What I've been playing recently: Part 1 !

It makes sense to start this off with something that's fresh in my mind so the most recent games I've been playing is as good a Place as any. What with Christmas just finished (sort of), I'm fairly inundated with new games. Christmas Day saw 3 separate copies of Fallout: New Vegas under the tree (who said originality was dead?). Well, due to a administrative cock up there was actually 4 but less said the better on that one! What better way to celebrate the holiday seasons than plunging into a horrifying apocalyptic wasteland? Well Quite...

Fallout: New Vegas (PC Version)

see what they did there?

You may or may not be familiar with the theme, but Fallout New Vegas is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Fallout 3 and takes it's place as the 5th game in one of gaming's oldest franchises. Set in a post nuclear-apocalyptic world, your character is thrust, quite literally, into the firing line in the Mojave Wasteland surrounding Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam. The game allows you free roam across a sprawling map packed full to the brim with populised settlements (human or otherwise) built out of the ruins of the past. From motels to aircraft hangars these settlements awe always a wonder to discover and typify the imagination and creativity that has been stamped onto this game.
 My particular favourite being the village of "Novac". Named after the once shining "No Vacancies" sign of the motel that forms the core of the village, years of disrepair have blown several blown bulbs leaving only Novac. Little touches like this point or the dark apocalyptic humour that runs through the title well. Throw on top of this good area design a dozen or so townsfolk going about their normal lives, several questing opportunities and a couple of dark secrets to uncover and you've got a great start to a game (Novac is one of the first points of call for a new player following the main quest). Oh, and there's a sniper guard in the dinosaurs head...

At the core of New Vegas is the story. Your character is thrust into a Vegas wasteland on the brink of a 3 faction royal rumble, and everyone is invited. In the red corner, the brilliantly re-imagined Caesar and his Legionnaires. As an invading force from the east, they're given early billing as the bad guys of the picture, what with their crucifixions and slavery. Boo hiss! In the blue corner we have billed the New Californian Republic, a force of rangers and troopers desperately stretched across the wasteland seeking to secure their hold on Hoover Dam, the pivotal strategical point that everyone is getting royally wound up about. Having run out of metaphorical boxing corners to use, I'll have to place our next faction smack dab in the middle of the ring. Mr House - the secretive figurehead of New Vegas who controls the mobs that sliced a piece of Vegas for their own purpose, with an army of no nonsense robots that respond to his every command. He is understandably worried about two armies shaping for a showdown so close to the Vegas he has built around himself. At it's heart the game revolves around the players interaction with these 3 main factions. Who you help, who you hinder will shape the game around you. And don't try and place each off against each other, because they will find out! Aside from these main factions you have smaller gangs of civilisation each with their own part to play and with their own agendas. Interaction with these factions adds the meat to the bones of the main factions. This is where you'll find the activities that give this game a playing time that can spiral into the hundreds if you want it to. Whether you're helping a settlement of super mutants to thrive or you're scampering across a desolated no-mans land with rocket shells being dropped on you by the unfriendly locals, you'll always have something to do.

As far as drawbacks go, New Vegas does pretty well. Obviously it isn't perfect, but it is a game that builds an interesting and absorbing world and lets you play, pretty much, as you want. Most of my gripes with the game come from the engine it's built around. It isn't quite a first person shooter and it's not all the way an RPG. The problem I find that when you're trying to shoot from range at a moving target, they're jerking around across the screen like you wouldn't believe. It's almost the game trying to force V.A.T.s (it's RPG-lite "turn based" targetting system on you). Having chosen to play the game as a stealth based sniper, this wasn't really something I wanted to be doing. Secondly, there were a few dodgy pathing issues, particularly in battle situations. When you're so involved in the game and you see something like this it does kind of spoil the moment. Saying that, however, it's understandable that in a world as vast as had been built here, with its changeable terrains and with the variety of enemy and situation , it must be almost impossible to get everything bang on!

try hitting that from 40 yards!

Considering I found it so hard to come up with things to put a black mark against with this game, it seems fairly obvious that I really enjoyed it! My only regret is that I pushed on with the main storyline to quickly in hindsight and affected the game world to much for me to freely explore as I would've wanted. Still, at 33 hours played, it has to go down as one of the better christmas presents this year (certainly better than the socks!).

9/10