Fallout New Vegas Review

Two years ago we fell in love with Fallout 3. It was a marvelously rich experience full of atmosphere and wonder. Now the wasteland is back with Fallout: New Vegas from Obsidian Entertainment. In this new title we’re transplanted to the west in and around what was once Las Vegas before the nuclear war. There is a lot to explore here so we’d better get started.

It’s difficult to review this title without comparing it directly with Fallout 3. They have so much in common that playing Fallout New Vegas, you could be forgiven for forgetting that you’re no longer in Fallout 3. It’s not a paradigm shift and no dramatic changes are immediately evident.  If you loved Fallout 3 you’ll love New Vegas, surely. It will keep you coming back for more. Unfortunately if you were part of the minority who did not enjoy Fallout 3, then this incarnation offers up nothing new to appease you.

Now that being said, being so similar to Fallout 3 isn’t always a bad thing. It offers up a similarly engrossing experience which you can spend countless hours immersed in.  The story doesn’t have the best writing ever but it is engaging and you can opt for side quests and really take any path you like, both metaphorically and literally speaking. Correspondingly the game features multiple endings your quest may result in.

One problem is that New Vegas also has all the same flaws that Fallout 3 had, and a few new ones. There are so many problems which become immediately evident. Load times can seem long, Lip syncing is lackluster, the game has a tendency to crash, and animations feel tremendously dated in general. Fallout 3 made up for a lot of these flaws with sheer polish two years ago but today they are a lot less forgivable, especially considering it’s not the first Fallout game with this software engine, so they should be aware of what’s going on.

The most glaring flaw is the fact that once you complete the main quest you cannot continue to explore the game’s world. This was criticized in Fallout 3 so much that they eventually patched the game to allow post-quest exploration. Committing the same sin this time around is inexplicable.

Now none of these flaws are deal breakers. In the light of the scope and scale of the game, they all are minor issues and even cumulatively they cannot diminish the sheer wonder and enjoyment this title can offer. There is a lot to see and do. There are a lot of choices you can make and the game adapts to reflect those changes.

Any character aside from children can now die, which as you can imagine, can impact the story and your goals quite significantly. You are free to make tribal allegiances and enemies at will and this can sculpt your experience. You can also customize your weapons to a seemingly infinite extent.  You can really do what you want in this game and make it the experience you want it to be. It goes well beyond Fallout 3 in this respect, giving you a new level of freedom.

There is also a hard-core game mode which really challenges seasoned players. If you want to invest a lot in to this title (and you should), try this out. The game tries to steer you away from it but it can make the game so much more fulfilling by increasing the challenge and emersion of the survival experience.

This is not a perfect game and two years of tarnish has made the flaws more apparent while the polish has begun to dull. Fallout New Vegas today is not as spectacular as Fallout 3 was in 2008 but whatever you liked or disliked about Fallout 3, it is likely there in New Vegas but with some great additions to make the experience even more dynamic and customizable. They didn’t reinvent the wheel but if you liked the ride on the first wheel, why not take it out for another lap?

ED Note: Raj Patel is a technology culture blogger and architecture professional in Toronto as well as editor of Ohmpage.  This article originally appeared his site at ohmpage.ca.

Fallout New Vegas is available now for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.