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[laserdracula]

first person shoot genre is so old and tired.  if you've played one, you've played them all.  why don't they do something new?

That's exaggerating a bit.

[phubans]

I have it on medium (I played Fallout 3 on hard) and I'm finding it a bit more difficult than FO3. I'm only about 10 hours in the game yet I have more money and stimpacks/super-stimpacks than I could ever need.

Actually, it's more like a mod of a mod of a mod of a mod... etc... I mean, it's great, but it doesn't try to deviate much from Fallout 3. On the downside, it's super choppy and prone to crashing frequently (though, I'm starting to suspect the crashes are by design so you can actually get away from the game)

The game crashes less often than Fallout 3 did for me. Before the many patches for FO3 it would crash at least every two hours, but in 10 hours of play I have only crashed twice. Crossing my fingers. As for super choppy gameplay, I had poor performance before I applied this patch. I dunno what the changes to the dll are made to make it run so much better, but I don't care. I used to struggle on medium settings before this 'fix', and now I can play on high.

Yep, that patch is essential. It's actually running faster on "high" than it was on "medium" without the patch now. Before, it was more like Lagout: Slow Vegas, amirite?

[TeeGee]

So how does it compare to Fallout3? Is it better overall?

[Nikica]

So how does it compare to Fallout3? Is it better overall?

I've only played it for a couple of hours but even now I think that it's a lot better than FO3. Judging from the reviews and comments all over the Internet it seems that if you liked FO3 you'll like this one too and if you didn't like FO3 there's a big chance that you'll like New Vegas.

As for the patch, someone in the comments explained it very well; "This isn't a DirectX file. It's named as one, since it pretends to be one and lies to Fallout about what videocard you have. Fallout bases its rendering decisions on what your card is named (which is really dumb), and that's how this improves performance. Fallout guesses wrong a lot."

I'll try that patch now but I still hope that we get an official patch for this.

[Bood_War]

So how does it compare to Fallout3? Is it better overall?

Honestly, like Nikica said, its feels like one giant Fallout 3 expansion, while having enough new features to feel fresh. I don't know if its better or not, as it feels just the same as Fallout 3 (not that this is a bad thing). The one thing about New Vegas is it doesn't quite have the impact that stepping into the wasteland and hearing Butcher Pete Pt. 1 for the first time.

[Kevin]

Honestly, like Nikica said, its feels like one giant Fallout 3 expansion... The one thing about New Vegas is it doesn't quite have the impact that stepping into the wasteland and hearing Butcher Pete Pt. 1 for the first time.

This pretty much sums up my problem with the game. FO3 was, obviously, a major change in direction for the series and, like it or not, at least it tried something a little bit different (comparisons to Oblivion aside). New Vegas, despite its improvements, feels like a rehash. I've only been playing the game for a few hours, and I've already come across tons of recycled resources from FO3, and game play is essentially identical. The myriad bugs don't make matters any better.

This is not to say that I'm not enjoying it. I am, and quite a bit. Frankly, so far, this feels like the game FO3 should have been, thanks to the various game play improvements and better overall atmosphere. It's just... I feel guilty rewarding what feels like lazy/sloppy/unoriginal design with my purchase.

[TeeGee]

I see. Thanks guys.

How's the story so far? I loved the exploration element in FO3 and those little stories told (or even implied) by the places you discover, but the main quest felt pretty silly, forced and not very well written. New Vegas is made by a different team, tied to the original Fallout devs. Does it fell different/better or is it more of the same?

[Bood_War]

So much better. The main quests are excellent (imho)this time around, while there is still the care put into the little details of the wastes like the first.

[TeeGee]

In that case, I'm sold  .

[C.A. Silbereisen]

Let me preface this post with the following words: FUCK DRM AND FUCK STEAM. I can't tell how fucking sick I am of forced online activation for single player games. I had to install a crack to get the goddamn thing to work in offline mode! 

As for the game itself, I'm liking it quite a bit better than FO3 so far. True, gameplay is still largely the same ol', but I feel Obsidian made a conscious effort to make the story, setting, lore, atmosphere etc. more "fallouty" and, speaking as someone who loved the first two Fallout games, they've succeeded for the most part.

Aside from that, I also think the world is better designed, the main plot is more interesting and characters/dialogs are better written in general, not just from the Fallout fan perspective. Hardcore mode isn't what I had hoped it would be, but it adds a little bit of depth and immersion which is fair enough. I also like the reputation mechanic.  The game is still overly combat-centric and you can't really "roleplay" your character the same you could in FO1 and 2. The experience remains largely the same, no matter what stats/skills you choose.

The game also crashes frequently for me, including a number of BSODs. I haven't noticed any in-game bugs though, aside from a feral ghoul getting stuck in a wall once.

[Tuba]

13 hours in and so far it's been as addictive as the Fallout 3 to me.. I have the impression that there are a lot more empty areas though and the locations are not as interesting, but I still haven't got to Vegas so that can change, the story on the other hand is better and the whole gang and reputation system is nice.

The only thing hardcore mode changed for me is that now I have to keep coming back to a doctor every time I step on a mine.. which doesn't make the game harder.. just more annoying.

And there are so many bugs.. I lost count of how many enemies I couldn't kill because they spawned inside a rock or under the ground and I couldn't reach them :/

[jotapeh]

I had a guy 'swimming' in the air as I talked to him. Definitely buggy.

[deathtotheweird]

And there are so many bugs.. I lost count of how many enemies I couldn't kill because they spawned inside a rock or under the ground and I couldn't reach them :/

I guess I've been really lucky because for the most part, the game has been relatively free of bugs like that for me. There was this one time one of those horned thingies walking down a hill (on his ass and feet in the air) that I thought was pretty funny.

I have the impression that there are a lot more empty areas though and the locations are not as interesting, but I still haven't got to Vegas so that can change, the story on the other hand is better and the whole gang and reputation system is nice.

I dunno, there are a lot more locations than Fallout 3. I've found a lot of stuff that "seems" empty, but really isn't. Like an old burnt down barn house with letters saying the kid (author of the letters) killed his parents cuz they turned into ghouls and burned himself alive in his house so his Brahmin don't eat him. I also found a dead depressed girl in a building in the middle of a nuclear test site with a diary lamenting how much she hates life and wants to be a ghoul. Little things like that actually reward you for exploring on your own. Very cool, I think. Which keeps my addiction growing to see every part of the map.

[phubans]

The only thing hardcore mode changed for me is that now I have to keep coming back to a doctor every time I step on a mine.. which doesn't make the game harder.. just more annoying.

Yep. Having to pull up my Pip Boy and drink water ever 5 minutes is more of an annoying chore than a "hardcore" challenge. It's not like I don't have more than enough of those supplies on hand, it's just the fact that they have me doing it every 5 minutes that annoys me.

[Alevice]

hardcore mode sounds like a distilled Pathologic.

[PGGB]

hardcore mode sounds like a crappy Pathologic.

Fixed that for you. 

[Core Xii]

Fallout: New Vegas is a brilliant idea buried under a mountain of poor execution. It's one of the buggiest games I've ever seen:

• Crashes often; Sometimes softly, sometimes with the Blue Screen of Death
• Corrupts saves. For a game with an autosave function, it sure makes you save manually a lot
  
• General glitching with enemies and NPCs; Stuck inside terrain, pathfinding issues, problems with transitions (NPCs suddenly appearing in places they shouldn't be), ragdolls launching into the air
• Animation/logic bugs; Stuck after reloading, can't shoot, twitchy NPCs in conversations, etc.
• VATS bug: At certain arbitrary locations (probably over boundaries of areas of the wasteland), VATS doesn't work at all; The screen lags like crazy and all body parts report 0% hit probability

The engine is old and clunky. The new "companion wheel" is a duct tape fix to a tiny fraction of the terrible UI.

There's about 3 voice actors in the entire game, though I am fairly impressed at the sheer amount of recorded dialog, even if it does repeat itself somewhat.

The animations are absolutely abysmal. NPCs just fade in/out of doorways. Your player character doesn't even have a diagonal running animation; Moving forward while strafing looks stupid as fuck (you run forward while just sliding to the side). Most animations are skippy, incomplete and generally not smooth at all.

Personally the most annoying thing was that after playing for hours, finally one of the loading screen hints revealed that I'd run 10-20% faster if I holstered my weapon; Then I needed to search the friggin' Internet to figure out how to do that (hold down the reload button, wtf).

Scratch that. Definitely the single most annoying design decision is that DPS and DAM aren't shown at the same time! They slowly fade between each other so if you want to compare weapon stats, you have to sit around waiting like a lemon for the displayed numbers to change. Who the fuck designed this shit??

[C.A. Silbereisen]

It's one of the buggiest games I've ever seen:

Really? I've played so many much buggier PC games in the late 90s/early 00s, my brain doesn't even register most of the issues you mentioned anymore (apart from the crashes). I mean, I dunno, enemies getting stuck in terrain and ragdolls launching into the air is amusing to look at, but it's kind of a non-issue as well.  

[deathtotheweird]

You on PC? They fixed the corrupt saves bug, I've never had a problem with it. I haven't experienced any VATs bugs, except when they last too long.

The bugs really do take you out of the experience, especially the crashing. But I've just been ignoring them. I try not to let it bother me, because I really enjoy this game. I think some are over-exaggerating the bugs a lot, because they haven't been bad enough for me to be angry about it. But then again I may just be lucky.

I'm around 35 hours in and still have a lot of exploring and side-quests to do before I start on the last quest. Enjoyed almost every hour I've spent with the game.

My problem is now is that my character is too strong and too rich. I have all the implants they'd allow me and I have guns and ammunition for me and my companion, that will last me virtually forever. Nothing really poses a challenge to me (except those goddamn cazadors who always sneak up on me). I put the game on Very Hard and it still is too easy. I guess I could start a new character, but I'm not really in the mood to start over just yet.

[C.A. Silbereisen]

You on PC? They fixed the corrupt saves bug, I've never had a problem with it. I haven't experienced any VATs bugs, except when they last too long.

You have a 0% hit chance on all body parts when you try to attack an invisible Nightkin. Maybe Core mistook that for a bug.