Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition

While Fallout 3 brought new life to the Fallout world, and was fantastic in its own right, Fallout New Vegas holds a place apart. It took the events of 1 and 2 and concluded that arc in a very satisfying way. It also has some of the best DLC content of any Fallout game, most particularly Old World Blues. Alternating between dark nostalgic scifi futurism, a grim apocalypse and layers of black humor, the Obsidian team took great care crafting this gem.

As it turns out, the apocalypse did little to change the day-to-day on the Vegas Strip - and that's just fine by me. Obsidian brought an interesting and welcome change of scenery with NV. Sure we have more of the sandy wastes and ruined cityscapes of old, but the warm glow of the strip just makes things feel so...right. The game itself seems to have aged like a fine (and strange) wine. I often heard complaints about rampant glitches and performance issues when it was first launched, or that the game was simply a cash-grab on Bethesda's part by letting "lowly" Obsidian take the reigns, or that it simply paled in comparison to FO3. The game isn't perfect, true. I do wish the strip itself was larger - the game can leave you feeling rather lonely out in the desert (not that there's ever a shortage of quests). My biggest gripe personally with this game is a rather weak main quest-line/story. There definitely are some interesting characters (Benny, Mr. House, Caesar), but the ultimate goal remains stale: investigate [faction], join [faction], sabotage everyone else until [faction] wins. We have been there. We have done that. HOWEVER, New Vegas completely shines with some of the best DLC content I've ever played. Dead Money, with its brushes with horror and stealth, the undeniably charming Twilight Zone-esque Old World Blues, and the "what should have been the main story" Lonesome Road combine to form a golden trifecta of post-launch goodness. (Honest Hearts is decent as well, but not quite as shiny). As it stood on launch day in October, 2010, New Vegas was an interesting, "good enough" Fallout entry. Today, patched and bundled with all content, New Vegas beats 3 and blows 4 away. I think we all know it, too - it just took a while.

I played through this game several times. On my PS3 and later on my PC. The game is a great Fallout game. A 3D game, similar in view to Fallout 3. If you enjoyed F3 you will probably enjoy this one. As most games this is not perfect, but IMO it has nothing bad enough to even consider not playing it. The game is a more refined version of previous Fallout games, especially Fallout 3. My favorite part perhaps being that you can look down the scope with all weapons instead of the very 90s shoot from the hip view. As an RPG, a Fallout RPG, it is superb for what it is. You find yourself in an expected position and you start on a mission to get revenge. How you proceed and what you do is entirely up to you. There are so many things to do, both in main story and sidequests, that you can spend 100s of hours, easily. If you like Fallout, if you like Mad Max, if you like post apocalyptic settings for your entertainment, this is a must.

Track down your nemesis, and decide his fate. Train military misfits to survive in battle, or lie about your skills and let them suffer the consequences. Save a dictator's life from a brain tumor, or let nature take its course. Work with the status quo, or against it. .308 or surplus ammo. FNV's greatest strength lies in the weight of every decision you make. It's not just about shooting the wrong guy and having other guys come after you - your dialogue, your actions, and how, when and with whom you do them carve your story. And it should go without saying: mod the game and make your story truly yours.

However, if you don't mod the game and want to prevent the possibility of not being able to load a save game at some point well into your gameplay, consider the following: After a while, the game will fail to "Continue" from your last save whether the save is one you explicitly created or an auto-save. The workaround is to create an explicit save sometime very early in your gameplay -- immediately after character creation is a good option for several reasons. Then, sometime into your gameplay (perhaps after a forced restart because of an attempt to "Continue" which never completes or exits), get in the habit of loading your early save each time you start the game. As soon as the game starts from the save, you can then hit the escape key, load your most recent save, and continue on. This workaround has yet to fail for me after hundreds of hours of gameplay. No guarantee you might not have other problems at some point, but this workaround will "solve" one of the bigger problems with playing this game past the early stages. While the preceding will help and creating the early explicit save as recommended is always a good idea, following the Viva New Vegas (https://vivanewvegas.moddinglinked.com/intro.html) modding guide to install the New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE) as well as the first two recommended "bug fix" mods will go a long way towards providing a more stable and enjoyable experience. While even minimal modding may be a pain, the benefit of nearly 14 years of "bug fixes" is well worth the effort. And then, it becomes easy to improve upon and extend the base game and DLCs in ways which add tremendous value to a game which is now available for a very modest initial investment...