Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 3 was, like many others, my first foray into the Fallout universe and boy was it fun. Quest after quest, character after character was so entertaining it was hard to put it down. I've actually only finished the main storyline once (and haven't finished the Broken Steel expansion) because it was always such an adventure to see that open tick on your compass and go exploring only to find something completely unexpected. Tack on the many expansions and you've got a game that can easily eat away hundreds of hours of your time.

And now comes New Vegas, a game that seems to fall in much the same vein of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in not being a full on sequel, but is still another iteration. Unfortunately, unlike Brotherhood instead of there being big improvements across the board, there are several rather annoying steps backwards.

This game is essentially Fallout 3 in terms of game mechanics. You still have a pip-boy, the same 7 SPECIAL stats (Strength, Intelligence, etc), many of the same perks, and VATS (the targeting system). Practically everything is the same, just with some added new items, new types of crafting stations, new weapons, and the sometimes appreciated iron sights mode where you actually look down the sights on your weapon when aiming. Only sometimes appreciated since some weapons' sights are just plain really poorly designed. These things I have no problem with. After all, besides having to press Tab to open the pip boy for every single menu instead of just pressing I for inventory and such, I really had no problem with the mechanics of Fallout 3 and New Vegas only adds to them.

So why is New Vegas such a worse experience than Fallout 3? Let me count the ways...

Just to get this out of the way, the glitches. I understand they were bad at first in Fallout 3 and will most assuredly get fixed in the future. I had some big problems, mostly with characters getting stuck in the environment, but I'm sure they'll be fixed in time and weren't really a big deal to me.

Perks are now gained every two levels instead of every level. While some may appreciate this for making perk choice more strategic, which I'm sure was what they were aiming for, you end up missing out on some that add to the enjoyment of the game like Terrifying Presence where you get the dialogue option to make crowds flee before you, or Miss Fortune who randomly shows up in VATS and does something I don't know about since I had other more important perks to get. Becoming a terrifying powerhouse of destruction was part of what made Fallout 3 so fun, and I'm sad to see that go.

Radiating entire areas of the game does not make sense. Supposedly New Vegas got hit much less by the nukes, and so should be less irradiated. WRONG. Entire sections of this game require you to be constantly exposed. There are two situations this creates. If you don't have enough rad-x, it then becomes a mad dash to rush through the area before you accrue too much radiation and die, forcing you to ignore possibly important sections in said area and completely rendering useless any stealth character (like I like to play). If you do have enough rad-x, then the radiation is simply an annoyance and serves no purpose besides forcing you out of the experience as you have to constantly make sure your levels don't get too high. In any case, it was a very bad design choice.

In Fallout 3 each waypoint usually indicated something interesting or unique. In New Vegas there are a great deal that are simply placeholders. Like a shack. Is it important in any way? No, but it's a quick travel location in case you need it. And speaking of locations, the Mojave is unfortunately a lot less varied and interesting in simple landscapes than Washington DC. Everything is either in a dark cave, on a mountainside, or in the open desert with very little variation even within those categories. While everything may carry a more lifelike brownish/yellowish hue instead of the odd greenish tinge of everything in Fallout 3, it doesn't really matter because none of it is interesting to look at.

New Vegas is a much much more political game than its predecessor. You carry reputations with certain factions that you increase as you do quests for them or demolish as you kill their members or support rival factions. Depending on how they view you they may give you discounts, extra support, or attack you on sight. This can sometimes be avoided by wearing the armor of a certain faction, which identifies you as one of them and makes anyone below a high ranking member automatically think you're a friend. Of course, if you accidentally keep that armor on when you enter a rival faction's town, get ready to reload from a checkpoint because they immediately attack you and make you gain infamy with that group. As you go on you also start to lose out on certain quests with opposing factions depending on who you support, but honestly I never noticed a big difference besides a kind of no-turning-back point in the story. While some may appreciate this change, I thought it felt more like a tacked on system with an interesting premise and poor execution.

What this political turn also means is that a great deal of the quests revolve around talking and traveling to talk to someone. I once was surprised after about an hour when I suddenly realized I hadn't had to draw my weapon in that long because all I was doing was fast traveling between areas as one talking quest lead me to another. The quests themselves seem very tuned down from before, with only three or four really funny or surprising ones sticking in my brain as opposed to the countless fascinating turns held in Fallout 3.

Possibly the most disappointing part of New Vegas was that after a short time I never felt interested in going to explore the Mojave, because there was never any reason to. In Fallout 3 each new quest takes you to a new and different part of the Wasteland with all its own surprises and curiosities. In New Vegas, quests are either isolated experiences in one area that don't require much venturing out, or point towards the Strip where the main story mostly plays out. Before I knew it I had finished the disappointing main quest line, leaving a great deal of the Mojave unexplored despite several forays out into the wild just to see what was there (the answer was a whole lot of nothing). You could tell from the memorable parts that there was still some great humor and ingenuity in this game (like everything at the Super Mutant camp), but besides a few shining gems everything else just felt flat and uninteresting.

New Vegas certainly has some things going for it, but the numerous things it does wrong far outweigh the underlying things it does right, most of which are from Fallout 3 anyway. If you've played Fallout 3 and are thinking about getting New Vegas, go back and play Fallout 3 again. You'll have a better time swimming through those familiar waters than dipping your toes in the shallower water of New Vegas. If you haven't played Fallout 3 before and are thinking about getting this game, go back and get Fallout 3. If you really just want to play this game...then play it. Other reviewers seem to have had a more positive experience than I did, so maybe I'm missing something. I'm going to give this game one more shot, forcing myself to explore more of the Mojave where supposedly all the best parts of this game reside. But for now, New Vegas just feels like a poor substitute for DC.

Fallout New Vegas gets a 5/10.