Paul_cz
Mildly Dipped
Fast as per usual, Eurogamer has reviewed Old World Blues, giving it a 9/10.<blockquote>This opening scene is incredibly funny, featuring such wonderful dialogue as "Fully erect hand penises!" and "The FORBIDDEN ZONE! Where no brain has EVER entered!", but it does drag on. Comparisons to Portal are inherent in the concept, but where Valve laced its brilliant chatter through those games so you were always doing something while being amused, Obsidian sticks with the old "locked in place, waiting to move" approach.
That blast of entertaining exposition out of the way, you're free to explore the ruined crater in which the facility sits. The plot is minimal at first, unfolding naturally as you poke around and fetch bits and pieces for Klein. Basically, one of the science brains - inevitably named Dr Mobius - has gone rogue and now fills the area with robot scorpions and beams, rambling threats at the rest of his former team. Mobius has also stolen your brain, and the radar fence surrounding the crater will kill you if you attempt to leave without retrieving it.
From there, it becomes the most open DLC yet for New Vegas. The game doesn't nudge you towards attempting the quests in any particular order, and the Big Empty crater is anything but. It's small in terms of square footage but dense in features, with 35 specific locations sprinkled across (and below) its surface. So if you'd rather poke around, discover the enticingly titled Mysterious Cave and tackle the monstrous Legendary Bloatfly, that's entirely up to you. In any other game, this would be a story-punctuating boss battle. Here it's just one of several surprises tempting you off the beaten track.
The laissez-faire approach pays dividends as the story unfolds at its own pace, filling in not only the backstory of the warring science-brains and their mountain retreat, but also other elements of the wider Mojave wasteland. There's a lot of information on Elijah, antagonist of Dead Money, and even explanations for some of the unique flora and fauna of New Vegas. If you want to know who to blame for f***ing Cazadores, this is the download for you.</blockquote>
That blast of entertaining exposition out of the way, you're free to explore the ruined crater in which the facility sits. The plot is minimal at first, unfolding naturally as you poke around and fetch bits and pieces for Klein. Basically, one of the science brains - inevitably named Dr Mobius - has gone rogue and now fills the area with robot scorpions and beams, rambling threats at the rest of his former team. Mobius has also stolen your brain, and the radar fence surrounding the crater will kill you if you attempt to leave without retrieving it.
From there, it becomes the most open DLC yet for New Vegas. The game doesn't nudge you towards attempting the quests in any particular order, and the Big Empty crater is anything but. It's small in terms of square footage but dense in features, with 35 specific locations sprinkled across (and below) its surface. So if you'd rather poke around, discover the enticingly titled Mysterious Cave and tackle the monstrous Legendary Bloatfly, that's entirely up to you. In any other game, this would be a story-punctuating boss battle. Here it's just one of several surprises tempting you off the beaten track.
The laissez-faire approach pays dividends as the story unfolds at its own pace, filling in not only the backstory of the warring science-brains and their mountain retreat, but also other elements of the wider Mojave wasteland. There's a lot of information on Elijah, antagonist of Dead Money, and even explanations for some of the unique flora and fauna of New Vegas. If you want to know who to blame for f***ing Cazadores, this is the download for you.</blockquote>
Face it: the portal comparison is reasonable, especially since Portal 2 came out fairly recently, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't deliberate. I mean, keep in mind, there were Portal references in the core game.
