NOTE: This is not a "Let's bash Bethesda/Obsidian"/"OMG this game suxors it fails" thread. In the same regard it's not a "Don't say anything bad about the game or an angry mob is going to show up at your door thread". Reviews should be done in a constructive manner stating what you liked about the game and what you disliked (obviously).


Reviews can either be full reviews or reviews in progress, please indicate which you are doing. The difference between the two, and hopefully this is somewhat obvious, is that a full review is done by someone who has "finished" the game and a review in progress is by someone who has not "finished" the game. PLEASE MAKE THESE REVIEWS SPOILER FREE REVIEWS!

For the rating system we will use turtles because I like turtles. 1 turtle being that the game is absolutely terrible and 5 turtles means that the game is so good you have dreams of marrying it. Please try to keep to the 1-5 ranking as we don't want to kill the forum server.

An example of the scoring (in case you were wondering about the turtles there is an emoticon for them)

[Insert review here] (Imagine a lot of text, my opinions intricately woven throughout, and maybe a few smiley faces) [Review ends here]

Review Score: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle:

Review Away!

My Review in Progress:

I haven't been able to play much of Fallout New Vegas. The little bit that I have played of New Vegas has been thus far a good one. If you've played Fallout 3 you're be familiar with the interface of the game. The gameplay mechanics essentially the same, for better or worse, so veteran Fallout 3 players should not have a difficult time adapting but if you're looking for something drastically different than Fallout 3's gameplay you'll be disappointed. The opening narration and movie were excellent as all of the Fallout openings are (I've seen the openings for all of the games and they each set an excellent tone for the game). Thus far the opening quests and NPC dialogues in Goodsrpings (basically the town is set to be where the tutorial starts off) are excellently written and add a uniqueness to each of the characters. There have been graphical improvements on the game but at the same time there have been un-improvements as well. When walking my character actually feels like he has weight to him rather than that skating on air feeling Fallout and Oblivion had. However, and I don't mean to nitpick, the animation for your hand when holding a pistol when aiming down the sights is absolutely horrendous. Given that you will be looking at your hands a lot because this game does have a first person element to means that a bit more effort should have gone into animation for the hand and gun.

While the first series of quests is fun and particularly well written it does leave you with a bit of a cliffhanger at the end. The transitioning into the quests and in the middle of the quests are excellent the end of the quest comes to an abrupt halt leaving me with a "that's it?" feeling. I've since moved on out of the town and headed to the next quest location and have begun the quest there. Not much has happened since I've left Goodsprings and made the move but I have had a few run ins with enemies and another quest or two.

hardcoe mode does add a degree of difficulty but it's a rather small degree. Perhaps it is because I stocked up on supplies before I left Goodsrpings or perhaps it's because I know what to expect because of Fallout 3 that I haven't felt that it adds too much difficulty. The bugs I've encountered thus far have been minor but nothing new or radically different from Fallout 3. My arms have disappeared (when in first person and not literally. They just go out of view and my gun appears to be much higher than it actually is), my Pipboy can be placed rather oddly sometimes when I bring it up(sometimes it's too low or too high rather than centered), as well as other minor graphical errors.

Overall though, despite the minor graphical glitches, the first impression New Vegas makes is a a good one. The game is fun to play and I feel like I'll be playing for quite some time to come. I look forward to where the story goes and how the factions will interact with each other. I will update later in terms of how the rest of the questing goes.

Review Score: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle:

I am not that far into the game, but what I have seen has been great. I love the dialog, quests and art style much more then FO3. The only bug issues I've experienced is a little bit of lagging but that's a dream compared to FO3. The only things I could complain about is that I think Vegas was way to easy to reach within a small time frame, and I was disappointed in the music in the game. I was hoping might be more, but a simple CD fixes this problem

One of the main features I love is the Lucky 38 presidential suite. Tired of walking around with Boone? Want to try out Arcade for a while? Just send Boone to the Lucky 38 suite and come back and get him if you want him back. I have basically almost all of the companions so far up in my suite and I pick and choose which ones i need for certain tasks. Great feature.

Well it's small but I think it explains it well. I will be planning my marriage to my copy of the game shortly :hubbahubba:

Edit; Forgot my turtles!
:turtle: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle:

my review- in my short time playing this game i have had a ton of fun, and am having a hard time to stay away from it. the voice acting is top notch and the characters are more vibrant and likable then the ones from fallout 3.

Unlike in fallout 3, it is very easy to get overwhelmed. (this is a good thing in my opinion). there is just so much more to do, that it makes me feel indecisive over what i should do next.

as for the weapons. the sound is better and there is much more variety then in fallout 3.

as for glitches, i haven't experienced anything past 1 enemy getting stuck in a wall. it hasn't hindered me in the slightest.

Its better then fallout 3 in almost every way.

since i haven't even gotten into the strip yet, i cant really comment on the story. but it seems to good so far
:turtle: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle: :turtle:

My thoughts on the last 15-20 hours of New Vegas.

Graphics:
Compared to fallout 3 I think the graphics have improved a little bit. In Fallout 3 the enginge was showing it's old age and I believe this game should be the last one to use this outdated engine. Still the graphics are decent and especially on the PC it's possible to make the wastelands look quite nice (as far as wastelands go).
Character models are still a bit bland and glitchy while walking, talking and other interactions, but I make it sound worse than it is to be frank.
Even though I've only gotten around the 15-20 hours of gametime in this game I've noticed very little bugs and most of them aren't gamebreaking at all. Minor gliches as enemies clipping or being stuck in the surrounding, some crashes, minor lag at some points and weird behaviour of the arm while holding a gun. I've encountered one bug where i couldn't progress in a tunnel because I constantly fell through the ground (and then teleported back to the tunnel which is kind of nifty ) Luckily this game honours the saying: All roads lead to Rome, so another path was found and I safely arrived at my objective.

Gameplay:
The gameplay, story and atmosphere of this game is absolutely sublime. I love it! the Mohave wasteland looks authentic with some plantgrow here and there, ruined buildings, hot scorching sun in a blue sky and the town of New vegas in the background.
The first time I entered the world after a visit from the good doc at the start of the game my jaw dropped like it did in Fallout 3 after leaving the Vault and i just had to walk around for a few minutes to enjoy the scenery.
At first glance the main objective seems a bit boring and cliche "find the guy who tried to kill you and deal with him", but after following his trail you end up in a bigger storyline based on the three main factions and some lesser factions in the Mohave desert. The side quests acquired from the people who live in the area often feel like little sidestories instead of just random things you could do, but rather didn't. Which is very important for a open world game in my book. Beside the quests exploring still feels like a lot of fun and never fails to amaze me with the tiny holodisk logs which not always help you directly in your objectives, but add to the post-apocalyptic feeling the game portrays. I could talk for hours on end about some parts of the game and discuss or share a laugh about the choices of the people. (one in particular, vault 11. I won't spoil anything, but I highly recommend everyone to take some time exploring this vault and try to read every piece of information in there. Simply amazing!!!)

A lot of objectives or goals have multiple ways to achieve. For example, repairing a robot could be done with a high enough repair level, science level or just with spare parts. Or making a NPC spill the beans could be done with Intelligence, Speech, Barter etc.
Talking about speech checks. I love the fact that this game replaced the percentage way of speech checks in the previous game. It was just silly to be able to pass a speech check with only a low skill level and low percentage.

Humour is of course one of the main ingredients of a Fallout game and this game is filled with it. From silly interactions to just weird behaviour and from minor nudges to other (fallout) games or movies to downright parodies, this game delivers! The skills like speech, barter etc. feel like they matter more in progressing a conversation with people which i missed a bit in the previous installment.

Replay value:
Very high. Fallout 3 had a really high replay value due to the many places you could visit, the karma system and the different choices you could make. This game has this and more.

First the different endings. I haven't beaten the game yet so I can't tell you anything about the ending, but as far as I know there are at least 3 different endings (for every faction at least 1)
Secondly character development. I felt fallout 3 gave you way too many skillpoints and ways to raise your S.P.E.C.I.A.L points. Especially after Broken Steel it was easy to get your S.P.E.C.I.A.L to 10 and your skills all in the high-max range. You got a perk every level which didn't really help to add to character diversity, as perks ranged from useless to simply overpowered and ridiculous. This game battles this by removing the +1 bobbleheads from fallout 3 and replacing it with the implant upgrades based on your endurance level. My only annoyance with this system is it's way too cheap. Instead of 4k I would rather see these upgrades go from 10k+ to a 40k range depending on the kind of implant. Perks are obtained every 2 levels instead of 1 which makes choosing the right perk way more fun.

Conclusion:
What can I say? I love a open world RPG game, I love post nuclear settings and I loved the other fallout games. I think this installment belongs with one of the best (if not the best) games in it's genre. There are some minor (and sometimes larger) annoyances in the bugs and gliches but all around this game is really great and I know I'm going to lose 200+ hours in the Mohave wasteland. It's not perfect, but the game gets the most important part (gameplay and replayability) right.

Score: 4,5/5