Fallout: New Vegas

I loved Fallout 3. It was a great game that had you immersed in the world you view and the quests were good, graphics amazing. When F:NV came out, I got it to continue the similar story.

If you are familiar with Fallout 3, then you will instantly feel at home with this game. You have your Pip Boy where you see all the locations you have been to, quests, weapons, aid, health etc. You can still repair weapons, mod them etc.

The main plus points:
You can have 2 companions travel with you, this helps a great deal when fighting Nightkin, Deathclaws and the like. Which 2 companions you have will alter the gameplay. For instance, Boone automatically attacks Legion army, making it impossible to do their quests.
There are different factions of tribes. You have to decide which faction you prefer, as helping one set over the other will make the others hate you and you cannot complete their quests.
There are more weapons and different ammo for the weapons. Its harder to decide what to carry with you.

The main negative points:
There are plenty of glitches. For instance, after you go through a door, sometimes you start spinning slowly round, when you crouch behind items, sometimes you disappear.
Animals you are fighting materialise in rocks, you can see their outline but can not do anything at all, no shooting etc.
The locations you find are mostly nothing, for instance a broken caravan is a location to find. The bottom of a mountain etc. They have no value and nothing of interest.
Some of the area in inaccessible. There are plenty of mountains that you can not climb and access, making the area you travel slightly smaller than the previous Fallout.

Overall, I put the niggles aside because I still enjoyed the game. Not as good as Fallout 3, but still worthy of a play. A tip is to save before entering buildings and going to merchants.

Fallout 3 was by far one of the most amazing games I've had the pleasure to play on this generation of consoles. The vast world, lovingly-crafted post-apocalyptic and fully interactive environment, sandbox gameplay and solid production values made it an absolute blast. Fallout: New Vegas delivers essentially much of the same gameplay experience, with a few tweaks to the mechanics that are, on the whole, quite positive.

This is by no means a bad thing. The Mojave Wasteland is just as big as the world from Fallout 3, with all the scavenging opportunities, mutant fighting, exploring and flexible moral compassing carried over. This time, you play the Courier and begin the game left for dead by would-be-killers you can't remember over a conflict that equally escapes your grasp. When you recover, the overarching goal is to chase down these folk who tried to leave you pushing up daisies, figure out what happened and maybe get a little revenge along the way, but as with Fallout 3, the extent to which you adhere to this primary storyline is entirely up to you.

There have been numerous good changes to the gameplay, such as companions no longer dying permanently on normal mode, an increased level cap meaning that for the thorough explorer you're not mowing easily through the enemies before you've even nosed around a quarter of the world, and a hard mode requiring more stringent adherence to daily meals and sleep and generally improving the roleplaying experience as much as the challenge.

Unfortunately, all of this hard work is spoiled by the fact that New Vegas was blatantly pushed out the door as quickly as possible to grab customer cash, leaving the game half-finished and poorly tested. It is absolutely RIDDLED with glitches and bugs, from the visually annoying and immersion-breaking (for example, one where your character keeps twitchily lifting his/her arms if you're holding a rifle) to the utterly game-breaking (frequent save corruptions, areas you have to avoid because they are guaranteed to glitch and will break your game, quests and dialogue frequently screwing up and preventing you from completing them, constant crashing and freezing etc.). The glitches are so frequent and so annoying that they genuinely spoil the game experience, when they're not completely preventing your progress.

I think it's utterly appalling that games can be released in this state as 'finished products'; even worse that, instead of fixing these problems with patches, we instead get an endless stream of equally broken DLC to steal more money from consumers. Any regular retailer pushing out hardware that broke as frequently as Fallout: New Vegas does would have their business name smeared and legal action probably taken against them. But games developers? They're safe, if New Vegas is anything to go by.

Come on, developers and publishers. I realise the pressure is on to pump out game after game and sequel after sequel these days, but you have a responsibility to deliver ethical business practices, too. STOP RELEASING BROKEN/RUSHED GAMES, invest in QA testing, and give a damn about your customers.

I don't normaly bother with reviews But I feel that I have to voice out in the case of Fallout New Vegas.

I guess it's important to mention that I'm playing this on Xbox 360. (I'm sure there are problems accross all platforms and I won't have any of this "PS3 is better" childishness. I own both consols, I know the specs, I just prefer the Xbox.

I have played through the game (well... mostly.) and apart from being the most fun I've had in a video game since Fallout 3. It has to be the most frustrating thing on this planet.

Bugs and glitches that I encountered along the way. (Possible Spoilers)

On the quest "ED-E My Love" At the last dialogue with ED-E I'd hear Senior Knight Lorenzo talking about ED-E and how he'd like to "examine" him. At this point the voice would change to what sounded like a drunken Mexican (no joke! I'll put a vid up if it happens next play through) who'd say something completely different to what the subtitles were reading. My character then froze on the spot unable to do anything whilst the rest of the world carried on. No amount of re-loading old saves or back-tracking could stop this so long as ED-E was in my company so he got left behind at the 38 all game.

The Freeside King was invisible. All I could see was his teeth and his Robo-Dog companion.

On the quest "Wang Dand Atomic Tango" after recruiting the Sex Bot I could no longer enter the Atomic Wrangler. The game just froze.

On the quest "The Moon Comes Over the Tower" After installing the bug for the followers I'd go outside to find their contact floating about 30ft in the air, spinning and shooting her 10mm Pistol all over the place. Causing the Securitrons to turn Hostile towards everyone on the strip.

After contacting the Boomers at Nellis and helping them raise the lady from the lake. I found myself being bombarded with howitzer shells everywhere I traveled. This was funny at first and sometimes quite handy when being chased Deathclaws through Quarry Junction.

When crouching I'd find my gun slowly floating away... along with my arms and Pip-Boy. The only way to rectify this was to immediately stand up and jump whilst looking up. (Not ideal when trying to avoid contact with a bunch of angry Nightkin.)

Occasionally whilst in a fight with a few NPC's the game freezes in the wierdest way. I can still move my character and shoot, fast travel, eat, sleep. But every NPC freezes on the spot and only moves in a fixed 360' circle facing my character when I walk around them.

My weathered 10mm Pistol from the Classic Pack Turned into A GIANT RED EXCLAMATION MARK!!!!

And finally. The Vendatron at Gun Runners robbed me of 70,000 caps for a 70 cap purchase. Lucky I save before visiting any merchant.

Now, Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy all of the game I was able to play and I will deffinately be playing through it again and again. There is a lot of good potential in there. It's just up to Obsidian to squeeze it out.

Right now I have returned to Fallout 3. I'm hoping that by the time it takes me to complete it and all of the DLC Vegas will be patched.
Please think about the following carefully before buying.

How much of a Fallout fan are you?
Are you ill-tempered?
Do you have A LOT of free time?
And do you enjoy doing the same thing over and over and over?

If you're new to Fallout I'd reccomend you steer clear from Vegas. It will only taint your Fallout ideals with dissapointment and frustration. Buy Fallout 3 instead and enjoy it fully. (It's not bug free, but It's spotless compared to Vegas)

These are the major bugs I encountered and reading through what I've written I feel a little bad. And I'm sure there is countless spelling, grammar and other mistakes. But it's late at night, I'm tired and I can't be bothered to change it.

Has anyone else experienced any of these bugs(or any others I haven't listed that I should look out for)?

Many thanks for reading.
FM