Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

I made the mistake of playing this after all of the other Fallout games since so many people said this was the best one. For me, this was my LEAST enjoyable Fallout game.

A convoluted story without any emotional connection. I kept asking why I should even care about any of the decisions/factions. Not that the other games had amazing stories, but at least there were (somewhat) clear motivations. The moral choices were still pretty much black and white.

This is all subjective, of course, but I didn't expect just how boring this game was. Most of it is dead desert. I legit fell asleep while holding down the run to get to a location. Nothing attacked me, didn't stumble upon a find, no NPCs to interact with, just desert. The game is definitely more "open" than "world."

Lastly, the quests were so bad. If they weren't fetch quests they were "deliver these messages back and forth" quests. Jill loves Tony, travel to Tony to tell him. Tony likes her too, travel back to Jill and tell her. Jill wants to go to him but can't until you talk to some other person. Other person lets Jill go, tell Jill she has permission. Jill is happy, go tell Tony that Jill is coming. Ugh!!! How is this a "game?!"

Maybe back in 2010 this was entertaining. And maybe I should not have played this after completing games like Mass Effect Trilogy and The Witcher 3 for the first time. I'm happy for all who found this game enjoyable, but I do feel that it is very overrated.

My Fave FPS, 27: Fallout: New Vegas

So, this is the first time an RPG makes an appearance. If I'm being honest, I'm not a Fallout guy. I dig the atmosphere, exploration, 50s vibe, humour. These games should be among my absolute favourites, but they're not. It's really just a matter of one mechanic souring the experience enough to prevent that. The mechanic I'm talking about is V.A.T.S. I know, you don't have to use V.A.T.S., but I've always felt it was a band-aid for how crappy the shooting feels, so it calls attention to itself. Maybe this is a case of me being too hard on it, but a single mechanic can absolutely dampen an experience. It's less serious than this, but it reminds me of something like Final Fantasy 8, where the junction system/how it deals with magic makes me not want to play an otherwise fantastic game.

With that said, I like New Vegas quite a bit. I know I've been negative. As I said in my original post, any game on this list is an 8/10. I'm more forgiving of New Vegas because from the moment it begun, I was invested in the story. And that continued.

Went back after the show to finish up getting the achievements. I first played this in 2013 and in 2024, I went and finished the other endings I didn't do back then.

• Legion ending
• Yes man Ending
• House Ending

Works perfectly on Steam Deck with no mods which was a really fun way to play through this.

I now remember why slogging through Fallout: New Vegas felt so heavy.

The game's really barren. I've been through all the houses in Nipton, in Primm, spoke to every NPC and there's not notes, very few computers, very few POIs that make you go "oh what's that" that aren't the starts of the DLCs.

I can only pray I reach Level 15 fast enough so I can start Old World Blues.

I've got an interesting relationship going with the NCR military in this game. I've basically done a lot of helpful jobs for them all over the Mojave, typically because they are opposing the Legion (fascist slaver cosplay losers) or are at least trying to solve a local problem. Because the NCR can be a little authoritarian, I often don't resolve quests quite the way they want me to, but they generally seem grateful. Grateful enough to have granted me two special radios that will let me call in a squad of their soldiers to help me with a tough fight, even.

Despite that, I went and murdered one little corrupt officer, and now my reputation with them is bad, but not quite shoot-to-kill bad. But bad enough that they sent a death squad of rangers to show up and intimidate me, warning me I had 3 days to make amends or they'd come and whack me.

The hilarious bit about this is the death squad showed up to threaten as I was literally in the middle of a Legion occupied town that I had just liberated, having just saved a number of crucified NCR soldiers at the behest of one of their Rangers. I was just about to finish killing the last couple Legionaires, returning the captured town back to the NCR who had lost it to their enemy. Did the death squad help wipe out the rest of the Legion and reclaim their captured territory? No, they had more important things to do like threaten couriers who are actively assisting their army, lol.

It's kind of cool though, that even though this situation is a result of jank, it does fit in perfectly with the in-universe narrative description of the NCR. They're a corrupt, in-fighting, bloated, bureaucratic government that frequently sabotages their own goals through incompetence and pettiness. Well, I'm going to be kicking them out of the region with my army of robots once we're done defeating the Legion together anyway, so it all works out for me lol.

I find New Vegas to be a game I have to do a factory reset of every two or so years. My mod list gets so unwieldy. Some are important, some are one off things, but I'll forget what's dependant on what. So, I clean it all out and start fresh.

I think that time has come. I picked up the game again & I got something boogered up. It's all red exclamation points & purple graphics.

I legitimately doubt you'll be able to find someone who despises Bethesda rpgs as much as I do. Both the Elder Scrolls series and the Fallouts they've made, they make me angry thinking about them, lol. Somehow I've tricked myself into playing most of them to some extent anyway, which means I somehow have a lot of experience with this series that I hate. But I've always heard New Vegas was different. That it's made by staff that actually know how to make games, and that it utilizes Bethesda's awful engine and game design to make an actually enjoyable experience. And frankly, I've spent probably like 8 hours of my life rewatching/listening to Hbomberguy's New Vegas video, lol.

So I've always wanted to give New Vegas a try. It's never really been available to me on a system I felt I could enjoy it until now, when I found it on Xbox's Game Pass. So I sat down to give it a try and... I wound up playing for 5 hours straight.

Yeah, despite looking and feeling like a game series I cannot stand on the surface, New Vegas is actually good. Like, legitimately good. I'm really glad everyone shouting its praises out there were right.

I think I need to start over though, I made a really shit character.