Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for Fallout: New Vegas

     Once again, as the titles suggests, this post will be a review of another of Bethesda's games- namely Fallout: New Vegas. The title is an allusion to a quote that 90% of NPC's in the game like to say to you. Every time they see you. Over and over. No, seriously:

   
     These guys are more annoying than those guards in Oblivion.

Okay, maybe not that annoying.

     Joking aside, lets start with the story this time, seeing as I messed up the ordering with the Oblivion review. In NV, you are the "Courier", a messenger for the rich in post apocalyptic Nevada. And that means in the game you can and will be visiting the "ruins" of Las Vegas, now named "New Vegas".

 

Because people are still as illiterate as ever after a nuclear armegeddon.

 

      The game starts with a lengthy cut-scene, where your character wakes up in a graveyard after being abducted. To make your day even worse, some smart mouthing guy then proceeds to rob you of a platinum betting chip you were meant to deliver, and then shoot you in the head. This normally fatal wound is no match for your character's thick skull, however, as you wake up in a local doctors bed, which is when you take control.

 

 Hey, people survive fatal headwounds all the time. No, really.

 

     From here on out, similar to Oblivion, you can either find out where the guy who shot you went and why he robbed you, or just head straight to New Vegas and get piss drunk on irradiated whiskey. Again, this open endness makes the game alot of fun to play, and may have something to do with the fact that I have over 100 hours of playtime on my copy.

 

 This is my fallout face.

 

     Once again, Bethesda's trademark RPG attribute and skill system comes into play as you level up in NV, except some skills have been changed to suit a more futuristic setting. For example, instead of swords, blunt and marksman (like in Oblivion) NV has guns, energy weapons and melee weapons. Whilst most of the attributes have stayed the same, they correlate to different skills; agility now takes care of guns and sneak, whilst strength lets you carry more and use melee weapons more effectively. 

 

     Combat in NV has been improved and altered to makes guns a more viable option than melee weapons. A new lock on system named V.A.T.S. has been implemented to make killing easier, and works for all weapons, both ranged and melee.

 

 Because casual RPG's aren't casual enough.

 

     Bethesda also seemed to have improved the levelling system; in all my playthroughs I never really felt underpowered compared to my enemies. However, one thing I thought wasn't handled very well was the chems in the game. Half of them were pretty much useless, good only to sell, and the useful ones were highly addictive, meaning that if your character took too many you became dependant on them, giving you a attribute debuff if you hadn't taken your daily fix.

 

Replace Meth with "Psycho" or "Mentats" and you get the idea.

     New Vegas is set in the Mojave desert, in Nevada and Utah, after a devastating nuclear war. Being a desert, the game world is mainly flat, with a few canyons here and there as well as small mountaints. However, to save game space and reduce the size (and the amount of modelling needed), Bethesda decided to make alot of the map inaccessible with the use of invisible walls. This may seem pretty cheap, and thats because it is. F**k you lazy designers.

     This wasteland is occupied by a whole variety of monsters and people, trying to survive in the harsh environment. There is a bit of everything, from mutated geckos to bio-engineered deathclaws. However, the most annoying monsters by far are these b*stards.

Bzzzzzzzzz "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"

     These giant, mutated butterfly-hornet monstrosities are the b*itches of the mojave. They reside in nests throughout the desert and have only 1 purpose in the game- to piss you off. They fly at over a bajillion miles per hour straight at you and then sting you repetedly with their poisonous tails. The poisons goes from irritating to deadly as you get stung over and over, and if you're not quick with the antidotes you'll find yourself very dead, very fast. To make matters worse, they often attack in swarms of 5 or more. 

  See those wasp nest looking things? Yeah, right now you should be RUNNING AS FAST AS YOU CAN- OH GOD THEY'RE RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

   New vegas also has a thriving modding community, creating new guns and enemies for the computer version and fixing many game bugs- ah, f*ck it. The main thing they do is this:

  Because the internet is for porn.

And on that note, I'm done. Thanks again to anyone who waded through my review, and once again I hope it made you smile or consider buying (read: pirate) the game. And don't forget what fallout is all about: