I've fallen for the same trap and been burned twice now.
The first time was Bioshock 2. New Vegas is the second.
The trap is quite ingenious, and it works like this:
1. Development Studio X makes a great game.
2. Development Studio X farms out the sequel to a shitty, lazy, talentles bunch of arseholes.
3. I buy the sequel, not realising it's not made by the same people, thinking it will be as good as, or better than, the original.
4. I rage.
The only way not to end up buying this crap is to become one of those people who know what developers make what games, the names of different programmers...a total fucking nerd, in other words. It's lose/lose.
Still, I wasn't burned as badly as those poor sods who like Final Fantasy XI (the online one) who went out and bought Final Fantasy XIV (the other online one). They didn't just farm it out to a shitty company, they farmed it out to a shitty Chinese company...and ended up with Chocobos being referred to as 'Horsebirds' in the actual release version. If that was the only problem with the game, it wouldn't be so bad, but...just watch.
Sadly, the nicest thing I can say about New Vegas is it's not quite as bad as FFXIV.
First off, the storyline is rubbish. Like, fanfic bad. If you don't want it spoilered, skip to the next couple of paragraphs, otherwise here goes. You're a courier who is robbed, shot, and left for dead. You're rescued, and follow the guy that killed you, and get your package back. The package is a chip that contains what is essentially a driver update for an army of robots. You are given control of the robot army for no apparent reason. You install the update and take over the region during a battle between two factions who were also vying for control of the area.
Think about how fucking stupid that is. Someone designs and mass-produces an army of killer machines, but doesn't bother installing the software that makes their primary fucking weapons work? That's like a story where someone makes a load of tanks, but doesn't bother putting the turrets on. Absolute arse. And why are you put in charge of them? There's no reason. They might as well just say "Oh, you're the main character...I guess that means you're in charge, eh?"
Ok, spoilers over, you can start reading again...
Considering this was written by professionals - whose sole responsibility is writing an interesting and engaging storyline - it's an insult. It's the AAA equivalent of Halflife: Fulllife Consequences.
The characters, too, are awful. There are exactly four interesting characters in the game. Three are machines, and the other is batshit crazy. I'm sure the Obsidian apologists will froth at the mouth over that statement, but bear this in mind: You know exactly which four characters I'm talking about. Every other character has congealed in my mind into an amorphous blob of dull, charmless dialogue, plastic faces, and nondescript outfits. The only real exception is the guy that shot you - and he's only memorable because you can shoot him in the head seven times with a rifle and he won't die, despite the fact that his entire set of armour consists of...a suit. Character wise, he's just as boring as the rest of the losers in the Mojave. Why does he have so many hitpoints? It's never explained.
Speaking of shooting, the gunplay outside of VATS is as bad as it was in Fallout 3, which is to say it's terrible. But at least in Fallout 3, the perk Grim Reaper's Sprint meant you could basically use VATS an infinite amount, and never had to use FPS mode - not so in New Vegas. Sprint was nerfed and is now largely pointless, forcing you to aim manually in many encounters...but the engine just isn't up to it.
The environments are dull, most of the game takes place in the Mojave Wasteland which is about as interesting as it sounds. It's just a flat expanse of brown, with barely anything going on in between the places you're forced to go as part of the storyline. They seem to have used many of the Fallout 3 tilesets, there's nothing interesting or well designed to look at. Oh wait, I take that back - in one of the towns there's a gift shop inside a fake dinosaur. So, there's one interesting thing to look at...in a 40+ hour game.
Interiors are also bad...from tiny shacks with no content, to empty, lifeless casinos, you spend most of the game wondering where the hell everyone is. In one casino, I counted seven members of staff, but only 3 customers...how can they afford to pay their wages, let alone their other overheads? Never explained.
Vegas itself is also extremely poor. Insultingly poor. It's tiny. I counted, for the sake of this article, how long it took me to run from one side of Vegas to the other...54 seconds. Three tiny zones separated by loading screens. Even Morrowind and Oblivion had bigger towns than this, I'm baffled as to why they named the game after this one tiny area. Although, in fairness, 'Fallout: Lazy Cash-in' doesn't have the same ring to it. I was actually looking forward to seeing Vegas, but the only way I can describe it is 'a massive letdown'.
Another problem is unfinished interiors. On my travels, I happened across some giant ants outside a barn. I killed them, and decided to investigate the barn...turns out it was the entrance to an area called Ant Mound. I went inside, assuming I'd be fighting hordes of ants...but no. I spent a few minutes walking down empty caverns, only to find two ants in the final room - a Queen and a Soldier. They'd clearly built this zone and intended to fill it with enemies, and then simply not bothered to place any except the boss and a solitary guard. Nearby, I found a building with about half a dozen giant ants inside - more than in an area actually called Ant Mound.
Now, that building was interesting in itself...it was full of giant ants, but all the doors were closed...and giant ants can't open doors. So, how the hell did they get there? Did someone lure individual giant ants inside a building, and then shut the doors behind them, trapping them in? And to what end? It's never explained...like most of the nonsensical bullshit in New Vegas.
As we're coming to the end of the writeup, let's talk about the end of the level. You're thrown into a battle between two of the main factions...except when I played, I was friendly with both factions, yet one of them started arbitrarily shooting at me anyway. There's a long, dull battle on a dam, followed by one of the worst boss fights I've seen in a long time. You're fighting a guy who has about as many hitpoints as the guy at the end of Operation Anchorage, except this time he spawns about a dozen bodyguards who come after you exclusively. Out of nowhere. I specifically cleared the area before I attacked the boss, but the game had other ideas. It basically boils down to a war of attrition; a race to see which you run out of first, enemies or health packs. It's utterly dull, since you're fighting waves of the exact same guy over and over again.
To top it off, seconds after you finish the last of the fuckers...your robot army shows up. I could have put my (virtual) feet up, had a nice (virtual) cup of tea, and the problem would have sorted itself out. I put myself through that abject tedium for no productive reason whatsoever.
Not to mention the fact that the best weapons in the game are only found in the last level, which you can't exit once you've entered...so you can only use all the best crap for about 40 minutes on a shitty map.
The only thing this piece of trash has going for it is VATS, and even that seems like a bit of a step backward compared to Fallout 3...they seem to have altered the way action points work, so you spend a lot more time unable to aim because you a) can't use VATS, b) the controls are shite. That may be my memory playing tricks, mind.
How this game ever got released is a mystery. I can only see two ways that anyone thought this was a product worth releasing: 1) During the entire development cycle, at no point did anyone actually sit down and play this game from start to finish 2) They just don't give a fuck. My money's on both.
(I hope you noticed the fact that I never mentioned the bugs, game-breaking as they were...this game doesn't fall down because it was badly made and shipped buggy and unfinished, it's shite anyway)
Socko likes to post videos at the end of the articles, but this sack of cack doesn't deserve one...so here's a music video featuring a decent game instead:
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