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| MidPoint Review |
Fallout 3 introduced their post-apocalyptic world to a whole new generation of gamers. They turned a three quarter overhead view into a first person shooter, and it worked. It worked great. The story, the gameplay, and the world all meshed together to form this amazing game play experience that comes around only so often. So when they said they were going to do another game, I got my pre-order and patiently waited for what was to come. Was lightning going to strike twice? Well, I've been playing for a couple weeks now, and my answer is a sad "no".
It's impossible to not compare Fallout: New Vegas to Fallout 3. It's the same game engine, it's the same interfaces, it's the same everything. There's no innovative new tricks for them to use here, which makes the game rely on a couple things: one, you really liked the game play of the original, so much that you're okay with spending another 30 hours with it, and two, it's got a strong enough story to stand on its own two feet. Well guys, it barely holds on with both, but just barely.
Part of what made Fallout 3 so great was the relationships that you built up in the game. You start out as a child and get to know your father, and grow up inside the Vault, so when he disappears and you're forced into the world for the first time, it's a huge deal. You've got purpose, find your father, you've got a background, you come from a vault where nobody has gone outside for decades, you've got a sense of not knowing what was out there and learning everything for the first time. None of that happens in New Vegas. You're a nondescript courier who has no background or ties to anything, no knowledge of what's going on around you despite living in the world presumably for your entire life. They present you with the mission to find out who tried to kill you and when you get to him, they want you to feel like you should take his place in whatever plans he had going on, and it just doesn't work. I don't understand why I'm supposed to want to help any of these sides other than personal morals. What about my characters morals? Doesn't matter, he might have well never existed before being shot in the head. Taking over New Vegas doesn't have the same thrill to it as the holy quest of creating purified water for everyone.
Then there's the bugs. Textures flicker and hover out of place, creatures and NPCs get caught in rocks and fall through the world, and crashes happen when walking into rooms. Some of these were fixed quickly in an initial patch, but it just feels sloppy, especially with as few problems as I had with the original.
Finally, the straight line syndrome is here, despite the "open world". If you go outside of the path, even a little, you're often met with death. One of the worst cases of this was when I was level 6 and went into a town where a faction had killed everyone, and told me that if I didn't like it, I should attack them and die quickly. Sounded like a challenge to me, so I attacked and finished them off without too much trouble. Unfortunately, this caused a small squad of that faction to spawn about thirty minutes later, who would run up to me, tell me I had been marked for death, and proceeded to tear me apart. This wasn't just a little bad luck, these were high level soldiers that were killing me in 2-3 seconds. I couldn't escape them, they would spawn wherever I went, and even killed off a military base that I ran to for help. I was finally forced to load from a previous game. Things like that shouldn't happen in these types of games.
I'm going to keep on playing this one through, and unless some major revelation happens in this second half, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be recommending that people just stick with Fallout 3 and take a pass on New Vegas. Stay tuned for the full update when I end up finishing this one up.
