Fallout: New Vegas should have been Fallout 3. Its more thematically consistent with the original Fallout titles than Fallout 3 was. The setting makes sense, its well written, and the gameplay is much improved over Fallout 3.

There's a long and sordid history involving the development of Fallout 3 and there are many names thrown out occasionally. Names that your average gamer today wouldn't recognize. Names like Black Isle or Van Buren. If you really want to hear the whole story, go check out the folks over at No Mutants Allowed, an internet web-zone dedicated to talking about Fallout and bitching about how no other game is Fallout.

The Story:

Unlike most games today, Fallout: New Vegas throws you right into the middle of the story. No over-elaborate, unskippable tutorials explaining your relationship with your dad here. You are just a simple courier sent to New Vegas to deliver a package. You get jumped, your package stolen, and then you get shot in the head by Chandler from Friends.

Sounds like my mail man.

When you come to, you find yourself in the house of that doctor from Battlestar Galactica. You get a brief sequence to set up your character and thrown out the door. Your initial goal: find the people who shot you. Along the way, you can partake in quests to help or hurt people, slaughter animals or people, dress in funny hats, spend all your beer money at thse casinos, get yourself a hooker, or just explore a vast desert landscape.

You'll also encounter various factions along the way and you'll ultimately have to decide who you'll throw your support to. There's the New California Republic, a democratic but highly corrupt government which means well but is incapable of doing much on its own. There's also Caesar's Legion, a band of ex-raiders and tribesmen united under the banner of old Roman culture. Then there is the person you were going to deliver the package to: Howard Hughes, a mysterious hermit who is never seen and lives in the penthouse of one of the New Vegas casinos.

Or you don't support any of them. In a refreshing turn of events, you can just say "fuck you" to all three of them and make yourself King of New Vegas. Of all the NPCs in this game, only one individual is unkillable if you don't count the random NPC kids. If you feel like becoming Death, Destroyer of Worlds, then the only thing holding you back is whether or not you'll get your ass kicked.

There is also a greater sense of moral choice present in the game. Fallout 3 had a bad habit of breaking things down to "Great choice/Good choice/'I eat puppies and kick orphans' Evil choice." In New Vegas, you may very well find that not all of the choices you make are going to be black and white. You might actually find things can get somewhat nebulous.

The Characters:

Like I mentioned earlier, this game doesn't railroad you into a given backstory. What your character was doing prior to becoming a courier, how they interact with people, and even their age is determined by you, the player. If you want to pretend that you were an escaped ex-con trying to turn over a new leaf, play it up. If you think your character is somekind of spaceman trapped on a desolate world, go ahead. If you want to make a crazy old man that wears tight leather, wields a shovel, and has neon green hair, then have you found the perfect game.

While your own character is what you make of it, the Mojave Wasteland is inhabited by plenty of memorable groups and characters. Off the top of my head you've got:

-A gang of thugs that dress like Elvis

-A gender confused Super Mutant that runs a radio station

-Howard Hughes

-An ex-NCR officer who can join you and kill anything that walks within a mile of you

-The Brotherhood of Steel

-The red-eyed stormtrooper guys like on the box cover

-Kevin Bacon

That's only a fraction of the characters you'll actually encounter. You will also find that the voice acting is significantly improved over the voice acting in Fallout 3. There's a much greater variety in the voices you overhear in the street. Sure, you'll still here some repetitive lines or the same voice from two different characters, but its nowhere near as frequent as the preceding game. I wish the voices I hear in my head were that nice.

The Gameplay:

In some respects, if you've played Fallout 3, you'll have a rough idea of what to expect from this game. It is a First Person Shooter RPG. While the game looks and feels similar to 3, there are enough vital differences to make it a different experience.

The first major thing is that combat has been overhauled into something brutal. VATS mode, the time-pausing, auto-aimer from the third game, no longer reduces damage. If you use VATS and you get shot, it's a full hit. Iron sights have been implemented allowing for better aiming with most weapons. Even a character with a low Guns skill can hit targets just by using the sights.Almost every weapon has alternate ammo types with different effects.

The biggest change in combat is a return of the Damage Threshold rating from the original two Fallouts. The higher the DT, the more resistant you are to lesser weapons. If you go against, oh say, a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin in power armor with an assault rifle, you might be screwed. Unless you remembered to bring some armor-piercing rounds. To make it in the Mojave ,you'll need to juggle around a variety of weapons and ammunition.

Also introduced in New Vegas is a crafting system. Using materials you collect from the wasteland, you can create chems, stimpaks, ammunition, and other items and weapons. How efficient you are at creating these items are dependent on your skills, most particularly your survival skill. With a low survival skill, you are as likely at making efficient use of your materials as Obama is at being invited as a guest speaker for a Palin rally.

Get it? It's topical political humor. Ha ha....

Can't forget the hardcore mode either. All of a sudden, you actually need to eat, drink and sleep or else you die. All ammunition has weight to it and your companions can be permanently killed. I don't much care for it though. I already have a realistic needs system in real life. I'd rather not have to worry about it in a video game.

The Graphics/Game Engine:

This is where the game really takes a big nosedive and its all because of the engine.

Gamebryo is the buggiest, most poorly coded graphical engine ever conceived. It makes for hideous character models, bizarre physics glitches, bad textures. It represents the inhumanity of man towards man, but in a computerized format. If you have ever witnessed bizarre, almost game breaking problems in Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Fallout 3, or even Civilization 4, then its a good bet that it all stemmed from the Gamebryo engine.

That aside, at least this game at least makes the Mojave Wasteland visually distinct from the Capitol Wasteland. Wide desert expanse, dusty western towns, the bright lights of New Vegas, and you actually spend most of your time in it instead of dark repetitive dungeons.

Also there isn't a weird green filter over everything. It's a orange filter this time.

In Conclusion:

Much like the original Fallout and Fallout 2, this game has some flaws to it. If you can get beneath the crust that is Gamebryo, you will find a delicious and enjoyable center. Kind of like a pizza roll, really.

Leave a comment on my web-zone if you want an irradiated Pizza Roll.