Reviews Comments: Mediocre

Fallout New Vegas game review by Dobbytheelf

Mediocre

Thanks to playing Alpha Protocol and KOTOR 2, I was rather looking forward to New Vegas, so I'll get the good out of the way, writing for companions has improved, with Cass definitely being my fav, aiming has improved thanks to being able to look down the sights, and it has a better (if rushed) ending, alongside better dialogue choices (albeit also rushed at times).

Then. Bugs. Dumb AI. EVERYWHERE.

While it's true F3 had these things, New Vegas is worse, since they seem to happen every single 5 minutes, things frequently pop in from nowhere, enemies randomly stop shooting and stand still, textures fail to load, enemies turn invisible and crash your game if you try the V.A.T.S on them, NPC's start floating in mid air, your allies randomly start killing people, your arm keeps moving so you can't see your Pipboy, and buttons randomly stop working, especially when in combat.

Adding to this is the fact that many of the quests are boring, usually involving you going to different places to talk to people, mostly since they are dragged out far longer than they need to be, a good example being where you have to find three singers for The Tops, since not only are they all over the map, whenever you find one, you have to go back to The Tops in order to find out where the next two are, since the location markers for them are taken off, doubling what's already a rather unremarkable quest.

And finally, the level design and enemy placement is rather poor, since you're often thrown into a completely open area with little cover, surrounded by enemies who wish to keeeel you, resulting in The Many Deaths Of You, exacerbating this is the fact that absurdly strong enemies appear all over as opposed to when you're at a level to fight them, which killed any ambitions I had to explore since whenever I tried to step away from the plot I was killed before I could get a shot off.

New Vegas is frustrating, all it's improvements are nullified by glitches, poor A.I, lousy enemy balancing, dull quests, and naff level design, say what you want about F3's story, but gameplay wise it beats this.

Also whoever decided to limit you to one humanoid companion deserves a kick in the head

ALSO, blatant invisible walls = ALL OF MY HATE

Just some things that I want to point out:

(1) I don't know about all these bugs and game breaking issues that so many people seems to be talking about. So far I had more then 48 hours of gameplay and the amount of bugs that I experienced are significantly less that the ones that I usually have in a single playthough of Fallout 3. Perhaps I am just luckier or maybe it is because I didn't bought the game until the patches were released. But the bugs wasn't nearly as bad as I was led to believe.

(2) About the quest of getting performers for the Tops. You can actually just talk to all the performers first and then return to Tony for only once. Plus why is this an issue? Couldn't you just fast travel to their location anyway?

(3) The difficulty for the enemies is a way of preventing your character from becoming an overpowering killing machine and make the game a bit more realistic. In Fallout 3 basically by the time I get to level 5 my character can just kill everything like a super solider. In New Vegas you actually have to worry about what areas you should avoid at lower levels and unlock new places to explore as you become stronger. I don't really see an issue there.

(4) I agree with you on the invisible walls. But seriously, there are lots of it in Fallout 3 too. Remember how they force you to use the subway tunnels when you are traveling in the ruins of DC during your first playthough? How is that really different?

comment #6032 chankljp 24th Jan 11

Because Fallout 3's were better implemented with rubble in your way, and didn't have them over hilltops you should be able to get over.

For me, it removed all the markers till I went back and talked to him

Because whenever I tried to set one inch of the plotted line, I died, in addition, some the early quests are downright impossible, like the one where you go to free two slaves from the Legion, I was attacked by three Legionaires that killed me in three hits, I had to lower the difficulty to do the quest, while Cassidy's one (Since you encounter her early on) puts you in a room with little cover, 4 enemies with Plasma rifles, and with you surrounded by them.

Plus they already curbed the stats you're given out and placed limitations on how well you handle certain weapons, so harder enemies really seems needless

Yes you're lucky, I don't have Xbox Live, so I'm stuck like this

comment #6044 194.81.151.145 25th Jan 11

Wow, you got killed in "Booted" by those three Recruit Legionaries? That's not a fault of the game developers... you just suck. Unless you were playing on a hard dificulty, in which case what'd you expect? I never had a problem with getting killed by deviating from the standard quest, except in one annoying incident where a giant radscorpion spawned near Goodsprings and killed me while I was at level 2. Plus, you don't have to kill those four plasma rifle wielding enemies, just pickpocket a key and take come evidence from a safe is all you have to do. Personally, I think that the walls in Fallout 3 were much, much more frustrating than in New Vegas. At least in New Vegas you can kind of see where you are going and everything isn't blocked by rubble.

comment #6635 CPFMfan 27th Feb 11

Not really, since they were all wielding submachine guns, I was level 3, oh, and the fact there is absolutely no cover.

And yes, I did need to kill them since I took the revenge route, and it's still a flaw since Fallout is meant to give you alternate ways of dealing with shit, which falls apart if one of the ways of doing this is broken.

comment #6642 92.18.112.108 28th Feb 11

Well what do you expect when you intentionally antagonize people stronger than you at level 3? They don't attack like animals, they just stand there unless you attack first, so complaining about them is a moot point, especially when it is so easy to get to level 5 or higher before you even get that quest (that's what I did, and killed all three of them, although only one had a 10mm SMG, the other two had cowboy repeaters and machetes). I don't get what you're talking about when you say the Van Graff's quest is "broken". It works perfectly fine (my version is unpatched currently, by the way), and there is an alternate way of dealing with their shit, like I just said. Find the evidence in the safe. Plus, letting you kill all those guys at a low level will let you take all their cool shit in the Silver Rush, which would be a Game Breaker. It's not that hard to kill them if you're at a high level and have a powerful weapon like the Ballistic Fist.

comment #6646 CPFMfan 28th Feb 11

For the love of god, FUCK THE INVISIBLE WALLS. I WANT TO CLIMB A MOUNTAIN, ASSHOLES. LET ME FEEL AWESOME.

comment #11988 ScanVisor 21st Dec 11

There's a mod for that?...

comment #13219 Nettacki 11th Mar 12

I remember dying in the beginning time I played. A LOT! I mean, so much it was frustrating. But, then I learned. Oh hey, they have a tutorial, there is a plot to level me up and bring me to places where I can get quests my level. Also, Cassidy,from what I know. I don't remember her giving you a quest that early. I knew you had to go do some stuff for the caravan company. But, most of that is just doing random odd jobs. One of which, that is dangerous can be skipped. And, yay, lets go venture out to the dangerous wilderness where radiation and FEV has mutated the landscape to be a hell on earth at level 3 and see what happens? Also, let's do ONLY one quest at a time and if I fail due to low level, I should complain instead of level up, get better weapons, and come back. I once provoked the van graffs, they tried to kill me. I left until I had high level shit, came back, killed them ALL! I had a sweet time doing it too. IT's a fun game, but learn to play it smart, not hard. Plot is both substance and a delivery system of experience. Also, on a side note. When I am level two now, you should note that I brave through the mountain of super mutants, travel to new vegas after killing a soldier, gets Vance's SMG, and I go kill benny, then I start the main quest chain.

comment #13257 DoomfulLord 13th Mar 12

There is an alternate way than "charging in guns blazing at a level so stupidly low you shouldn't have been able to survive to get that far." You can simply sneak in and free the captives, or waltz in wearing Legion armor and free them, then run the fuck out, preferably south toward Camp Searchlight so the dozen NCR troopers in that area can shoot the Legion for you. There's also usually an NCR patrol in that area, and you can lead the Legionaries toward them; the NCR patrol can deal with them.

Or you could do the smart thing an level up; if you're not at least level 5 by the time you've hit Primm, let alone passed Nipton, you're doing something really, really wrong. If three recruit Legionaries are killing you with submachineguns, I'm sorry, bro. You're just failing. You've got to have shit armor, shit weapons, or are just shitty at this game.

comment #13983 Zaptech 25th Apr 12

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