Well, now that I've talked about all four of the major DLC packs I figure it's time I talk about New Vegas proper.
I'm gonna be straight up here. This game is awesome. Though I'm assuming that you probably didn't me to tell you I think that given the fact I've written 4 other posts about it already. But yes, this game is awesome. Yes it's buggy. Yes people sometimes say and do silly things. The game is still totally awesome and I'm super fine with having bought the game twice. I'm not even really sure where to start tackling this beast of a fuckin game. Well I normally talk about story first, so let's talk about that.
The story starts with you being shot in the head. You die and the game is actually over right there. Ballsy fuckin move by Bethesda to release this, but ya know, I think it's good. No no, of course the game isn't over right there. You play the whole game as a ghost. I'm joking again. You miraculously survive being shot in the head and wake up a little while later in the house of good guy Doc Mitchell, who saves you life after a robot pulls you out of the shallow grave you were buried in. After not requesting any compensation for saving your life he proceeds to give you his pipboy and his old vault suit. Seriously, Doc Mitchell is the nicest guy. Anyway your character swears some sort of vengeance upon Benny, the guy who failed to kill you, and promptly runs off in search of him, to educate him in the proper technique for shooting someone in the head, through example of course. Through a series of several other quests the character learns of an oncoming battle over hoover damn between Mr. House and his robot army, the NCR, and the legion. The player can throw their hat into the ring as well in a special hidden (not well hidden, but hidden) quest line.
That's the central story line, and the game ends after the fight for Hoover damn. But..... this being a Bethesda game you're safe to do what I almost always do and tell the main story it can go fuck itself and spend all your time wandering around the massive world. I've spent my recent time with the game playing the DLCs (duh), collecting all the unique weapons, playing some modded quests, and hunting achievements. Cause I so love getting achievements.
There is some interesting play going on with the factions. The major groups (and sometimes minor groups) of the Mojave each have a sort of collective feeling about you based upon your past interactions with that group. Often times an act will gain you positive reputation with one group, while getting infamy with another. This is most commonly seen with NCR and the legion as they directly oppose one another. It can be interesting trying to manipulate your reputation with everyone, though in general it comes down to don't murder anyone in the faction and do a few nice things for a few people and they'll like you. this must be why I always end up hated by the legion. They just make themselves so utterly murderable. Seriously fuck the legion, every one of those guys is a massive asshole. It actually made me smile when I looked at the global steam achievements and saw that the legion support victory was the least common. Fuck you Caesar. The world agrees, anyone other than you is a better leader. One thing that grates on me a little is how exactly do I gain bad reputation if I slaughter an entire group of the faction? Who's telling that story?
"The Black Pearl? I've heard stories. She's been preying on ships and settlements for near ten years. Never leaves any survivors."
"No survivors? Then where do the stories come from, I wonder?"
Yeah that. when I kill everyone around, how is it that the other members of the group miles away find out instantly about this? (Let alone find out at all) I know it's a gameplay balancing thing. But it can be a little immersion breaking. I guess the argument is there there is some unnoticed survivor who sees me doing all this and runs off while I'm busy committing genocide and tells everyone what a horrible person I am. You can kill someone without having your reputation being affected, if you kill them real stealthy like.
I do want to say that the Karma system is silly, useless, and basically broken. There's a system that is essentially morality. But it's called Karma. I don't out rightly hate morality mechanics, but I find they're pretty much always implemented poorly. They either have essentially no effect, which the one in NV does, or just wind up forcing you to play through the game twice to see all of it. Normally they have the side effect of making the main character massively bland, but that's not an issue here. The mortality is sort of a left over relic from fallout 3. In fallout 3 mortality was slightly more important. Here most of the effects of mortality have been shifted to factions, which makes some more sense. They just chose not to remove the karma mechanic for.... idk reason. In addition to the karma having almost zero effect (at this moment the only effects I can think of it having is that if you get too evil Cass won't want to be a follower and it affects what perk you can get at level 50) it's also very easy to get whatever karma you want. Want good karam? Go shoot some fiends. Apparently murdering a strung-out psychotic junkie who is trying to murder you, is a good act. I get it, you're making the area safer for other people, but that's not why I kill them. I do it as a selfish act to protect me and my stuff. Sometimes I do it even more selfishly. I'll shoot fiends who don't even know I'm there cause I want to loot their corpses. I often murder a bunch of destitute drug addicts then pick over their corpses taking anything of value. And that's considered a morally good thing. If you wanted negative karma, that's easy to do as well, just go into any owned building, walk out of sight and begin taking everything that's not riveted to floor. You lose karma for stealing. So go murder fiends, or go on a massive thievery binge. Either of these approaches get you caps and easily affects your karma.
The implementation of gambling adds some neat little games for you to play (and the ability to make a boatload of caps doing so) and an achievement if you play them well enough to get thrown out of all the casinos. There's also a card game played outside of casinos called caravan. The rules of caravan are a bit odd so I'm not going to get into them here.
Hmmmmm other things to discuss? Well, in case you didn't see them all I did reviews of each of major DLC packs for the game. I'll link them here.
Dead Money - Somewhat linear and it can be annoying at times with it's gimmicks. Not great, but it's worth seeing at least once.
Honest Hearts - Not terribly interesting in any way, but it's pretty.
Old World Blues - It kicks ass and you should totally fucking get this is you have New Vegas.
Lonesome Road - Mostly good, but there's one really fucking annoying moment/choice you're forced into that leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.
So then, aside from those there is also the Gun Runner's Arsenal pack. GRA doesn't add any new areas or quests, but instead adds a pile of new murder devices. Hooray! Many of the new toys are very expensive unique variants of existing weapons you have to purchase from various vendors. In addition to that there are also GRA variants of some already existing guns, the only difference between these guns and the normal ones is the GRA ones can be modded, cause..... just adding mods for the normal guns would have been too easy? Or would it have made too much sense? Maybe there was some reason this actually was easier due to how the game is set up. There are also a handful of new bombs and some new ammo types for a few guns. Just generally more things to add to your arsenal, huh almost like they named it sensibly (not like lonesome road! BURN!). There are also some new achievements three of which are fun and challenging to get. GRA adds in 15 new challenges divided evenly into one, two, and three star difficulties. There are achievements for completing three of each level of challenge. And the three star challenges are not easy to pull off. Feels good to know I am one of the less that 1% of players who have done so. Awww yeeeah.
One minor gripe I have is that the AI is kinda stupid. Like kinda really fucking stupid. It's possible to crouch down directly in front of someone and pickpocket them at times. If you post up a reasonable distance away, you can snipe people and the people standing 3 feet away won't seem to be bothered enough to bat an eyelash. The companions are all borderline suicidal, so their being mortal in hardcore is kinda sucky. Oh I suppose I'll mention hardcore mode.
Hardcore mode has some minor tweaks to make the game more difficult/immersive. Your character requires food, water, and sleep. Stimpacks and rad-away work overtime as opposed to instantly. Broken limbs are only fixable with doctor's bags or help from a doctor. Also ammo has weight. And yes, companions can die as opposed to being simply knocked unconscious. There's an achievement for playing the full game in hardcore.
Well this review is already starting to drag on so if there's some other aspect of the game you'd like my thoughts on go ahead and leave a comment, or tweet me Colored Media twitter or @Colored_Media. I'm also considering doing one last post where I talk about a few mods I'm using (and could also answer any questions). Would anyone be interested in seeing this? Again, please leave a comment or tweet and I'll be sure to read them.
10 big irons out of 10
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