15/11/2010

Fallout New Vegas - Time to decide


I’ve been wanting to write a lot about the Fallout New Vegas, initially I had ideas of a daily diary but I did not want to spoil the experience for anyone who reads my posts so cancelled that idea. In my post below I have given a brief summary of the first few hours of play, do not read if you have not played the game yet.

After nearly 95 hours of gameplay I think now is a good time to do a quick update. The game does not have the hand-holding fallout 3 introduction and chucks you straight into the story. You are a courier who has been shot, your delivery has been taken & you have been left for dead. Lucky for you a passing robot comes to your rescue & takes you to the town of Goodsprings. Here the doctor removes your bullet & you are given time to heal & recover. If you have played Fallout 3 the control method is exactly the same with a few minor adjustments.

Once you are on your feet, the doctor gives you a quick check & you get to choose your SPECIAL points & TAG Skills. You are also given an option to choose Hardcore Mode (This has you looking after a few more things like H20, Food & Sleep but the biggest change is that stimpacks now heal over time). Time to question the doctor about what, why & who shot you? Then came the looting, this is the man who has just saved my life & how do I repay him? By nicking everything in his house to sell back to him for caps. Looting, Prospecting, Scavenging or Stealing call it what you want it’s a big part of the game & you need to do it to get caps to buy better weapons or armour to use. After buying a few stimpacks from the good doctor & using his sink to drink some H20 I then popped out to see the town of Goodsprings. It looked like I had stepped into a western movie set, wooden shacks, tumbleweed rolling down the hill & Brahmin chewing grass. I then question the townsfolk to find out more information about my attack & hear about the problems they are having from a group called ‘Powder Gangers’.

After completing some simple basic quests including a nice training quests which shows you some of the new features of the game it was time to help the townsfolk get rid of the ‘Powder Gangers’. The town gathered together, armed & nervous ready for a showdown, the Powder Gangers came running into the town guns blazing. Bullets flying everywhere. Bang !! Bang ! a town settler has just died next to me. I grab my gun and lock on using ‘VATS’ to take down a Powder Ganger, now for the next guy my AP is out I can’t use VATS. Do I want to go charging into a group of 4 enemies with no AP? How will my health suffer? Will I die? I use a stimpack (which will now heal me over time) & go charging in, shooting freestyle (without vats) bang, bang!, bang !! & BANG !!! they are all dead & my health is ok. I survived. Up pops a confirmation box informing me that I am now vilified by the Powder Gangers. What? Factions, this game has factions you have to choose who you want to help. I had the option on this quest to side with the Powder Gangers instead of the townsfolk but I did not & by helping the townsfolk, the Powder Gangers hate me which means they will shoot me on sight. You can if you want reload your save file & try to go for a neutral option, in my case I didn’t & carried on.

I have been lucky in that I have not experienced any game breaking bug as reported by Gary on UGVM but I have had the game freeze on me twice whilst going through a door loading screen. I was very worried about buying this game because of the developer Obsidian & the stories of bugs. The game is obviously broken & bugged (just search on google or read UGVM for the many reports), it’s disappointing to see a game released in this condition & I’m surprised there has not been more of an uproar by the gaming media. But I am glad I purchased the game on release I am throughly enjoying it so far.

Goodsprings was now safe & it was time for me to move on. My work here was done. The next 90+ hours had me helping out other towns with their problems, making difficult choice’s on how to treat a particular faction & selling anything I came across to amass my caps. The main storyline has you deciding on if you want to go with the NCR, Caesar’s Legion, Mr House or Yes Man (go it alone basically). I am now at that point where my character is now on level 30, gun & energy weapons are 90+ on skill & lockpick & speech on 100. I have 2 companions with me to back me up in a gunfight, in truth one of them probably gets the shot before me. I have a few small side-quests to complete & I need to go shopping for some SPECIAL implants.

Then I plan on creating one save file (multiple copies) on which I can choose one faction to complete the game & then reload to choose one of the others. The time has nearly come for me to decide. Will I go it alone? Align myself with Caesar’s Legion, help Mr House or let the NCR control the Mojave?

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