Review Fallout: New Vegas Review Linkathon

[Jason]

Tags: Fallout: New Vegas; Obsidian Entertainment

<p>The floodgates have opened on reviews for <a href="http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/home/home.php" target="_blank"><strong>Fallout: New Vegas</strong></a> so let's scoop out a few and have a look.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-19-fallout-new-vegas-review?page=1" target="_blank">Eurogamer</a> (9/10)</p>
<blockquote>Fallout: New Vegas is still a fantastic game, only slightly held back by its increasingly outdated tech. Obsidian has created a totally compelling world and its frustrations pale into insignificance compared to the immersive, obsessive experience on offer. Just like the scorched scenery that provides its epic backdrop, New Vegas is huge and sprawling, sometimes gaudy, even downright ugly at times &ndash; but always effortlessly, shamelessly entertaining.</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/fallout-new-vegas/61-25933/reviews/" target="_blank">Giant Bomb</a> (4/5)</p>
<blockquote>It's not a surprise that Fallout: New Vegas sticks closely to Fallout 3's structure and style. But if it weren't for the game's way-too-long list of technical issues, New Vegas would actually be better than its predecessor. Instead, it's a well-written game with so many issues that some of you might want to take a pass, at least until some of this nonsense gets fixed. Yet, for all its flaws, I'd consider taking a second run through it, if only to see how some of the game's finer points play out with different choices.</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2010/10/fallout-new-vegas-review.ars/" target="_blank">Ars Technica</a></p>
<blockquote>But really, for all of its grandeur and epic narrative, New Vegas&nbsp; is a game of small moments. Seeing a group of starving children chasing a giant rat and then eating it raw. Entering a town filled with charred corpses nailed to crosses. Or simply seeing the sunrise while listening to Johnny Cash and realizing you've been walking the entire night. These moments make the world feel real and are equally as satisfying as reaching a new experience level or surviving a close battle. If Fallout 3 left you thirsting for more wasteland exploration, New Vegas&nbsp; is just the thing. And since the story stands on its own quite well, it's also a great entry point for new players. However, it doesn't add enough new to entice players burnt out on the previous game.<br /><br />Sadly though, the technical problems can't be ignored. When you're as scared of losing progress as you are of fighting a Super Mutant, that's a problem. And one that will frustrate even the most die-hard Fallout fan.</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/112/1128811p1.html" target="_blank">IGN UK</a> (9.0/10)</p>
<blockquote>Fallout: New Vegas is the game that many wanted Fallout 3 to be. It's harder, more ruthless, better written and more morally ambiguous. It's a game we&rsquo;ve been wanting to play for more than a decade, a real modern re-imagining of the Fallout series, complete with that deliciously black humour. But it's also more of the same, aesthetically and technically identical to Fallout 3, wonky facial animation and all. The ever-so-slightly ageing technology only marginally detracts from what is otherwise an expansive, fulfilling and ambitious game, unmatched in scope and maturity. If Obsidian were to make another Fallout game, we certainly wouldn't say no.</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8229-Review-Fallout-New-Vegas" target="_blank">Escapist</a> (4/5)</p>
<blockquote>It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that. Reviewing 2008's Fallout, I felt inclined to give a certain amount of visual glitchiness a pass because that game covered so much ground, from a development point of view, and was simply awe-inspiring in many respects. Seeing the exact same bugs in a new game, two years later, is harder to excuse. Truth be told, I enjoyed New Vegas a lot more than Fallout 3, but I can't give it a full score on the basis of the bugs alone.<br /><br />Bottom Line: Fans of either the original Fallout games, or 2008's Fallout 3 will find plenty to love in this new installment. New weapons, characters and locations, plus a fresh sensibility marry to make New Vegas a near-perfect continuation of the series.</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/10/19/fallout-new-vegas-review/1" target="_blank">bit-tech</a> (8/10)</p>
<blockquote>Unfortunately, while there are rays of light that manage to break through, the clouds still make up the majority if the view. Tonally and conceptually New Vegas feels like a return to form, but the tone isn't always consistent and the execution is sadly lacking, grounding New Vegas closer to Fallout 3 than the Fallout 4 it could have been.</blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

 

[Clockwork Knight]

CTRL + f "epic"

2 occurrences

hm

 

[Jaesun]

Escapist (4/5)

It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that. Reviewing 2008's Fallout, I felt inclined to give a certain amount of visual glitchiness a pass because that game covered so much ground, from a development point of view, and was simply awe-inspiring in many respects. Seeing the exact same bugs in a new game, two years later, is harder to excuse. Truth be told, I enjoyed New Vegas a lot more than Fallout 3, but I can't give it a full score on the basis of the bugs alone.

So Obsidian was contracted by Bethesda to fix all of Bethesda's remaining bugs AND make a new game? What a complete fucking idiot.

 

[bonch]

"It's so buggy that you'll be afraid of losing your progress, and the characters are as stiffly portrayed as Oblivion, but here's a safe 9/10 rating anyway."

 

[nFn]

destructoid dude likes it too thinks its good for what it is (9/10)

New Vegas is good enough, though. And being good enough to make up for system lock-ups is the highest praise you could give any game.

ITZ COMING?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Escapist (4/5)

It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that. Reviewing 2008's Fallout, I felt inclined to give a certain amount of visual glitchiness a pass because that game covered so much ground, from a development point of view, and was simply awe-inspiring in many respects. Seeing the exact same bugs in a new game, two years later, is harder to excuse. Truth be told, I enjoyed New Vegas a lot more than Fallout 3, but I can't give it a full score on the basis of the bugs alone.

So Obsidian was contracted by Bethesda to fix all of Bethesda's remaining bugs AND make a new game? What a complete fucking idiot.

Well, considering that the mod community has had most of the major bugs with the Oblivion/Fallout engine pinpointed, many fixed, years ago, it does get annoying that noone at Bethesda/Obsidian ever took notice and fixed them. Not that anyone cared to mention this when Bethesda released Fallout 3 with 95% of the bugs Oblivion had, but it just wouldn't be an Obsidian game if you weren't mentioning that the game crashed at least once every paragraph ofthe review.

 

[commie]

Good on Obsidian....maybe they'll get the 'cred' they need to try again with their own game now. I must admit I'm surprised at the high scores but I guess the 'reviewers' were still subconsciously and/or consciously treating it as a Bethesda game.

BTW 8/10 is the new 'fail' score now? Reading that bit-tech review you'd think it was a mediocre turd yet still gets 8/10!

Fuck it anyway...my free copy is arriving in an hour or so and finally the wait will be over...

 

[Hirato]

Ars Technica
...
Sadly though, the technical problems can't be ignored. When you're as scared of losing progress as you are of fighting a Super Mutant, that's a problem. And one that will frustrate even the most die-hard Fallout fan

Right... because Fallout 3 didn't crash reliably every 10 to 20 minutes...
(it did - Oblivion did too)

 

[Jezal_k23]

The only problem I truly have with it are the fucking FPS drops, during combat mostly. Down to single digits. Whatever the problem is, it ought to be fixed soon, and I'm above recommended specs.

 

[bonescraper]

BTW 8/10 is the new 'fail' score now? Reading that bit-tech review you'd think it was a mediocre turd yet still gets 8/10!

Dude, you must have just crawled from under the rock. Here's how you read your scores today:

1-7 - shit
8 - mediocre
9 - good for what it is
10 - great

 

[Jaesun]

1-7 - shit
8 - mediocre
9 - good for what it is
10 - popamole

fixed.

 

[deuxhero]

The only issues are the bugs?


Well the patches should be out when I upgrade my computer and the price for the game drops mid 2011, so yayperoni.

 

[themadhatter]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10 ... more-42059

"The new “Hardcore” mode on offer that means your character has to eat, drink and sleep is a touch nonsensical. After 48 in-game hours where I did nothing but walk and fight, I checked my FOD, SLP and H20 meters in the nick of time, because they all showed that I only had about 50 points out of 1000 left. I drank some water, ate some fruit, and checked the meters again. They now read 0. As in, after 48 hours they hadn’t ticked from 1000 to 50. They’d ticked from 0 to 50. I could go without drinking or sleeping for weeks. Also, in Hardcore mode food still heals damage you’ve taken, it just takes a few seconds instead of being instantaneous. So you still have the ability to get shot, bring up the Pip Boy, devour 40 packets of instant mash, exit the Pip Boy and keep fighting."

"I played Fallout 3 on my console toy so I’m not sure how bad Fallout 3′s controls were on PC, but I can tell you that New Vegas definitely does have the controls of a lazy port. It’s impossible to assign hotkeys for anything in the Pip Boy menu, so if you want to check your map, quests, inventory or even turn off the radio, you bring up the Pip Boy with tab and navigate to that specific submenu with a series of clicks. Clicking your way through multiple choice conversations is almost as bad- it’s just that so few buttons do what you’d expect them to, and masses of obvious shortcuts are ignored."

Summary: Standard Obsidian-developed crap.

 

[flushfire]

Clicking your way through multiple choice conversations is almost as bad

wow, there must be a lot of choices in conversations if someone had to complain about the lack of shortcuts there.

 

[Drakron]

There is only so much that can be done, the engine seems to have a major memory leak that is what causes the increasing loading times until it CTD (or crashes the console).

Modders fixed what are "fucks up", that is typos in scripts so they fail to trigger and the like but correcting a memory leak is much harder and they would have no choice but to disassemble the engine that is a obvious EULA violation.

 

[Garm]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/19/fallout-new-vegas-old-obsidian/#more-42059

"The new “Hardcore” mode on offer that means your character has to eat, drink and sleep is a touch nonsensical. After 48 in-game hours where I did nothing but walk and fight, I checked my FOD, SLP and H20 meters in the nick of time, because they all showed that I only had about 50 points out of 1000 left. I drank some water, ate some fruit, and checked the meters again. They now read 0. As in, after 48 hours they hadn’t ticked from 1000 to 50. They’d ticked from 0 to 50. I could go without drinking or sleeping for weeks. Also, in Hardcore mode food still heals damage you’ve taken, it just takes a few seconds instead of being instantaneous. So you still have the ability to get shot, bring up the Pip Boy, devour 40 packets of instant mash, exit the Pip Boy and keep fighting."

WTF is he trying to say? Is he bitching that the system is to harsh...or not harsh enough?

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

but I can tell you that New Vegas definitely does have the controls of a lazy port. It’s impossible to assign hotkeys for anything in the Pip Boy menu,

I'll believe it when I try this for myself. For some reason a lot of PC users seemed ignorant that you could do it in FO3, and bitched about it.

 

[Drakron]

WTF is he trying to say? Is he bitching that the system is to harsh...or not harsh enough?

Not hardcore enough for him, Sawyer should have know better that call it hardcore because every dumbass will go for it because its harder despite the fact in NV case its not really that much harder.

 

[Begriffenfeldt]

Ars Technica
...
Sadly though, the technical problems can't be ignored. When you're as scared of losing progress as you are of fighting a Super Mutant, that's a problem. And one that will frustrate even the most die-hard Fallout fan

Right... because Fallout 3 didn't crash reliably every 10 to 20 minutes...
(it did - Oblivion did too)

So what?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

There is only so much that can be done, the engine seems to have a major memory leak that is what causes the increasing loading times until it CTD (or crashes the console).

Modders fixed what are "fucks up", that is typos in scripts so they fail to trigger and the like but correcting a memory leak is much harder and they would have no choice but to disassemble the engine that is a obvious EULA violation.

Oblivion had a problem where there was an out of control script that created some object every frame no matter where you were in the game, taking up RAM, save space, and eventually crashing your game as the entire object space was used up. This happened no matter where you were in the game. Its entirely possible this is something like that.

Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout are actually pretty damn stable even with mods if you follow a lot of rules the community discovered about why the engines crash. For example, the auto save function has been bugged since Morrowind. Your game WILL crash and eventually corrupt something in the save if you leave it on. Bethesda still hadn't fixed it by Fallout 3, and if reviews are to be believed I'm sure its still not fixed in F:NV.

As for modders not being able to modify the engine, see:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19510
http://fose.silverlock.org/

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

There is only so much that can be done, the engine seems to have a major memory leak that is what causes the increasing loading times until it CTD (or crashes the console).

Modders fixed what are "fucks up", that is typos in scripts so they fail to trigger and the like but correcting a memory leak is much harder and they would have no choice but to disassemble the engine that is a obvious EULA violation.

Oblivion had a problem where there was an out of control script that created some object every frame no matter where you were in the game, taking up RAM, save space, and eventually crashing your game as the entire object space was used up. This happened no matter where you were in the game. Its entirely possible this is something like that.

Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout are actually pretty damn stable even with mods if you follow a lot of rules the community discovered about why the engines crash. For example, the auto save function has been bugged since Morrowind. Your game WILL crash and eventually corrupt something in the save if you leave it on. Bethesda still hadn't fixed it by Fallout 3, and if reviews are to be believed I'm sure its still not fixed in F:NV.

As for modders not being able to modify the engine, see:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19510
http://fose.silverlock.org/

From Tom Chick's article:

When someone at Bethesda emailed me and suggested maybe it was just an NPC getting stuck and eventually causing a memory leak, I wondered if maybe it was my NPC traveling companions, who can be a headache and a blessing in various ways. I sent them away and plunged yet again into Vault 22, this time solo.

No crashes.

 

[Sceptic]

It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that. Reviewing 2008's Fallout, I felt inclined to give a certain amount of visual glitchiness a pass because that game covered so much ground, from a development point of view, and was simply awe-inspiring in many respects. Seeing the exact same bugs in a new game, two years later, is harder to excuse. Truth be told, I enjoyed New Vegas a lot more than Fallout 3, but I can't give it a full score on the basis of the bugs alone.

I don't get it. Both games had the same engine-inherited bugs, NV is a better game, but it gets a lower score?

 

[Forest Dweller]

Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout are actually pretty damn stable even with mods if you follow a lot of rules the community discovered about why the engines crash. For example, the auto save function has been bugged since Morrowind. Your game WILL crash and eventually corrupt something in the save if you leave it on. Bethesda still hadn't fixed it by Fallout 3, and if reviews are to be believed I'm sure its still not fixed in F:NV.

I had it on and didn't get crashes.

 

[hoverdog]

It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that. Reviewing 2008's Fallout, I felt inclined to give a certain amount of visual glitchiness a pass because that game covered so much ground, from a development point of view, and was simply awe-inspiring in many respects. Seeing the exact same bugs in a new game, two years later, is harder to excuse. Truth be told, I enjoyed New Vegas a lot more than Fallout 3, but I can't give it a full score on the basis of the bugs alone.

I don't get it. Both games had the same engine-inherited bugs, NV is a better game, but it gets a lower score?

It's not bethesda, duh!

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout are actually pretty damn stable even with mods if you follow a lot of rules the community discovered about why the engines crash. For example, the auto save function has been bugged since Morrowind. Your game WILL crash and eventually corrupt something in the save if you leave it on. Bethesda still hadn't fixed it by Fallout 3, and if reviews are to be believed I'm sure its still not fixed in F:NV.

I had it on and didn't get crashes.

IIRC its completely random what it messes up. It may corrupt some meaningless NPC's stats or a containers contents. Or it may crash your game. All I know is that since I turned off all auto and quick saving that Bethesda games have been rock-solid even with large lists of mods.