Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition

New Vegas is the story of a zombie mailman who came back from the dead to take a poker chip stolen by Chandler from friends and then either help cowboys, romans, Walt Disney, or throw a town into anarchy. Pros: >No SJW shit >True sequel to Fallout 2(And the unreleased van-buren) >Made by competent dev studio responsible for original Fallouts >Retained the feel of the original games >Classic CRPG style mechanics in a real-time first person format >Unique setting(Retro-futuristic wild western) >Fantastic writing >Player has significant impact on the world with many branching possibilities, each with various outcomes that heavily affect the world for the rest of the game and impose long term consequences for the players actions(no illusion of choice mass effect bullshit) >Every character could be killed(except children) >Likewise you can go through the game without ever killing a single living thing. >Almost every character is memorable, especially the companions, each having various dialogue trees for roleplaying that can change depending on your faction, karma, skills/stats or simply how you answer them. (Just watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1yR7WYqgM) >Voice acting is varied and lines are well delivered with some big names like Danny Trejo and Steve Blum >No binary morality, each of the 22 or so factions are as morally ambiguous as the last and all have realistic motives and cultures. >Diverse, memorable quests that go beyond fetch quests and "Kill X amount of Y" skyrim-tier shit. >Interesting locations >Deep lore and world building >Packed with content with tons of replay potential >Great character customization(in both equipment and skills) allowing for fuckloads of builds or playstyles >perfectly scratches the "explore, loot, equip/sell" itch >Tons of mods to fit anyone's preference(See: ) Cons: >Map is too fucking small and cramped(especially the Vegas area) >No vehicles or horses >Uses the shitty havok physics engine, picking up a spoon will make everything jump off the table. >No co-op functionality >Buggy as hell(Bethesda was in charge of the QA, they fucked up their 1 job on the game) >Bethesda potato faces >Ugly orange tint over everything, looks nothing like the actual Mojave desert >No dynamic shadows >animations are janky >unfinished(Legion quest, post-ending content, unused companions, unreleased quests) >closed source It's graphically ugly, the gunplay is sub-par, the map is too small and cramped, the game is buggy as hell, and the engine is a 14 year old mess made of twigs and duct tape... But I love it to pieces <3 It will always be special to me.

Regardless of how good a game is in story or writing or art design, if it is broken it gets one star. The greatest game ever is of no consequence if it is so buggy it can not be played. Such is the state of New Vegas. Unless you are very lucky you will crash, you will stutter and you will bug. If you enjoy spending twice the amount of time you spend playing just getting the game to be functional then by all means buy this game, but if you really enjoy software repair that much I'd instead get an IT job and get paid for your time instead of paying Bethesda for the privilege of fixing their broken game.

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.