Fallout: New Vegas offers the same flexibility as Fallout 3 while boasting new and bigger stories.
Customizable character
Freedom of choice
Plenty of sidequests
Cons:
Some sidequest are tedious and more work than fun
A lot of housekeeping is needed throughout the game
"Fallout: New Vegas" for the PC is an action role playing game; the player assumes the role of "the Courier", whose duty it was to deliver a package to New Vegas, but the Courier was ambushed and left for dead in a shallow grave. Back on his feet, the Courier sets out in the Mojave Wasteland to find his would-be killers, but along the way he becomes entangled in a power struggle that will decide the fate of the Mojave Wasteland.
Fallout: New Vegas gives the player a wide range of freedom. Whether it's developing the character or which story path to follow, the developers make the game as open ended as possible. F:NV paints the picture of a world that has been the victim of a nuclear war (hence the name Fallout) and now the survivors of the post-nuclear war pick up the pieces of life and start anew.
The gameplay is fairly intricate since there are different areas of the character that the player can enhance and upgrade. The HUD displays the player's health, compass, weapon condition, action points, ammo, radiation meter, and even the enemy's health. The Pip-Boy 3000 houses all of the important information for the player such as the clothes and items acquired throughout the game, the quests available to the player, the stats and status of the player, and other features.
As mentioned, the weapons the player comes across throughout the game will wear down over time from constant use, the more damaged the weapon, the less damage it does. Constant repairs need to be made, that is to say as long as the player has the right spare parts to make the repair. Armor/apparel also can wear down and needs to be repaired.
When the player levels up, there are a number of different areas that the player is able to enhance, enabling the player to develop their character any way they choose. Some of these areas available are split between skills and perks. From the set of skills the player can choose to develop the skills of lockpick (easier to pick locks), science (easier to hack terminals, certain dialogue), and speech (used for persuasion or deception). These are only a few of the skills to choose from.
From the Perks, the player can select from Gunslinger, (increase accuracy in V.A.T.S. with a single handed weapon), Hunter, (increase damage to animals and mutated animals), and Rapid Reload (to decrease loading time), to just name a few. Just from these selections, it's clear to see that the player has numerous options to choose from when developing their character.
Since the player can develop their character any way they see fit, this mean that other areas of development will be neglected. If the player decides to tailor their character to be a brute force type of character who can take on all sorts of attackers, then that character would most likely do poorly when it comes to science and speech, and vice versa. The player could attempt to hedge their bets and try to distribute points evenly to all the skills available.
With the Action Points, the player is able to use the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) to strategically attack different limbs of the enemy; this is extremely handy when staring down a horde of enemies. Attacks on the limbs causes different amounts of damage, on top of that there's percentage chance on whether or not that attack will land on the limb. The more AP, the more attacks the player can attempt in succession.
The player will most likely acquire a plethora a items on their journey, though their character can only hold a certain weight amount before they're no longer able to run or even walk properly (though the weight amount can increased through the skills section), so the player will be constantly doing housekeeping; items will have to discarded in order to make lighten the load on the player. Though if the player wanted, there's numerous places the player can make a home out of (granted that it's abandoned of course, unless the player decides to use aggressive eviction tactics) and store the bulk of their items there.
There are different towns and factions the player visits during the story and the player can choose who to align with throughout the course of the game, again going back to the freedom the developers tried to instill in the game. On top of that there are almost endless sidequests the player can participate in; some sidequests are easier than others depending the on path the player decided to take their character. However, a lot of the sidequests turn into more of a chore and backbreaking rather than actual fun.
There's plenty more to Fallout New Vegas than what's listed; anyone who's attracted to the open world freedom of gaming (and even mods) won't have any problems diving into this free roaming, post-apocalyptic action role playing game.