Kotaku returns to Fallout: New Vegas

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WorstUsernameEver

But best title ever!
After musing on mods (see our previous tidbits news post) Kotaku has published a couple of new articles on Fallout: New Vegas, part of an ongoing retrospective effort.

On that one place they just had to rob (yes, it's the Silver Rush):<blockquote>It's so easy. You just walk up to the table and crouch. At some point, you'll become "hidden," and then you can just… grab every single thing on the table. This happened the first time I played New Vegas, and this time around, I was waiting for it. I walked out of Silver Rush with enough plasma weaponry to last me the entire rest of the game. I even sold back some of the stuff I sold to get some mods for my weapons.

Was this on purpose? Did Obsidian intend for energy weapon players to find a ridiculous explosion of armaments to use? We may never know. All I know is that there's no way I'm the only one who robbed the Silver Rush blind. So come on, fess up. It's okay, you're in good company.</blockquote>And on VATS:<blockquote>It's amazing, really, just how well V.A.T.S. works. The action and shooting in New Vegas is remarkably bad; ancient feeling, crusty to a "free demo of off-brand 1994 FPS that came with PC Gamer" degree. Enemies float across the terrain, hovering left and right and shooting you. Your character slowly meanders backwards as your gun's huge iron sights pop up and obscure everything in your path, making it impossible to aim. A couple of melee enemies make a beeline towards you, swinging and yelling, and in about three seconds, you're dogmeat. Non-V.A.T.S. firefights in New Vegas feel jagged, shouty, disconnected, and altogether strange.

And yet with V.A.T.S., battles become distinctive, satisfying, tactical, and even humorous. If only more first-person games had some sort of option that let you freeze time with a button and ponder your options! (Okay I guess they do... the pause button. But that's not what I mean. And bullet-time, while similar, doesn't count—I'm talking freeze time here.) "Okay, this guy charging me needs to be dealt with, so I'll shoot him a couple of times, then I'll have to unfreeze time and reposition over behind that dumpster..."</blockquote>
 
:facepalm: to the section on VATS.

It's like Bethesda can't be touched, when FO3 came out the shooting was great (according to sources including Kotaku) the combat in Skyrim is supposedly great (according to Kotaku) yet in New Vegas they suddenly notice the terrible controls and poor interaction with the environment that has been an issue with every single game made on Bethesda's Elderscrolls Gamebryo engine.

And then this:

If only more first-person games had some sort of option that let you freeze time with a button and ponder your options!
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They had that, it was called TURN BASED GAMEPLAY. You know... the thing that Fallout was originally based on? The thing that FO3 stripped out to make it more user friendly and approachable to a larger audience than the people who knew about Fallout 1 and 2 before the announcement of Fallout 3.

I don't even want to read the whole "article" (I have a hard time calling it an article because that insults higher caliber writers... like Stars Weekly and The National Inquirer.) Because I know that just from that snippet the amount of stupid things said in that article will piss me off.
 
Not really cool to review an exploit, like it tells everything about the game - Fallout 1&2 had heavy exploits too, yet no one puts them in a review to show how the game sucks.

On the other hands, totally agreeing with the VATS first part. But I don't think VATS makes battles any better.
 
The current tech that Bethesda was using, a combination of the aging Gamebryo engine, Havok Physics, and other middleware in varying states of decrepitude, was simply not up to supporting an enjoyable first-person shooter. And yet if Fallout 3 was to be a first-person game, it was going to involve guns, and shooting. What to do?
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Not make a FPS? Use a different engine? Work their ass off on the existing tech? No, add a button that takes the player out of first person perspective and shooting perspective. So Bethesda's solution to making a shitty FPS is to allow it to not be a FPS. V.A.T.S. is in absolutely no way tied to or even uses a first person perspective and could be tied to any perspective that Bethesda could use that wasn't shitty in non V.A.T.S.. Hell you could even tied it into a text adventure.
 
Buying the Fallout franchise kept them from having to actually come up with their own ideas. Hence the game even featured the utterly destroyed bad guys from F2.

As I played Xcom Enemy Unknown this past month, I couldn't help but imagine if Fallout 3 had been made by people who actually liked playing the first two.

I know it's a dead horse, but I'll never stop beating it. Fallout 3 is the pinnacle of lazy game design.
 
Beelzebud said:
Buying the Fallout franchise kept them from having to actually come up with their own ideas. Hence the game even featured the utterly destroyed bad guys from F2.

As I played Xcom Enemy Unknown this past month, I couldn't help but imagine if Fallout 3 had been made by people who actually liked playing the first two.

I know it's a dead horse, but I'll never stop beating it. Fallout 3 is the pinnacle of lazy game design.
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I am depressed of the fact that the Fallout I like is most likely dead and that all future games bearing the name are catered to a very different type of audience, an audience who could never give a damn about the universe/setting until the franchise was 're invented' in order to run in an Oblivion like set up.

There are possibilities to make this better, FNV showed that and I can imagine of many more possibilities but even if these were suggested its most likely they would not be implemented as it doesn't 'click' with the core focus group.

I honestly wish Fallout had died with the dismantlement of BIS.
Bethesda's people IMO don't have the creative spirit or feeling for the universe to come up with fresh new ideas or situations that fit and will most likely continue to raid the old games for material while sticking a 'the player is the only person who can save the world' type of storyline to it.
 
Kotaku can suck my dick. It was and still is one of the first gaming blogs to start acting like real deal. Fuck them with a yardstick. They were one of the harbingers of the current gen gaming press decline.
 
I understand a lot of peoples disappointed feelings towards that type of article, but I think Bethesda should be taking more heat on the content of the game rather than its superficial combat mechanics. The problem with Fallout 3, is that being a Fallout 1 + 2 fan wasn't a prerequisite for getting to work on the project.

I'm certain that a lot of hard work on many individuals part went into making Fallout 3 work the way it did, it is still pretty obvious that the direction of the game wasn't interested in being clearly Fallout-esque.

Perhaps it was a way of distancing itself from the original 2 to clearly define that it would intentionally not be like the originals(FPS, etcetera). It is still regrettable that the Reboot Franchise did not try to be as Fallout-esque as possible. The way Fallout 3 plays but on a better platform(think borderlands), would have been an incredible experience if it truly looked Fallout style. Could you imagine a professionally done Fallout 1 Total Conversion on a borderlands engine? ...

Well, anyways, its clear that article is just UNIT SELLING HYPE that the journalists probably get a commissioned rate for.
 
Energy weapons are weak. If you really want to watch the cheese wheel spin, try sneaking out of Goodsprings making a beeline north, stay to the west of the westernmost road and up over the rise, Chance's grave... all you need is the shovel you found doing the gecko tutorial. Best melee weapon in the game (other than the blade of the east) 5 minutes after you loaded your disc. Want more?

Keep going north, avoid the cazadors or use your new shank on them, (the latter nabbing you a couple fire axes and a smg or three). Turn right and kill the mercs for a set of combat armor and the best knuckles in the game. 10 minutes tops (with retries). Oh, and you now have free access to New Vegas, Just a friendly reminder, no rules or honor among wastelanders, man is the most dangerous foe you'll find and you can turn off the iron sights in the settings if you don't like.

-PTAR
 
danielje said:
The way Fallout 3 plays but on a better platform(think borderlands), would have been an incredible experience if it truly looked Fallout style. Could you imagine a professionally done Fallout 1 Total Conversion on a borderlands engine?
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Borderlands engine? Clicking on HP bloats over and over again for hours and sometimes listening to bad monologues.

I'm throwing up cel shaded puke just thinking about it.
 
guys, you are missing the point.

fallout 3 they must slob all over bethesdas knob. because they have to cater to the big AAA publisher. AAA publishers cannot do any wrong.

obsidian on the other hand is a A publisher. not a AAA publisher. so they can take obsidians games and give honest reviews. when you read this review, its not about FO:NV, take it as them giving a review with kids gloves to FO3.

because all the mechanical problems are bethesdas. the only thing oblivion can be held responsible for are story problems. and possibly not even then as they are constrained by the engine. beths engine.
 
In related news Fallout NV: Ultimate edition is 50% on the Steam Halloween sales.
TF2 is on sale as well for some reason despite being free.
 
The reason they have TF2 up there is because they just put out another free Halloween event for it.

As to the "Borderlands engine" comment: Borderlands has a distinctive art style, but the game just uses the Unreal engine.
 
TheWesDude said:
guys, you are missing the point.

fallout 3 they must slob all over bethesdas knob. because they have to cater to the big AAA publisher. AAA publishers cannot do any wrong.

obsidian on the other hand is a A publisher. not a AAA publisher. so they can take obsidians games and give honest reviews. when you read this review, its not about FO:NV, take it as them giving a review with kids gloves to FO3.

because all the mechanical problems are bethesdas. the only thing oblivion can be held responsible for are story problems. and possibly not even then as they are constrained by the engine. beths engine.
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Yup. First off, FPS/Turn based never works well. VATS was shoehorned in to avoid just being Call of Duty with Fallout tagged on. I truly despise choosing perks in NV, there are two kinds; VATS and non. Makes the specilization of your character feel pointless, you have choice certainly but if you want to be the best at your weapon spec, you take the same perks every time. I blame the capped/set skill selection (e.g: no diminishing returns). I'm a perfectionist, and I like each of my PC's to be unique. The careful tuning of your skills honed to your level and making the progression through the game as smooth and effecient as possible depending on which storyline branch you chose was dull (nonexistant at times) after the first two games.

There's nothing wrong witth Obsidians itemization, it is truer to the S.P.E.C.I.A.L rules and overall spirit of FO than the previous attempt. Simply put, it was the best they could do with the resources they were given.
 
Beelzebud said:
The reason they have TF2 up there is because they just put out another free Halloween event for it.
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Oh they fixed it, it did have a buy button where you could save 0% on it.
 
Why were these articles even written? Was it such a slow news day that they had to write about a game that came out over a year ago?
 
woo1108 said:
Why they don't criticize fallout3?
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Because Fallout 3 fans would proceed to flood the site with hate mail because somebody dared to have a different opinion about the game. Why do you think NMA gets trolls and fanboys trying to prove us wrong?
 
White Knight said:
woo1108 said:
Why they don't criticize fallout3?
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Because Fallout 3 fans would proceed to flood the site with hate mail because somebody dared to have a different opinion about the game. Why do you think NMA gets trolls and fanboys trying to prove us wrong?
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Yeah, it has become sort of an initiation rite or that question sketch from "Monty Python and the holy grail" were King Arthur and the knights of the round table had to answer the question of the bridge guardian.

"To face the beast NMA you must answer these questions three..."
 
"What is your name?"

Smokeup420headshot

"What is your reason for posting?"

To talk with fans of Fallout!

"What... is your favorite post apocalyptic game?"

Fallout 3. No wait.... WAAAAAAAAASSSTELLLLLLAND!
 
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