🔥 HOT: Id/nosonsellsout - High Quality

★★★★★
The GOAT

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Despite production problems such as budget cuts and short deadlines imposed by Bethesda on Obsidian, Fallout: New Vegas found its own place amongst its brothers, not as a stillborn such as Fallout: Tactics or Brotherhood of Steel, but as a sole bastard, misunderstood by the overlords of the franchise, but loved by the players.

Eccentric, playful and carefully built (despite its limitations and problems), Fallout: New Vegas is a game of substance, one of the most recognizable and endearing titles of its franchise, despite Bethesda’s grand marketing campaigns to push its newer titles under the spotlight and cast a shadow over this gem.

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★★☆☆☆
Unsatisfying

Fallout: New Vegas’ graphics were already ugly when they first saw light in 2009. The outdated engine took its toll on gameplay systems and on the world design, but none suffered more than graphics.

One could blame the rushed development or tight budget, which might justify but not excuse the use of outdated technology for the game’s development. However, if you’re willing to believe in those rough and brutish graphics, letting go of the need of being aesthetically pleasant, there is much more down the rabbit hole.

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★★★☆☆
Satisfying

Fallout: New Vegas is a captivating fusion of FPS and RPG mechanics. Its FPS elements, while rooted in the legacy of Fallout 3's mechanics, showcase satisfying gunplay and a diverse arsenal of weaponry. FNV innovated with iron sights, the strategic use of different ammo types and other small tweaks. While some FPS features, such as sprinting or dedicated grenade buttons, remain absent, Fallout: New Vegas's unique pace ensures a captivating gaming experience.

Also, it shines as a true RPG. A thoughtful approach to leveling, in which meticulous planning shapes definitively your characters strengths and weaknesses, is essential for success. Dialogue options demand careful consideration, as your words can impact the game's narrative and the reactions of its dwellers. The game's NPCs, despite the limitations in their scripting and voice acting, are designed in a way that gives them flashes of true humanity. Karma and reputation systems further enhance the RPG experience, influencing encounters, loot, and the overall trajectory of your journey.

Quests in Fallout: New Vegas consistently present themselves as intriguing challenges, offering a sense of accomplishment upon completion. The game's conclusion ensures that your actions and decisions throughout the journey will bear significant consequences, leaving a lasting impact on the world you have shaped.

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★★★★☆
Mesmerizing

The Mojave Wasteland, despite occasional emptiness, presents a bleak yet quirky environment. Production issues may explain its sparse nature, but it aligns with the idea of the desert and its oasis, contested by powerful factions. It's empty so the few things it has jump to our eyes while we search for very little, in a very scarce place.

What redeems the game is its player-centric map design. In contrast to Fallout 3's sprawling but confusing Capital Wasteland, FNV features (more or less) well-connected towns, outposts, and marketplaces where small societies thrive. The northern crown jewel offers a central point amidst the vast wilderness, providing both interesting surprises and moments of terror during extensive journeys through the desert's sands and languid biomes.

The integration of a seamless tutorial, a clear progression route, and the enchanting narration by Wayne Newton, accompanied by iconic music, make the Mojave an enticing home for players who like to wander.

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★★★★★
Outstanding

[no major spoilers included]

Fallout: New Vegas takes place in the Mojave desert in 2287, in an alternate universe. In this world, microtechnology wasn’t developed further such as in ours. Without transistors, scientists employed their efforts in mastering atomic technologies, such as fusion reactors. A great crisis in fossil fuels and later atomic fuels pressured the new “Cold War” between the United States of America and China into total nuclear annihilation in 2077.

Nations slowly rebuilt, many years after the war, and in 2287, two new nations of this disfigured world are engaged in skirmishes after an armed conflict over an oasis, standing in the middle of the forgotten Mojave: New Vegas. While Los Angles, Washington DC, New York and other major cities fell quickly under bombardment, Las Vegas stood as the last bastion of the Old World. Its casinos opened up again, neon lights and extravaganza never seen before the Great War.

You are a courier for the Mojave Express delivery service, tasked with taking goods across the Mojave. One night, one of your deliveries takes a turn for the worse.

Left for dead, you have to regain your strength and walk again the Mojave after revenge, for you know, better than anyone else, the game was rigged from the start.
The game has rich lore, expanded thanks to the franchise’s original developers, who worked at Obsidian during the time of New Vegas.

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★★★☆☆
Satisfying

Here’s a list of the game’s DLCs, in the order I completed them, which I recommend:

1. Honest Hearts→ Captivating story, beautiful although poorly designed map.
   
2. Old World Blues → Fun, engaging and rewarding for curiosity. Not the best story.
   
3. Dead Money → Challenging enough to make gamers work hard for it, but not so much as to be just a grind or impossible. It is the most difficult one of all four, and can be the most rewarding, as well. It brings in the game a component of horror which fits well.
   
4. Lonesome Road → Second most difficult one. Interesting story, intriguing and eerie atmosphere. Introduces interesting mechanics, as well as more locations for the player to explore before the endgame.

Fallout: New Vegas’ DLCs bring forth new weaponry, equipment, armor and interesting stories for the player. It must be noted that some DLCs, while short, can be tedious at times. Still, their characters are always fresh and interesting.

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Fallou: New Vegas is my favorite game of all time. I had it on the Xbox 360, I bought it for PC as well, and if they ever port it to newer platforms and it is a decent port, I’ll have it as well.

FNV is a mindset. I get lost in its world just like I do in GTA IV. It speaks to me in a personal level. It's an outstandng work of the game industry, a refined magnum opus from 2009, even with all of its flaws, that stands the test of time with its everlasting and maturing qualities. No game that I have seen, so far, could quite replicate the same precision and tasteful artistic quality that Fallout: New Vegas had when portraying its story and world. FNV inspired other games and spawned Outer Worlds, another Obsidian title, out of its own success.

Fallout: New Vegas makes you feel a part of that world, it enables you to shape it however you want, but it will always punish you for the things that we forget: that war never changes.

I would like to see its legacy continue through creative choices in future games in the series, a hope that is naïve, to be fair, and through old and new players enjoying it and I'm pleased that I've been seeing it happening more and more.

New Vegas is an underdog that has shown very well it can be king by conquering its place in the hearts of fans.

And it probably can conquer its rightful place in your favourite games if you give it a try.