Fallout: New Vegas

So I feel like I’ve just mortgaged my house on a game of Blackjack and drew 22. Now that I’ve lost anything, I’m left lying despondent in front of the casino entrance, hat stretched out asking for chip donations from incoming patrons before security escorts me to the broom closet for an ass kicking. Now with two black eyes and a disgruntled family with no shelter, I have but nothing to do but…go on the internet and write a negative review about the casino! Yeah, they’re the ones that put me in this predicament, not my lack of restraint!

So yeah, I don’t like Fallout: New Vegas very much, and I’m not exactly certain if that’s my fault or the developer’s. On one hand, I grew up with the values of 16-bit Japanese RPGs instilled in my gaming blood; spiky hair, mythril weapons and massively illogical, melodramatic plots were more the norm to me than anything in the early Fallouts and Baldur’s Gate games. On the other, that never stopped me from fully comprehending Oblivion or Fallout 3, and Dragon Age: Origins becomes more co-operative on the Easy setting. New Vegas doesn’t want to give me that chance. I think the game secretly resents me for never getting past the first rat in Fallout 1 or 2.

For reference, I gave up on the post-apocalyptic universe at around the 8 hour mark. This was a point in the game where the New California Republic and the Legion suddenly took interest in my female character’s adventures and exposed midriff. I don’t know how early in the campaign that is, but I do know that, this being a Bethesda game that I spent a hardy amount of time dabbling in side-quests. The game has a whole approval system where towns and gangs can either like you and give you rapid-speed discounts, or hate you and give rapid-speed bullets. This struck me an interesting concept at first, until I realized that once you earned the approval of a town or gang early in the game, you’ve probably also done every useful mission in that area and can move on to somewhere far off.

But for me, the reason that I drew snake eyes on Fallout as a whole is the game’s reliance on its many, many statistics. Blasphemy, I know, an RPG that depends on your character’s numbers! I thought numbers and dice rolls fell out of favour around the time people mistook Mass Effect 2 for an RPG. Fallout is a game that has many stats; stats for the many different offensive weapons, ways to talk to people, surviving in the wasteland, tamper with equipment in the workforce, and don’t get me started on the perks system. On paper, the idea of the game giving you so many options for playing it is kind of intriguing. Do I want to be the slick talker, the wild gunman, the resourceful hack, the sleazy prostitute? Some of these stats in perks come up in very unlikely ways. The Black Widow perk, for example, gives your female character a seductive edge against males in theory. And this perk never manifested itself until I ran into a major game character at a major point in the story. An unusual, but satisfying payoff.

Not so clever are the 10-odd other statistics that I have neglected during my time. I had originally thought to play the game investing all of my stats into Guns and Speech. My rationale is that if I can’t sweet-talk my way out of a fight, then I sure as hell can sweet-shot my way through. That logic failed to me in a spectacular manner. The speech option only manifests itself in certain dialogue trees. For others, you need a good science rating, or a good barter rating perhaps. The worst is when a dialogue option only opens itself based on your stats on the SPECIAL system. “SPECIAL” are the base-level stats you assign your character at the beginning of the game, and aren’t so easily altered as your 16-odd other character stats. And it sucks to be told you are short two Strength or Intelligence stats necessary to sweet-talk a certain individual. Thus, I found myself shut out of a bevy of the game’s missions due to the lack of clairvoyance in knowing what stats I ought to be upgrading.

Likewise, I learned quickly that the end of a gun is not always the solution to a problem. Many enemies, typically, have immunities to bullets. And I found myself wishing that I invested in an alternate statistic for combat for said enemies. But even having a higher rating in explosives, energy weapons or melee offense assumes requires physically possessing such tools. So I would have to theoretically invest in a good Barter or Survival rating, and cave my skull in as I cringe at the statistical balancing act that would ensue. I don’t know what it would take to overcome this issue, whether it be prior experience with Fallout games or playing through this game twice as to know what stat issues await the player.

Which is a shame, because I think New Vegas has some pretty interesting things going for it. Once you build up a decent Guns rating, VATS-based slaughter becomes an enjoyable pleasure. It is both highly amusing and illogical to use your small pistol to cause giant scorpions and hooligans to explode in a sea of limbs. And for all intents and purposes, the setting of the game is fantastic. “Post-apocalyptic 50s” is quickly becoming a tired cliché in video games, but visiting a region of the world that never stopped loving the Rat Pack is a little heartwarming. Also, the Fallout-humour is in full effect. A gang of hoodlums with customs rooted in Elvis impersonation, robot killing machines with Walt Disney-illustrated cops for faces, a sniper positioned inside a giant model T-Rex…like any good Fallout game, the only resource that isn’t in short supply is raw irony.

But there’s something frustrating about realizing that there is a right and wrong way to play a game…and finding out you were on the wrong end of that spectrum. Instead of trying to rectify my mistakes, I think I’ll just go on Youtube and find out how the game ends proper. I imagine the PC version of New Vegas being the right version to play. Not because of any false sense of tradition but because you can hack and cheat your way through all of the stats and let no numbers get in your way. So go add an extra star if that’s the version you elect to play. Otherwise, approach with caution.

3 stars