We're off to see the wizard AKA Heart, Brain and Spine retrieval in the Post-Apocalypse

Ok, so imagine this. You pick up a strange radio signal and in responding to it are whisked away to a ancient research lab where a brain floating in a jar informs you that your brain, heart and spine have been removed/replaced. The brainjar further explains that even if you wanted your original parts back that they seem to have misplaced your brain and that you're likely going to have to defeat a mad scientist in order to retrieve it. Such is the beginning of 'Fallout: New Vegas' third DLC expansion 'Old World Blues'. Of course there's more to it than just a brain retrieval mission, you'll also have to eventually fight your way through hordes of crazed lobotomites and robotic scorpions as you explore the Big MT.

Like the 'Fallout 3' expansion 'Mothership Zeta' the 'Old World Blues' DLC takes a turn for the bizarre compared to the main game and to the other expansions. Unlike 'Mothership Zeta' (a DLC that takes place on an Alien spaceship) 'Old World Blues' manages a much lighter tone to match the absurdity of its premise and situation*. Most amusing to me was the results of a (lengthy) series of missions to restore the AI personalities to the appliances in the living space that your given as your base of operations. I found Muggy, a crazed mini-robot whose raison d'être is to collect and clean mugs, and the toaster "Ahahaha! I am on-line once again! Tremble, world, before my heating coil of doom!") to be the most amusing of the appliances but it seems like real thought went into all of their personalities (such as light switches that try to seduce you). The benefit for restoring the AI personalities of the appliances (other than amusing dialog) is that they'll each provide the player with additional resources to help in completing the DLC.

The overall story of the DLC is an interesting one as it manages to present some fairly horrible things in a fairly humorous manner. Examples would be the aforementioned lobotomy that the player is subjected to at the beginning of the DLC, the way the various researchers in the facility casually mention the horrifically inhumane experiments they've been conducting and the mad rantings of Dr. Mobius (usually threatening to release more robotic scorpions to attack the player). Overall the DLC fills in some of the blanks about the world itself (technology and creatures) a bit more than it fills in the players background though if you scour around the region you'll still find some information that transcends this particular expansion.

Overall 'Old World Blues' was my favorite 'New Vegas' expansion for a variety of reasons. The story it told was tragic while still being somewhat humorous. The villain was also a much needed deviation from some of the stiffer personalities encountered during other DLCs and the main game. The environment itself was interesting as you get to see where a lot of the critters and technology encountered elsewhere originated. A diverse and interesting experience that paces itself well and really draws the player in and one I would definitely recommend. See you all next week.

*The 'Mothership Zeta' has a few humorous moments but overall the tone is more somber as the player works with other abductees to escape from the aliens.

Post-apocalyptic sightseeing in 'Honest Hearts'

Be very, very quiet we're hunting rabbits. Oh sweet Jesus, that was no rabbit. Yes, in fact there are no rabbits or really anything that constitutes normal game animals in 'Honest Hearts', the second 'Fallout: New Vegas' DLC. The premise of this expansion is that your character is contracted to serve as security for a trade caravan and that en route to the destination everything goes hilariously wrong. And by 'hilariously wrong' I mean the entire caravan (except for the player character) is slaughtered by a warlike group of Native American wannabes somewhere in a post-apocalyptic version of Zion National Park in Utah. After a brief initial conflict you're contacted by one of the two less aggressive Native American-esque tribes in the region and you're off.

The funny thing starting off is that the criticism leveled against 'Dead Money' is actually the one I would turn around and level at 'Honest Hearts'. Namely that it doesn't feel like a 'Fallout' game. It's sunny. There aren't that many freakishly mutated creatures. There's very little sense of tragedy born out of greed and/or corruption. I mean, you're in a pristine national park and the only thing to worry about are a weird band of tribals who, if the player character headed the level warnings before starting the DLC, pose exactly zero threat to competent players. Hmmm, thinking about it I would definitely say that that was one of the things bugging me about this entire DLC. It was way too easy. In that unless you're trying to deflect bullets with your face you aren't going to have too many issues cruising through the enemies you encounter. This little warning actually struck me pretty early in the DLC as there was a brief in game cinematic for the appearance of a Yao guai (a mutated bear thing) that seemed to tout it as the regions apex predator. Now, these things appeared in 'Fallout 3' and unless there where a lot of them they weren't much of a threat to mid-level characters in that game either. For $9.99 I'd like at least maybe some kind of challenge or something.

'Something' brings me to the other issue with 'Honest Hearts'. It's really short. By far the shortest DLC. This is due to the fact that there aren't any areas that are especially difficult to access but also because as already mentioned there aren't any enemies that pose a threat thereby allowing the player to breeze through encounters. Hell, the toughest (as far as I can tell) creature in the entire DLC is part of an optional side-quest. But back to the length. What is a good length? See for me it really depends on the experience. The other DLCs in 'Dead Money', 'Old World Blues' and 'Lonesome Road' provided sufficiently compelling experiences that even if they'd been shorter than they where I would have still liked them. However here the player character is thrown into a storyline in which they themselves have no stakes and into an area with no threats so for me at least it would have helped if they'd compensated for this with a little more volume. More areas to explore. More unique stuff to find. Something. Anything really.

At this point it's pretty easy for me to say that 'Honest Hearts' was the worst of the 'Fallout: New Vegas' DLCs. It has a few moments. Being in a region in which you can actually make out the environment clearly is a nice change of pace but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of what the game is doing. Additionally it doesn't really advance the side-story, a more in-depth explanation of your character's back story told in bits and pieces in the other DLCs, at all. If you where going to skip one of the 'New Vegas' DLC expansions it should, in my opinion, be this one. See you all next week.

Playing post-apocalyptic blackjack in 'Dead Money'

Ok, so I hope that people have seen 'Ocean's Eleven' or else some of this isn't going to make a lick of sense to you. Maybe read the summary of that movie on Wikipedia or something and then come back here. For those of you who've seen the movie I'm sorry but we're going to have to wait for those who haven't to familiarize themselves with it. Oh look, they're back. Excellent. Now that that's out of the way it's easiest to summarize the 'Fallout: New Vegas' expansion 'Dead Money' as a post-apocalyptic version of that movie. A bit too simple of a comparison but at least a good jumping off point. They both feature a (hopefully) charismatic group leader in the player character and George Clooney who has to assemble a team of misfits for the ultimate heist. They both also feature an attempt to break into a casino in order to steal unimaginable wealth from within its vaults. They both...OK, so that's about it for the similarities and I'm sorry for wasting your time with Wikipedia.

So to explain the story of 'Dead Money' in greater detail a madman (Father Elijah) mentioned in the main quest line and in the other DLCs stumbled across the Sierra Madre casino and became obsessed with the possibilities of old world technology that it contained. To this end he began forcibly conscripting people to help him break into it. After numerous (the impression that he gives the player) failed attempts your character, responding to a radio broadcast, is captured and thrust into the heist of the centuries. You're forced to recruit three teammates to whom you're linked via exploding collars wherein if one dies all die in order, according to Elijah, to instill a greater sense of urgency and teamwork amongst you. Now one of the main criticisms I've seen leveled against 'Dead Money' is that it doesn't feel very Fallout-y and to this I respectfully disagree. While it may take place in a non-traditional environment 'Dead Money', to me, has all of the sense of oppressive tragedy brought about by greed that I feel generally characterizes all of the games in the series. The sky is this sickly red color, the result of science run amok. The casino sealed off to the world the result of greed and paranoia. The ghost people who haunt the villa despite now being crazed and hostile used to be the construction workers who built the it and whose degeneration from human into what the player encounters simply another example of mad science corrupting the innocent.

The actual gameplay in 'Dead Money' is probably where it really came alive to me. At the very beginning of the DLC you're stripped of all your gear and given a moderately effective rifle by Elijah. This very likely takes the player from a damage tanking god (given the level recommendations before beginning this particular DLC) to a mere mortal forced into a more stealthy approach to survival. As someone whose character was in fact a damage tanking god I actually loved this transition to vulnerability not really felt anywhere else in the game nor in any other game I've played recently. In the past I've found diversion in the survival horror genre (mostly Resident Evil titles) and have been greatly disappointed with that genres recent entries so for a game to instill even a modicum of fear of the unknown into me was very welcome. Oh, crap what's around the next corner? I can hear heavy breathing (the Ghost People make very distinctive noises) where is it coming from? I would go so far as to say that if a game could replicate the atmosphere and oppressive feeling from the first half of 'Dead Money' for an entire game that I would buy that hypothetical game in a heart beat. About the only places where 'Dead Money' drops the ball to me are in the latter half which is very enemy sparse and overall where the game allows the player to get a perk that allows them to permanently kill the Ghost People more easily. Sorry for not explaining this earlier but the Ghost People encountered in the villa are among the more difficult enemies in the entire game to kill, rising from the dead when dropped after a few short seconds unless dismembered.

Overall I greatly enjoyed the 'Dead Money' add-on and would certainly recommend it to others. I also think that other games could take a pointer or two from how it generates it atmosphere and not just the toxic red clouds that pollute the in game environment. Take care and see you all next week.

What Happens in New Vegas Stays in New Vegas...Sometimes.

Alright so let's get my biggest gripe with 'Fallout: New Vegas' out of the way real quick like. It isn't 'Fallout 3'. Now don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad game or that 'Fallout 3' is that much better but there are a couple of things that lead me to favor 'Fallout 3' over 'New Vegas'. The first is the one that the game itself has the least control over and that would be where I live. As a longtime resident of the Maryland suburbs it was very interesting to see a designers take on what the region would look like after nuclear Armageddon and while the results weren't totally (or even remotely) geographically accurate* it was close enough that when I encountered landmarks that do actually exist that it really had an impact on me and greatly enhanced my immersion into the game's world. The other thing that 'Fallout 3' does better is the character creation. Now I'm not talking about all the stat configuration or ability selection though that is part of it more so though the fact that you guide your persona from birth through adulthood and then out into the wasteland. While in 'New Vegas' it kind of goes halfway with regards to the blank slate character as even though you're given a job title very little else about your character or their motivation is spelled out. This leads to a few too many questions about why your character is doing what they're doing and compared to the character in 'Fallout 3' it feels much more like Quantum Leaping into someones life to puppeteer them through a series of conflicts rather than actually molding “you” in the game world. Outside of those two things I feel that every other difference between the two titles is up for debate (somewhere else). So now that that's out of the way I'd like to go a little more in depth into 'New Vegas'.

So the question you may (emphasis on “may”) be asking is why the difference in the character creation is so crucial. The answer is that by starting from the beginning in 'Fallout 3' the game gives you the opportunity to define your characters entire back-story which in turn gives more weight to your actions and the actions of others later in the game. Did you pick on someone during the childhood phase of character development? Well, then maybe they won't help you out later in life because they still hold a grudge. Stuff like that greatly enhances the gameplay experience by making more actions have actual consequences. Now, I'm not saying that every game would be better off starting their protagonists off from birth and letting the player define their characters entire life story but the game needs to make certain decisions about how much of the character is going to be predefined for the player. Where 'New Vegas' makes its mistake is in hinting about the characters life before the events of the game but never actually explaining how the character got to the point shown at the beginning of the game in being ambushed by bandits, plot important item stolen, left for dead, etc. In short the game leaves too many “Why” questions unanswered. Even in its attempts to fill in some of this via Downloadable content (DLC; which will be discussed in the next few weeks) there are still a lot of unanswered questions. This became especially incongruous to me when the back-story filled in by the DLC didn't really feel like it matched up with the character that I'd created.

OK, so when I said earlier that there where only two areas in which 'Fallout 3' really surpassed 'Fallout: New Vegas' I lied. The other area beyond the emotional impact and the character creation would be the openness of the world. Now looking at your map in both games you might think that you're dealing with a large post-apocalyptic sandbox to explore and to some extent you'd be correct. However the world is much more open much sooner in 'Fallout 3' than it is in 'New Vegas'. This is because the latter uses a lot of high level enemies to sort of railroad the viable directions that the player can travel for a large portion of the game. Getting murdered by mutant wasp things and you're under level 10? You probably took, according to the developers, a wrong turn. By contrast 'Fallout 3' is perfectly fine letting the player screw around as long as they like as the nasty player murdering enemies either only show up as the player levels, as part of particular scripted events, or in very isolated areas of the map. In short 'Fallout 3' is a much less linear game than 'New Vegas'. Not that either is especially linear but it really feels like you're given more freedom earlier in the former whereas you really have to earn it (usually via heavy firepower) in the latter.

OK, so still building off the lie told earlier about their being only two significant ways in which 'Fallout 3' was better than 'Fallout: New Vegas' there is actually yet another one. That being quality assurance/quality control. Yes, both games, like almost every Bethesda Softworks game, have some significant bugs and scripting issues. However having extensively played both, 'New Vegas' is much, much worse in this department. The number of random game crashes I've experienced is staggering as are the easily replicable game crashing actions (for me fast traveling into or out of one region in the 'Honest Hearts' DLC crashed the game every time). That's not even counting the number of bugs with scripting issues (i.e. you give a non-player character an item and they give you the next step in the quest only sometimes they don't). By contrast I don't recall any easily replicable game crashing actions that I ran into in 'Fallout 3' and the scripting issues where much less of a nuisance. Now I realize that games as massive as these with as many variables as these are dealing with are bound to have some issues but it really seems like, somehow, the older game of the two handled this better.

So now having concluded our walkabout in the main wasteland of the game complete with all its foibles we're looking ahead to (hopefully) filling in some of the gaps in our characters back-story as we explore the DLC for the game in the 'Dead Money', 'Honest Hearts', 'Old World Blues' and 'Lonesome Road' expansions. See you all next week.

*This is a little weird as the game is made by Bethesda Softworks named as such because they're based in Bethesda, MD. I personally would have loved it if the game had simply copy pasted the entire region as accurately as possible just to see how it would have turned out. I also find it amusing that one of the few immersion killing things for me in 'Fallout 3' was the existence in game of Metro Stations that don't exist in real life mostly because it took this region five decades to fund highway expansion and I found it too hard to believe that the government would somehow find the money to build a dozen new stations between now and 2077.