Score: 9.5/10
You awoke in a house to the sound of an old man’s voice. Your vision is blurred. Your head aches. Stumbling forth from the white cottage amid a flurry of questions from the old man, a doctor, you find yourself in a small town, with nothing more than a general store and bar to separate it from the desolate wasteland visible beyond the edge of town. From atop a nearby hill, you see the glorious neon expanse of a great city to the north, but setting out in that direction, you find yourself surrounded by ferocious mutated beasts, which the puny pistol the doctor gave you cannot harm at all. Welcome to the wasteland. Welcome to Fallout: New Vegas.
Anyone who played IGN 2008 Game of the Year Fallout 3 knows exactly what to expect in the latest iteration of the classic game franchise Fallout (ign.com). The player character is developed through an early series of test/surveys, and then is released out into the open world to fend for himself/herself against the savage wasteland. This system, thankfully, eschews the complex character construction of traditional Role-Playing Games, instead allowing the player to jump rather quickly into armed combat with giant rodents. Since everyone wants to do that…
The biggest star of Fallout: New Vegas is the environment, a “totally compelling world” according to gaming website Eurogamer. The Mojave Wasteland is bursting with all sorts of interesting locales, from counterfeiters’ shacks, to old nuclear test sites, to the city of New Vegas itself. Apparently the character of mankind has remained unchanged through the 200 years since nuclear war, as the casinos are still open and still bustling with pitiful people losing their life’s earnings in a night. New Vegas differs from real-world Las Vegas, though, in the number of robotic super-soldiers roaming the Strip.
“Weapons are also better than they were in the last game,” asserts sophomore Brett Mace, “especially in the PC version where users can mod in their own content.”
The main storyline of the game is another step forward for the series, as it better allows players to choose their own path, be it good or evil. Hoover Dam is up for grabs, and both a legion of slavers reminiscent of the ancient Romans and a bureaucratic elephant of a government called the New California Republic vie for control. Meanwhile, mysterious Mr. House controls the New Vegas Strip from within a casino that has been sealed for hundreds of years, and one can only wonder what his goals are until he or she gets inside (fallout.wikia.com).
“It’s sooooooo good. Better than Fallout 3. Better than ANYTHING. Well almost anything,” says noted game reviewer and sophomore Cupcake.
Fallout: New Vegas, despite sharing many components of Fallout 3, nonetheless manages to be its own game. The large number of new locations, as well as improved quests and more moral dilemmas than you can shake a stick at, ensure that the apocalypse will be a preferred spot for gamers in the months to come. The impending release of a massive patch to repair technical issues within the game also helps to hold Fallout: New Vegas in the limelight (bethsoft.com).