Derf was already put off after an hour yesterday. So I think I know what to expect in terms of reviews.

As for my two cents....I'm not VERY far into the game yet, but I'm enjoying myself a lot. I'm playing a survivalist, basically (albeit a weak one). I went for high endurance, intelligence (10!) and luck and skimped on strength, agility and perception. Chose science, repair and survival as tag skills and I'm playing hardcore mode on hard.

One of the things that stands out (even in the relatively boring tutorial starting town) is the quality of the dialogues and characters. It's much better than in Fallout 3, but that's not that strange given Avellone and Sawyer are working on this. Quests also feel less forced, and there is more RPG to the entire thing. This manifests itself in a lot more skill checks for repairing things, examining things, healing people/animals and so forth. In conversations, you'll always see the "skill-based" answers you can give but whether they will work or nto will depend on how good you are, obviously.

The setting in general is much more engaging, with different factions fighting for control and dominance in a lawless world. Now that you have 'reputation' with groups and places in addition to karma you tend to balance your decisions more (I do anyway). Once your rep hits rock bottom with a certain group they'll attack you on sight, so that really messes up your dealings with them. BUT one of the cooler things is that you can wear a sort of 'faction uniform' in most cases, which allows you to walk among them without being attacked (as long as you don't come too near to a security guard on watch etc).

In many ways, New Vegas seems a throwback to F1 and F2, with animals returning that weren't in F3 (Geckos, giant Mantis, etc) and a much more 'absurdist' approach to things at times. I also heavily recommend taking the 'Wild Wasteland' trait upon character creation, as it makes you attentive of 'weird' situations in the wasteland. It's a throwback to the 'random meetings' of F1 and F2 which could just outright be bizarre, but often funny. Since the devs weren't in agreement if this should be standard in the game (ie whether it fit the spirit adn atmosphere) they made it an optional trait at character creation. .

Bug-wise, I have been largely spared. There was a graphical glitch when shooting for a few seconds at one point, but that wasn't much of a problem. I still get the 'computer freezes up if you play in fullscreen' thing I get in F3 and many games but that's not the game's fault, more a problem with my gfx card. The major criticism is basically the clunky combat. It's pretty much the same as in F3, with the addition of using iron crosshairs when not in VATS. This allows you to aim a lot better from a distance without having to go into VATS, but overall still isn't much of an improvement. Of course my character is extremely shit with rifles, but it just is super clunky. Don't get me wrong, it can be thrilling - just don't expect to run around the wasteland guns blazing and it playing like a mildly decent shooter. VATS, of course, still works as it used to and is still pretty cool. I think as long as you go in with the idea of playing an RPG with a TBS-style combat part then you should be fine...just don't expect a FPS.

As for hardcore mode: it's pretty neat, altho it does make the game a lot more restrictive. I have to carry water on me all the time and even resort to the heavily irradiated water sources in abandoned buildings etc to get over my dehydration. I also need to eat radiated food quite often. You'll also need a doctor's bag to heal any crippled limbs, so that can be really difficult too. I've been walking around with a major headache and a tinnitus sound in my ears for a while after getting a concussion in a fight with some gangbangers. Guess I'll be heading down to Good Springs for some medical supplies soon.

Overall, recommended so far.

P.S. another point of critique I forgot to mention: the huge ass dialogue replies font. the conversation screen can only show 3 replies at a time (or 1-2 long ones) and for the rest you need to scroll down every time, annoying. In the character creation you do a sort of associative thinking test where the doc says a word and you say what comes to your mind...for a minute I thought each word only had 3 possible answers. Then I realised you could scroll down. Hope they mod that soon (they did it for F3)

Of course, i'm still forming an opinion but I will comment on the Wild Wasteland trait. If "the dev's weren't in agreement" with this feature, then this is proof enough that the entire project is without adequate direction.

Those kind of "encounters" are essential. They make Fallout unique and frankly they are the driving force behind the atmosphere in FO1 and FO2. The reason why it works so well is because without it, the Fallout world is merely a sober reproduction of a radioactive wasteland. With it, we are reminded that a post-apocalyptic world is actually quite surreal and fucked up.

Having never played the original 2, I have no idea what the game is "supposed" to be like. I did enjoy FO3 thoroughly. I'm sure I'll like this one too. But, for now, I'm playing Batman.

A rough and preliminary review, pretty negative. No jade rate yet, although it may come soon.

I'm approx level 8 and i've just come out of Vegas, pretty disappointed with the visit. I can't find my companion all of a sudden, so I quit out of frustration and lack of satisfaction.

Graphics & Animation:
- Flat monochrome environment, graphics are generally dated. No lighting effects.
- Animations of face and body (e.g. walking, running, talking) are so dated they are now unbearably poor.
- Graphics engine is generally dated. There are tears in the any land that is mildly flat, draw distance is still apparent (ie, walk forward and see objects magically appear in front of you).
- Some textures are really bad. E.g. Mr. House's suite reminded me of Duke Nukem 3D. I shit you not.

Combat:
- Not enough weapons. There's only 1 model for each type. E.g. 9mm pistol = Browning only.
- Why is the Grease Gun a 9mm SMG? In reality it's a .45. Pisses me off
- Shotgun does fuck all damage, even at point blank compared to a 9mm pistol
- Far too many hitpoints. Firefights often end up as standoffs where me and the enemy empty magazine upon magazine of ammo onto one another.
- AI is pretty cack. I can single out 1 enemy from a group and the rest will not react. Similarly, I broke into a gang base and wiped them out one by one. There wasn't an "alarm" of some kind.

Story & Immersion:
- Dialog script and voice acting is poor. E.g. a random redneck said "to my dismay..."
- Not alot (or nothing at all) else to do aside from the main quest.
- No open wasteland space. It doesn't feel like a desolate wasteland at all.
- Supplies (food, ammo and meds) are scattered everywhere in abundance.
- Again, far too underpopulated. Same problem as Fallout 3. There are simply not enough NPC's. New Vegas is supposed to be a bustling city and instead is a goddamn ghost town. This also makes me laugh every time I find a "save the town" quest
- Far too many boarded up homes and inaccessible areas. Half the time you're playing surrounded by props.
- A town generally consists of more than 10 people. Pass.
- Uninventive quests. E.g. Help X to Save Y. Get Z for A, so B and be reunited with C.

The rest:
- No summary / description of weapons before you buy them. Some are odd, and i'd like to know WTF they are. A rather simple feature.
- Can carry far too much loot. At one point I was carrying 6 pistols, 5 SMG's, 3 rifles, a flamethrower, 10 grenades and random other junk and ammo.

Overall, it feels like nothing new since Oblivion. There is not one positive thing worthy of mention at the moment. It's definitely not worth £30. It's not even well polished. I only got a couple of technical issues, but the rest is just laziness. I'll leave it for now and perhaps pick it up in a couple of days. Or maybe not. If I were to uninstall the game, I do not see myself re-installing it, even at the promise of mods. They didn't come with FO3 and they sure as hell wont arrive with this. At least any that removed the mickey mouse, ADD console gamer feel.

Some more notes:

I kinda knew on a 75% chance, the game would suck, so i'm not at all shocked or even disappointed.

I think the reason why i'm finding it particularly hard to justify doing side quests and exploration is because i've effectively seen that shit before in Oblivion but especially FO3. Those props, those weapons, those faces, those visuals. I know what I'm going to find over that hill before I even think about it. The reason for this is simply because New Vegas is an expansion. It can't add anything fundamentally new, because it's the same game.

Edit: Oh, also, I want to elaborate the weakness of the main story. Perhaps it's a mini spoiler, but definitely not for Ox. The game more or less starts off like Kill Bill. Some gang tried to kill you and it's up to you to get revenge and maybe ask why. I'm down with the revenge thing. I like the idea of hunting down those mofo's and scattering their brains all over the sun baked tarmac. After all, I was just a courier doing his job. The trouble is that the game soon deviates from a perfectly good theme (revenge) and instead focuses on a pretty weak find-the-magic-item theme. It's weak because you drag your ass to Vegas (having done the usual retarded errand boy quests to get there) only to find that the magic item is a data storage device with information that compromises the security systems of a casino...

The buck stops there for me. That is a pretty lame end goal for my books. Let's say things go well and I take over than casino, heck, let's say I take over all the casinos, I didn't really play the game to control such an inconsequential achievement. Not only is it a fickle aspiration, but the game has NO mechanics that would enable you to enjoy the fruits of owning a casino, so why bother?

Of course, there's a possibility that the magic item is actually something more. Perhaps it's a device containing blueprints for a clone army hidden away in a secret vault, designed to restore order to all America against a surge of mutant taliban insurgents. Perhaps it's a device that somehow activates a load of content that makes Fallout New Vegas the best game since Dominos. I just don't know. An RPG that reveals such an inconsequential main plot at any point throughout the story has incurred a big no-no.

A preliminary rating: /

Awfully tempted to strip it to zero. I guess that 1 is more a placeholder for that 1 positive thing, when (or if) I find it.

lol @ least surprising review in the history of mankind.

As I said on Steam yesterday, I can actually understand where most of your points of criticism are coming from and definitely the technical/graphical ones (textures, faces, lowly populated towns). Obviously I don't think they are quite as gamebreaking as you though.

But one thing I will absolutely refute is that the writing, dialogues or voice acting is bad. I thought they were excellent so far, and definitely a few steps up from Fallout 3.

Anyway, as for 'my' game, I took some screens earlier on and I'll point them tonight if I can remember. I've been digging my whole 'brainsy repairs/science guy braving the wasteland' stint quite a bit. I've mostly been doing odd jobs left and right, and picked up a few companions. One is a broken robot I found in an abandoned building and fixed with my 1337 skills, the other is a badass former NCR sniper. I used to a pretty big wimp in combat (still am) but now I have two peeps drawing fire AND returning it, so that's going a lot better already. I tend to focus on .357 magnum weapons right now, either a handgun or a rifle. I can't aim for shit, but if I can run up to an enemy in combat and go into VATS from about a foot out I can sure as hell take 3 shots of 95% accuracy at their head. And since those bullets hit like a mack truck most people with headgear are in for some pain.

I'm actually walking around in a cowboy hat, metal armor (very mad max-y) and authority glasses I stole off some body I found. It looks absolutely ridiculous with my muttonchops 'stache, and I love it. The fun thing about great at repairing shit is that I'm constantly carrying around top notch maintained weapons and armor and can recycle a lot of empty ammo shells. It also solves a lot of carry weight issues and inventory size problems (particular when trading, as it's just one long list instead of divided into item types) since if I find 5 crappy 9mm pistols I'll use parts of the others to make 1 or 2 mint condition ones, which sell for a lot. Same with armors. The companions also have inventories so that also helps for carrying stuff.

I'm beginning to realise at least one of my two pals has a sort of person backstory quest thing I may unlock later. That's pretty neat compared to the boring (once they folloed you anyway) companions of F3.

One thing to notice though: while the hardcore mode does add flavour to the game, some things could have been done better. For example water: you don't really need to drink it all that much. It seems like a bottle of water can get you almost through an entire day, which is pretty silly since you're walking through the freaking Mojave desert. Also, the lack of 'enormous' empty plains makes that you'll almost always have time to go find a water source somewhere. so unless you're absoutely retarded and don't drink for days even after passing several water sources, it's kind of hard to actually suffer more than minor dehydration. Still, that's a minor concern.

A while ago I was walking over the empty road as I passed by a former police station. Night was falling and I knew there were enemies out there, so I decided to see if I could spend the night inside it. I enter and I realise the place has been squatted by a small gang of 4-5 people. Me and my robo pal killed2 of them quickly, then struggled a bit with the leader and another armored chick. In the end we took them down and stole their gear - among it a sweet Cowboy repeater rifle. I searched the place for further supplies and then slept on the brig in the jail. It felt kind of good to sleep behind bars, in case any animal would wander in.

Did a fun quest yesterday, I won't spoil it for anyone but let's just say that it involves rockets. I seem to be gravitating towards a mostly decent character so far, actually helping people out instead of leading them to their doom. :O I still do steal anything I can use to increase my chances of surviving and hack into people's personal pc's when I have the chance, but it's not like I threaten them or kill them for their gear.

The water/food thing I mentioned earlier has panned out a little better by now. It would appear that the relatively low maintenance of my character related to two things: a) the relatively small distance I'd covered at that point and b) the survival skill which is pretty high for me. Higher survival = longer you can go on food and water.

I'm still walking around the wasteland with my crew, doing some small work for the NCR. I also cleaned out the Powder Gangers HQ. Bitches had it coming. Now I'm slowly turning my sights on New Vegas some more. Found a lot of oldschool Fallout stuff, like for example an abandoned factory with a few working computers which accidentally got a shipment of stealth boys (personal cloaking devices) and as a result suffered from a few sexual harassment cases.

I've found the game unplayable for 1 single reason, which could be amended by an extremely simple mod.

When you attack an enemy with a gun, you have to pass 2 checks. The first is the hit check, which is determined by your skill and distance to the enemy. Pretty logical, no? The second check is for damage, which in scientific terms, is totally retarded. I take my .44 magnum, walk up point blank to someone and shoot them in the face. They take 10% of their health taken off.

When I climb a few levels, get more skill on Guns and re-attempt the exact same thing, the enemy takes 50% damage.

If you get shot with a .44 magnum on a specific location on your body, the damage you incur should not depend on skill of the attacker AT ALL. It makes no blinkin' sense. I am certain this decision was made because the developers otherwise thought that the game would be "too easy" or maybe because they had no other ideas at hand to fix the impending "imbalance".

Here's an idea: How about arranging camps and enemies in tactically sound positions? Watchtowers? Formation? Barbed wire? Oh wait, that requires time and attention to detail. I guess I can't expect that from game developers these days.

Is it me, or does Derf find every game unplayable?

Oh I found a mod that does the things I need

I'm replaying the game as a non-fighter, with the hope of grabbing 2-3 companions.

Hey Ox, I have Charisma 10 but still can't pick up Veronica even after joining with Boone. Why's that?

You already found the answer to your own question re: Veronica iirc. Ad thanks for the font mod! That will up my enjoyment of the game even further I'm sure. Off to install it.

I (and Derf) installed the mod and it's a GODSEND. It makes the game so much better to actually see your dialogue options and have a more manageable intenvory. Fuck yes. If anyone starts playing it, I suggest installing it from the boot. I can't even imagine playing without it now. Fucking console GUI.

Having played quite a bit of New Vegas so far and, well, it's a superb game. I personally have been spared from most bugs (a CTD once in a while, but that's hardly outrageous for a recent title) and have been ejoying the finer parts of the game. I can now confidently say that Derf was smoking crack when he said the dialogue was badly written. It's of a standard well above most games I've played in years, honestly. I'd occasionally also find some note that are just there to add to the world's 'spice' and they're good too - like letters from NCR soldiers at the front to their loved ones, pretty chilling. The game is generally more mature without being the standard black/grey/white thing most of the time. It's not mature in the sense of 'yay boobies' (altho there are some silly ones), but mostly in the way the game deals with it in the story. One example is how you talk to the leader of the NCR crack team sniper squad and he talks about how two if his soldiers have been acting up - one of them the only female of the group who, apparently, was raped by some junkie gangbanger leader while her sniping partner was knocked out and -obviously- has some mental trauma from it. So you can try to convince her that she has a problem and then try to get some assistance to solve it.

There's also a sort of hard to explain quality to the world that F3 didn't have (but was in F1 & F2). I think it's the fact that there are so many factions and groups, and the indications/references that there are actual bigger societies out there in the world (like the NCR in Cali and the Mormons in Utah). I.e., there is a -sort of- society. Things are connected and interwoven, each faction has a its own relations (be it actually so or story-wise) and friends and enemies. In F3, the world was a loosely connected collection of seperate towns. In NV, you actually get the feeling of New Vegas acting as a hub with things revolving around it, all in a bigger universe. That makes for a lot, imho.

I've played a ton of really amusing quests too. One I didn yesterday was do guard duty for Silver Rush, a weapons store specialising in high-grade energy weapons (I'm a energy weapon whore). So I was like...maybe I can get a discount or something and took the job. The other guard gives you instructions on what the policies are (ie no drunks, frisk people for weapons, be polite, when to use force) and you start off. Then the customers walk up to you and you need to practice the rules (or fuck it up if you feel like it). Really fun and different.

I keep finding new shit everywhere. So much to do...I want to get to the Brotherhood of Steel and try and get me some sweet power armor, but they seem to be hidden away pretty well.

Oh and a lesser aspect: although companions are a lot better with the companion wheel, they're still pretty much unhandable and unless you have superhuman charisma and are playing on very easy, they WILL die and they WILL start running off to attack stuff in the wasteland. It sucks because I like (some of) them and in some areas one of them is likely to get into trouble a lot and will die often. So that means reloading, cause in Hardcore mode their death is permanent.

Just get the game, basically.

P.S. I'm all NCR all the way for now....even try to wear the uniform as much as I can.