Not really, in the old games it made a cheesy 'melt em to the bones' B-List science flick effect. And in New Vegas, it's just terrible, or so I feel anyway. In Fallout 3 the fatman was a powerhouse, and rightly so, but I find both weapons to be terrible in New Vegas. :shrug:
The E charger needs a buff too. 15lbs. And its just weak, its a dman orbital laser, and yet I may aswell have just walked up to lanius and shot him with a .22 pistol for all the good it did. It made it like a scene from ther terminator. A blinding flash of light, sixonds later I see lanius running at me through the fire with his sword and then he just killed Rex 0.0. A few weapns should be buffed in this game. Especially the fatman and archemidies, fatman has limited supply, and archemedies is a once a day thing.