Fallout New Vegas, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Buggy Bomb

It's difficult putting my finger on exactly why I feel this way, but I like Fallout: New Vegas more than Fallout 3.

Perhaps it's the environment? While New Vegas still takes place in a bleak post-apocalyptic wasteland, it's color palette isn't so dark and muted. Sure, there is a lot of desert, but much like the hicksville areas of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it's really there more as negative space for the important locations.

Thinking about it, New Vegas seems like more of a coherent world than Fallout 3. That game, while based (I'm told somewhat accurately) on real-life Washington D.C., just felt very same-y. I felt like I spent way too much time crawling around subways and trying to weave my way through the city because there were collapsed buildings everywhere. New Vegas is much more open - not just in a "we're in a huge wasteland desert area" but there are much less artificial roadblocks. Sure, there's the occasional mountain, but at least it makes sense that you cannot pass it - unlike the rubble piles in the city in Fallout 3.

It could be the story, too. I went way, way out of my way to avoid the story missions in Fallout 3, because I just did not care about the player character's dad. Oh man he wants to purify some water! Okay you run along and do that, Dad, you nerd.

New Vegas starts with the player character (hereafter referred to as the Courier) getting shot in the head by some dude who steals this mysterious package he was tasked with delivering. After being rescued in the middle of nowhere by some robot no one seems to know, you are set loose to find out what the hell all that was about. And the main hook of the story (that I will not spoil here) is a fantastic payoff, especially if you take the route I did. I felt like a badass when I beat the game. That's all I'll say about that.

I find it interesting, too, that the game was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, whose team is made up of people from the former Black Isle Studios, who made Fallout 1 and 2 (Fallout 3 and its downloadable content was developed and published by Bethesda, whereas New Vegas was only published by them). I really enjoy the writing of New Vegas more than Fallout 3, and I believe Obsidian crafted a much more entertaining world to play around in. Credit of course must be given to Bethesda for crafting the basic engine of the game, though, of course, as New Vegas was built upon Fallout 3.

Something must be said, though, about the ridiculous number of bugs in this game. I'm not talking about Radroaches, either - Fallout: New Vegas crashed on me time and time again, despite being patched a few times before I got around to it. There are numerous little bugs, too, like when I had beaten a quest, and was told to go get a deputy to arrest a guy, when the guy who needed to be arrested locked himself in a room and started giving a suicide speech over the PA. About half a minute into his two minute long speech, the audio just ended - and after another minute and a half, I would hear a gunshot and then the quest would end and I'd gain experience. No matter how many times I saved and reloaded (I even tried the quest over again from the beginning!) I couldn't get the bug to stop appearing. Every once in a while, I'd see an enemy character (usually animals or bugs - humans didn't seem to suffer this problem) get stuck in the environment, like halfway into a rock or something. There are more than that, too, but I don't feel like listing them all (and to be honest, they just tend to be annoying - the freezing didn't happen all THAT often and everything else was a small nuisance at best, nothing game breaking, at least that I encountered). In my experience playing it, Fallout 3 ran perfectly compared to this.

Even so, I never did finish Fallout 3, and don't really have any desire to go back and play it, either. I just found everything in New Vegas to be more compelling. The different factions are all so well characterized and written, whereas I can't even really remember the difference between all the people in Fallout 3.

The game structure seems a bit more polished, too. I like the leveling system in New Vegas (well, at least how now there isn't Small Guns, Big Guns, and Energy Weapons - it's just Guns and Energy Weapons). The game controls a bit better, as well. Companions do not stay dead permanently if knocked out, either, which is a vast, vast improvement as far as I'm concerned. I was afraid to use my companions in Fallout 3 for fear of them dying. In New Vegas, if a companion is killed, they will stay dead until all nearby danger is eliminated, then wake up after being "unconscious".

If you enjoyed Fallout 3 at all, I feel like New Vegas is a must play. You will certainly enjoy yourself, and I don't think it's "more of the same" like I kept hearing people worry about before the game was released. I know that "war, war never changes" but Fallout does, and for the better.