Should I Buy? – Fallout New Vegas

Oh dear, Fallout has had a troubled past. After it finally got a chance to prove itself again with Fallout 3, it proved itself to be a hit and a sequel was inevitable. That arrived in the form of Fallout New Vegas, very much the Fallout 2 to Fallout 3‘s Fallout.

Yeah, it's kinda like that

OK now that’s just confusing as all hell, let me explain. The original Fallout was a dark, atmospheric yet limited game that captured a pervasive mix of both hope and despair as the player attempted to stop a singular organisation from destroying the people’s of the Wasteland. And Fallout 3 was very much that, and has one of the best atmospheres I’ve seen in a game period.

Fallout 2 on the other hand, added more locations, factions, weapons, moral ambiguity, choice and, most controversially of all, humour and bugs. This is what New Vegas has done. For the record it’s made by a studio comprised mostly of the people who made the old Fallouts, and boy did they bring back the classics.

The Mojave Wasteland is much more inhabited than the Capital Wasteland, mostly because the titular city was spared most of the destruction of the Great War by the efforts of one Mr House, now its enigmatic ruler some 200 years later. But even outside of the city, the Mojave is brimming with the local inhabitants and the presence of two invading factions.

The plot at first concerns itself with you, the Courier, being robbed of your package and left for dead. Once you track down the guy that did it, you come back into possession of the item that was stolen and your efforts have gained the attention of the three major factions, who now all want your help.

The first is Mr House, a Pre-War Industrialist who wants to make Vegas great again, damn the desires of everyone else. Then is the New Californian Republic, a state-spanning democracy dedicated to providing equality, freedom and basic living for all under its banner. Then there’s the aggressive, imperialist slave army known as Caesar’s Legion.

Who you work with is your choice, and each has their ups and downs. House is an excellent administrator, but has no interest in anything beyond Vegas’ wellbeing. The NCR are nice guys, but their bloated bureaucracy and idiot Presidents are dragging things down. Caesar’s Legion will establish order, and quickly. But they’re bloodthirsty, technology hating slavers that treat women like cattle and destroy whatever culture of beliefs you held before.

Well Vault Boy likes it

But moving on from the major players and glossing over the minor ones, what’s different in the gameplay? Well, the basics are the same. This game’s more difficult. The old school developers have made gamers fear Deathclaws and Super Mutants again. Armour works differently, Big Guns as a skill has been dropped, with each such weapon instead using a skill based on its ammo type.

And of course, there’s Hardcore Mode. This optional setting sounds great, but in practice I really think it should be handled differently. With this on, ammo has weight so you really have to pick your weapons carefully, you need to eat, drink and sleep regularly so a lot of that junk you can find has a point now, healing is much more difficult and if a companion’s health drops to zero, they’re gone. Permanently.

Now some of these options would allow for a fun, roleplaying experience. The others are just there to give you a challenge. What I want to know is why this has to be an all or nothing feature, instead of a bunch of options you can choose from.

The companions themselves are worthy of mentioning. In 3, they were rather basic. Dogmeat and Fawkes broke the game, while the rest were likely to die with varying degrees of ease. In New Vegas, the companions are instead useful for a wide variety of reasons and have interesting back stories you can explore that lead to a variety of quests. For example, Boone is a monstrously powerful shot as an ex-sniper, and you can recruit him for his skills and then help his work through his issues. Or Raul, who’ll keep your weapons in good condition and who you can convince to revive his old Vaquero skills or become a dedicated mechanic.

All this choice and depth aside, it’s still difficult for me and many others to say whether or not this is the better game. Pretty much the only subject 3 wins out on is atmosphere, but it was such a strong atmosphere that it just might be enough. New Vegas trades the broken 50’s feel for a cowboy/swingin’ Vegas aesthetic that all but vanishes when you’re not in the Mojave itself or the streets of Vegas.

But still, this is a good game. The characters are great, the factions are plentiful and interesting, the moral choices are more ambiguous, the tweaked combat and new weapons fit and all the throwbacks to old Fallout are well executed and never intrusive.

If you liked 3 you’ll like this. It’s more of the same but from a different approach. 3 showed the world broken and barren, New Vegas shows us what civilisation’s up to. I hope the future games continue this approach, I want to see the NCR and Caesar’s Legion really go to war. I want to find out about the Commonwealth. And who else is out there? An army of tribals like the Great Khans? More Enclave? More Brotherhood of Steel? How’s about bringing the Pitt into this?

My recommendation for this game is just as strong as it was for its predecessor, but for different reasons.

Price: (CEX) £10 – XBOX 360
£10 – PS3
£10 – PC

(Steam) £14.99
DLC – £7.49 each/£22.47 combined

Gaming on a budget

Now the point of this site is to provide advice to those who’re, well, gaming on a budget. I have always tried to keep the games I review at under £20, and I don’t review more current games because well, I can’t afford them. I’d be no good at it, but I’ve been playing games since I was a child and I’ve never had much money. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from all that, it’s that gaming can be both cheap and rewarding.

Play Free Games
Too obvious? It goes without saying that nothing is cheaper than something with no cost, and James of Extra Credits once set himself the task of playing games with zero cost for a whole week. There are casual games like Farmtown, little Flash ones, social ones like Echo Bazaar and a wealth of demos on services like Steam and XBOX Live.

Just last night, I tried half a dozen demos from Steam, and its only by loving the demos for Tiny Bang Story and Bastion that I bought the full games.

Even more than that, there’s an increasing number of free-to-play MMO’s that you can choose to spend money on if you want, that will give you some nice extras features if you decide you want to splash out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_massively_multiplayer_online_games

Team Fortress 2, one of if not the most popular online shooters, is now free-to-play and the excellent point-n-click classic Beneath A Steel Sky is available for free at gog.com And you strategy fans, try out Battle for Wesnoth, a free turn based strategy game with an open source code and strong modding community.

For that matter, are you aware of mods? People work to create custom campaigns, challenge maps or characters/factions for many PC games to increase the challenge or simply include a bunch of fun stuff. You’ll need to be a little tech-minded or willing to read a fair amount of FAQs to install one, but a good mod or two can really increase a game’s lifespan.

Own decent consoles
Not every console has a great range of games, and is it really worth buying one that’s only got half a dozen titles in its entire catalogue you care about? If you’re stuck between buying two consoles like say a PS3 and an XBOX 360, look at the exclusive titles and think about what you’re interested in and what genres you want to play.

Personally, I think the cream of the currently available crop is a decent laptop that’ll let you play stuff from Steam, a 360 (I prefer it over a PS3 because it, DVDS rather than Blu-Ray and the games are cheaper, and I prefer the 360 exclusives over the PS3 ones), a Nintendo DS and a PS2.

Between them they can cover pretty much any genre you care to mention, sometimes with the best stuff available in that genre. And hey, if you’ve got a smartphone that has access to gaming apps, there’s a cheap way to turn your phone into a console.

Buy good games
Again, this seems too obvious to be worth mentioning, but there is just so much junk out there. Whether its derivative, bland, repetitive, a multiplayer focused title disguised as a single player epic, a lazy cash grab or simply overpriced is something you can discover before you buy it.

Read reviews, ask your gamer friends, talk to the guys in the game store. And when you do these things, don’t just here what’s being said and take it at face value. If someone says they hated the timed platforming sections, don’t assume the game is bad, ask yourself whether you mind that.

Gamers might seem elitist because you’re not playing ‘classics’ or the hottest new thing, but don’t let that put you off. Some gamers will be like that, and if you’re having fun with Super Smash Bros Brawl, don’t let some insufferable jerk with no life tell you how it sucks because its more ‘casual friendly’.

Don’t get caught up in fads
The reason everybody and their dog and their dog’s grandma bought either a Wii or a DS is because it was a fad. Halo was a fad. Even my beloved Professor Layton was a fad. No matter how big these are, that doesn’t always mean they’re good or that they’re right for you. It doesn’t mean its something you should get into after the fact because its the only thing you know about.

The Wii does have some really fun games, but it suffered from poor third party support (translation: good games not made by Nintendo). And yes, fad titles like Halo or Professor Layton didn’t wholly undeserve their hype, but instead of Halo, why not try Bioshock or Fallout 3? And instead of Professor Layton, there’s always Monkey Island, Ace Attorney, Broken Sword and Ghost Trick that’re equally fun and readily available.

Look, if you want a game in a certain genre, you can buy it without breaking the bank. Don’t be afraid to take risks on strange or obscure titles if the price isn’t too high. Don’t jump to get Final Fantasy XIII, ask a few fans what they think. Consider Kingdom Hearts or Crono Trigger instead. Not because Final Fantasy XIII is a bad game, but because you should know your choices and put some thought into your purchases.

You’d be pretty pissed if you paid £15 for a terrible film or book, so don’t spend £15 on Grizzled Macho Brown Shooter 5: The Bloodening of Space Death.

Should I Buy? – Left 4 Dead 2

Pretty much everybody’s putting zombie or suspiciously similar substitutes in their games these days. They’re an easy enemy to make and justify. You don’t need to program any intelligence to them and you’re not gonna kick up any controversy or moral questions by having players blast a creature of folklore into bloody chunks.

Well Valve, of Steam, Half Life, Team Fortress and Portal fame (who doesn’t love Valve?) got in on the action too with a pair of zombie blasting games. Both are very similar mechanically, but I’m more familiar with the second one so that’s what I’ll be talking about here.

The game is a first person shooter in which you take the role of one of four survivors and attempt to blast your way through one of five campaigns. There’s the jerk of an ex-con with a mysterious past Nick, the dim but good natured Ellis, the loud, angry black guy Coach and Rochelle whose…well, rather lacking in the personality department.

If you’re playing single player, or local 2 player co-op then the other roles are filled by bots who are competent, if limited. For example, they won’t use melee weapons. These are perfectly fine to play with, and they will rarely if ever be a load you have to carry.

In each campaign, you work your way through several areas until you reach a place from which you can be evacuated while fending off hordes of Infected. The campaigns each have their own setting and challenges, so none of them feel repetitive or rip-offs of the others.

The weapon choice is simple, you get pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, rifles and melee weapons of varying strength. Each is useful for different situations, and lets you approach combat in different ways. There are a few other unique weapons like chainsaws and grenade launchers that the game’s A.I. ‘Director’ throws up for you.

Speaking of the Director, it’s what keeps each replay feeling fresh. The Director changes the location and frequency of enemy and item placements. If you take down the Horde with big guns at every opportunity, it’ll throw more at you. If you’re doing too well, it’ll spawn one of the dreaded Special Infected to take you down.

L4D2 never feels like a typical shooter, so you don’t have to be an FPS fan to enjoy this. I’m a gamer who plays multiplayer as an exception rather than a rule. L4D2 is one of the games that I enjoy playing with friends. Unfortunately local co-op is only two player, if you want a full group you’ll have to brave random online gaming.

And those Special Infected I mentioned earlier? They really break up the monotony of zombie killing. Each poses a unique challenge to you and your team, requiring you to move out of your usual tactics to face them.

This is a difficult one to say something constructive about. I don’t want to go too far into explaining the mechanics, but criticisms aren’t very forthcoming and the game isn’t exactly innovative. If you want a fun game to play with friends, or a dedicated zombie shooter or hell, just something that’s fun to play then L4D2 is a blast to play.

 

Price:  £15 (XBOX 360 -CEX Price)

£12 (PC – CEX Price)

£14.99 (Steam Price)

 

EXTRA – As of the time of writing, L4D2 is on a 33% sale on Steam, along with a four pack that gives you three copies to gift to your friend, a pack bundles with L4d1 and as part of the Valve Complete Collection.

Should I Buy? – Fallout 3 DLC

Here’s the promised follow-up to yesterday’s review of Fallout 3 where I’ll look at the DLC available for the game. I don’t usually buy DLC, and only got these because they were available on disc bundled with the game. But in this case at least, paying the extra for that disc is worth it. There are 5 DLC campaigns, so I’ll do 5 mini reviews a la my Steam games reviews.

1) Broken Steel (F3BS)

2) Point Lookout (F3PL)

3) Operation Anchorage (F3OA)

4) The Pitt (F3TP)

5) Mothership Zeta (F3MZ)

Broken Steel (F3BS)

Broken Steel is the major DLC campaign for this game, and designed to add a more challenging endgame to experienced players. There are four main features to this DLC. The first, it allows you to play past the ending of the original, and changes the ending in response to fan complaints. Secondly, the level cap is raised from 20 to 30, with all new perks to allow your character to develop further. It also negates that sadistic choice of which of the two awesome level twenty perks to take.

The third part is that it allows you to play a new set of missions that carry on from the main plot, as you track down and destroy the Enclave’s remaining power base. These missions take place in their own special area of the map and don’t allow for any sidequests or exploration but they are action-filled fun.

Fourth is the introduction of three new enemies to the Capital Wasteland. This isn’t something usually worthy of note, but these are designed to be sadistically tough. Even on the easiest setting, these guys can send you running for cover.

For the money they’re asking, this is worth it. But I still maintain that buying the Game of the Year Edition is the best way to go, giving you all five for a fraction of the price.

Point Lookout (F3PL)

This DLC is the one I’d most recommend after Broken Steel. Point Lookout takes you to a Louisianna swamp that was largely untouched by the nuclear devastation, but after centuries cut off from the outside world things have degraded. There’s a ghoul (kind of a sane zombie) from before the war battling the brain of an evil genius in a jar and his army of brainwashed tribals, a bunch of inbred hillbillies that have devolved into grotesque, bloodthirsty sub-humans with a fascination for ritual blood magic and a sinister old man living in his family’s manor.

The swamps are dangerous and foreboding. The atmosphere here is even stronger than the main game. And the strange peoples and quests in this area add a semi-surrealist tone to the whole experience.

Point Lookout is based on exploration and will make even you powerhouse level 30 fear confrontation. It’s an excellent addition to the main game.

Operation Anchorage (F3OA)

I would not recommend this as a separate purchase. Buying this unlocks a special quest line available from the main game map. By approaching the Brotherhood Outcasts you can enter a pre-War combat simulator, designed to train soldiers for one of the pivotal battles against China, the aforementioned Operation Anchorage.

This turns the game into much more of a standard shooter, with little originality beyond setting this in a semi-futuristic snow field. It doesn’t offer up any of the atmosphere or aesthetic of the main game and is only playable once per character. There are some good rewards at the end, but that doesn’t really make this DLC worth it.

It feels like they missed a real chance here, they could have made a campaign that gave us a glimpse into that twisted pre-War military psychology that was going on, or offering up some pathos through showing a more human element some rogue programmer had put into the simulation. Instead, it’s pretty much straight shooter action with the slightest hint of strategy.

The Pitt (F3TP)

I’d probably list this one as third in terms of value. You’re transported to the Pitt, the new name of the remains of Pittsburgh. This place was awash with a terrible disease that turned the inhabitants into sub-human cannibals called ‘Trogs’. But a Brotherhood of Steel Member stayed behind after they purged it off the Trogs and has since forged the survivors into an industrial super power using the old steel mill.

Lord Ashur has created a vast army of slave labour, which he controls with an army of slavers and raiders. He seems like your average evil overlord, but playing through this DLC quickly reveals that in fact, the rebellion you’re brought in to help may well end up being the worse of two evils in the long run.

A fair portion of the quests have you disguising yourself as yet another slave, which makes a nice change from the combat-centric quests that make up most of the Fallout 3 experience. These quests don’t last too long though, and you’re quickly forced to make a moral choice that for once is not cookie-cutter good or evil but instead incredibly complex. The game doesn’t even award you any Positive or Negative Karma for deciding.

Mothership Zeta (F3MZ)

Why isn’t this DLC great? You’re abducted by stereotypical 50’s style aliens in flying saucers and have to win your freedom by fighting your way out with a bunch of warriors plucked from different eras of history while also slowly uncovering details of just what the aliens have been doing with all these people over the years.

For some reason, none of it works. The new characters feel flat, the new weapons don’t balance the game’s seriousness with their intended comedy, the level design is bland, repetitive and uninspired and the clues you get rarely evoke a reaction, visceral or otherwise.

In fact, I’ve never even finished this DLC. Half a dozen times I’ve got halfway through and reloaded a save before I started it out of boredom. Don’t buy this separately. If you want to buy one individually, get Point Lookout or Broken Steel.

Price: PS3 DLC – $9.99 – £9.99 – 800 Points Each

XBOX 360 DLC – $9.99 – £9.99 – 800 Points Each

PC DLC – $9.99 – £6.75 Each (Games for Windows Live)

Game of the Year Edition: £12 (PS3) – £18 (360) – £12 (PC) – CEX Price

Operation Anchorage & The Pitt disc – £4 (360) – £3 (PC) – CEX Price

Broken Steel & Point Lookout disc – £6 (360) – £4 (PC)

Steam Prices: GOTY Edition – £14.99 DLC Price – £3.99

Should I Buy? – Fallout 3

Holy Gameplay Trailers, Batman! Did you guys see the new Arkham City trailer? It looks amazing! I cannot wait to play that.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/trailers/3638-Batman-Arkham-City-Gameplay

Anyway, down to business. The Fallout series is one with a troubled history. The first game was released in 1997 and was a critical success and a cult classic. Its sequel Fallout 2 performed similarly. Then the series was taken out of the hands of its original creators and made first into a divisive tactical game and then a disastrous shooter game.

With its original studio shut down, it looked to become a relic of gaming’s past until it was revived by Bethesda Softworks with Fallout 3, an RPG-shooter hybrid. The series is set in the future of an alternative timeline where the Cold War happened between China and America which continued into the 21st Century though culture stagnated in the 1950’s and hasn’t moved on since. Eventually the world nuked itself to death but humanity survived.

You grow up in one of the underground Vaults, where remnants of humanity have dwelt for the past 200 years with no contact from the outside world. And this childhood actually comprises the game’s tutorials. Under the guise of bullies, classroom tests, birthday parties and more you create your character’s look and statistics and get introduced to combat and morality. This is all very immersive , and doesn’t outstay its welcome.  Eventually however, the time comes for you to leave the Vault to find your recently escaped father (Liam Neeson).

And from there, you’re given free range to do pretty much whatever you want within the game’s parameters. You’re free to explore the crumbled wastelands of the Washington D.C. and interact with the peoples therein.

The game’s main plotline revolves around finding your father and unravelling his past. However, you can choose not to do this for weeks while you explore the Capital Wasteland and get embroiled in side quests.

All the equipment you can use has it’s own ‘condition’ bar. This means you have to scavenge equipment as well as medicine in order to keep yourself and your gear in working order. This mechanic serves two great purposes. For one, it fits very nicely into a world where everything is built on the bones of the old as a blend of mechanic and aesthetic. Secondly, it means you can’t just pick up the most powerful weapons at the beginning of the game and expect to rely on it.

Combat can be taken care of in first or third person views. Personally, I’d recommend using the first person view, as something about the aim in third person seems a little off.

The freedom that the game gives you is great, as this is an environment you can quickly draw you in with its great sense of worldbuilding and atmosphere. Though the game world leaves you with a lot of neat little secrets and stuff to find, it’s not very populated. The game has about five proper, revisitable settlements and depending on whether you play as good or evil you’ll probably end up destroying one of them.

Despite this, being able to wander around an office building which has no relation to any quests and find a series of internal emails on the computers that tell a story of the people who worked there is fantastic. These kinds of touches are all over the place and really help the world feel alive. Or dead. Or dead but with people living in it again. Whatever it is, it makes the world feel like that.

Unfortunately, there’s not much to really say about the gameplay. It’s perfectly serviceable gunplay mixed with some simple to understand, yet deceptively deep RPG mechanics whirring away close enough to the surface that you’re mindful of them, but not so much so that they ever really intrude on the game.

Now that this game is so cheap, there isn’t really a reason not to buy it. Don’t expect any handholding once you leave the Vault though, and if you’re a shooter fan with no interest in RPGs then you should just go back to Gears of Halo Duty Warfare  5. The five different DLC packs add a lot to the game’s quality, and I’ll do a write-up of those soon. As a note, instead of having to download the DLC packs to your console, buying the game of the year edition would give you all those on disc, so you might wanna wait on buying this till you’ve heard about the DLC and whether you think it’s worth it.

Price: PC – £6 (CEX) £14 (Steam)

PS3 – £5 (CEX)

XBOX 360 £7 (CEX)

Should I Buy? – Bioshock

Yes. Now. In fact, you should buy it yesterday. Better yet you should go back in time to buy it on launch day so Irrational Games get more money to keep doing things like this. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a gamer, this is something that everybody who loves a good story should play.

The story of the game is that you’re the last survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Waking up, you see what seems to be an ornate lighthouse not too far away and so you swim towards it. Soon you enter the once great underwater city of Rapture, now a place of madness and anarchy. You become embroiled in a battle between two powerful and enigmatic men to decide the future of the city.

The actual story of Rapture, its denizens, its purpose and its downfall are slowly revealed throughout the game. You can collect diaries of various characters to help you piece together the game’s timeline. And what a story it is. The founder of Rapture and its nominal leader Andrew Ryan’s personal philosophy is based on the ‘Objectivist’ philosophy of Ayn Rand.

You don’t have to understand any of this philosophy to understand the game, I didn’t and I still had a blast. The game is basically deconstructing this philosophy and showing how a world based on the philosophy of only furthering your own goals and living under no restrictions leaves a lot of people angry, betrayed, or virtually enslaved to the few who rise to the top. It also shows what happens for example, when doctors are free to research and refine their techniques with no ethical inhibitions.

That’s long enough without talking about the gameplay. It’s a first person shooter with some minor RPG elements, mainly in the way of buying and equipping upgrades. The weapons are fairly standard fare, at least until you get the gun that can shoot fire, ice and lightning. As well as weapons, you get access to a range of ‘Plasmids’, special tonics that alter your genetic code so you can use magic-like abilities such as telekinesis, the  ever reliable lightning and even keeping a swarm of killer bees in your hand. Though you can only use either your weapons or Plasmids at any given time, switching between the two is as easy as pressing the other shoulder button.

The environments you move through are all dark, chaotic and semi-destroyed but each looks different and has a different person whose carved it out as their personal kingdom. Particularly chilling are the mad plastic surgeon of the medical centre and the sociopathic artist of the pavillion, both of whom seem to have developed serious perfectionist/thanotos complexes.

Like most FPS’s these days you’re lead through each area by people giving you objectives over the radio, though things aren’t quite as plain as they seem.

Each of the game’s systems are well balanced and together with the novel challenges of Rapture this means that while this game follows many of the conventions of the FPS genre the game never feels cliché or formulaic.

This is a game of brilliant storytelling and solid atmosphere. It’s hard to think of a time when this game missteps. Instead of trying to think of one, I’ll just say that you need this game now.

Price: PC: £5 (CEX) £13 (Steam)

XBOX 360: £6

PS3: £8