Fallout: New Vegas Dead Money reviews round-up #2

WorstUsernameEver

But best title ever!
Here's another batch, this time more positive than the last.

OnPause gives the DLC a 9, which honestly reads weird considering that the writer spends most of the time complaining about the difficulty and bugs. <blockquote>If I could bestow some wisdom and parting thoughts, I would say this, be prepared to scream, save often, and have your melee weapons skill up to a decent level. Dead Money strips you of your gear. Most Ghosts have Bear Trap Gloves or Knife Spears. You may find some guns and ammunition in crates, but nothing beats the infinite ammunition of a melee weapon. Also, the story behind Dead Money is one worth taking your time and investigating. It fills in story holes that you didn't know or didn't remember.</blockquote>SFX 360, 3.5/5.<blockquote>Overall , the storyline in Dead Money is well done and features a few plot twists to keep things rather interesting through the entire quest. However, after completing Dead Money, there’s not much replay value so you might consider this a one and done once you complete the campaign and the achievements. For those of you who can’t get enough Fallout like myself, then Dead Money is a must download. For everyone else, you might want to wait on that “Deal of the Week” sale down the road.</blockquote>We Got This Covered, 6/10. <blockquote>All in all though, Dead Money was not very fun. The story was good, especially at the end when it all comes together, but the sneaking around, the insane amount of dangerous traps, the lack of supplies, confusing town layout and unclear directions made it a very difficult game. I’m all for changing the gameplay but I don’t think it was executed well here as it was more frustrating than it was refreshing. It wasn’t really for me and didn’t fit my character’s playstyle. I can’t even imagine how people are playing this with Hardcore mode on.

On the other hand, you get quite a bit of value here. My in-game counter clocked me in at just about six hours for Dead Money and that’s not including deaths and retries…and there were many of those, believe me. When you take those into account, the real number is probably sitting somewhere between 8-10 hours depending on the player. At 800MSP, that amount of game time is a bargain compared to some content other companies are charging. I only wish I took that level 20+ warning a little more seriously at the beginning as having higher skills in the non-combat areas would have helped me tremendously and made this piece of DLC a little less frustrating.</blockquote>Crazy Gamers, 8/10. <blockquote>First of all, as I mentioned in my introduction, Obsidian continues to show us how they are impressively staffed with a fine crew of clever, talented writers. From a plot-point perspective the story is commendably engrossing, tragic, mystical, unpredictable, sad, hilarious, and overall genuinely well crafted. I still stand by my past comments relating to New Vegas and its unacceptable lack of polish, yet I still consider it a top-tier experience due to the quality of the writing. Moreover, the characters are well presented and some of the best characters from the Fallout universe in some time. The voice acting is sensational, and unlike the main game all of the actors sound different from each other. This DLC thankfully avoids the recycled voice tactics used to distribute the same voice across a variety of NPC’s in New Vegas and in Fallout 3, for that matter. Not only do they all nail a keen sense of pathos with solid delivery and tone, they’re also legitimately interesting and entertaining characters. Your 3 companions for the main goal of infiltrating the Casino come in the form of the schizophrenic Super Mutant with multiple personality disorder, Dog/God, the former theater performer turned post-War ghoul, Dean Domino, and the oddly mute and facially scarred enigma known as Christine. These 3 characters all accompany you and assist in the objectives imposed by Father Elijah (who is also especially effective and convincingly portrayed as a villain), and all have their own collars to worry about in addition to yours. They all bring their own unique perks to the table, so at any one time whoever you’re currently using will give you their associated advantage. These are all pretty useful and novel, and I won’t say much more to avoid spoiling the discovery and wonder felt from interacting with them.</blockquote>
 
I might be generalizing here, but I find it quite pathetic that all of these reviews say the writing is excellent, and then proceed to whine about it not being an action game.

Do these people remember that Fallout is supposed to be an RPG first?
 
Beelzebud said:
I might be generalizing here, but I find it quite pathetic that all of these reviews say the writing is excellent, and then proceed to whine about it not being an action game.

Do these people remember that Fallout is supposed to be an RPG first?

Those who complain about that stuff are probably the same people who say things like, "you play the first Fallout?" when talking about Fallout 3.

I guess they must be expecting something similar to the Fallout 3 DLC's where most of them had a heavy emphasis on shooting, weapons, etc.
 
That is going to take a while, seeing as its not announced yet for the PC.

Still looking forwards to it though.
 
sampson70 said:
I can't wait for most you to finally play DM..then you will see how frustrating it really is!

You're being sarcastic, right? DM is not a difficult game, especially not for the people on this forum. The "problem" with Dead Money is that it requires you to listen to the characters. The DLC tells you exactly what to do, you just have to listen to it. I guess paying attention is frowned upon in games now.
 
Great writing != great DLC. There's a whole heck of a lot more that goes into it.
 
Huntman said:
sampson70 said:
I can't wait for most you to finally play DM..then you will see how frustrating it really is!

You're being sarcastic, right? DM is not a difficult game, especially not for the people on this forum. The "problem" with Dead Money is that it requires you to listen to the characters. The DLC tells you exactly what to do, you just have to listen to it. I guess paying attention is frowned upon in games now.
No I'm not being sarcastic,I thought game started off great,the writing is top notch and the plot is very intriguing...at first. Then towards the end it got boring and tedious...and it is buggy! l I did enjoy most of the game though...
 
From what I can gather is the writing and story are good, but "it's too hard bwaaa!". I played it on my brother's 360 and found it to be pretty easy even on hardcore.
 
Gaddes said:
From what I can gather is the writing and story are good, but "it's too hard bwaaa!". I played it on my brother's 360 and found it to be pretty easy even on hardcore.
Yeah right!! :roll:
 
As for my play through...sampson70 is absolutely right in frustration level. The beginning when you have the companions with you is not to difficult, but toward the end it turns into a series of dash-into-the-room-and-try-to-find-the-speaker-before-your-head-explode-so-you-can-reload-and-try-to-kill-it-in-your-next-life moments. Thats not challenging its frustrating to the fullest.

Story wise i feel they wasted the Father Elijah character on a fairly banal DLC that seemed to serve no real purpose then to mention instances of the next "EPIC" DLC...pretty disappointing all in all :cry:
 
letz hope we get a better DLC at some point with more story and content. Maybe about ulysses ! That would be kick ass. Something to expand on the legion as well showing a "good" side with them. And not some randoom father-elijah-saw-rip-of
 
What, can't handle getting beat up by three Ghost People while simultaneously avoiding traps, the Cloud, and speakers?

YOU ARE CASUAL FILTH
 
OakTable said:
What, can't handle getting beat up by three Ghost People while simultaneously avoiding traps, the Cloud, and speakers?

YOU ARE CASUAL FILTH


*Hi-five*

Let's tell em, Oak table.

(I highly doubt though that they make something better regarding narrative in DLC form. The DLC was extremly focused and got the maximum probably possible out of it in regards to narrative)
 
Astiaks said:
korindabar said:
Great writing != great DLC.

Bad writing = Bad DLC/Game

No, the have little to do with each other. If bad writing = bad game then we'd have never gamed before 1995~ (txt based and point'n click adventure titles aside). I certainly enjoyed my fair share of coin-op experiences in the 80s and that was entirely due to gameplay (well, and that soft spot on the top of my skull).

I was having the discussion with my roommate last night -- it's entirely possible for a game's writing to be atrocious and the game still be enjoyable if not phenomenal (puzzle games are an example, as are most Arcade titles). Metroid is an example I can shine the spotlight on -- the story/writing was weak as hell but it was relegated to being a backdrop for the gameplay.

Limbo is my game of the decade and it has absolutely no explicit story (though, perhaps to its credit, this void is readily filled by one's own imagination).
 
Anarchosyn said:
Astiaks said:
korindabar said:
Great writing != great DLC.

Bad writing = Bad DLC/Game

No, the have little to do with each other. If bad writing = bad game then we'd have never gamed before 1995~ (txt based and point'n click adventure titles aside). I certainly enjoyed my fair share of coin-op experiences in the 80s and that was entirely due to gameplay (well, and that soft spot on the top of my skull).

I was having the discussion with my roommate last night -- it's entirely possible for a game's writing to be atrocious and the game still be enjoyable if not phenomenal (puzzle games are an example, as are most Arcade titles). Metroid is an example I can shine the spotlight on -- the story/writing was weak as hell but it was relegated to being a backdrop for the gameplay.

Wait, aren't these examples more of a simple writing style rather than a bad one.

Metroid Games are usually very simple written, not too bad/obnoxious. A really bad written (but story focused) Metroid Game is Other M. And it got a lot of flak for it- Hate even.
 
C2B said:
Wait, aren't these examples more of a simple writing style rather than a bad one.

Metroid Games are usually very simple written, not too bad/obnoxious. A really bad written (but story focused) Metroid Game is Other M. And it got a lot of flak for it- Hate even.

I agree. Simple writing is not necessarily bad writing-- even an absence of writing is not necessarily "bad." Games that are gameplay-focused are allowed to stick writing in the back seat, so can get away with a little bit of cheesiness. However, games like Fallout 3, which focus largely on story and writing, don't have as much of a free pass because there's literally no way to avoid the bad writing.
 
Gaddes said:
From what I can gather is the writing and story are good, but "it's too hard bwaaa!". I played it on my brother's 360 and found it to be pretty easy even on hardcore.

Hm, could be.

On the other hand (as I like tough chalenge I’m probably the last person to defend it) it could be, as some above have said, actually tediously hard. Illogically, for no good reason annoyingly probability-based hard. The worst kind of hard.

It’s not like Obsidian (or Beth’s QA for that mater) are epitome of balancing perfection. Well, Beth’s QA surely isn’t.

I don’t like something to be hard just for the sake of hardness or to cover some gameplay shortcomings and flaws, which probably could be the case here… The only worse thing could be if this dlc was too easy for all the same reasons.

Also, there could be a problem in pace of the dlc. Maybe people on consoles expected something more in line with previous Beth’s dlcs, so forcing them to read (yes, I know) in order to understand new set or rules is maybe slightly over the top for some of them. Until now, all Beth’s dlcs are (as I understood) strictly FPS kill fest, so any element that demand some additional effort and adaptation is the game-changer and not necessarily accepted by all players (most of them are probably leisure players looking for a light entertainment). Of course, I could be wrong on this one.
 
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