Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition

New Vegas brought the charm and grittiness of the original Black Isle isometric Fallouts but to the Bethesda vision of how Fallout now looks. Overall I think that Obsidian did a good job with the breadth of the story, but so many technical issues remain it is difficult to continue to enjoy this game. With the amount of travel, why there is no sprint and this acts like a game from the 1990s is irritating. I initially stopped playing after first getting through Primm and Goodsprings due to the travel in and out of Freeside and the Strip and the length of time it took to get to new POIs to get them on the Pipboy. Eventually I got over that hump after taking about a year off and can fast travel. Another issue with travel is the areas that are blocked over hills to funnel you along a linear path. Even from the Oblivion days I was able to go up and over mountains with enough tenacity but otherwise paths are blocked arbitrarily. *Minor Spoilers* The endgame scenario is also a surprising let-down. Not being able to continue after beating the final scenario for your faction is unfortunate. I do like the summary slideshow that is voiced as the characters, a real nice touch, but not being able to strut around the Mojave as the boss is not what I expected. Also, the battle of Hoover Dam is ridiculous. Monster closets all over the place spawning in the same group of baddies that have almost no intelligence, just a lot of bullets. They literally run straight at my group, usually backwards and are shooting point-blank instead of finding cover. At one point I just run it due to how infuriating it was. Also the fight encounter with the Legate was bugged the first few times and I didn't even realize there was a chance to parlay. The crashing. This was the final straw. I get it is an old game. An old Bugthesda game. But this is out of control. I can't even finish Dead Money at this point, and since it is one way, I have to load an old save in the Mojave, hours ago. Unacceptable.

Fallout: New Vegas continues Bethesda's reputation of making highly immersive game worlds. However, where Fallout 3 faltered - gunplay and weapon customization - Fallout: New Vegas delivers. PROS: + Bigger, yet tighter, world than Fallout 3 + Diverse factions, each with their own motives and roles in the main story. + Side missions, a highlight of Bethesda games, are plentiful and none feel like 'filler'. + Ranged combat is fast, tactical, and satisfying. + Many weapons can be customized. + Moral ambiguity keeps the main story and side missions more interesting. + GOG release includes a swath of bonus content. + Despite the sheer volume of content, Fallout: New Vegas has modest* hardware requirements. + A steal at $20 and can be found on sale for even less. CONS: - Same glitchy performance as Fallout 3 and Oblivion. - Windows XP users appear to be out in the cold. *I've played the GOG release of Fallout: New Vegas on a Lenovo ThinkPad T410 laptop, with Nvidia NVS 3100M (256MB) graphics. Plays pretty good on 'Medium' settings.

This is how Fallout 3 should have been like. You can skip F3 and go directly to this one.

This is my favorite Fallout game, so it's such a shame that it runs pitifully on PC. There are a myriad of glitches, some minor, some really bad. But the worst is the bug that crashes the game when you try to load a save file. I can't even play my game now because it won't load. Don't waste your money on this.

I want to like it so so bad. The story can be really smart at times but at other times feels clunky and immature. Some of the environments and areas are put together excellently, but most of the time its just boring and greyish yellow. Combat feels terrible and having high speech is attaching a "I win" button to every objective given to you. You can choose between using fast travel and making the vast wasteland feel like a childs sandbox, or abstain from using it and get the courier experience, which turns out to be boring as hell. Overall its an aged experience which im not totally convinced was much better on release. Also lots of bugs, save a lot.