Figured I'd start this thread just as a holding point for any commentary/reviews/impressions of the newest Fallout game. Shall we go for spoiler free?

General impressions. I have this game on PC, as opposed to Fallout 3, which I have on 360. Unlike my earlier Lament on how crappy my experience trying to get Front Mission Evolved to run was, New Vegas runs well on all the ultra settings at my preferred 1680x1050. Some reviewers have noted slowdown with many NPCs on screen, but I haven't.

The release version had some issues with quicksaves/autosaves that since appear to be resolved, but its still recommended to use manual slot saves frequently.

I'm around level 21 right now, I believe the cap is 28. I haven't really touched the main story mission too much, just the stuff that eventually leads you to New Vegas itself. For the mostpart I'm exploring the wastes doing sidequests, and the like.

Playing Hardcore mode, which isn't quite as difficult as I expected. In this case, Hardcore difficulty is a setting that adds sleep, thirst and hunger needs as well as weight to things such as ammo, as opposed to combat difficulty. Still, I have enough water and food and since stimpacks are still weightless, its pretty simple to keep track of. Since you either have to use doctor bag consumables or visit doctors to repair limb damage, you actually tend to visit towns more often than to just sell off your gear. I kind of like it, though I'm pretty sure the majority of my weight carried is still ammo Hardcore mode also makes it possible for companion NPCs to die, so I've had to reload a save or two at times, especially when fighting deathclaws or mutant wasp things.

As for companions themselves, hm, I still have mixed feelings. I welcome the assistance, and it appears you can run with 2 companions. At present I'm using the eyebot and sniper dude. Companions also come with a 'companion perk' while in your party. For the most part I'd say pick companion based on your combat needs (in terms of what attacks they have) as opposed to what perks they bring. Sniper dude companion is long range, much like me, so we tend to blast things from extreme range.

On combat, this version of Fallout introduces iron-sight mechanics similar to FPS, which in some cases appear to override your normal hit percentages. For example, in VATS, at loooong range, its possible for my sniper shot to have 0 to 2 percent chance of hitting. However, at that same distance with manual sighting in a scope, I can blow your head off most of the time. The way I use it, I start off with manual sighting shots, then if I haven't cleared the mob pack, slip to VATS to finish them off when they get into appropriate range. VATS remains useful for fast moving creatures you'd have a harder time manual sighting (things that fly, for example).

Weapons: More variety than Fallout 3, but also oddly not as much at the same time. How? Well, sure there are a bunch of different types of weapons, but because of the new addition of 'threshold' to damage, you often end up with a bunch of different weapons, many of which would be like using a spitwad on a car. So you tend to have to go with the hardest hitting things you can find, which then leads you down a relatively limited path. Its unfortunate, because some of the less effective weapons seem really nice. Weapons can be modded to a degree, but don't expect to find mods on a regular basis, they appear infrequently in store inventories for purchase, but not for all weapons at the same time. Special variants or 'named weapons' appear within each class again, usually superior in 1 or 2 ways to the generic version of that weapon.

It is my hope that in the future the community will add some weapon packs to help expand options a bit.

Armor: I find it odd, but I'm still running in Reinforced Leather armor, which is fairly low tier and low protection. I'm using it largely because I like the way it looks in 3rd person. The NCR ranger armor looks pretty good, and has better protection, but for the time being I don't want to run around in faction armor, as it can influence interactions by parties you meet. Yes New Vegas has more types of armor than Fallout 3, but again, because the way armor attributes are placed, especially on helmets, you tend to find a good piece (like say...a beret that gives +1 Perception and +5 crit chance) versus a goathorned helmet that just gives +1 Perception, even if said goat helmet might look better. Like Fallout 3, Power Armor requires training to wear, which can take awhile, depending on how you go about your game.

They missed an opportunity to make armor modifiable as well. Likewise I find it unfortunate you can't mix and match pieces like say, boots, legs torso, arms, etc. But I can see why due to limitations of the combat setup.

Crafting: Crafting has been tinkered with in New Vegas. Your Survival and Repair skills affect what types of ammo crafting you can do, as well as foodstuffs. Repair is such a vital skill in any Fallout game that its not a chore to build up, but the flipside is that Survival is rather difficult to invest in, especially with the less skillpoints availability in New Vegas. Unfortunately that means most of the miscellaneous foodstuffs you pick up will be not very useful as food recipes have skill minimums. You might have all the ingredients for 'superduperawesome chili' but if you don't have the skillpoints in survival, you can't bake it, even if you 'have' the recipe in your list.

As such, crafting is kinda hit or miss. Can be useful for certain types of ammo. Handloads tend to do more damage. But it also appears not all ammos are unlocked. I can buy incendiary ammo but apparently i either dont have the recipe for it, or simply can't do it. Nor can I make grenade rounds (for launchers), but I'm not sure if thats a factor of my explosives skill or what.

Music: I like the music, though I wish the playlist was much larger than it is, again, since I'm on PC, at some point the community will come up for an appropriate mod for it. I'm not sure if its because I have the radio on all the time, but it does seem the DJs repeat their news/blurbs far more frequently than I recall from Fallout 3. It may also be because I haven't really tackled the main quest line yet, so its mostly scattered sidequests that make the news.

So, I've only gotten to level 6 so far in this game (taking it slow, grandparents visiting) but I can tell you that there are recipes in some form out there in the wastes. I haven't actually found any, but I know there are some perks that give them to you. I'm not yet entirely sure if you can get them without the perks though.

I'm having some serious slowdown issues, but I suspect that has much more to do with my laptop than the game (Though I do find it weird that it goes the slowest when I'm in conversations).

I'm also playing on hardcore, and haven't found it to be particularly difficult thus far. I have maybe 15 pounds in ammo, but more like 200lbs in random junk that I'm waiting to find recipes for (Toy cars for example). The food is usually taken care of by my normal healing needs, the water is an occasional pain as I'm running low on purified water and the game lacks a way to combine an empty bottle and a source of water into transportable water. The sleep seems to build up exceedingly slow, as I haven't slept yet and I think at least 3 days have passed in game. Maybe I drank some soda or something without noticing that reduced my sleep. I do love how several drinks (Whiskey, soda, etc) actually make you thirstier.

Sunset Sarsaparillas are awesome. I didn't notice at first, but they heal an amazing 25 damage and only have a rad or two in them. At 1 lb each, they aren't stimpacks, but they are darn handy to keep around. Makes me sad that I sold a stack of about 40 of them before I noticed this.

Lets see... what else... Oh yeah, I love caravan! It took me a while to figure out that you had to move the card down to play it, but once I figured that out, I started making money left and right with it. For fun, you can buy a bunch of stuff from a merchant that plays caravan, then challenge them. The amount they bet is based on how many chips they have, so you fill them up with chips, then win them all back in a few hands of caravan.

Okay, bunch of random ramblings I know, but overall I'm enjoying it greatly so far. I was afraid it was just going to be a big Fallout 3 mod, and I admit for a large part it is, but it manages to make some great changes. The +10 temporary skill books are a great addition, and I like the flat skill requirements in conversations, instead of the old % chance where you could get burned with high skill, or reload over and over with low skill. It makes you have to think all that much more about how to spend your skill points, especially since you get 10+.5*int instead of the old 10+1*int per level. All hail the perk that gives you an extra 2 points a level that you can get at level 4.

Oh, one last thing, game caps at 30.

I'm hoping the multiple factions make for good multiple playthroughs. I'm currently playing a 'good' (kelpto) character, likely join up with NCR. Then likely go through with an 'evil' character and join the Legion (I'm assuming those are the two main groups, not 100% sure yet). Heck, maybe my good character will end up joining the Legion, they might not be as bad as NCR makes them out to be.

"Big iron on his hip~
Big iron on his hip~"

I love the music. He does seem to repeat himself a fair bit, think it is a combination of not many reports to start the game with, and a smaller number of 'catch phrases' than Big Dog had

I am having very much fun with my toon and his bumper sword so far ^^
Also, after one day of normal mode to get back into the game, i switched to hardcore mode . .
And holy shit is this shit hardcore . . hlf the time i am suffering fro poison, radiation, hunger or thirst.
The other half i need to leave things like power armour on the ground because i can't carry it x.x

What is a bumper sword?

Best way to describe it....well maybe not best...imagine Cloud's Buster Sword from Final Fantasy 7, being used by a Supermutant. But more literally, its a sword made out of a bumper of a car, used by a supermutant (generally).

Awesome. And that is viable for puny humans?

Some weapons have minimum strength requirements in fallout new vegas.
but generally, everything is available to everybody else too . .
be carefull about dropping expensive or strong weapons anywhere <.<
others will loot it and if they are fighting you allready, use it against you too.


Ok, after some days of hardcore playing i have successfully butchered my way up to be the overlord of vegas and owner of the dam.
i got me artillery, rocket strikes, orbital laser cannon, a loaded up flying fortress and a whole army of robots. *nods* sounds good.
the ending itself on the other hand, basically showed what would happen if i did this. anarchy, crime and violence rule both vegas
and the wastelands. but me, i am sitting snug like a bug way up there on top of my own pimpin ivory tower. *tips hat and walks off
slowly towards the sunset with his power armored bodyguards in tow*

Sounds like you got the good ending to me.

Sounds good. I'll get it eventually...my HD is full of games I still need to play/master!

Selling off gear with the weight problem being mostly from ammo? Sounds like my experience with Fallout 2.

Hunger and thirst! Yay! I no longer have to play Burntime in order to experience that!

Sounds really terrific!

I found cybernetics!

Yes, this one has cybernetics. One for each stat, an armor one, and a regeneration one. They limit how many you can get based on (I think) endurance. Not sure if it is 1 per point of endurance or what, but they are 4k each for stats, 8k for armor, and 12k for regeneration.

Given the fact that you can cheat fairly easy and make infinite money once you hit NV (Or so I assume, save, gamble, load if you lose, save if you don't), it doesn't seem like much of a cost, but I'm trying to avoid that. I currently have about 10k, so working on that regeneration one so I don't have to worry about healing between fights any more.

Ok, got Fallout Vegas day 0 with a Raging headcold/flu that had me seeing chesspieces in shadows, so a really awesome way to start the game:)

Platform, XBox 360 (as my pos PC would curl up and die if I showed the DVD to it)

Zero: PATCH GAME. There's a day 3 patch that stops the 1-2 hour random system hangs, also some of the more gigantic plot quest errors are seen to. Very sloppy work on their final QA, expect to see a few people made to walk on these. Also removes the a few of the "free money/xp" glitches that people abused. Save errors are expected if you don't patch - I had to restart because of a few.

First: Characters have improved, in both voiceacting quality (Although Marcus Aurilius again makes his appearance) and in general, well, feel. Everyone's dirty and dusty, until you hit vegas. Then they're slimy. Bringing back some old Fallout 2 faces/voices was nice, but even better they didn't slap you in the face with it.

Second: Factions have depth. Not at first, they're faces in the mob (or dust) but they have more of a feel as you get deeper.

Third: This isn't Fallout 3, you get those delicious perks every 2nd level and your skill points don't come as easy, either. So play cautiously in the desert and come back to sell your ill-gotten gains AFTER raising that barter/speach/repair or you're not going to see anything like the money you'll need later on.

Forth: Critter's ain't friendly (unless, of course, you went that perk route, see above for the those limitations) and they may have friends. Deathclaws hunt (And kill - the gun you brought along isn't big enough, you need a bigger one.), radscorpions kill, giant ants are fine from a distance (note: biiiig distance from fire ants.), Geckos are cute, like those insurance adsARRRGK, Bighorns aren't too bad and those flying, wasp-like things are poisoned, armour-ignoring cliff-racers (Remember Elder Scrolls?) but fly twice as fast as you can run and come in groups.

Fifth: Be aware of where the hell you are. Nothing like killing a few punk-ass Fiends and laugh at the one coming at your pistol-totin' badass with a poolcue, apart from the 20 or so of that guy's friends with laser and PLASMA weapons. (Cue non-stop swear). Find places to hole up in if you need to, explore and be ready to run like hell.

Sixth: Enjoy yourself. Hate the music, but it's authentic. Hate Sarsperilla, but it's authentic. Hate the atrocity-farming Caeser's Legions, but they managed to stick a lot of historical accuracy in there as well.

7th: don't play it with guests in the house.


-Tir

No, it was NOT the good ending. Well, at least not from the game point of view. It was the egoist ending.
Biggest Change i have found as of yet is the simple fact of how those magazines work . .
You don't get skill points, you get a skill boost for some time, when you read one.
Well, if you don't go perk route, at least . .
In F³NV it's basically:"There's a perk for that"
There's one metric shit load of places to go too . .
And sadly, none of those really good looking vehicles work <.<
Seriously, i spent about 5 minutes figuring that one out after seeing the 3 more or less brand new motor bikes . .

Yeah, quite a few launch bugs, but they fixed them quickly, very nice.

Did Sunny look familiar to anyone? I swear she reminds me of someone from Fallout 3. I keep thinking it is that survival guide person, but I'm not entirely sure. I do agree, the characters are great. I absolutely love the 'suave' guy you run into just outside the strip. 10 of Spades seems to gain and lose his stutter, and you do still get the occasional disconcerting switch from people being angry at you to giving a very passive or even chipper 'goodbye'.
Haven't gotten that far yet I think. I did enjoy finding the FotA in the solar plant, made the factions seem a bit more dynamic. Still looking for the darn enclave so I can put the two suits of power armor I found to a use besides selling for caps.
Yeah, the skill points are a notable change, but even more notable is the fact that you only get perks ever other level instead of every single level. Makes planning for your even levels all the more important because you don't get to adjust your skills so you can pick up the perk you want on an odd level.
Didn't really remember them being friendly in 3. Or do you mean more deadly? I did notice it was kind of crazy when that fly thing killed my (eyebot) companion in 1-2 hits from full health.
Haven't quite had this problem, though I did manage to run into some trouble with the nightkin, kept backing myself into corners or running into a second one.

I love the music. It's one of the many reasons I love Fallout. Even though I've heard the Texas Ranger song dozens of times already, I still perk up every time it comes on. And Jingle Jangle is great too.

Guess I've been messing up the last few days. Though to be fair, I was using headphones.

basically, i sat down on friday afternoon and started playing and got up and went to bed monday morning at 1 o'clock.

Thats not a change, those magazines are a completely new item type.
The old skill books that give a permanent boost of +3(+4 with the perk) are still there.

Ah, okay, i did not notice that.
After i first figured that out i simply did not bother with them at all anymore ^^#

Fallout: New Vegas is to Fallout 3 as Fallout 2 was to the original Fallout.

I love it. All of it. The visuals, the metaplot, gun modifications, higher-output laser weapons - ALL OF IT.

Okay, maybe not -all-. I'm not impressed with the crafting skills. I rarely have the materials to reload my own rounds, so I spend most of my time recycling energy cells and fuel tanks. A sniper rifle + a silencer is a powerful beast against just about anything, and the iron sights are a lot of fun as well. Still, being able to cook a billion Dog Steaks, Gecko Steaks and...Ant Steaks was nice. I may try to pick up more reloading materials on my next playthrough as well as the associated "I know all the recipes" perks so I can figure out what does what. Since I run a high-Repair build in most everything I do, the reloading recipes could be a lot more interesting.

Silenced weapons make the AI stupid, and it amuses the hell out of me. Bloody Mess + Sniper Rifle + Silencer = Ludicrous Gibs. This made things difficult on some bounty missions (apparently the shock blows off all the limbs when I remove a leg), but changing it up with a low-power sidearm tended to do the job right.

I found myself listening to Black Mountain Radio most of the time. Tabetha is hilarious. NCR and the Legion are now the Two-Headed Bears and the Battle Cattle from today unto the end of days. RNV was good, but I heard the same song four times in a row, swapped the station to Mojave Free Radio and it was the same damn song. ARGH.

First playthrough conquered the Wasteland for Mr. House. We'll see what happens with the second - may go NCR, may go just for me, and the third will go for the Legion. I found myself murdering anyone who said 'Kai-Czar' instead of 'See-zar', so the Battle Cattle weren't terribly happy with me throughout the game.

By great Cthulhu's naughty tentacles, why did they halve the number of skill points you get?!

Because otherwise you maxed out too quickly.
They Raised the Level Bar from F³ with one of the DLC's allready.
Dunno if they raised it again with New Vegas. But with the DLC and raised level Cap, you could max out skills before Levels, if i remember correctly.
Especially when using tricks like Books and early on perks for more skill points as you levelled up. There even was a bug where you could not go on
when levelling up, without spending all of your skill points . . Which is kinda hard to do, if you managed to get all skills up to 100 and still had some
points left over . . They patched that, but the Problem of getting skills up too high too fast still existed. It made the game not progress slowly and
evenly. If you concentratred on one or two skills, you went from bloody beginner to master of disaster in 4 levels basically . .
For example, do that with energy weapons. If you had it as a tag skill in the beginning, you start out with a laser pistol and can find a second one
and some energy cells in the docs house immediately after character generation. You left the house with 35 points in energy weapons then.
Next level you get 15 Skill Points. Now you're at 50 points. Halfway there! You only need 50 more, which is 4 Levels, as those 4 Levels will net you
60 skill points. And if you repair your maintain your weapons and maybe upgrade them a bit, then energy weapons is hands down the best skill
you will ever have. There is no situation that can NOT be solved by applying copious ammounts of focused energy into vital body parts of obstacles.
So at level 4 you have Energy Weapons at 100, a fully boosted laser pistol, maybe even something stronger allready. You can sloughter your way
through basically anywhere, if you are smart enough to use te right perks you have by then too . . And you are only at Level 4. The Levels go up
to 30 i think. And the game's difficulty concerning enemies goes up accordingly to your own gear if i remember correctly.
So basically, you are level 4, with still poor gear, aside for one or two energy weapons, which you wield like a god from the future yet to come.
And the game thinks you are still weak. But you sloughter anything it can throw at you because your weapon of choice is just that effective.

FORMATTING AUGH

I think it's meant to ensure you can't have a "I AM PERFECT AT EVERYTHING" build as was possible in previous games. I personally prefer regular guns over Energy Weapons because of all the neat pieces you can find in the game, like the lever-action .357's and .44's, although the Laser RCW is a sweet find.

Anyone go check out the Canyon Wreckage to the west of Primm after talking to the Express rep there? It's...interesting. Very interesting.

No, i am still thinking about what i am gonna play through as next . .
I did the high STR Close Combat Monster who slaughtered himself through the world and up to te top and took vegas for himself . .
Maybe the sneaky sniper type? Or the talky one? Or the Cowboy?

I had a combination talky/shooty since I focused on guns and speech. Both are nice!

I do recommend having a holdout at all times, though. The Silenced .22LR is a good working weapon, though if I ever had to pull a piece it was the largest hand-cannon I could afford. That happened to be the .44 mag on my last playthrough.

Hurry up, Christmas.

Mrs. Crit, you better appreciate me not buying everything I want, to leave you some low-hanging, easy, gifts.

Hurry up, Christmas.

*snickers* poor Critias ^^
And i think the largest hand gun is the plasma protector . .
And the strongest is the alien blaster with single shot damage of 111 and 501 DPS . .
And i fucking hate that they have the stat DPS in there <.<

Yeah, I find the DPS stat rather worthless. May try a cowboy approach next run: Lever-action shotgun or rifle, revolver, knife, light armor and a cowboy hat. Sunglasses if/when I find them. Could just use the Sheriff's set from Primm... Yeah. I'd go with:

Cowboy Repeater
.357 Magnum
Sheriff's Hat
Sheriff's Jacket
Sunglasses
Knife

I like the thought of that. Both weapons use the same ammo, even. It would make carry weights in Hardcore mode slightly more manageable.

Wanna really skimp . . there's an energy pistol that does not need any ammo . .

Meh, don't want to go that route yet. I could just as easily stick with the Plasma Defender and Laser Pistol for the entirety of the game, or the Q35. I like the regular guns. A lot.

Steam Holiday Sale? That is what I am waiting for.

Nah, I'll probably be getting it for the 360. It's just a thing I've got to do, thanks to a September birthday, an October anniversary, and Christmas, where I basically don't buy myself anything awesome from July or so on...in order to make sure there's stuff my wife can grab me, to feel like the cool wife that buys the cool gifts.

So I'm pretty much stuck waiting for Christmas, for this one.

Yeah, I made the decision to get Fable 3 before New Vegas, mainly because wifey enjoys the Fable but not the Fallout. Going to be a while before I get to it. Hopefully that will be BEFORE Deux Ex, otherwise I'm going to have a tough choice. Then there's also the new Dead Space... ahhhhh!

Deus Ex 3,
Tron Legacy.
There's at least two more games that are probably gonna be released shortly before christmas i guess.
Maybe some more too.

Ugh, but yeah, you get what you pay for. Though the pistol seems ok, the recharger rifle is a piece of crap. Heavy, weak...terrible. Still, Id only use the recharger pistol for stuff like shooting the wayward critter, but even then its mostly for the weaker stuff you could just melee to death (even with minimal melee skill investment).

Still, I generally felt the game did an ok job of scaling appropriately. Your early levels are 9mm and 20 gauge, mixed in with 5.56 with the varmint rifle, you notice an upgrade when cowboy repeaters and .357 ammo starts showing up, etc.

Tho in terms of personal preference, I wish 12 gauge showed up earlier. By the time decent 12 gauge weapons started dropping, you were already past the level where you should be farting around with shotguns, except for giggles. I've got near 100 in firearms, but for the mostpart even rolling with 12 gauge slug on my hunting shotgun isn't really useful (I also have shotgun surgeon perk), especially when I have .308 hand load jsp almost coming out of my ears.

Mmm, .308. Point, click, mans explode. i want to see just how much I can trick out a sniper rifle now.

Wait, there's a recharger RIFLE?
I thought the closest was the modded Laser RCW . .

Silencer and Carbon Fiber Parts.
There's a .50 BMG Sniper too.
Use that one. Or the Gauss-Rifle, if available.

I'll pick up the BMG this playthrough; I didn't catch it previously. I was hoping for a Gauss Rifle, but I didn't know where to find it! I stuck with the .308, it did the job but nicely.

Both can be gotten from the BOS

They weren't offering much when I blew up their bunker. >.>

You need to do some quests for them of course O.o
Yeah, maybe i should have done that too blowing up thing too, after they had made me a member and tought me how to wear their power armor and gave me some nice and shiney weapons . . but nah, i thought they would have a change of mind . . of course they did not and refused to step in line behind my grab for power <.<

Oh no, I did all the major quests - I just didn't check out their stores and exploded the bunker.

This time around I'll refrain from detonating until I take their delicious weaponry. Mmmyes, mmmyes.

Kind of reminds me how they want you to destroy a weapon cache with thermite for one of the quests. I just kept thinking 'Why can't I just take all the weapons instead of destroying them'. I don't know, maybe you can. I talked the guy into destroying the boxes for me. Likely not a great idea overall since he dies in the process and I figure I might have been able to get some good guns from him if he survived. But maybe not. Oh well.

If you do it yourself, you pick up about six assault carbines out of the deal - and blow the room to pieces!

STEAL the guns, tell him to blow up the crates himself, see if he notices them being empty. if yes, place them back in and decide wether or not you want to blow it all up yourself you maniac, or if you want to go down on your knees and scream: "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Oh damn you!" after he has done the deed.

The new barter exploit! I was disappointed that they got rid of it (I thought) in Fallout 3. Getting your barter skill up high enough that you could swindle a merchant for all his caps and the good stuff (leaving him a handful of caps) was pretty sweet.

--



That was how I would get people to kill themselves in Fallout 3 and Oblivion without suffering negatively.

I just planted the occasional frag grenade.

That would get you negative karma.

I can't remember how I did it in Fallout 3, but in Oblivion casting Berserk(?) on the target and letting them hit you allowed you to kill the target without punishment.

ookaay . . just for shits and giggles i tried F³NV with Hardcore Mode AND Difficulty at VERY HIGH . .
Let's just say BAD THINGS HAPPEN! . .
Seriously, a lone Scorpion or ANYTHING really poses a very real threat to a level 1 character . .

I'm level 12 and I still run away from Giant Radscorpions on Hardcore.

Oh god. I was running around NE of Goodspring (near the Yangtze memorial) and I headed north from there trying to sneak around a Giant Radscorpion. I get past it and woops, I see a giant radscorpion and 2 regular radscorpions to my right. I'm thinking "Oh shit, oh shit. Put my gun away and run away since they can only keep up but not hurt me. Eventually they chain back to their places. Then I encounter at least 2 more Giant Radscorpions and 4 more regular radscorpions as I'm trying to evade that group of three. I must have hit a nest. So I'm following this ravine, not seeing any obvious ways out (the kind where I know I'm not going to get stuck and die if I try it) so I follow a gulley downward. Then a big flying insect starts chasing me and killed me. Bah. That was at level 7 though.