First Impressions: Fallout: New Vegas

Those are my first impressions on Fallout: New Vegas, three hours into the game... at which point my Xbox 360 controller's batteries died.

I guess it would be a bit simplistic to say that New Vegas is just more Fallout 3, but it kinda is. The game looks the same, sounds the same, plays mostly the same and I enjoy it about the same. It's both a good and a bad thing. Good because because I really enjoyed Fallout 3, but bad because that was two years ago. How come the issues that were plaguing the game two years ago are back?

Not that there is anything wrong with using old resources. Majora's Mask is mainly reused models from Ocarina of Time, but it's one of my favorite Zelda game ever. What made it work was the clever way they made the old stuff fell new. They used them in different ways and in different situations. They changed the overall style and feel of the game. New Vegas hasn't really done that yet for me. Sure, everything looks more orange, dusty and westerny, but it just feels like more capital wasteland and not its own place. Maybe that will change once I explore more and get to the strip. The other things that didn't change and should have are the glitches. I was lucky enough not to get into anything too crazy, like the spinning head doctor or the game files erase issue, but I still saw a gecko stuck in a wall, and one who had the mysterious qualities of a ghost -- couldn't hurt him and he couldn't hurt me BUT THERE HE WAS! The animations are still weird... two years after the facts. It has been said before and will be said again but Bethesda needs to get out a new engine, this one is starting to show its age. Oh and the hardcore mode is incredibly useless. Those bars never seems to go up.

On the good side, I mainly noticed two things in my short time playing. They added an interesting crafting system and the writing is way better. Not that the last point had a very high bar to go over but we'll take what we can get. The crafting system is a nice addition, even when I presume you can get through the game without ever touching it once. It will certainly fits a few players (like mine) play-style. It is all about collecting whatever you can find, get to a crafting apparatus, and see what you can make. It is certainly better than Fallout 3's handful of craftable items. I didn't get to experience much of the writing in my three hours, but what I got so far is atleast better than the first few hours of Fallout 3. I just had my first plot twist and boy does it already makes the game more intriguing than Fallout 3's convulsed plot about radioactive water, wild goose chase for a missing dad we don't even care about, and totally dumb use of a good GECK.

So yeah, if I am lucky enough not to run into any frustrating glitches, I think I will have a good time with this game, at least as much as I did with Fallout 3, despite all its flaws in term of writing and technicalities. Looks like Obsidian took care of one problem... and totally ignored the others. War never changes, and neither does dated engines I guess.

The Aug... September Madness... sorry guys.

Alright, haven't posted anything on here for a whole month. That sucks. I was busy with the first few weeks of university and with a good whole week of being sick like a dog. But now I got rid of a few things (mainly my sickness) and I can write again! Well, to be fair, I have to write a weekly post (on Myspace of all places) about one of my class. It's pretty interesting, even if Myspace is clunky, and I get to talk on about games and internet culture in french for notes. Could be worse.

In the meantime, I wrote a bitmob article about Minecraft (because everyone did) and I am probably going to write another iPhone game review soonish.

See ya later peeps!