Jingle, Jangle, Jingle

With high hopes of an open, exciting world, catchy music, intriguing quests and fun combat I picked up my copy of Fallout: New Vegas day one and eagerly jumped back into the irradiated wasteland I’d missed so much.

This game had a lot to live up to and let’s just say that I wasn’t terribly optimistic when it was revealed that Obsidian Entertainment (the developers behind the ultra glitchy Alpha Protocol) would be releasing it. Still, I remained very enthusiastic and optimistic about this game.

Now, approximately 15 hours in, I want to share my thoughts so far.

Fallout: New Vegas begins in a very different way than Fallout 3. Instead of beginning your life within the safety of a vault you are instead captured and shot in the head for a platinum chip you’ve been tasked with delivering to the New Vegas strip. When you recover, you set out to find your assailants and, wouldn’t you know it, an entire complicated world soon envelops you.

Well, maybe not “soon”.

While the plot to Fallout 3 gripped me from the very beginning, I would say it was a good 8 hours – when I finally reached The Strip - before I really started to get into the groove of New Vegas. I think before I got to The Strip I’d done maybe 6 mundane quests and found a few locations but once I made it to Sin City all of a sudden I had dozens of options. So many in fact that at times it was a bit overwhelming.

Who do I work with? How will this affect my relationship with the other bigwigs in New Vegas?

There are three major factions who you have the option of allying yourself with: Mr. House, Caesar’s Legion and The New California Republic. In a massive quest called “Wildcard” you pick your side and once you’ve completed 4 quests or so for that one side you’re considered enemies of the other. Unless of course you decided to do small missions for them all but never really align yourself with one.

And that’s one of the greatest things about New Vegas: your impact on the world.

This game takes the karma system from Fallout 3 and gives it a little oomph. No longer are you just “good” or “evil” but rather feared, hated, and honored. It’s certainly a great case for re-playing the game since you will literally get locked out of certain quests once you declare your allegiance.

Now, for the only bad remarks I have which all goes back to my initial concern with Obsidian taking this project over: Fallout: New Vegas is glitchy as hell.

In the first few hours I fell through the world, had my gun repeatedly pull itself out of its holster, had VATS target objects instead of enemies and several lock-ups. It was never enough to make me want to stop playing but it was certainly bad enough to irritate me at times. I feel that had this game been delayed it could have been noticeably more smooth.

There has however already been a patch for the 360 and the game does seem to be performing better. Or I could just be getting used to it.

Either way, I am very much enjoying my time in New Vegas and hope you all are too.