The plot. The general story of Fallout, for those who don't know, tells about the life of people in a post-nuclear world. Most of the old world is reduced to rubble and only people who hid in huge vaults survived. The original Fallout (of the new series, or Fallout 3) is about a kid who grows up in one of these vaults and has to leave it.
Fallout: New Vegas is roughly 3 years after Fallout 3 and tells a story about a courier who is on a task of delivering a strange platinum chip to what's left of Las Vegas, but is intercepted by a gang of thugs and some sort of a businessman-looking person. The courier is shot and buried, but gets dug up by a robot and finds himself in a small town outside of New Vegas. He then starts gathering information about this mysterious man, why he was shot and tries to get the package back. At the same time, the region is in a conflict of power, where two organized military forces, the New California Republic and the Legion try to get hold of the Hoover Dam and the HELIOS One solar power plant.
General thoughts. I like a proper sandbox-type rpg with lots of things to do and places to explore. Fallout is a little bit different from other rpgs, by the way of having firearms and energy weapons instead of swords and bows. The rest is pretty much standard. You kill stuff and do quests, you gain experience, you level up, you get more skills and health points. The skill set is quite similar to Fallout 3. You can still blow your opponent to bits using the Bloody Mess perk and get assistance from a Mysterious Stranger, if you're lucky. So in every way, if you've played the Fallout 3, you'll know your way around this one also. There are some new guns and you can even craft your own ammo, if you have the necessary parts. The crafting part is mostly useless, since there is an abundance of ammo of different types and even some rechargeable weapons later on in the game. And yes, with some serious effort, you can even get the ability to wear power armor. For this you need to find and contact the Brotherhood of Steel, familiar from Fallout 3. They also have some awesome weapons, so it's totally worth the time and the effort.
A very special thing about the Fallout series in general is the story arc, which can really go every possible way with multiple different outcomes. In New Vegas, you can side with one of the large military forces in the region and help them win the conflict or conquer it yourself. There are multiple ways of doing all of these things. There are also numerous sub-plots, like the Brotherhood of Steel mentioned earlier.
Since the world in this game is huge, although a bit smaller than Fallout 3, it's really helpful that you can fast-travel between different points of interests. This helps to speed up the game and keeps the game interesting. There are a whole lot of these points. At one point, you can get a special perk that shows all of the interest points on the map and since every smaller encampment or landmark is considered a point of interest, you can easily fast-travel during quests. It's a shame that you can't fast-travel from in-doors and that the Vegas Strip doesn't have any fast travel points at all. You have to travel to the gate and walk all the way through the strip every time you want to report in.
An interesting addition to the game was the chance to have group members, who could carry around equipment and help you out in a fight. I found an NCR sniper in Novak and he proved to be a very useful ally. This makes the alliance with the Legion impossible, but he is very handy in a fight and helps you spot enemies. You can also find allies elsewhere, but I stuck with the sniper all the way through. You can have just one human follower, but there is another interesting fellow to help. A little floating eyebot with a laser as a weapon. In addition to being an extra hand in battle, he also has a sensor that spots friends and enemies from far away, usually even before they come into the field of view. This helps to gain an upper hand on a fight, makes using sniper weapons really handy and helps you avoid a serious confrontation altogether, if you can sneak up to an enemy and shoot them down using the sneak attack critical bonus.
A big problem that Fallout: New Vegas has is the amount of bugs. The game seems too rushed and some of the important things have gone unnoticed. I installed the game with the first patch right away and still ran into a serious crash bug at the very beginning of the game. After I installed the second patch, the game was actually playable. Every once in a while, after fast traveling or moving to a different area, your companions would pop in a weird place, which could cause the game to crash. I experienced about 4-5 crashes during the 20-30 hour gameplay. Sometimes radscorpions would have nothing but their tails above the ground. You could still kill them, but after that, the body would fall through the ground and disappear. I also read that some people got stuck in some places, but that didn't happen to me. In some places I thought I would get stuck, but I somehow managed to get out. The companions sometimes fall a little bit behind, but if you change areas, they usually pop right next to you anyway.
Since this game and Fallout 3 were both built on the same engine, they have a few of the same problems, like V.A.T.S., for one. This is a system designed to automatically fire at an opponent and also gives you an idea of how big is the chance to actually hit a body part you're aiming for. All the V.A.T.S. did for me is convince me that I can't aim properly. It's quite difficult to hit someone with manual aim, because the movement logic of both the point of view and the AI is not very good. Enemies make sudden and unexpected moves which cause you to miss a lot and since the aiming itself feels somewhat uncomfortable for some reason, shooting manually is really difficult. Another place where the mouse movement could use some improvement is the menu area. I had some issues with the mouse accelerating, so for precision, I had to move the mouse slowly to hit buttons. This made some quests quite difficult to complete. I tried looking around the menus, but didn't manage to find any way to make it normal. You get used to it eventually, but this shouldn't be something you have to get used to.
The other thing that was very uncomfortable was that enemies in the next area don't care about what happens in the previous one. This means that if you clear an area and move on to the next, you may face an ambush of guards on the other side of the door. This happened to me when I went to kill the Legion leader. Caesar's tent is a separate area filled with the worst kind of enemies with really powerful melee weaponry. It took me a lot of time and many tries to kill them all and I ended up running from the pack of elite legionaries backwards and shooting them with everything I had. My companions didn't share my views on running around the camp trying to not get hit by the angry mob that was chasing me. Instead they rushed into battle head-on and got knocked out in an instant. Fortunately, they don't die and recover quite quickly when the fighting stops.
Another interesting thing that I didn't try but possibly will at one point of boredom is the Hardcore mode. Playing this in hardcore mode will mean that healing yourself using stimpacks takes time, you can die of thirst, hunger or exhaustion and you need to use doctor bags to heal your crippled limbs. Playing in hardcore mode makes you more aware of your surroundings and you have to really think before rushing into battle.
I liked this game. It had the atmosphere, it had loads of things to do, many interesting places to see and you could make the plot go whichever way you wanted it to go. I would suggest this game to anyone who liked Fallout 3, enjoys a good RPG and has a lot of spare time. This game is quite long. If you go through all the sub-plots, you could squeeze 40-50 hours of game out of this one, no problem. A bit too buggy, but playable after installing a load of updates.
7/10 Flogs
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