of their vending machine. It's a vending machine. Sure, maybe if I broke into a high level security room and stole their tools and parts, but hey, I'm a buddy, it's hot out there, and I'm thirsty.

[Hurlshort]

I should try switching out Boone then. It also isn't letting me say a password, I go in the bunker and they kind of arrest me.

 

I'm not really upset about it, there is sooooo much stuff to do besides that, and everything else has been perfect.

[LadyCrimson]

I left Boone to 'wait' outside the bunker and had no difficulty getting in/them turning violent. No NCR armor, that's a no-no. I think one of the companions is supposed to make a negative reaction but it isn't Boone.

 

edit:checked, think I was wrong, no companion makes a bad reaction. Just the NCR armor (any kind/form). They "arrest" you the first time I think no matter what. But I don't know about the crash. Some report that wearing the rebreather causes consistent crash there. Come to think of it, I think I did crash when I first entered their stairways after being 'arrested' but I reloaded and it was fine. :/

Edited November 6, 2010 by LadyCrimson

[Cantousent]

Thanks LC! Yeah, that problem with the BoS was probably the most irritating thing so far, but I didn't post it because it wasn't a design problem. The game is quite clear about the consequences of wearing faction garb.

[Orchomene]

I had my first crash, and it is consistent. Every time I enter the Brotherhood base, I crash.

 

You may try to enter in the bunker with Veronica. The script at the entrance should be different (not sure, not tested) and may avoid the crash.