Bright lights, big city......well not for a good 10 hours at least.
New Vegas has so far sucked up 23 hours of my life, despite the large amount of coursework i currently have to do, and in that time only about 5 of those hours have been spent in the city of New Vegas. This had upset me for a while because i had heard from a few people that the city is "really cool" and "awesome" (i know, my friends have a way with words) which made me think that Bethesda managed to bring some character to the cities and towns in their game, something i thought was lacking in Fallout 3. I liked Fallout 3 but every place you went to, with the exception of Rivet City which had a rich background to it, felt very same-y and put me off exploring to a certain extent but the prospect of cities with character excited me, so with anticipation high i loaded up New Vegas and set off on my journey.
Now, cards on the table, i didn't like New Vegas, after 2 hours i was getting bored. This, to me, seemed like an expansion, a very big expansion but an expansion none-the-less and that annoyed me greatly. As a side note i am getting fed up with the way the downloadable content market is heading, there is less and less content being put in games in order to sell more and more DLC, i'm aware that Fallout 3 was a very big game and this comment is not meant for Bethesda but rather in general to all developers. My main point is why should people pay £40 or the equivalent amount of dollars for what is essentially a £20 add-on in the same vein as The Shivering Isles was for Oblivion? I was lucky enough to pick up New Vegas for £19.99 and a few hours in i was happy i didn't pay a penny more.
And then it happened.
I started noticing little things, subtle things in each town i walked through, growing ever more noticeable the more i wandered. Small things like random posters mentioning some wonderful place in New Vegas, people talking to me in a doughy eyed way about the wonders of this oasis in the wasteland. Slowly i started learning more about the history around the strip and who ran it and why. This is what i wanted, a city with character, somewhere to look forward to getting to, a reason to keep pushing further in the game beside the usual "i want to complete the main quest" reasoning. After i started noticing how interested i was becoming i realised i was going off course a lot more than in Fallout 3, i was adventuring and enjoying it as apposed to adventuring because i had to in Fallout 3. In short, New Vegas really draws you in, each town has a back story to it and everyone in each town beams with pride about how their town is better than the next. New Vegas gives you a reason to find every city, because every one is unique. Fallout 3 lacked this and because of this i just felt like i was wandering around aimlessly, i know this was intentional to give the feeling of a real post-apocalyptic wasteland, but New Vegas does just that and gives the sense of a living community of survivors on top of that. New Vegas to me is what Fallout 3 should have been.
As for combat, i can gladly say not much has changed. Weapons feel a bit better, bigger guns have a sense of real weight to them. I got the feeling that every gun weighed the same in Fallout 3 (if you know what i mean, its hard to explain). One criticism is that i tend to over-use the V.A.T.S targeting, it might just be me but i feel like this should be a special thing to use, a once every so often event saved for bigger enemies instead of to be used with every enemy encounter.
And graphics? mostly the same, but that's to be expected in a game as big as Fallout is.
So, in conclusion:
Good Points -
Very immersive, Cities and towns have a better sense of history and the NPC's have a sense of purpose instead of just being put there to fill the world
Bad Points -
The bugs. Although most have been sorted now, i've still had one save corrupted and it's crashed 4 times now, Conversations with NPC's sometimes get bogged down in too much uninteresting and unrelated dialogue
Presentation - 8/10
Gameplay - 9/10
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 8/10
Longevity - 9/10
Overall - 8.3
Well worth the money, a rarity in this day and age.
As a foot note, i promise to be a at least a little more objective in my next review, i seemed to have rambled for a bit there, i'm sorry :D