Jay’s Internet Log

Fallout 3 was a game that originally I was not ever planning to play, but in the end I put over 120 hours into it and fully enjoyed pretty much 100% of the game and all five of its DLC releases.  The next installment in the series is something that I’ve been looking forward to since it was announced.  Between last night and this morning, I’ve logged about 4.5 hours into the game, and these are my impressions.

In New Vegas your character is a courier who was transporting a large platinum poker chip somewhere when you got shot in the head, survived, and wake up in a doctor’s office.  When my character woke up, I modeled and named her after my wife, then spent a good hour figuring out what initial statistics to give her.  I then started my adventure.

I immediately noticed a few issues with the game that I need to point out.  The x-axis sensitivity is slower than the y-axis sensitivity when they are set equally.  I’ve noticed constant stuttering in movement, possibly because the graphics have been upped to 1080p from Fallout 3′s native 720p resolution.  The very first mission is a tutorial of sorts where you have to go and shoot a few geckos.  I shot two of them but was being attacked by a third, completely invisible one.  It had never rendered.  A dog who was with us ended up killing that gecko.  I kept wandering around this early town and got a mission where I had to get 3 people to join a cause, but my skills are all too low to convince any of these people, so I left that quest for later.  I headed off on the main mission line and came to an old town called Primm, where I got my butt kicked over and over again.  I kept reloading my save and walked around the outside of this town to find out I could not enter that way.  When returning to the front gate area, two enemies were stuck half in walls, but it made it easy to shoot them.  I then was able to make my way into town slowly.  I’ve got to say though, that so far, this has been a difficult game.  Another glitch I found was when I walked into a casino in Primm, a character could only be seen from the waist down, stuck in a ceiling.  I walked in the room, looked up at his feet, and was able to talk to him.  I think this game needs a patch, but I’ve also read of other people having no issues at all, so I’m at a loss as to what’s going on.  Even with these issues, I can’t put the game down.  Just like Fallout 3, it’s sucking me in.

I’m playing the game in hardcore mode.  In this mode, health items don’t heal immediately, but over time.  Ammo has weight to it.  Also, you need to carefully monitor sleep deprivation, hunger, and thirst.  I haven’t had too much problem with any of this so far, and it seems just a bit more tedious than non-hardcore mode, and I like it.  I really need to find a safehouse though in order to drop some of my load there as I’ve become overloaded with stuff already.  I also need to find out how to make more powerful ammo, as I have a lot of ammo but am very weak.  There is a card game called Caravan, that I’m completely horrible at and need to figure out how to play well.

Overall, I think this will be a great game.  It’s a bit on the dark side, but most games seem to be when I first start them.  I’m not sure that the story is going to be as extraordinary as Fallout 3 was, as in that game, you start out by being born, and it doesn’t get much cooler than that.  Right now I’m just trying to find out who shot me, not search for my missing father who disappeared and holds a big secret.  I’m looking forward to putting many more hours into this, and hope that the game smooths out a bit.  Even with all the little glitches and annoyances that I’ve come across, before I knew it last night, it was past my bedtime and I didn’t want to stop.  I then woke up at 5AM and put in another hour this morning!