One Step Forward Two Steps Back
What Worked
Opening Scene. The opening cinematic kicks off the story and I was immediately intrigued in how all this was going to play out. That it was a shortly lived feeling of intrigue is another matter.
Vegas Baby! You get new digs... kinda. Vegas shines like a dingy beacon in the same old post apocalyptic world. Casinos are up and running and it provides a unique atmosphere - one that is filled with life - as opposed to the lonely desolation of FO3. BethSoft clearly spent a great deal of time building New Vegas (the city) and perhaps as a result ran out of resources when it came to really making this a great playing environment. Only quest givers can be interacted with in any real manner, with the rest offering a glib pat line each and every time. Despite the eye candy of the people populating New Vegas, with the exception of key players, they have all the personality of a card board cut outs.
The casinos offer a means to make a ton of caps until you hit the weird winnings threshold and are cut off - for what reason I simply cannot fathom. It's not like you can make money crafting, nor can you make decent caps selling items until you've leveled up a long ways.
The weapons modification system was a great idea - poorly implemented. Without a game guide you have no idea if the modification you were lucky enough to find at a vendor will work on the weapon you are attempting to mod until you buy and try it. If it doesn't work, you are left with two options: Either find the weapon that the mod does work on or sell it back to the vendor for a price much less than you bought it for - unless of course your barter skill is very high.
BethSoft keeps a lot of the old stuff in like weapons, armor, critters, etc. It all works pretty much the same as FO3, and no real surprises there. I was able to jump in and get to work with ease.
Shooting, slashing, blowing up, laser tag.
What Didn't Work MINOR SPOILERS
Story. After the opening cinematic it all started getting muddled. Expect to do a ton of wandering to try and figure things out. Even when I started to get the gist of how the main quest was going to play out, I was left uninspired by the options. Like a lot of the FO world, you are left with choices that "directly impact the game." So what? When your choices are the lesser of four evils, who cares? Trying to deviate from these choices and creating an outcome I wanted to see often resulted in failing the main quest. Failing as in: End of story; better luck next time. At least, to BethSoft's credit, you don't have to offer yourself up as a sacrifice to finish out the game along one of the acceptable end game branches. Even though what is acceptable to BethSoft may not be acceptable to you.
The World. I played the PC version of FONV, so I don't know if the following is true for all platforms, but the world of FONV is seriously buggy. There are all kinds of bugs beginning with the old, "I am trapped inside this [insert: cliff, rock, building, planet] and I can't get out! Thankfully BethSoft didn't eliminate the fast travel option, so if you were fortunate to fall through a hole in the terrain and weren't close to enemies when it happened, you can pull up the Pip Boy map and click to another location and try again. Wonderful!
More Bugs. And not the kind you shoot. FONV has a major bug infestation to include quest bugs, companion bugs, weapon bugs, all kinds of bugs. I personally find it very difficult to suspend reality when I'm in a bug hunt in the real world. Despite the numerous patches, as of this writing, FONV still hasn't fixed their pest problems.
Perks. BethSoft changed the perk system from FO3. Perks are not offered every level, but every three levels.
Leveling. Too little choices. I liked BethSoft's approach in FO3 and Oblivion where if you reroll, play with stats, and make the right choices you can create a character and advance that character to if not max in everything, pretty close to max in everything. I like this because it allows me to experiment with all the choices in dialogue options or how to solve a quest. For some reason, FONV pretty much makes this impossible. Part of that "choice" thing now is that there aren't enough points go around. You are limited in a world that attempts to provide you with limitless options. With the current level cap even a maxed PC can't possess a high skill level in anything but a couple of main skills and secondary skills - leaving a lot of options on the table. This, in and of itself wouldn't be so bad, but the story is so un-compelling that I have no desire to replay to try other choices.
Companions. Who cares. Companion quests were few and far between and boring. No feeling of a personal connection to these automatons was ever experienced. The only companion that displayed even the faintest similarity to an actual living, breathing character was ED-E. Why? Because ED-E is a robot! The rest of them were simply robots in human clothes.
Shooter. That's what this is, don't be fooled. The only role you play is the canned role that BethSoft has scripted for you.
It is my hope that for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, that BethSoft will follow the Elder Scrolls models and what they've done in such great games as Oblivion and FO3. I tend to buy games on pre-order if the company has a good rep and the genre interests me. I choose to play games (both RPG and Shooters) that make me feel like I'm in a movie and I don't know how it turns out. That is not to say that I need to control over how it turns out. A lot of excellent titles are scripted - you follow a path to the end - you just don't know where that path will lead you. In others, you have choices like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. I don't really care what model the publisher follows, I just want to be immersed in finding out what happens. I never felt this way beyond the opening cinematic in FONV. The only emotion I had when the FONV end credits rolled was relief. A TGIO feeling - Thank God It's Over.