Fallout: New Vegas Launch Day Reviews

How could I hope to evaluate the worth of Baldur's Gate 2, a full-price game that's practically identical, both graphically and mechanically, to another game that was released years ago?
 
TheUnwashed said:
ill give it a go... translating Canard PC that is, as best as I can, or so

Thanks.

I have found someone who is doing that on canardpc.com. I'll give that to BN when it'll be finished.

Sobboth said:
Canard PC review is awesome and really focused on what i am expecting of a fallout game !

It's not a review. The real review arrived the 1st november. It's just his advice he gave to those who can't wait. :)
(And knowing O. Boulon, It'll be a huge review (8 pages I think))
 
Brother None said:
willooi said:
I can't help but think that there's some anti-Obsidian bias with these reviews.

Obsidian releasing buggy games is not bias, it's fact. The bias is in ignoring similar faults in Bethesda releases. Not so much anti-Obsidian as pro-Bethesda.
Agreed.
Kotor 2 is the best example. Very good story + writing but you had to play with hordes of bugs around ye'.
Of course it was because they had to release it "RIGHT NOW" but oh well - It wasn't their only failure at this level... Maybe they should hire more testers? >.>
The fact is they're not best at programming. But it's pretty young developer studio without much experience so I can wait for patches fanpatches, and fanfanpatches.


Some dude said:
Fallout: New Vegas hails from the philosophy: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” From my perspective, this works extremely well here, as the game retains everything that was interesting about its predecessor, and only makes updates that add either depth or breadth.
:roll:
Exploding heads and flying limbs?
There was nothing interesting about it's predecessor.
 
SmartCheetah said:
Brother None said:
willooi said:
I can't help but think that there's some anti-Obsidian bias with these reviews.

Obsidian releasing buggy games is not bias, it's fact. The bias is in ignoring similar faults in Bethesda releases. Not so much anti-Obsidian as pro-Bethesda.
Agreed.
Kotor 2 is the best example. Very good story + writing but you had to play with hordes of bugs around ye'.
Of course it was because they had to release it "RIGHT NOW" but oh well - It wasn't their only failure at this level... Maybe they should hire more testers? >.>

Some people are just horribly unlucky? I never really have any glitches or problems with my computer games, including KOTOR 2 and AP. I've had one or two that just refuse to start up, but that's about it. Oh, and having some older games work on newer systems. But I am always amused and amazed by people's horrendous luck with these things.
 
Feed Your Console, 10/10.
That also brings me to another point – I’m having one hell of a time finding any good armour that doesn’t completely suck the ass of a dead donkey. Same with Caps and Stimpaks. For some reason, they seem to be hiding very well from me because I’m always broke or in dire need of health – Go to the nearest travelling trader you say? Ya I did that…they’re sold out.

This made my dick hard.
 
Terrible reviews, but I guess it was to be expected. :roll: Any info on the stability of the PS3 version?

Lazlo said:
How could I hope to evaluate the worth of Baldur's Gate 2, a full-price game that's practically identical, both graphically and mechanically, to another game that was released years ago?

How could I hope to evaluate the worth of Fallout 2, a full-price game that's practically identical, both graphically and mechanically, to another game that was released years ago?
 
TQCast said:
Also, for those looking for a NIGHTMARE challenge, there’s HARDCORE mode. In Hardcore mode, EVERYTHING has weight, including all of your ammo.

I find it amusing that things like this are now considered "HARDCORE".
 
Eternal said:
These reviews are severely confusing me.

They are for the most part saying that the writing is good (and other than the idiot at joystiq who hates when video games make him think.) better than FO3.

G4's review also rips on the writing "That said, the quality of the writing in New Vegas – which is to say, the degree to which these stories will compel you as you play through them – is only a scant shadow of what players have come to expect from Fallout 3."

I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
 
Deelron said:
Eternal said:
These reviews are severely confusing me.

They are for the most part saying that the writing is good (and other than the idiot at joystiq who hates when video games make him think.) better than FO3.

G4's review also rips on the writing "That said, the quality of the writing in New Vegas – which is to say, the degree to which these stories will compel you as you play through them – is only a scant shadow of what players have come to expect from Fallout 3."

I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

I died a little inside. :shock:
 
Zeronet said:
I died a little inside. :shock:

How could you not? I'm not a blind hater of Fallout 3. There were aspects of it I loved. However to say anything else about the writing/story except it being - at best - mediocre, is either a lie or a revealing character flaw of the reviewer. I choose the latter. Completely voids the review of any worth.
 
SmartCheetah said:
Brother None said:
willooi said:
I can't help but think that there's some anti-Obsidian bias with these reviews.

Obsidian releasing buggy games is not bias, it's fact. The bias is in ignoring similar faults in Bethesda releases. Not so much anti-Obsidian as pro-Bethesda.
Agreed.
Kotor 2 is the best example. Very good story + writing but you had to play with hordes of bugs around ye'.
Of course it was because they had to release it "RIGHT NOW" but oh well - It wasn't their only failure at this level... Maybe they should hire more testers? >.>
The fact is they're not best at programming. But it's pretty young developer studio without much experience so I can wait for patches fanpatches, and fanfanpatches.

Obsidian has a ridiculous amount of experience. What they don't have in surplus like other developer studios is money, people, and power. The first is why they take whatever work they can get, making sequels and such for other developers' games. The second is why the games are so buggy. The third is why they get bullied around by bigger publishers to release games early.

Combine the three, and you can easily see if that every Obsidian game was given another 3 months for the sole purpose of bug squashing that their reputation wouldn't be marred.

Obsidian is a highly talented and experienced but smaller developer that attempts to do too much in its games with too few people to test things properly and also lacks the reputation and wallet that allows more well known developers like BioWare to tell people like LucasArts and Atari to fuck off until they finish making their game.
 
cogar66 said:
Apparently a LOT of the problems are solved by installing on the Xbox's HDD.
Was the same way with Fallout 3 and Oblivion. At the very least, it nipped load times in the ass.

Also, I seriously am wondering how Fallout 3's story was "deep" to G4. "oh noes dad is gone. oh noes, he's trapped in a rip-off of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream! oh yays I found him! oh noes, he killed himself! oh noes, the enclave is doing the same thing they did last game! oh noes, I am captured! oh yay, I killed them all! oh noes, I must sacrifice myself or another and make an arbitrary good or evil decision! [Insert repetitive lecture on the Book of Revelations in between all of these]" G4 also did this to Metro 2033. I find them excessively stupid.
 
cogar66 said:
Apparently a LOT of the problems are solved by installing on the Xbox's HDD.

On that note, with FO3 I noticed that the game would lock up severely when there wasn't very much HD space left on the console. My 360 is one of the 20 gig varieties, and ultimately when one of my FO3 save games got to about 10-20mb, just loading it up would cause massive, unplayable slowdown when the HD only had a few gigs left.

I'm not sure how it works or whether it's a direct consequence, but freeing up HD space helped out.

So yes, with Xbox 360 owners I agree with installing onto the HD and freeing up several gigs if you can spare it for best performance
 
I think the guy from Joystiq has no idea what he's talking about in regards to the music. I'm sure someone at Obsidian has already said that there are more songs in New Vegas than there were in F3, and the Joystiq guy claims to have never been able to get sick of the music in F3. What the fuck?
I wanted to have the radio playing in Fallout 3 to add to the atmosphere, but after about 3 hours I was going crazy from hearing the same 5 songs over and over again (not to mention the idiotic banter of Three Dog).

I also wonder if any of these reviewers on 360 thought to clear the memory cache seeing as how many of them are complaining about frame rate drops. Surely they must have remembered that the Engine had exactly the same issues in both Oblivion and F3? It's something that Obsidian and Bethesda should have taken the time to address (well, really, Bethesda should have sorted it out before releasing Oblivion) but it seems to me that a professional games reviewer should know enough to be able to clear their own cache and also advise their readers that they may need to do the same.

But, between Bethesda's obviously-buggy engine and Obsidian's history of releasing horribly-bugged games, it's good to see that nobody is comparing NV to the glitch-fest that was Alpha Protocol (a brilliantly written and fun to play glitch-fest, but a glitch-fest nonetheless).

Anyway, still have to wait until Friday, but I'm still very excited.
 
GamePro said:
That’s when I realized finishing the game was no longer a concern; that moment was enough to seal my perceptions of the game, and I felt confident enough to write my review. On top of that, I knew I could go back and visit all the locations I hadn’t yet discovered, and finish all the quests I had sitting in my PIP-Boy. In short, I could finally start to play the game the way it was intended.
Nothing like stating that you felt like you played the game wrong in order to review it and giving the impression that it's normal in how you review games.

willooi said:
The unanimous complaints about bugs doesn't sound too good, but hey, it wouldn't really be a Fallout game if it didn't ship with any, eh eh :P But no, they'll get patched and the main thing is that these reviews so far at least sound very positive and impressed with the writing and the content.
All of the bugs sound identical to ones that shipped with Fallout 3.

Brother None said:
*looks up from playing Wizardry*

Oh yeah that sounds fucking brutal, bro.
I'm gonna go watch a movie as I wait for the enemies to finish moving... :p Oh I love Wizardry 8 but damn is it slow.

Brother None said:
AtomicSabotage said:
Well it looks like review scores are averaging into the mid to high 80% range.

That's excellent! :D

Except that that is a pretty low score.

Well, not for a sequelspansion like New Vegas I guess. But if you're not scoring in the "MetaCritic 90s" you're anything but great. Any game can score in the 80s.
It's amusing because almost every review is saying that it's better than Fallout 3 and giving it a lower score. How predictable they are.

AtomicSabotage said:
A score of 86+ is pretty rare. There's less than 75 games between PS3/XBOX 360 that have scored higher than that. And when you consider the huge amount of games for both platforms up to this point, an 86+ is a perfectly acceptable score.
There are 75 games for the PS3 alone with a score of 86+ on Metacritic, be sure to hit that "All time" button. There are 21 games for the PS3 with a score of 85. All you really need to look at to see how balanced game reviews are is how metacritic had to shift their scale towards the top due to game publications giving markedly higher scores than reviews for any other media they cover. For everything but games a 61+ indicates generally favorable, with 40-60 being mixed, and 39- being generally unfavorable. With games it's 75+ and 50+.

Games
75+ _ 2606 _ 34.9% - Favorable cutoff
61-74 _ 2727 _ 36.5%
50-60 _ 1329 _ 17.8% - Mixed cutoff
40-49 _ 509 _ 6.8%
39- _ 296 _ 4.0%
Total 7467

Movies
75+ _ 1008 _ 15.5%
61-74 _ 1885 _ 29.0% - Favorable cutoff
50-60 _ 1362 _ 21.0%
40-49 _ 1055 _ 16.3% - Mixed cutoff
39- _ 1180 _ 18.2%
Total 6490

Of course that ignores multiplatform games so maybe with adjustments they are somewhat close but when only 10.8% of games use half of your scale, that half is pretty pointless and wasted. You then have 35% of games clustered in a 25 point range, makes it awfully hard to differentiate between how good they are compared to each other.

Deelron said:
G4's review also rips on the writing "That said, the quality of the writing in New Vegas – which is to say, the degree to which these stories will compel you as you play through them – is only a scant shadow of what players have come to expect from Fallout 3."

I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
Did you really expect more? G4 is trash and useless for reviews. Back in the day of Tech TV you at least had Judgement Day which gave you two different perspectives on games and the hosts were the ones who actually wrote the reviews (I presume).

Mapex said:
Obsidian has a ridiculous amount of experience. What they don't have in surplus like other developer studios is money, people, and power. The first is why they take whatever work they can get, making sequels and such for other developers' games. The second is why the games are so buggy. The third is why they get bullied around by bigger publishers to release games early.

Combine the three, and you can easily see if that every Obsidian game was given another 3 months for the sole purpose of bug squashing that their reputation wouldn't be marred.

Obsidian is a highly talented and experienced but smaller developer that attempts to do too much in its games with too few people to test things properly and also lacks the reputation and wallet that allows more well known developers like BioWare to tell people like LucasArts and Atari to fuck off until they finish making their game.
I'm pretty sure that they've had leadership/organizational/prioritization issues in the past which has been a major contributing factor to their games being riddled with bugs. They have a track record of taking on too much for the time limit they are given, resulting in many the problems that their games have.
 
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