I think this review is going to be much like my Arkham City review; I would say the majority of user’s on Steam will have already purchased Fallout: New Vegas, and most will have probably even finished it. So this review will be aimed at the probable minority of people who don’t have it, or just haven’t played it.
Fallout New Vegas was released in October 2010. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic, open world environment around the areas of Nevada and California. You play as a Courier who has been hired to deliver an unknown package to the New Vegas strip across the Mojava Desert. During the delivery, you are captured and shot dead (or so they think). After being recovered by a friendly robot, you are thrust into this massive world which is filled with various different factions competing for control over the land.
This was my first ever experience with a Fallout game; I had previously watched my younger brother play a little bit here and there, and of course I am on the internet, and so it’s always mentioned on popular websites and subreddits so I knew what I was getting into, a huge deep time sink.
Game play is focused around the use of your V.A.T.S for guns, as well melee weapons. V.A.T.S pauses the game so to speak, and allows you to target certain areas on the enemies body. You have a limited amount of action points to use in this mode, so once you aim, you come out of the aiming mode and the character carries out the orders you set. You can then either wait until your action points have been replenished or use free range shooting mode.
As you wander around the desert, you will find plenty of items, weapons, food, drink, books and many more items that will be of use to you in someway or another. Obviously you cannot loot every single thing you find, alas we have a weight limit for how much you can carry on you at any given time. This can sometimes lead to difficult choices to make when it comes to looting heavy weapons or armor. As you progress through the game and get a higher reputation, you unlock safe houses, where you can store your items in fridges, cupboards and desks for safe keeping while you are out traveling.
One thing I was surprised about in Fallout is that there is surprisingly not as much shooting and actual fighting as I had initially imagined. I created my character to be more based around being able to talk his way out of situations, and this cut down the amount of fighting I had to do by quite a bit I think. It was a nice surprise to see this big game take this approach as I have not come across many that have; like wise, you can go guns blazing at all times if you want; although I would hate to see how your story ends out.
Within Fallout New Vegas you have the main quest line which you follow from the very beginning of the game, right until the last moments in the game. Along the way you will pick up side quests, these take you away from the main story and lead you down little branches that allow you to explorer the world you are in and become completely immersed. There are so many little olive branches of side quests that you actually completely forget about the main quest after a while. Some of the side missions in this game are the most memorable I have ever played, helping ghouls escape on their great journey, liberating a power plant were among my favorites, but there are just so many to do, and I would highly recommend that people don’t just rush through the main quest in New Vegas as you are going to miss out on hours and hours of content.
While the graphics in New Vegas don’t look like the graphics we have today in game; they can be enhanced with community made mods to get them up to and even better than any game you will ever play. I played my game completely vanila as it was my first ever run through; I was still happy with the way game looks in the vanilla state, it looks nice. You can get some pretty amazing screenshots from the remote locations you find.
The game has varying levels of difficulty, you can play it on hardcore mode, or just on the regular easy, normal and hard modes. I played on normal mode so I could see the missions, story and explore the world without being too focused on min/maxing my character to be optimum at all times – although once I got the option to have Boone as my companion (a sniper), the combat in game takes a definite decrease in difficulty as he just rips through enemies in no time, sometimes you end up not even shooting at all before they are all dead.
As you can see from the amount of time I have put into New Vegas, this is one of the biggest and most content heavy games you will ever see, and probably in our life times. You will never be bored; there is always something different to do, whether it be crafting potions, or just playing a little Black-Jack at the casinos – there is never a dull moment.
I 100% recommend Fallout New Vegas to anybody. Even if you aren’t a fan of RPG games. New Vegas will probably change your mind; this is easily now in my top 5 games of all time and I cannot believe I had not played it until now. If you haven’t got New Vegas, get it, it’s on sale quite regularly and if you do have New Vegas but haven’t played it; please don’t wait a second longer, boot this game up and get your self fully immersed in this absolutely perfect game. Easily one of the games of our generation.
Tom’s Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play
Fallout: New Vegas
£9.99
Pros
- Vast open world environments
- Indepth story line
- Huge time sink
- Various solutions to ingame problems
- Modable
Cons
- Basic graphics for modern gamers
- Bugs and glitches without mods