Warning: PG-13 content below.
I finally finished it! And according to Steam's game time counter it took me 83 hours of grinding to complete the storyline. This is by no means because it's impossibly difficult, but because it's so bedazzlingly massive.
That being said, there's a lot to say about this game. Fallout: New Vegas is the fourth (fifth if you count Fallout: Tactics) in the Fallout series. Built on the same engine as the renowned Fallout3 and boasting it brings back things from the earlier titles it had a lot that it needed to live up to, something I feel it managed to do to an excess.
The sheer amount of things to do is incomprehensible, of that 83 hours it took me to beat it only maybe 10 was spent doing the main storyline and everything else was just dicking off. I have to admit that I cheated a little by consulting the Wiki, but that's like saying you're cheating at life because you read an instruction guide left to you by your dad, an apt comparison when you consider that the game has about as much content as the average person's life.
It was on the Wiki that I noticed that this game holds the current world record for dialogue at over 65,000 unique lines. Good Lord, no wonder I was left staring at the screen for twenty minutes at a time listening to a bearded man droll on about his day like so many visits to the old people's home. This by no means makes the game boring because if you pay attention to little hints and notes they drop all over in those hours and hours of audio you start to pick up on subtleties and unspoken truths of this fully developed world. This kind of sleuthing is the sort of thing that NCIS¹ nerds masturbate to.
So my initial response was one of jaw-dropping awe, but I feel any open field role playing game is only as good as how long it can keep you glued to the screen, and New Vegas understands that in that it has exactly a bagillion and three different places to explore, all conveniently placed just far enough from each other to be looming on your horizon and begging you to investigate them while you're teetering at the edge of how much you can carry, making the precarious decision between keeping your medical supplies or throwing them away to make room for more loot.
it's only when you drop your mass of consumable food items and go to that thingy on the horizon that you see it's decorative and you can't actually get inside, so you go back to your dropped loot only to find a swarm of deathclaws have found them to be quite tasty. This is basically the gist of the game as a whole; a lone wanderer who just keeps trying to do their thing despite that the entire world seems intent on killing you.
This sort of treatment is what causes people to go insane, and indeed I did. Right around player level 26 or so I decided I was fed up with obeying the rules so I made a backup save and went crazy.
"what do you want?" why I want to blow your face off good sir! "move along please" not until after I've used your insides on the wall in lieu of paint. And that's why this game had some primal satisfaction to it. It's like yes you're following the rules but at any point in time if you get fed up with how people are treating you then slaughtering everyone in the room is always a viable option.
so my final consensus on the game is:
1: the crafting system is well done, although I'm annoyed that it simulates the real world in that no matter how long you plan a crafting project you always forget exactly 1 piece you need to finish it, leaving you scouring the ruins of a robot factory because you swear you saw a fission battery there a few hours ago.
2: the reloading system is also great, the ability to tear down 1,000 useless 9mm bullets and turn them into 3 armor piercing rounds that will finally shut up that securitron that's laughing at you has something very satisfying about it, even if the conversion rates from one ammotype to another seem to be more than a little borked.
3: on the same topic as the crafting system and stemming off of the reloading system, the ability to have more than one type of ammo for an energy weapon is rather nice, even if your options are only big bigger biggest.
I found myself routinely compressing hundreds of regular rounds of ammunition for energy weapons into only a handful of max power rounds just for the enjoyable finger of god feeling when a laser pistol one-shots a raider, which you then find out ten shots later was a bad idea because like any electronic, if you run higher current than it was designed for through it, the magic smoke escapes and it stops working.
4: perks perks perks. while some of the perks have rather dubious benefits, there are others that are obvious right off the bat. two of my favorites that actually compliment each other and serve to directly engorge that part of my brain that triggers violence are Bloody Mess and Corona.
As the name implies, Bloody Mess is a perk that once taken increases the chance bodies will fall apart upon death. this chance increases by how much you overkill them by, which when you get your hands on the .50 caliber sniper rifle usually means their meat chunks will land in houston some time three days from now.
The Corona perk is a varient of Bloody Mess in that what it does is when you kill an enemy using an energy weapon their body gives off a blast similar to a plasma grenade. Combine these two together with a high powered energy weapon with a shot impact effect like the Gauss Rifle, which gives a blue flash and lens distortion where shots land, and what you're left with is every shot results in a massive explosion and nothing left but meaty bits. Again, primally satisfying. You pull the trigger, that person is Cntrl + Alt + Deleted from existence.
5: Factions! This game takes the factions of Fallout3 and takes them to a whole new degree. should you choose to be a nice person and talk to people instead of decapitating with a chainsaw before taking their wallet, you quickly find yourself in a lot of political positions. Helping person A will make person B hate you unless you explain to person B you're helping person A because person C wants to kill you. it gets very complicated if you want it to, but if at any point in time you just say "fuck it" then killing everyone and everything, as I've said repeatedly now, is always an option.
6: guns. oh god so many guns. I spent 83 hours perusing this game in detail, and even googled the locations of a few unique weapons like the Telsa Baeton Prototype shoulder cannon, which is like a personal ion cannon for all extents and purposes. Through all of this gameplay, I still haven't seen all the guns, especially not all of the unique ones. Again, it's the sheer content of this game that keeps a person going.
If you're a person that likes games with deep immersive plots, this is for you. if you're a person that likes big gunfights but is okay with waiting hours between engagements, this is for you. If you only like pointless carnage and you're not willing to work for it....GTFO. This game is designed so that should you so choose you can just kill everything you see, starting with smaller and weaker things like wildlife and working your way up to civilians, then soldiers, then robots, then main characters...but that's kinda cutting out all the pure substance that makes the game awesome.
Bethesda has found the sweet spot between pointless shooter, exploring free-roam, and deep plot RPG. And for that, I give this game a 4.8 out of 5. that 0.2 taken off is because you can't duct tape a minigun to E-DE.
Oh, almost forgot, gotta end with a quote.
"war...war never changes..."
¹NCIS is actually a very good show that I enjoy greatly.
I finally finished it! And according to Steam's game time counter it took me 83 hours of grinding to complete the storyline. This is by no means because it's impossibly difficult, but because it's so bedazzlingly massive.
That being said, there's a lot to say about this game. Fallout: New Vegas is the fourth (fifth if you count Fallout: Tactics) in the Fallout series. Built on the same engine as the renowned Fallout3 and boasting it brings back things from the earlier titles it had a lot that it needed to live up to, something I feel it managed to do to an excess.
The sheer amount of things to do is incomprehensible, of that 83 hours it took me to beat it only maybe 10 was spent doing the main storyline and everything else was just dicking off. I have to admit that I cheated a little by consulting the Wiki, but that's like saying you're cheating at life because you read an instruction guide left to you by your dad, an apt comparison when you consider that the game has about as much content as the average person's life.
It was on the Wiki that I noticed that this game holds the current world record for dialogue at over 65,000 unique lines. Good Lord, no wonder I was left staring at the screen for twenty minutes at a time listening to a bearded man droll on about his day like so many visits to the old people's home. This by no means makes the game boring because if you pay attention to little hints and notes they drop all over in those hours and hours of audio you start to pick up on subtleties and unspoken truths of this fully developed world. This kind of sleuthing is the sort of thing that NCIS¹ nerds masturbate to.
So my initial response was one of jaw-dropping awe, but I feel any open field role playing game is only as good as how long it can keep you glued to the screen, and New Vegas understands that in that it has exactly a bagillion and three different places to explore, all conveniently placed just far enough from each other to be looming on your horizon and begging you to investigate them while you're teetering at the edge of how much you can carry, making the precarious decision between keeping your medical supplies or throwing them away to make room for more loot.
it's only when you drop your mass of consumable food items and go to that thingy on the horizon that you see it's decorative and you can't actually get inside, so you go back to your dropped loot only to find a swarm of deathclaws have found them to be quite tasty. This is basically the gist of the game as a whole; a lone wanderer who just keeps trying to do their thing despite that the entire world seems intent on killing you.
This sort of treatment is what causes people to go insane, and indeed I did. Right around player level 26 or so I decided I was fed up with obeying the rules so I made a backup save and went crazy.
"what do you want?" why I want to blow your face off good sir! "move along please" not until after I've used your insides on the wall in lieu of paint. And that's why this game had some primal satisfaction to it. It's like yes you're following the rules but at any point in time if you get fed up with how people are treating you then slaughtering everyone in the room is always a viable option.
so my final consensus on the game is:
1: the crafting system is well done, although I'm annoyed that it simulates the real world in that no matter how long you plan a crafting project you always forget exactly 1 piece you need to finish it, leaving you scouring the ruins of a robot factory because you swear you saw a fission battery there a few hours ago.
2: the reloading system is also great, the ability to tear down 1,000 useless 9mm bullets and turn them into 3 armor piercing rounds that will finally shut up that securitron that's laughing at you has something very satisfying about it, even if the conversion rates from one ammotype to another seem to be more than a little borked.
3: on the same topic as the crafting system and stemming off of the reloading system, the ability to have more than one type of ammo for an energy weapon is rather nice, even if your options are only big bigger biggest.
I found myself routinely compressing hundreds of regular rounds of ammunition for energy weapons into only a handful of max power rounds just for the enjoyable finger of god feeling when a laser pistol one-shots a raider, which you then find out ten shots later was a bad idea because like any electronic, if you run higher current than it was designed for through it, the magic smoke escapes and it stops working.
4: perks perks perks. while some of the perks have rather dubious benefits, there are others that are obvious right off the bat. two of my favorites that actually compliment each other and serve to directly engorge that part of my brain that triggers violence are Bloody Mess and Corona.
As the name implies, Bloody Mess is a perk that once taken increases the chance bodies will fall apart upon death. this chance increases by how much you overkill them by, which when you get your hands on the .50 caliber sniper rifle usually means their meat chunks will land in houston some time three days from now.
The Corona perk is a varient of Bloody Mess in that what it does is when you kill an enemy using an energy weapon their body gives off a blast similar to a plasma grenade. Combine these two together with a high powered energy weapon with a shot impact effect like the Gauss Rifle, which gives a blue flash and lens distortion where shots land, and what you're left with is every shot results in a massive explosion and nothing left but meaty bits. Again, primally satisfying. You pull the trigger, that person is Cntrl + Alt + Deleted from existence.
5: Factions! This game takes the factions of Fallout3 and takes them to a whole new degree. should you choose to be a nice person and talk to people instead of decapitating with a chainsaw before taking their wallet, you quickly find yourself in a lot of political positions. Helping person A will make person B hate you unless you explain to person B you're helping person A because person C wants to kill you. it gets very complicated if you want it to, but if at any point in time you just say "fuck it" then killing everyone and everything, as I've said repeatedly now, is always an option.
6: guns. oh god so many guns. I spent 83 hours perusing this game in detail, and even googled the locations of a few unique weapons like the Telsa Baeton Prototype shoulder cannon, which is like a personal ion cannon for all extents and purposes. Through all of this gameplay, I still haven't seen all the guns, especially not all of the unique ones. Again, it's the sheer content of this game that keeps a person going.
If you're a person that likes games with deep immersive plots, this is for you. if you're a person that likes big gunfights but is okay with waiting hours between engagements, this is for you. If you only like pointless carnage and you're not willing to work for it....GTFO. This game is designed so that should you so choose you can just kill everything you see, starting with smaller and weaker things like wildlife and working your way up to civilians, then soldiers, then robots, then main characters...but that's kinda cutting out all the pure substance that makes the game awesome.
Bethesda has found the sweet spot between pointless shooter, exploring free-roam, and deep plot RPG. And for that, I give this game a 4.8 out of 5. that 0.2 taken off is because you can't duct tape a minigun to E-DE.
Oh, almost forgot, gotta end with a quote.
"war...war never changes..."
¹NCIS is actually a very good show that I enjoy greatly.
Might I suggest Elder Scrolls: V Skyrim?
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty much a medieval version of this game if your review is anything to go by.
~Arykh
EERRRIIC
DeleteWHATDYAWANT, ERRRIIC!?
all memes aside, I'll get it when I get it, stop nagging me. >..>