New Vegas

[Felch]

Anybody else get this yet? Hardcore is a great improvement, it really ratchets up the tension. Obsidian knows how to tweak a great game and make it even better. Let's just hope they finished this one.

Smoke weed everyday, folks.

[Guynemer]

Had a couple of CTD so far, but I had the same problem with Fallout 3, and with the autosave every time you go into a building it's not a big deal.


Man, this Caesar's Legion **** is ****ing dark.

[Felch]

I've been luckily avoiding crashes so far. And the Legion is definitely grimmer than most.

[Felch]

Got a couple buddies, the eyebot and the sniper. Taking a break for now, I forgot how much that game can jangle your nerves.

[bc1871]

So is New Vegas as terrible as Fallout 3 was?

[Guynemer]

Got a couple buddies, the eyebot and the sniper. Taking a break for now, I forgot how much that game can jangle your nerves.

Same guys I'm using so far; seems to be the first two you'll run across in the main storyline.

The sniper guy ****ing owns. Probably too powerful. He hasn't come close to getting killed yet. The quest where you obtain him... that was a cool, shocking moment.


I'm enjoying it very much so far. Haven't made it to The Strip yet, but I am in the city...

[Felch]

So is New Vegas as terrible as Fallout 3 was?

Yes, you'd absolutely hate it. You should probably go jerk off into some maple leafs.

[Spaced Cowboy]

So is this just FO3 with more content, or is there something else?

I'm on the fence. I really enjoyed FO3, but I'm not sure I want to play with that engine anymore just for some new content.

[Felch]

It's a new setting, so there's a whole new map to explore. There is a bit more complexity with the reputation system supplementing the karma system (you get a local reputation just like in FO2). There's a hardcore mode, which forces you to keep track of food, water, sleep, ammunition weight, and a few other details. There are also a few tweaks to balance that I liked:

• Attributes are more balanced in their usefulness, so that Intelligence is no longer the only thing that matters.
• VATS is no longer instantaneous. If you queue up a bunch of attacks, enemies can now interrupt you in the middle of them.
• Skill challenges come up more frequently outside of combat, and are transparent. The game tells you that you need a certain score in a certain skill for an option in conversation to open up.
• Not so much balance, but in terms of realism the ammo system has been made a lot cooler and realistic. Hollow point and armor piercing ammo is back, along with an armor system that accounts for them. They even allow you to fire .223 out of a 5.56, but not the other way around.

It's not a completely new game, and most of it could be modded into FO3, but it's definitely worth getting if you enjoyed the last game. Since my PC is a clunker, I'm actually happy that it doesn't make big changes to the engine. If I weren't such a huge fanboy, I'd probably resent paying full price for it. So if you were unimpressed by the last game you should probably wait for the price to come down to the $20 range, or for a Gold edition with all the inevitable DLC bundled.

[Felch]

The sniper is insanely deadly. I ran short on food, so I went hunting with him, and he was murdering geckos left and right. He's a huge asset, since he draws a little fire, doesn't use ammo, and kills everything he sees.

Wandering the wastes with him at your side is a lot easier than it was at the start. He's not as badass as Fawkes was, but he's pretty close.

[onodera]

Damn, this game is glitchy as FO3 with 25 mods. I keep getting CTDs. Also, is there a spolier tag?

[Guynemer]

I've had three CTD in many hours of play, which is about on par with FO3.

[Felch]

I've had three CTD over about 20 hours, so I'm getting lucky. Spoiler tag is just spoiler in the square brackets, right?

Spoiler:

yep

[onodera]

I usually do not avoid slavers in my Fallout games, but man... I wonder what the devs can offer to make someone want to join the Legion.

[Felch]

I found what must be an Archer reference.

Spoiler:

A sexbot named Fisto.

And the best part, is that he's learning.

[Guynemer]

Domo arigato, Fisto Roboto.

[Guynemer]

I usually do not avoid slavers in my Fallout games, but man... I wonder what the devs can offer to make someone want to join the Legion.

Indeed. So far as I can see thus far into the game, is that, figuratively speaking, they make the trains run on time. Apart from that, sweet monkey Jesus. The NCR are no angels, and it doesn't appear difficult to forge a third way, but I'm siding with the NCR in every respect when it comes down to the two of them.

[onodera]

Loving the game so far. Even with Wacky Wateland on (I haven't met anything wacky yet, though), it's grim and dark enough to remind me of Fallout 1. What I don't like is how the game pushes me to follow the highways (and the plot, I guess) by sicking adult radscorpions on me every time I wander off into the hills. Mother****ing carapaced *******s. My service rifle can't hurt them hard enough, and shotguns, even with the shotgun surgeon perk, are as affective as throwing sand at them. I'm so not going to waste my AP rounds on them.

Don't click if you haven't reached Novac yet.

Spoiler:

I'm pretty sure now that it was Victor the cowboy bot whose delivery nearly got me killed. The ME operator in Primm described him as the customer, and now he appears to stalk me. Why can't I actually ask him about his strange deliveries?

[Guynemer]

I agree it is annoying you can't confront him, but all will be made (sorta) clear once you reach the Strip.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Bought this at Walmart yesterday, played it for about an hour. Did not do much really, except the "tutorial"

I was having a sound glitch where the dialog was either strong or weak, so I decided to quit and see if there were new drivers for my sound chip/video card, there were; DL'd them and installed them last night, but have not tested them to check if that solves the problem. A little annoying at this point.

[onodera]

REPCONN Test Site is hilarious. When I saw who was on the intercom, I did a double take. Thankfully, it was not a glitch. I am going to drop some points into my Science,

Spoiler:

because I want to see if I can rewire the nav system to use the ghouls as a missile strike.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Upon stating the game today, I went through a first time set-up, nice. LOL what about last night?

If I followed the events correctly, steam was in the middle of an update when I tried to play, I actually got an error message on steam.exe when launching the game from steam. Seems okay on the sound thing now, but is still a little muted when something happens during conversation (like getting another type of sound from a level up or item received). Only the first sentence after the effect seems to be a little muted, then back to normal.

Still have not left the first city.

[Felch]

The Boomers are my kind of people. The museum tour is the highlight for me so far.

[Guynemer]

Somehow missed the museum tour. Where's that?


Gigantic pain in the ass getting to meet the Boomers, but yeah, they're decent folk, if a bit paranoid.

[Felch]

It's in a trailer near the medical station. The kid is a trip.

[Felch]

The sniper rifle is a huge improvement over the cowboy repeater. It cost a lot to get, but it's worth every cap.

Hardcore seems to be a challenge only early on in the game. Food and water are only a minor nuisance, and save scumming helps keep your followers alive and kicking.

[Al B. Sure!]

The sniper rifle is a huge improvement over the cowboy repeater. It cost a lot to get, but it's worth every cap.

Hardcore seems to be a challenge only early on in the game. Food and water are only a minor nuisance, and save scumming helps keep your followers alive and kicking.

Hardcore is the only thing that would peak my interest since I did enjoy the early bit of Fallout 3 when I would be scared at night since I couldn't see danger from a distance and I had nothing but a baseball bat and a BB gun... rummaging through the school for stuff to sell, hearing raiders talking in the next room... making a pittance at Megaton selling whatever I could find, trying to make sure I got back in before sundown... long term, that would probably be just stressful and tedious but the survival aspect was fun when I first started playing Fallout 3.

But then once your character moves up in rank and you have plasma rifles and power armor, it just wasn't hard anymore and there was no more sense of dread. I could easily kill anything whether Super Mutant, Deathclaw, or Yau Gai.

So I guess hardcore mode tries to retain that but you said it gets easy into the game so I guess not.

This is definitely a wait til it gets cheap purchase from me down the line...

[onodera]

I waltz into the casino, guns blazing, trying to get at the gangster who shot me in the intro movie... And then... woah. So many quests. It's going to be fun getting to the Legion's fort as I've wasted my goodwill offer. Time to stock up on some automatic weapons.
Also, I've pimped my laser rifle to the sky, found the unique plasma gun and have 600+ MFC, but my Energy Weapons skill is too low

[laurentius]

Its a real shame that they made the PS3 version so much inferior to the others. Otherwise I'd be playing it as we speak. Now I'll prolly wait until it hits the bargain bin.

[Guynemer]

Energy weapons are pretty badass. The unique plasma rifle is great, as is a scoped laser rifle. Just found some laser RCW (?) which are phenomenal as well, but I burn through ammo like crazy with that one. Can't remember the perk, but there's one where enemies you kill with energy weapons explode and damage those around them, potentially causing them to explode as well, setting up chain reactions.

They do have some trouble penetrating heavily armored opponents, however.


I'm trying to figure out a way to be trained in power armor, since I'm carrying around a nice suit...