Review: Fallout New Vegas
If Fallout: New Vegas was a horse, they’d take it out back and shoot it.
After spending what can only be called an irresponsible of time with this game, playing every side quest I found, meeting every teammate, acquiring a godless amount of trinkets and guns, the overriding thing I’m walking away with is that Obsidian, the makers of New Vegas, stayed true to their developer history. That is, they continue to make games that could have been beautiful, but are instead too broken to fully endorse.
The concept behind Fallout: New Vegas is that of your common, post-apocalyptic western: you play as a package courier who, after a deal gone awry, has recently recovered from a bullet wound to the head, which was provided for you by a gangster by the name of Benny, who wears loud suits and talks like Dean Martin (and is also voiced by Matthew Perry. That’s right, Chandler shoots you in the head). You’re then dropped into the deserts of New Vegas, ostensibly to go and find out why you were shot. The story - of course - veers off wildly from there into a grand epic involving the fate of New Vegas itself, but really you can do whatever you want from the get-go. Want to go off and just explore the wasteland? Have at ‘er. Would you like to hunt mutated animals? Have fun! How about just plain killing everyone? You have Fallout: New Vegas’ blessing.
If you killed this guy you’d probably even be doing him a favour
And the world in which you’re wandering and murdering through is both expansive and well-realized. The world is massive, with dozens if not hundreds of towns, caves, and abandoned buildings to find and explore. But more importantly, unlike New Vegas’ predecessor, Fallout 3, this Fallout game feels more inhabited, with different groups and peoples living throughout the world, each with their own history, story, and conflicting objectives. Groups such as the Great Khans, a roughneck gang of pissed-off thugs, or the Brotherhood of Steel, who carry advanced technology and a “holier-than-thou” attitude, all have their own agendas. You can help these groups out, hinder their plans, or just, you know, kill them all. It’s pretty much up to you.
That…guy…is wielding a piece of concrete with rebar jutting out of it. For the record I’m pretty okay with that
And there is a lot that you can do within the world of New Vegas. With hundreds of quests, ranging from simple fetch missions to extended, hours long journeys that have you killing, smooth-talking, and sneaking your way through various environments. You’ll end up doing crazy things like helping a pack of cultist ghouls repair and fly their space rocket to the promised land, though not all of the quests are as engaging as that. But there’s really no end to them, as it seems every damn character you meet has some errand they can’t be bothered to do. If you want a game that just gives you a hell of a lot to do than New Vegas certainly provides.
The gameplay is, if you’ve ever played a sandbox rpg, or specifically Fallout 3, something that you’ll be immediately used to. Everything is played from a first-person perspective (or third-person if you want, but you don’t want that because it looks terrible), and you spend your time traversing the various landscapes killing dudes and beasts, finding items, and generally just living wasteland-fabulous. It’s escapism at its best. There are also numerous other little amusements to find, such as the lockpicking and computer hacking minigames, and since this is in post-apocalyptic Vegas there are of course a number of gambling games, like blackjack, roulette, and slots.
If you win too much in blackjack, though, the casino owners try to play golf with your skull
This all sounds really positive so far, doesn’t it? Like, hell, this has all the markings of a really good game, no? And the worst part is, if New Vegas was without any serious bugs or glitches it could have been one of the best games this year. But sadly this isn’t the case. At all.
Let’s go over a quick recap of a couple of the ridiculous, janky bugs I experienced in the course of playing, just off the top of my head:
- It freezes, causing you to restart and lose your current progress. By my count it happened to me about… nine times? Ten? Some amount around that, including once during the ending. I mean come the fuck on!
- I got stuck in a mountain. Like instead of walking over a mountain I walked into it, and couldn’t get back out.
- There were three quests that I couldn’t complete because of some kind of scripting error, and from what I’ve read online there are many more than that with the same problem
- One of my companions also got stuck in a mountain, and couldn’t follow me because he couldn’t get out
- Over the course of the game the loading time between areas went from about 15 seconds per load to well over a minute. By the end I was probably spending more time waiting through loading screens than actually playing
- A group of raiders who were trying to kill me ended up also getting stuck in a fucking mountain, which to be honest kind of helped me out at the time, but was still ridiculous nonetheless
- And of course, saving the best for last, there was a moment where the game told me I was missing some imaginary downloadable content and therefore it couldn’t load my save. I lost six hours of playtime that I had to redo. Repeating something that took you six hours to complete in the first place makes you question the direction your life has taken you, like few other things can, by the way.
And this is even ignoring the fact that my roommate, who’s been playing this game on the PC, suffered through his own slew of bugs and glitches, some of which didn’t even allow him to play the fucking game. It is, in all honesty, utterly inexcusable.
Why is it the moment the post-apocalypse occurs people forget how to wear shirts?
Which really hurts to say because through all the shit is potentially one of the best games this year. When firing on all cylinders it’s a lot of fun, and has a truly original and in-depth world, with a surprisingly engaging story that lets you make a lot of impactful decisions. But…it’s broken. Not just buggy, not just glitchy, but outright, fall-down, leave-it-on-the-side-of-the-road broken.
And so now I have to give this game a score, which is actually damned difficult. I’m truly conflicted, because I could give this anywhere from a 2 to a 4 star and feel like it’s accurate. So I’m going to meet New Vegas in the middle, give it a 3 out of 4 stars, but with a HUGE DISCLAIMER that if you’re not willing to suffer through some egregious, glitchy bullshit, than this game isn’t for you. But if you’re willing to suffer for your art, as it were, you’ll probably have one of the best gaming experiences of the year. And how knows? Maybe the developers at Obsidian will actually patch it, and if not completely fix it than at least make it palatable. That’d be a novel idea.
Score:
