Please note that OPINIONS and SPOILERS will be riddled throughout this post.
So with that spoiler warning out of the way, let's start with the plot, something I knew nothing of until I placed the game in the disc drive of my Xbox 360. You start off with the classic "War never changes..." bit, delivered by none other than Ron Pearlman. You then find yourself behind the mind of your character, tied up and gagged while five men surround you, one of which is digging a hole. The so-called "leader," if he can so be called (we'll call him fancy-pants, because we can), fiddles with a platinum poker chip that he stole from you moments prior. Fancy-Pants then proceeds to pull out a gun and promptly shoots you in the face. You awaken an indeterminable amount of time later in a doctor's office; it is at this point, you create your character, set your attributes, and set off to find the Platinum Chip that Fancy-Pants stole from you.
The main plot remains solid throughout the story; it starts of as a simple hunting mission. You then find yourself curious about what you've been ruthlessly hunting. After finding (or outright ignoring) what you're looking for, you decide its in your best interests (for whatever reason you want) to change the fate of the Mojave Wasteland. Now wait, this seems familiar; Fallout 3, anyone? While repetition isn't necessarily a bad thing (just look at the amount of popularity the Pokemon games have generated over the years), but when your game is essentially a sixty dollar add-on for an already monumental game, it just feels a little unoriginal. While its true the story will draw you in and poke at your curiosity, it just isn't compelling enough to set it apart from its predecessor, it doesn't pull at your heartstrings as much as Fallout 3's. It can, however, branch off into many different endings depending on your alignment and reputation with each of the game's factions; everything from unifying the wasteland to conquering it can be achieved based on how you play out the main plot line. And just like any RPG these days, the game is riddled with side quests to occupy the time between the campaign. However, it seems at times that even these side quest can drag on and on, usually for a sub-par reward, and usually the main storyline tries to force these quest upon you, preventing you from progressing your desired route unless you complete them. There are well over one hundred quests and side quests to complete (about five times the number in Fallout 3), and while a select few grab your attention as interesting, most of them involve the usual, tedious and repetitive routine: go here, kill/find/destroy/retrieve the indicated item/person, and it usually involves angering a rival faction in favor of another.
The factions system is a welcome addition to the game. If you do a quest for one faction, it could potentially end in a number of ways: you can go through with the original intention, or betray the faction at the last second and help the intended targets. In the end, you'll gain influence with a faction and they'll like you more for it; they'll accept, or even idolize your actions. If you cause trouble for a faction, you may quickly find yourself hated, even vilified, by the faction to the point that they'll shoot on sight, no warning and no questions asked; it could even come to a point where you'll find assassin squads stalking you.
Game-play elements aside, its time to get technical. The visuals are astounding, living up to its legacy to the fullest. However, you should keep in mind that this game runs on the same engine as Fallout 3, so you shouldn't expect to see much of anything new in terms of graphics; it was all done before. You'll even notice some recycled buildings, character models, and other small details; its nothing that brings the quality of the game down as there's certainly more new than there is old.
The interface is largely the same; the HUD is a carbon copy of Fallout 3's with a few tiny additions (like an indicator that reminds you if a limb is damaged or if your radiation is at high levels). The minute changes are more than welcome, but nothing to write home about. The Pip-Boy still functions as the game's inventory/stats screen with no real additions or subtractions.
Fallout 3 players will certainly recognize the ambient music since it was copy and pasted into appropriate areas. This recycling of music doesn't truly distract from the game, but the radio stations become very obnoxious very fast; the local radio station functions similar to Galaxy New Radio of the Capital Wasteland, playing songs from the 50's and 60's, but much like GNR, you'll quickly grow tired of hearing the same songs every ten minutes and on the New Vegas Strip and its hotels. On other station simply plays a talk show between super mutants, and after a very few number of comical exchanges, the station become annoying quickly. As far sound effects go, there isn't really anything a seasoned player hasn't already heard, and the voice acting satisfies in nearly all occasions.
But now we can get down to the meat of the problem. Take a look at any message board regarding the game and you'll find the place littered with complaints about the game's many annoying and sometimes breaking glitches and bugs. True, no game ships flawlessly; there is always going to be some number of bugs in the game, some that can be easily patched. New Vegas shipped with near catastrophic levels of bugs and glitches, rendering the game a pain to complete no matter how much fun you have with it. While most of the bugs aren't game-breaking, they certainly hinder the experience. The game engine shows its age with lengthy loading screens that only get longer with progression. On some occasions, a quest will become impossible to complete because an important character was killed by deathclaws while you were away. Some quests won't update as you complete the goals, leaving you completely in the dark as to what to do next. And much like any game of such size and depth, the game tends to crash and freeze often, and it does so with uncanny frequency the closer to the end you get.
My personal experience with these problems came when my character refused to fire his weapon on my command, rather only firing when I exited some kind of menu; attempting to use V.A.T.S. would only cause my character to aim the weapon, they wouldn't actually fire. While the bug eventually fixed itself, it did inconvenience me by activating in the middle of a heated firefight; I did manage to survive my entering and exiting V.A.T.S. repeatedly (entering V.A.T.S. aimed the attack, and the weapon would fire only once when I exited).
In the midst of all the negative aspects, there is a single factor that this game nailed right on the point: nostalgia, and I don't mean homage to Fallout 3. New Vegas was never meant to be a sequel to Fallout 3, but more of a continuation of the events of Fallout and Fallout 2, and it makes this known with its nostalgia of the two original games, bringing back classic weapons, and making vague allusions to the original classics (such as the Vault 13 jumpsuit that GameStop pre-orders received). Recreating classic weapons and characters that pay homage to two of the greatest RPGs of all time (on specific weapon is named "That Gun," as the developers continued to refer to it as "that one gun from Fallout 2), and bringing back features lost in Fallout 3. As I've mentioned in my previous posts, nostalgia is one of my favorite things about video games these days, and its on factor that New Vegas doesn't falter on.
The Verdict
Make no mistake, readers, New Vegas is most certainly not a bad game, but it is by no means Fallout 3; no matter how similar the games feel to one another, New Vegas simply can't stand up to its predecessor and feels like little more than a sixty dollar add-on. Cloned gameplay, an overall disappointing plot, and a plethora of glitches and bugs bring the experience down, but not to an unplayable point; while tedious and annoying, the bugs can be worked around and patched. All of the positives still outweigh the negatives by a long shot, and seasoned Fallout fans will have an absolute blast exploring New Vegas, but the underwhelming experience will leave you wanting more for your money.
