“War. War never changes.” With these words from Ron Pearlman every Fallout game has started. The PC game Fallout brought a new face to the RPG genre and brought a really wild post-apocalyptic world to the player. Then “Fallout 3” came out. It was the grown up version of the PC games with a first person shooter twist. It took the original story of the California vault survivor and moved it to Washington DC. Now the setting has been moved to Las Vegas and Mojave Desert bringing this Fallout back to its PC roots.
In a lot of ways it feels the same as Fallout 3. There are some nice differences. A big problem with Fallout 3 was that, like Oblivion, another Bethesda game, it froze, CONSTANTLY. This was such a problem that fans were in an uproar that the bugs be fixed. I did have two freezes on New Vegas but since then they sent out an update online I haven’t had any more problems.
Unlike Fallout 3, where you are born in at the start of the game New Vegas begins with you getting shot and being buried in a shallow grave. Fallout New Vegas has a few bad aspects. For example some missions require you to come and go multiple times like a damn postman. I find that tedious. In Fallout 3 you can get repairs and shop just about anywhere. It’s a lot more difficult to find repairs and doctors in New Vegas without specifically looking around.
Otherwise it’s really a great game. I like that they have fixed the companions to be easier to command. In Fallout 3 you had to sort through a mass of BS text to tell your companions to fight a certain way or to access their inventory. Now it’s a simple wheel which allows you to make changes. It’s really nice and easy. Plus you can have more than one companion at a time which can be very useful since their kills count towards your experience.
There are lots of varieties when it comes to what sorts of character builds you want to make to survive the wasteland. Generally I go with the smooth talking gunslinger (“I’m you’re huckleberry”) but it’s kind of neat to see that the replay is there if you want the challenge of playing as a sneaky ninja type or a melee fighter. I don’t think you can survive for long without relying solely on a ranged weapon in Fallout 3. It’s just a necessity, especially later in the game.
Anyway it’s an improvement. I did like the ruins of Washington DC’s wasteland. It was a lot more haunting to see national monuments turned into rubble. New Vegas is creepy and Las Vegas sure does have aspects of that. But it’s not quite the same when you see the Lincoln Monument turned into a hideout for slavers (ooh irony) or the Hoover Dam turned into a the site of a battle between survival factions. I still have a lot of game story to work through. I have a feeling it will only get more interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment