By Quintin Smith on October 21st, 2010 at 4:36 pm.
Obsidian’s pseudo-sequel to Bethesda’s Fallout 3 hits the UK tomorrow, arriving amid a raft of positive reviews. But I see you there, perched atop that blasted rock, canteen in hand, waiting for the official RPS review. That wait is over. Here’s Wot I Think of New Vegas.
There’s a distant sound that can be heard throughout your time with New Vegas. Quieter than the cheery 1930s pop hits that warble from your radio, quieter even than the chirps of night-time insects, or the long gasps of wind blowing across the wasteland. It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.
Now, if it’s purely size you care about, New Vegas has you covered. From the moment your character (a professional courier who gets attacked and left for dead in the intro movie) wakes up in a backwater town, you’re introduced to a sprawling wasteland even bigger than that of Fallout 3. There are dozens of settlements to find. There are (shh!) secrets to stumble across. There are four and a half shitloads of different weapons. There is a heaving mass of character perks, just waiting to be unlocked as you progress through the game’s wide array of quests.
But something Bethesda were very aware of when they turned Fallout into a first-person game is that the wasteland is potentially quite a boring setting for the player to be set free in. I mean, you think wasteland, you think deserts, charred ruins and grumpy survivors wearing faded, drab clothes.
So, Bethesda went to great lengths to infuse their D.C. wasteland with colour. It was populated by kooky, occasionally even cartoonish characters- it’s no accident that super mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel featured so prominently. Then you had the independant towns, which were all built in or around visually striking setpieces, and Bethesda even built a labyrinth out of the subway system. Whatever direction you walked in Fallout 3, you felt confident you’d find something interesting.
Whatever direction you walk in New Vegas, you might find something interesting, but it’s much more likely you’ll find something pretty uninteresting, like an empty shack or an NCR army outpost where you’ll hear two different potato-faced soldiers voiced by two different actors say the same line of dialogue about the Mojave being hot. There’s also a slim chance you’ll find nothing at all but a few irradiated creatures, since the game has entire acres of barren scrub and desert that you absolutely would not see in Fallout 3. In my whole time with New Vegas, I found nothing as architecturally entertaining as Megaton, and nothing as eerie or inventive as Little Lamplight. Hiking long distances felt like a chore.
Maybe you’re reading this and thinking that a more bleak and empty and therefore a more “realistic” vision of the wasteland would suit you just fine. Trouble is, it’s more than that. It can be hard to tell the difference between a lack of content and an authentically barren wasteland, but sometimes New Vegas is so impressively bold in its laziness that the distinction is clear.
Look, here’s a shot of the incredible NCR sharecropper farms, the “pride” of the state! One of the guards working here told me that they have to keep the place well-defended, just so every wastelander walking past doesn’t come in and stuff themselves. This isn’t actually a joke. It’s just a disconnect between the scriptwriter and the whoever designs the actual areas.
And here’s a bustling casino floor in crazy New Vegas!
I took those screenshots from quite far back to get a sense of space, but they’re not staged. Almost all of New Vegas simply has a quiet minimalism to it, which is probably for the best since there’s a pretty awful bug with Windows 64 bit that dropkicks your framerate if you’re standing close to several people at the same time.
More frustrating are the absences where you know there’s meant to be an actual feature, but it was evidently forgotten or abandoned somewhere along the brief road to getting this game on the shelves. I had a long conversation with a bartender about the etiquette for hiring one of her prostitutes, before discovering after three increasingly confused laps of the bar that there were no prostitutes in the building. Later, I encountered a man tied to a pole, begging to be cut down, but there was no way to do so. And in one awesomely surreal instance, I had a chat with a character about their impressive snowglobe collection when there wasn’t a snowglobe in sight.
This isn’t another Vampire: Bloodlines, where an ambitious game’s been left unfinished, because there is no ambition here. Imagine for a second that the above problems didn’t come about because of a lack of time, but because of carelessness, and apply that carelessness to the entire game- most importantly, to the quest design and the dialogue. Now you’re getting close to imagining New Vegas.
God, the dialogue in this game. I think there were several points where I was so bored my brain began rotating in my head like food in a microwave. Whatever voice acting agency or methadone rehabilitation clinic Bethesda used to voice the populace of Oblivion and Fallout 3 is back, and while I didn’t particularly like the writing in Fallout 3 either, the characters in that game were often interesting or disturbed enough that you were curious about what they had to say.
With an unforgivably small number of exceptions (and one character who does actually approach the cast of Bloodlines in his likeability), the characters in New Vegas are all tedious constructs, voiced by people who sound like they’re boring in real life, wandering around in the Oblivion engine, which as we all know is about as charismatic as a slow-motion seizure. The low point for me was probably these guys:
Caesar’s Legion are New Vegas’ big addition to the Fallout lore. They’re a huge, warlike tribe that attempt to embody the characteristics of a Roman legion, meaning leather tunics, little skirts and ferocious disciple- drugs, and as far as I can tell, jokes, are banned. There is just nothing interesting about them, except for the fact that they all pronounce Caesar “Kai-zar”, a mystery I never got to the bottom of.
New Vegas’ saving grace is really just the framework it fails to employ particularly well. While I won’t be returning to New Vegas after this review, I did have a fair amount of fun doing all the old Fallouty things- exploring the wasteland, looting bodies, solving problems with my skills instead of violence and, when I didn’t have the skills, blowing apart head after tender head with my favourite shotgun.
It’s just that this is absolutely not the classic that Fallout 1 and 2 unquestionably were, and it’s also not the bold, bright reinvention that Fallout 3 was. It’s just… here, offering more Fallout. Do you want some more Fallout? If so, New Vegas can provide, so long as you don’t mind your every hour with it being laced with some small amount of disappointment. That is, unless you haven’t played a Fallout game before, but in that case you’re better off with the Game of the Year edition of Fallout 3.
I want to finish by talking about the new Hardcore mode, because that’s what lured me into doing this Wot I Think in the first place. Hardcore mode means playing a version of New Vegas where you have to eat, drink and sleep, where ammo takes up weight allowance in your inventory, and where crippled limbs can only be healed by a doctor or with a one-shot Doctor’s Bag item.
In execution, Hardcore mode isn’t hardcore. At all. Playing as a big ol’ science nerd with no survival skill, no barter skill, average endurance and meagre strength, I breezed through all of the obstacles of Hardcore mode without having to think about them.
Just about every building in the game has a working sink somewhere, so water isn’t an issue, and the piñata-like presence of food in the bins and cupboards of New Vegas’ “wasteland” is bolstered by the fruit you find growing naturally everywhere you go. The most you ever end up thinking about Hardcore mode is when some landmine or mutant with a club breaks your leg out in the middle of nowhere, and there’s nothing for it but to fast travel back to a town and go limping the rest of the way to a doctor.
The way it sounded in previews, Hardcore mode was going to provide New Vegas with an additional, survivalist dimension. Instead, it’s just a handful of weak extra rules that have little impact on the rest of the game. Hardcore mode is, at least, ripe for a modder to come along and fix up, which I suppose describes a lot of New Vegas.
What a bummer I am. Look, let me make it all better- here’s a post onSavyGamer about how you can buy Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition for £30. At that price, I’d say this game is probably worth it.
21/10/2010 at 16:38 skalpadda says:
Oblivion, eh? I bet it’s just Obsidian with guns.
21/10/2010 at 16:40 Quintin Smith says:
The worst. Fixed now.
20/11/2010 at 22:32 Ur stupid says:
In Latin, its pronounced Kai-sar, to the west its See-sar, didn’t you talk to easy pete?
21/10/2010 at 16:41 SquareWheel says:
I think I’ll wait for the inevitable GOTY edition at 66% off.
21/10/2010 at 16:45 Nick C says:
I have to disagree with this review completely. It has everything I loved about F3, but with the writing wit that I enjoyed from the first 2 games. It’s a win for me.
21/10/2010 at 17:05 mwoody says:
Yeah, I’m stunned at this review. It’s Fallout 3, only with better balanced gameplay, infinitely more interesting quests and locations, better writing, better… EVERYTHING. It’s like he played a different game.
21/10/2010 at 17:26 The Innocent says:
In agreement as well. It reminds me a lot more of the bleak-but-darkly-humorous world of the first two games, and I’m rather pleased to see many of FO3′s changes gone. For one, the perks and stats don’t transform you into an uberman anymore, it isn’t possible any longer (as far as I know) to max out everything, the story overall is much more fascinating and mysterious, and… well, it just feels better generally than FO3.
21/10/2010 at 18:17 tomwaitsfornoman says:
I’m in this corner. To me, New Vegas feels like a real successor to the franchise in a way that Fallout 3 did not.
21/10/2010 at 18:19 Jason Moyer says:
Yeah, I’m about 10 hours in now and loving it. An improvement over 3 in every way, and I’ve encountered no bugs besides the quick/autosave one.
21/10/2010 at 18:58 suibhne says:
I too feel…well, baffled. I’m only a few hours in, but the game has a far better vibe to it than FO3 ever did for me. I’m especially puzzled by Quinns’ criticism of the writing, which I’ve found to be a few levels above Bethesda’s plain, dull language in FO3. Granted, this ain’t your daddy’s PS:T…but the game still exceeds FO3 in every way that I can identify, even in features where the improvement is disappointingly slight (like Hardcore mode).
FO:NV could be a case study, in fact, for the extent to which game reviews are situated in a specific time/market. This game is being dinged for flaws that were present in the original – a game which reviewers characterized with hyperbolic phrases like “a paean to the human spirit” (or was it “testament”?).
As for FO3′s “inventiveness” – well, for every Little Lamplight there were two Big Towns. Memory, rose-colored glasses, etc., etc.
21/10/2010 at 19:05 Zenicetus says:
I agree; maybe it’s a difference in expectations, but for me the game is better than the review suggests. I think much it depends on how much you liked Fallout 3 (or didn’t), and whether you’re okay with just “more Fallout” instead of a complete engine re-write. The complaint about the Mojave being too empty is also puzzling, considering that unlike the DC area in F3, that area actually is an empty wasteland even without a nuclear war.
This version seems better balanced than F3, where I became too powerful too early;. In this one, I’m constantly tempted into thinking I can handle a combat situation, and then I get smacked down. That probably changes towards the end game, but so far it seems like a good balance. The writing isn’t all that I’d hoped for, so far, but there have been some creepy bits with the Legion.
Also, Quinn didn’t comment on the changes to VATS, which are substantial. Range is reduced, and iron sights are actually useful now. I had a habit of just using VATS as a sort of autopilot mode in F3, but I’m shooting much more on iron sights now, and enjoying it. The one thing that’s still a bit annoying is the laser-like, flat trajectory of projectile weapons. I can snipe accurately at ridiculous distances with iron sights, just laying them right on target with no adjustment. But I guess bullet drop would be asking too much for this type of game.
The knock on “hard” mode is justified, though. Modders can probably make the effects kick in faster, but the real problem is the sheer abundance of water, food, and medicine in the game (including crafting). For the game to feel like a real survival situation, the body drops and loot boxes need to be ramped way down.
21/10/2010 at 19:17 Lobotomist says:
I am really shocked.
While I admit, have played only 5 hours. My impressions were completely opposite.
I give benefit of the doubt , Quintin maybe played far more into the game. But some things just dont strike as logical to me.
Obsidian were the original people that worked on original fallouts. They were very excited about New Vegas ( which was talked about in a leak from obsidian employee talking about Alpha Protocol ). And last but not least – its friggin Obsidian: KOTOR2 , Mask of Betrayer , Planescape. If anything they know how to write story and dialogue.
Now. I am also shocked with bad reception of this game I started seeing in media.
They butchered Alpha Protocol. That was in my opinion fairly good game , at least not worst than ME2 crap. Now they try to kill this game ?
Dont you realize it will spell death for Obsidian ?
Do you want another great studio to go down, like Troika did ? And than we will be sorry.
People still play Temple Of Elemental Evil , and Vampire <- same games Troika was burned for.
So all in all I see this review by Quintin Smith, very contraversial.
Either it will turn out the game sucks. But I still think he should have more remorse for Obsidian.
or It will turn out the game is actually pretty good but not for everyone (like let say Risen, or Gothic) and Quintin will get bad rep – and hurt this site (cause its the only game review site i trust)
In any way. Its bad
21/10/2010 at 21:58 skalpadda says:
Lobotomist:
Would you rather he lied about his experiences just to save face for Obsidian? And if they have made a game with severe bugs, missing content and a serious lack of polish (which doesn’t sound unlikely considering their track record), isn’t it fair to the people who read this site to point that out?
21/10/2010 at 22:13 Lobotomist says:
No.
But I also think that he should be more forgiving ( given it is the case that game sucks, which I hear other people vocally deny )
Troika went under because both Vampire:Bloodlines and TOEE were buggy at release and had missing content. And critics burned them in reviews.
But both games were also that rare good RPGs that people play and buy to this day.
I just wonder what would happen if the reviewers said that those games are great, but need more work. Perhaps we would still have Troika around, making good RPGs ?
21/10/2010 at 22:37 StingingVelvet says:
Add me too, I don’t think it is possible for me to disagree with the review more. It’s all the best parts of Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 merged together if you ask me, and quite brilliant. Only problem is the bugs, but the community has already fixed most of them.
I am noticing my opinions and perspectives just don’t really mesh with this writer’s, on average. Shame.
21/10/2010 at 22:58 FunkyBadger says:
Lobo: I played TOE on release, and it was far from a good game. It was a painful experience. Not quite as bad as Ruins of Myth Drannor, but getting there. THe company that made that should not be allowed to make more games.
21/10/2010 at 23:12 skalpadda says:
Lobotomist:
“Troika went under because both Vampire:Bloodlines and TOEE were buggy at release and had missing content. And critics burned them in reviews.”
And they deserved to be, they released a broken product. I can’t think of any other industry where that would ever be considered OK. It would be like a movie critic recommending a film even though it skips forward a minute for every ten, and makes your DVD player shut down just before the epic ending, but buy it anyway because the writing is good. Or recommending a comic book where half the panels are missing and every other speech bubble has to be translated from ancient Chinese.
I don’t hate Obsidian at all and I really think they’ve produced some amazing stuff, but they have serious issues with production values and just plain getting their shit together and they need to be called out on it when they screw up or we’ll be stuck with having to wade through crap to get to the good bits forever. KotOR2 is one of my favourite games, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone without a long list of caveats.
That said, the bit about “phoning this game in” in the article seemed needlessly insulting and presumptuous.
22/10/2010 at 00:51 thebigJ_A says:
While I respect Quinns’ opinion, i have to add my voice to those who strongly disagree. Were it not for the bugs and crashes, this game would be better than FO3 (which I absolutely loved.)
Oh well, to each there own.
22/10/2010 at 01:30 Psyk says:
@Zenicetus
Why would you want any more variables to where your bullet will go? your playing an RPG you make your gun more accurate by leveling up the correct skills.
22/10/2010 at 05:34 Nalano says:
Likewise: 16 hours into it (and counting) and I’m loving every moment.
I hated Fallout 3 for giving me a nice treat in terms of the environment and then totally destroying it with the fridge logic and bad characters. New Vegas feels like a true Fallout sequel to me.
22/10/2010 at 06:49 Kryopsis says:
20 hours into the game, I absolutely love it, having disliked nearly everything about Fallout 3. While everyone is entitled to his opinion, I find that a lot of the negative points of the review are unjustified and the whole thing seems like a rush to get it over with and move on to a different game. Performance is certainly an issue and there seem to be some major bugs, from what I hear. Personally I’ve yet to experience a freeze, a crash or anything more serious than a collision issue.
New Vegas offers a few options to tweak the experience: the ironsight aiming, the hardcore mode and the Wild Wasteland trait. I find that all three make the experience much more enjoyable. I don’t understand the issue with the Hardcore mode. It isn’t supposed to make the game significantly harder, much like Far Cry 2′s malaria. It’s there for flavour and immersion. The settings menu contains a difficulty option that does make the game easier and harder.
22/10/2010 at 11:03 skalpadda says:
Oh, and one more thing that might be worth pointing out for those who feel Quinns should have some had some oversight with bugs and bad polish: It’s not a rare thing to see the writers on this site give their own views on a game after a Wot I Think has been done, and it’s also not uncommon to see them go back and give a game another whirl once it’s been patched up or modded, something that has gotten me to buy a few games where the initial impressions have been pretty dire. Might be worth keeping that in mind when reading this site.
22/10/2010 at 13:48 Miko says:
I definitely feel that New Vegas is like Fallout 3 except good. On the one hand, yes, the places do feel even more like empty wastelands than is typical for an Elder Scrolls/NuFallout game, this is true. On the other, for the first time in one of these, the writing isn’t terrible. On the balance, I’m definitely enjoying it more than FO3, despite Hardcore Mode being no such thing.
23/10/2010 at 06:31 Nesetalis says:
Quin.. I think you dropped the ball on this one.
First off, its a wasteland, second, its a desert… empty swathes of land with a few rare spots of life. Making the world feel big did far more for the game in my opinion than if they had just condensed everything down to a small room with cities 10 steps from each other.
Secondly, fallout 3 was drivel, a bad story, with bad gameplay, and worse immersion. The only downside to new vegas in my opinion was the fallout 3 engine/oblivion engine. Cant stand the wooden actor models that weve been plagued with for a decade, morrowind on.
it feels like fallout 1/2, it plays similar, though I was never a fan of vats. I miss the old turnbased fallout but I’m good enough with ironsights to get along with this game.
it may not be as vivid a palate of colors as fallout 3, lots of browns everywhere, but I don’t recall fallout 3 being much more than brown and gray with a bit of blue/gray thrown in.
as for the dialog, It had me laughing at times, remembering at others, and always entertained me. Fallout 3 I didn’t even bother finishing my first time through, though eventually I did beat it, but never went back for the DLC.
24/10/2010 at 17:16 Mike I. says:
Add me to the “were you playing the same game?” camp. I’m not terribly far in the game (level 11, haven’t even entered New Vegas proper yet), but so far I’m finding the writing in the game to be an order of magnitude above what Bethesda pumped out. The feel of the game is a lot less directed, but in my mind that’s a good thing; along with everything else in Fallout:NV, it brings to mind the feeling I had playing Fallout 2, and fixes a lot of the weaknesses of Fallout 3.
I think a great example of the writing is the character No Bark, who’s a mental case living just outside of Novac. His dialogue actually had me laughing out loud in a way I never did with any of the “zany” characters in Fallout 3. Bethesda would write dialogue that would essentially read as “I am zany. Look at the zany things I say. They make no sense! So zany!” Obsidian actually brought some writers to the game, and the result is much, much more entertaining.
27/10/2010 at 17:41 Idiot Reviewer says:
Wow, you’re so cool. A negative review for an awesome game just so you can generate hits for your page. Yawn. You obviously are cashing some Bethesda checks right now, so you won’t bother reading this.
You are 100% wrong about this game. And I am never coming to RPS again.
04/11/2010 at 01:36 Niker says:
This is the review you get when you have a lazy, ignorant person writing it.
21/10/2010 at 16:45 Vinraith says:
Since hardcore mode is already present in the code, it’s not even going to require “a modder to fix it up,” my guess is you can go into the mod tools and simply tweak a few numbers to give it real teeth.
21/10/2010 at 17:14 Bhazor says:
I think the one hardcore addition people keep missing is the whole companions can die thing. Y’know, a pretty major thing really.
Also I played FO3 with the Better Stimpacks mod (essentially the same delayed healing thing as Obsidian added) and I thought it made a huge difference. Certainly fights were more dramatic when I could no longer instant heal the use of my arms back.
21/10/2010 at 17:19 Vinraith says:
@Bhazor
I’ve been playing Wanderer’s Edition so much I can’t help but think of stimpaks as rare and precious commodities not to be used except under dire circumstances.
Companions dying is a nice touch, certainly, though in FO3 at least I never used them. I tend to play stealthy, and never met a companion that didn’t cramp my style to the point where I was better off without them.
22/10/2010 at 05:21 jsdn says:
Tweaking numbers is a mod. He was saying that it lends itself well to modding, but you’d think it’d have the right numbers in the first place (subjective, but the current numbers are worthless). Along with the missing computer, snowglobes, and prostitutes.
22/10/2010 at 06:46 Vinraith says:
@jsdn
Tweaking numbers is a mod.
No more so than changing your game resolution in an .ini file, or turning off mouse acceleration in a config file, or any other standard PC game tweaking.
21/10/2010 at 16:46 Tyrone Slothrop. says:
I couldn’t disagree with this review more, I loved Fallout 3… yet this just supersedes it in the most crucial areas of gameplay and writing. Sure it’s not very polished (yet moreso than I believed it would be) but this is one of the best games I’ve ever played. The choices are quite complex and worrisome unlike Fallout 3′s or Mass Effect’s, the dialogue is quite beautiful and sophisticated at times, completely and effortlessly hilarious and poignant at other times.
My candidate for GOTY2010.
21/10/2010 at 16:46 Sunjammer says:
Couldn’t disagree more. But you’re entitled to your opinion of course.
21/10/2010 at 16:53 Quasar says:
I now have no idea what to think – but I liked both Oblivion and Fallout 3, despite their issues.
I think I shall play it for myself.
21/10/2010 at 16:53 Ian says:
There is a bloke – bearded one in the opening town – who acknowledges the different pronunciations of Caesar. It’s not a full-blown explanation supported by reams of back story, more just an off the cuff comment that establishes the point in the game world.
But yeah, I love the game.
21/10/2010 at 17:05 Bhazor says:
Well I’ve not played the game but I’m sure Kaiser (German for king) was pretty common 50′s slang for a head honcho/ leader/ Bad Muthfucka.
21/10/2010 at 17:10 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
“Kai-zar” is how “Caesar” is pronounced in Latin. “See-zer” is an English bastardisation. I guess the Caesar’s Legion guys prefer to use the authentic pronunciation.
21/10/2010 at 17:37 heh says:
Yes, it’s the old man sitting outside of the saloon. He mentions the confusion in the pronunciations himself. It isn’t ignored.
21/10/2010 at 17:51 stahlwerk says:
Kaiser is german for Emperor and is a direct derivation from the latin word (what with the “holy roman empire of german nation” and such). Ironically, Caesar is pronounced Zäsar (Tsay-Sar) in day-to-day german as well.
21/10/2010 at 19:06 suibhne says:
It *is* a nice touch – it’s an affectation that immediately establishes the Legion’s collective character.
21/10/2010 at 20:35 Dreamhacker says:
VelvetFistIronGlove is correct, it really is pronounced “kai-zar” in correct Latin.
I studied latin on university level and can provide you with this small pronunciation guide:
C is (always) pronounced K.
AE is pronounced AY.
OE is pronounced OI.
U is pronounced as Oooh.
O is pronounced…. with a sound that isn’t really used in the english language. Think italian/spanish O.
Now, try this: In vili veste, nemo tractatur honeste.
21/10/2010 at 22:07 Grundlewart says:
V is also pronounced like a W.
My Latin teacher explained the vowels thusly:
A is flat, as in “black”
E is pronounced “eh” or “ay”
I is pronounced “ee”
O is flat, as in “hot”
U is pronounced “oo”
So Veni Vidi Vici is pronounced Wennay Weeday Weekay.
21/10/2010 at 22:11 Grundlewart says:
Crapsticks, screwed that up. Teach me to multitask whilst reading RPS.
Weh-nee Wee-dee Wee-kee
21/10/2010 at 22:27 Bhazor says:
Well done. Now write it out 500 times or I’ll cut your balls off.
26/10/2010 at 06:21 Wulf says:
Do as the man says, be true to Bhazor!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
21/10/2010 at 16:53 Delusibeta says:
This is probably the first review I’ve seen that preferred Fallout 3 over New Vegas. I imagine that RPS will probably get some slack for this (although I imagine it’ll also be hailed as proof in certain sections of the Obsidian hatedom).
Not that I’m complaining too much, I bagged that Fallout 3 + New Vegas for £30 deal (topped up with Just Cause 2 for a little under £9 on top of that. I’m going to have my fill of sandboxes for a while). New release AAA games for £18, who would have thunk that?
21/10/2010 at 16:55 Urael says:
*glances upwards*
Hmmm. If I were a cynical man I’d wonder if there weren’t some publisher stooges leaving comments on boards to dispell any negative criticism of the game…surely a sign that the world of Fallout can’t be too far off.
I’m not a Day One purchaser except in rare circumstances. I bought Fallout 3 GOTY, all DLC and patches included and I’ll probably do the same here.
21/10/2010 at 16:56 Archonsod says:
If so they’ve hired more stooges than purchasers, everywhere I’ve seen people are saying it’s FO3 as it should have been.
21/10/2010 at 17:12 mwoody says:
Well, have you noticed that all the comments, both above and below, are negative if they’ve not played the game but positive if they have? Perhaps THAT should tell you something?
21/10/2010 at 18:50 perilisk says:
Not really, I’m enjoying myself. That said, I’m playing it as an Obsidian game, rather than a Bethesda game, so I don’t just aimlessly wander out into the wasteland for shits and giggles, I’m either heading toward something interesting I saw in the distance, or working on quests, of which there are quite a few. As a result, I have yet to notice “emptiness”. The VO and writing are hands down better, the quests invite you to think and make choices (and wonder if they’re good ones), the combat is much more challenging, and the bugginess hasn’t been a deal-breaker for me yet. I’m playing in hardcode mode, which basically requires that you carry some extra survival gear and use it periodically. If it was too challenging, it would detract from the experience, but it mainly forces you to give more thought into what you carry.
About the worst thing I can say about it is that there is a hell of lot of stuff that they don’t explain and just leave you to figure out for yourself, especially when it comes to crafting. The manual is particularly worthless — it doesn’t even describe stats and skills, let alone perks.
21/10/2010 at 22:05 Iggy Pop says:
This game is good, and I can assure you I’m no stooge.
21/10/2010 at 22:21 neems says:
Lol. Plus one million points.
21/10/2010 at 16:58 Mac says:
After reading all the reviews of this game whining about the “bugs” and claiming the game was “a mess,” this is the first write-up I’ve read that really touches on the real problems of the game: the content. I’m still playing NV and am enjoying it well enough, but I can agree with many of the points here. Solid write-up.
21/10/2010 at 16:59 Castle says:
Wow. Not what i was expecting. Though I’ll probably still pick this up once it goes on sale based on the glowing EG review, I’m a little less excited now…
21/10/2010 at 16:59 Alli says:
FWIW, while it was published by Bethesda it was developed by a different studio.
21/10/2010 at 16:59 Kelron says:
Not an unexpected review, Obsidian’s games have always been divisive.
21/10/2010 at 17:00 Noël says:
Kai-zar is how Caesar is originally pronounced in latin and explains for example the German word for Emperor: “Kaiser”.
This article makes me a very sad man.
21/10/2010 at 17:00 Danarchist says:
I have been enjoying it myself, but the bugs, good lord the bugs! I know no game releases perfect these days. Most companies expect their customers to perform all the QA testing for them I guess. I was actually surprised when I noticed the little cloud symbol appeared next to the game on my steam console. I had been playing an hour or two on my laptop at work and the second I got home I popped onto my desktop to continue my ammo hording. Of course the “sync” apparently only syncs your autosave and quicksaves from the first 10 minutes of play. After dinking around with loading on my lappy and exiting the game, waiting for the little sync notification etc I just said screw it and copied the saves folder off my laptop over my network.
Now of course my quicksave only works about 25% of the time…..sigh. I have to rekill a swarm of radscorpions again today at lunch….
Bugs aside I do like some of the new stuff, still hate the character graphics but not enough to hate the game. Your right it is just more of the same, but after the couple days worth of ingame time I spent on fallout 3 more of the same isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even with the game crashing its still more fun than risen IMHO ;)
5 days till the new fable? Maybe this one will be better than the last hehe
21/10/2010 at 17:10 Delusibeta says:
Apparently, due to reports of that bug, Valve has switched off Steam Cloud for that game. Reports are still coming in, so I’m calling it an engine bug until proved otherwise.
21/10/2010 at 22:21 DJ Phantoon says:
Yeah, why the heck didn’t Quintin mention the bugs? If anyone didn’t read the previous mini article about it, they’re just gonna assume he didn’t like the game because it felt uninspired to him.
22/10/2010 at 15:44 Miko says:
Any time you save in a new slot, it makes a backup of that save. Every time you run the game (because you quit or crashed to desktop, probably the latter) it copies that backup over the slot. In other words, quicksaves and autosaves only work as long as you don’t quit or crash, then they’re gone, and if you want other saves to be usable you have to always use a new slot.
21/10/2010 at 17:00 battles_atlas says:
Nice to read a review by someone who has actually played the Hardcore mode, rather than just regurgitating the press release, which appears to have been the case with other reviews (PCG I’m looking at you).
21/10/2010 at 19:35 suibhne says:
Sure, Quinns mentions Hardcore mode, but he doesn’t cover the most important aspects: ammo weight (versus the weightlessness in FO3 that allowed you to effortlessly carry dozens of rockets and nukes alongside hundreds of rounds of all types of ammo) and companion permadeath (which can be a real curse due to the oft-silly AI). To be fair, other reviews aren’t mentioning these factors either, but it’s worth mentioning since Quinns dings Hardcore mode for having negligible in-game impact. The ammo change alone is huge.
21/10/2010 at 22:55 Dances to Podcasts says:
From above: “Hardcore mode means playing a version of New Vegas where you have to eat, drink and sleep, where ammo takes up weight allowance in your inventory, and where crippled limbs can only be healed by a doctor or with a one-shot Doctor’s Bag item.”
22/10/2010 at 03:53 suibhne says:
He mentions ammo weight, yes, but he doesn’t cover it – ammo weight gets no mention in his elaboration of Hardcore effects. I’ve found it to change the game pretty significantly from my experience back in FO3, where I was carrying thousands of rounds without breaking a sweat. This in turn enabled me to easily juggle multiple weapon types at a time. Ammo weight enforces more careful character choices, but it seems Quinns didn’t notice. (Perhaps this wasn’t an issue for the type of character he played, or perhaps he felt the overall effect was insignificant.)
And he doesn’t even mention companion permadeath, for what that’s worth. (Maybe not much.)
25/10/2010 at 22:18 Josh W says:
Yes hardcore mode does make it harder, but it doesn’t do it in a way that gives you a feeling of scarcity and survival. It forms a nuicence rather than a proper strategic consideration.
Also, when playing it me and my friend kept waiting for the double-cross we knew was going to happen, because we were getting away with stuff too easily, but no. The “angles” never turned out to be substantial. We kept hoping that the political stuff would get complex, but it never did. Real shame.
There’s a problem there, where making value choices in this game seems to be mostly about picking options on a list, rather than having to fight for any of them. It’s like the game just holds up it’s hands and gives you the lot.
Both of those sides of the game don’t seem to have any teeth, like they’re the padling pool version, designed to make sure people want more, rather than running scared. Maybe obsidian are hoping that if they start off like this, people will ask for more of this stuff in future games.
21/10/2010 at 17:01 Mike says:
The Caesar pronounciation thingy comes from one of the way latin scholars think the Romans used their laguage. One of these tradition says that “ae” may have been pronounced “ai”.
Mistery solved.:)
21/10/2010 at 17:03 Will Tomas says:
On the Caesar/Kaisar thing – as far as we can tell, that’s how the Romans would have pronounced Caesar in Latin. They used a hard ‘C’ sound for the C and ‘ae’ is pronounced ‘ai’. I suspect they’re trying to be authentic.
That’s the benefits of a public school education, right there.
21/10/2010 at 17:20 the wiseass says:
As somebody who has studied Latin himself, I can say that this explanation is absolutely correct.
21/10/2010 at 17:23 Clovis says:
But the game takes place in the post-apocalyptic US where everyone pronounces it sees-er. I guess if you’re the kinda’ crazy person who manages to start up a group of people who wear tunics after the nukes fall, maybe you know the different pronunciation and foist it on everyone else though. I guess Quinns wanted to hear someone explain that that was the reason.
I guess the disconnect is that if I saw “Caesar” and someone said “Kai-sar”, I’d immediately ask why. Those Caesar guys must constantly get asked about it, so it seems like they’d get used to explaining it to people. They’d say “Kai-sar”, see your confusion, and then sheepishly explain that big boss man sez that’s how the old Romans said it.
Anyway, after the war comes, I’m gonna’ form a group called the Genghis Kahns and make all my recruits pronounce it “Jin-Jiss”.
21/10/2010 at 17:28 heh says:
One of the first characters you can meet (I believe the old man sitting outside of the saloon) mentions that he doesn’t know if it’s really pronounced Ceasar or Kaisar. So that ‘confusion’ is established in the game world through the characters themselves.
21/10/2010 at 18:40 Bhazor says:
Or they’d have you crucified for dissing their sweet Latin skills. Y’know, because the Romans weren’t the nicest guys.
21/10/2010 at 19:13 Zenicetus says:
@ Clovis:
“But the game takes place in the post-apocalyptic US where everyone pronounces it sees-er. I guess if you’re the kinda’ crazy person who manages to start up a group of people who wear tunics after the nukes fall, maybe you know the different pronunciation and foist it on everyone else though.”
I went to school here in the USA, and I had a mean bastard of a Latin teacher who would have done exactly that, if the bombs had dropped and he survived.
21/10/2010 at 17:03 bblz says:
Personaly I..disagree! Which startles me, because I’m usually pretty in sync with RPS’ opinion pieces. Not to take away from what you’re saying of course, it certainly isn’t for everyone.
Here goes nothing:
I enjoyed Fallout 3 quite a bit, but not as a Fallout game. See, I’m “one of those”. One of those people that pissed all over the idea of a Bethesda-made Fallout sequel from the day it was announced. When it came out, I was actually hurt by how very much “not Fallout” it was (in comparison to 1&2, obviously), even though I kind of expected it. A month or so passed and I picked it up again, without any illusion that this has anything to do with the two prequels I love. And it was fun. But I could never draw parallels to the earlier Fallout titles.
New Vegas changed this. I can be nostalgic and play NV without getting an aneurysm. Just about everything Fallout 3 did, NV does better. The voicing, the writing, the shooting, the exploration – they even battled the level scaling nonsense with Damage Threshold (superior armor vs. inferior weapon means you chip away at an enemy 0-1 hp at a time). The quests aren’t half as boring. Dialogue isn’t stupid as shit. No more “[Intelligence] So you fight the good fight with your voice?” or “Have you seen a middle-aged man?”. It can be intensely funny when it wants to be and the cross-referencing stuff that happened in Fallout 2 is insanely rewarding. I met a woman that talked about being a vertibird pilot; one day she flew over Klamath and had problems with the machinery – thinking back on the crashed Vertibird I saw 10 years ago when playing Fallout 2 just made me smile so, so much.
So, there’s another opinion on NV. I literally don’t know how to start listing the things it does better than it’s predecessor, which is why I barely scratch the surface and keep it short. Which doesn’t mean that it’s not bug-ridden as fuck, but I enjoy the game so much that I put up with it. And there has to be a lot of good in a game to make me do that.
21/10/2010 at 17:45 Fox says:
I had the same impression of F3 – decent game, didn’t feel like Fallout. I wasn’t going to get NV for this reason, but some of the reviews convinced me late last night. I’ve only barely scratched the surface of the game, but so far I’ve really enjoyed it. The review here had me suddenly worried that I’d misspent $50, but your comment has put me at ease again. Thanks for that.
I can’t wait to find these references to the past games!
21/10/2010 at 17:03 Alex Cox says:
Quinns — Where you put ‘Oblivion’ you meant ‘Obsidian’. A few times.
21/10/2010 at 17:04 Alex Cox says:
I am really slow to comment, clearly.
21/10/2010 at 17:05 burglarize says:
I can’t even imagine how awkward that pole-dancer’s animation is.
21/10/2010 at 17:06 Faldrath says:
“They’re a huge, warlike tribe that attempt to embody the characteristics of a Roman legion, meaning leather tunics, little skirts and ferocious disciple- drugs, and as far as I can tell, jokes, are banned.”
“Discipline” instead of “disciple”, right?
And I don’t know, most of the people saying that they “love” the game don’t say *why* they love the game, which does lead me to think they might be forcing their high expectations into reality. I acknowledge that’s what happened to me with FO3, I wanted it to be great so much that I convinced myself it was great for a while, until reality slowly sank in, and I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it.
(I do plan on trying it again with a heavily modded GotY edition. As for NV, I’ll wait for a few patches, at least.)
21/10/2010 at 17:35 The Innocent says:
Plenty of people have been saying *why* they love it. All the positive reviews have, and plenty of comments here have as well.
21/10/2010 at 17:35 Danarchist says:
Well I can say for myself, I did NOT have high expectations. I am an old school fallout fan and hated 3 right up till a coworker made an awesome mod for it and forced me to buy the bloody thing.
As for why I love it, thats really simple, its fun. You remember fun right? I have been doing a real tour-de-blase’ through all my old unfinished games and anything that has been mentioned favorably in forums that I hadn’t tried over the last few months. You see i suffered a sudden mmo burnout about 6 months ago and quickly burned through all the single player games I hadn’t tried in the interim. So I have been bored, and everything I have bought recently has been boring (except armored princess, and it is good for about an hour at a time). So when I bought new vegas, not even on release day mind you, I honestly was just expecting to be bored again and $50 wiser. Being happily surprised was in itself quite surprising!
So to answer your statement, I expected to hate it, I read enough about the bugs and saminess to quantify hating it. I bought it anyways and found that my faithful sources of game opinioness had failed me more epically than when siskel and egbert gave the original dune movie two thumbs down and I ended up watching it for the first time on VHS.
21/10/2010 at 17:06 Burgeri says:
I pre-ordered mine, so I am already committed. However, I am afraid you might be telling the truth. The shock of post-apocalyptic wasteland is that it is not supposed to be wasteland: it was transformed into one. Deserts of Nevada are wastelands even today, so as far as the choice of locale goes, FNV happens in the one place where nuclear holocaust did not matter.
21/10/2010 at 17:06 dhex says:
i’ve been lucky not to have experienced any bugs thus far, beyond the usual problems with this engine. (mostly a kind of stutter that’s really more of a lurch, i.e. every three or four seconds of walking forward, it seems to skip ahead a tad. it’s irritating but you eventually tune it out, as i did in fallout 3)
i disagree with the above on most of the points, but i do agree that so far it hasn’t really grabbed me as i’d hoped. the writing is far better, but outwriting bethesda may not really be much of an accomplishment. and hardcore mode may be more hardcore than easy, but it’s definitely not HARDCORE.
or ‘ardcore, as it were.
21/10/2010 at 17:08 heh says:
How anyone can think the writing in New Vegas is equal to the tripe in Fallout 3 is bewildering.
21/10/2010 at 19:23 sfury says:
Indeed, I haven’t started NV yet, but the writing in FO3 was just atrocious and I don’t think a company like Obsidian, that at least has always had quality story and dialogues in their games, can not easily top that and produce more quality stuff in a setting some of them are very familiar with.
I’ll see for myself soon, but man – Chris Avellone himself did work on that one – surely it cannot be that bad. :/
21/10/2010 at 17:09 Joe Maley says:
Shame.
I never finished fallout3 because of an SLI issue on my old computer. I have since sold that retail copy along with the older computer.
I was happily playing Morrowind with oodles of mods (thank you, PC) waiting for the New Vegas release.
I think I’ll keep playing through hundred hours of content I have left in Morrowind.
Bethesda used to make good games.
21/10/2010 at 17:10 Gotem says:
even that stripper looks bored
21/10/2010 at 17:13 Jethro says:
Absolutely bizarre review. Coupled with the snarky news posts earlier this week, and how pretty much everything he says flies in the face of what every other review says, it seems this guy just had his heart set on disliking this game.
Especially the criticisms of the dialog, which in my experience is leagues better than F03′s dialog.
21/10/2010 at 17:39 Langman says:
I agree, it’s in keeping with a few other Quinns posts on here over the last month or so that have fallen short of the previous standard you used to expect from RPS. I know it sounds harsh, but to me it’s quite plain to see.
I would have much rather heard the other guys opinions on this instead.
21/10/2010 at 18:08 Lilliput King says:
Do you mean the other Quinn’s posts in which he talked about his previous New Vegas impressions?
I imagine you do.
21/10/2010 at 18:15 Morph says:
If he doesn’t like it, what do you want him to do? Lie?
21/10/2010 at 19:11 Ateius says:
Games journalist dislikes game that I adore SHOCKER! How terribly unprofessional of him to have an opinion that disagrees with my own!
21/10/2010 at 19:35 sfury says:
“… fallen short of the previous standard …”
Dude, please! I haven’t played NV yet, but even if I’m sure I’ll like it (at least way more than FO3) I have no problem someone else (especially Quinns) having a different view. The “RPS standart” you are talking about is to write about your own experience and insights of the game, not just copy&paste what every other review on the Internet said over and over.
21/10/2010 at 19:47 drewski says:
The RPS guys haven’t really liked a Bethesda game since Morrowind and, OK, New Vegas is an Oblivion game but it’s still pretty Bethesda.
However, given that Quinns seemed to like F3 – at least more than NV – it’s a little hard to tell. Fair to say it’s his opinion, and others are entitled to disagree. I’ve read a lot of reviews, some great, some good – nothing as bad as this. But the criticisms here probably worry me more than the praise elsewhere excites me.
I don’t have a computer to run it at the moment so it’s something of a moot point, but it’s interesting getting one “review” which is so vastly different to everything else I’ve read. Food for thought.
21/10/2010 at 19:48 drewski says:
Oblivion? Obsidian.
Reverse Quinns!
21/10/2010 at 19:53 Crusoe says:
“Wot I Think.”
21/10/2010 at 17:14 Futant says:
I can honestly say that I’ve found all of the dialogue significantly MORE interesting than FO3, as well as the characters AND locations. Maybe it’s because of my combination of high LUCK and Wacky Wasteland, but I literally run into a random encounter all the time. I don’t think I’ve been able to walk 10-15 minutes of boring so far.
To me, this has essentially felt like what FO3 should have been (which I thought was terrible, due to the monochromatic colour-scheme, overbearing green tint on everything, lifeless characters, abominable plot, terrible gameplay balancing, complete lack of difficulty, the fact that nearly every location except 2 or 3 cities were just clone stamps of the same building, etc, etc, etc…).
So, in conclusion, for the first time ever with RPS I actually disagree with this review in every single way.
21/10/2010 at 17:17 Tomo says:
I didn’t really like Fallout 3 despite ploughing 30 hours into and finishing the main story. I got to the point where the side-questing just didn’t do it for me and I found the copy-paste environments extremely dull to explore.
That said, I’ve been mulling over getting this still! Anything with an apocalypse scenario and my fingers twitch.
BUT, thank you Quinns. Your discouraging remarks have done exactly that and I know now that I really shouldn’t buy this game \o/. Yay for not buying computer games!
21/10/2010 at 17:17 Qjuad says:
I STRONGLY OBJECT TO THIS ARTICLE – CAPITALS EXPRESS MY RAGE.
But seriously, I’m absolutely loving New Vegas in every way – minus the creeky engine and rather sparse number of characters (although too many would probably blow up the computer considering how poorly the engine handles lots of people) – and I’ve found the writing and voice acting excellent almost all the way through (as well as far better representation of the Fallout lore than FO3). A thoroughly enjoyable game.
And as noted about, in classical latin Caesar is pronounced with a hard C not a soft C, so Caesar is Kaiser and Centurion is Kanturion.
22/10/2010 at 05:41 Nalano says:
Seriously. How he can compare FONV unfavorably to FO3 is beyond me.
The things I don’t like about FONV – the crashes, the bugs, the AI – are Bethesda’s fault and were all true and painfully evident in FO3.
The things I love about FONV – the writing, the atmosphere, the Fallout feeling – are all Obsidian (and by extension, Interplay/Black Isle).
I’m not gonna say it MAKES UP for Bethesda’s horrible mangling of FO lore, but to me it kinda feels like Obsidian came in and showed them how it’s done.
21/10/2010 at 17:19 heh says:
Also, playing on higher difficulties scales with Hardcore mode and adds to the speed at which those values increase. So if you were playing Hardcore on Normal, you weren’t doing it right.
21/10/2010 at 17:19 laikapants says:
Well *that* was unexpected. Especially after the two posts of ‘I’m really enjoying this, the bugs are annoying, but I AM having fun.’ That said, it is Wot you thought. So fair is fair.
I am enjoying the hell out of it. Maybe because the worst bug I’ve encountered thus far (knocking on entire forests as I type this) was Cheyenne’s eyes popping out and residing vertically off her right ear. Maybe because the first thing I killed was not instantly beheaded by a crappy pistol. Probably mostly because it isn’t as claustrophobic as Fallout 3 could be a lot of the time. I loved most of Fallout 3 until I got to DC, then I ground my teeth into dust. Hey that thing I need to get to is right on the other side of that building but wait I need to get lost in the subway again. Awesome. Maybe New Vegas will teeth grinding-ly annoy me too at some point (I’m just 6 hours in at this point), but thus far it is my second favourite big new game of the year (the first being another wide open spaces game, Red Dead Redemption).
21/10/2010 at 17:29 Bhazor says:
Funnily enough RDD makes New Vegas look like the promised land in terms of bugs.
My favourite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFoMvLmfFEY. Classic.
21/10/2010 at 17:25 Bascule42 says:
To be honest, if I had of pre-ordred this, or intended to buy very soon, I would be telling myself it’s great, it’s more of what I want – It’s FALLOUT. Btt when a review here, on this site, says the things it has. I’m gonna let myself be swayed, (a rare thing) , by this review. I’ll be keeping my eye on user comments on various sites for the now.
(Captcha – come again?!?!)
21/10/2010 at 17:27 Lars Westergren says:
:decline of RPS:
21/10/2010 at 17:38 The Innocent says:
Ouch. It’s just Quinns. Maybe he couldn’t find any iron.
21/10/2010 at 17:48 Lars Westergren says:
Well, it’s like people saying that the Coen brothers or Christopher Nolan should take some pointers from Michael Bay on how to do great plots and dialogue. They are entitled to their opinion, but don’t expect me to pay much attention to what they say in the future.
21/10/2010 at 18:08 James T says:
God knows, Nolan needs help from someone…
21/10/2010 at 18:14 Lilliput King says:
You’re comparing Obsidian to Nolan or the Coen brothers.
People are just crazy about Obsidian, aren’t they. And by crazy, I mean they cease to be rational.
21/10/2010 at 18:28 Lars Westergren says:
@Lilliput King
>You’re comparing Obsidian to Nolan or the Coen brothers.
As in “They create quirky and unusual stories, and are one of the few who show creativity and originality in an industry full of blandness and stupidity”, yes.
21/10/2010 at 18:38 Paul S. says:
…because he disagrees? Do you just want critics to tell you how right you are? What would be the point?
Liliput King: yeah, Obsidian have a weird effect on people. I can’t understand it.
21/10/2010 at 18:45 Lilliput King says:
What exactly is creative or original about this?
It’s made in an old engine which is ugly as a distinctly unappealing rear-end, so we can throw aesthetic artistry out the window (not something the Coen brothers or Nolan have ever done, incidentally) especially considering they didn’t even make it.
It’s the fourth (unless we count Fallout: Tactics [we aren't counting Fallout: Tactics]) in a series! Four games! Same setting! The big thing everyone seems to be celebrating is that it’s the same as the first two.
What the fuck? That’s not creative or original. Can you imagine the Coen brothers outsourcing a pair of Lebowski sequels then returning to the franchise for the fourth outing? “Hey everyone, we’re taking the series back! We’re going to be using all the same sets as the third, widely regarded as the worst in the series! But you can expect all that writing and wotnot you liked so much back in the day again! For a second time! What do you think?”
Would we hail them as a creative power at the forefront of their industry? Like fuck we would.
21/10/2010 at 19:12 Lars Westergren says:
>What exactly is creative or original about this?
The writing, the story.
>It’s made in an old engine which is ugly
Well, the choice of graphics engine was probably out of Obsidians hands, so why are you blaming them personally for it?
>so we can throw aesthetic artistry out the window
No, as a number of indie games have shown, you can have artistry using very simple means. Didn’t think you were the type who cared all about The Shiny!!! in games.
>especially considering they didn’t even make it.
Exactly. So why are you attacking them for it?
>It’s the fourth (unless we count Fallout: Tactics [we aren't counting Fallout: Tactics]) in a series! Four
>games! Same setting!
Sequels are a problem of the game industry as a whole, unless you have missed it. As much as a loud and eloquent minority on the web are decrying sequels, they tend to sell better. Much better.
>The big thing everyone seems to be celebrating is that it’s the same as the first two.
No, not *the same*. But we are celebrating is a return to a gameplay where reading a situation and choosing the right line of conversation can be as important as aim, and where things aren’t immediately black and white, where gamers are given a hard challenge occasionally, and the consequences of your choices aren’t immediately obvious, and quests can interact in unexpected ways which makes a replay a fascinating exploration. Things that the first two games were in the forefront of. And which the third game strayed away from quite a lot.
>Can you imagine the Coen brothers outsourcing a pair of Lebowski sequels then returning to the franchise for the fourth outing?
The movie industry is not the games industry. You will notice I was using a simile above – an indirect comparison that allows ideas to remain distinct. I didn’t say they were identical, I said they were similar in that they are original and have good writing.
Also, it is not the setting that makes a story original. There have been many films that use themes or sets in new and unusual ways. What matters is how the story is told. If the Coen brothers think that they could tell a really compelling story by creating a sequel to one of their films, I think they could.
21/10/2010 at 19:56 sfury says:
Touche.
Man, I’m really hoping I’m not on Quinns’ impressions when I finish that, I really need me some good ol’ Fallout after wasting my time with Bethesblah’s bland reboot.
Funny thing is I absolutely hated what Quinns calls “the colour” in FO3 – a whole village of kids in a Wasteland where you’re attacked by SuperMutants and what not on every step, grown men dressing as idiotic super-heroes/villains, a hidden oasis, vampires… It’s not that the originals weren’t abundant of absurdist humour but at least it was written and implemented well, whereas everything seemed mostly off and bland to me in Fallout 3 – the humour, the story. So I’m looking forward to New Vegas changing that.
21/10/2010 at 19:59 Lilliput King says:
>>so we can throw aesthetic artistry out the window
>No, as a number of indie games have shown, you can have artistry using very simple means. Didn’t think you were the type who cared all about The Shiny!!! in games.
I think the most notable thing about the engine is that it uses very complex means to create something very ugly indeed. Braid or World of Goo are games that use very simple graphical effects and audio to create really beautiful worlds. We know it can be done. Half Life 2 came well before Oblivion, after all, and it’s world was far more artistically consistent and believable. It’s not about ‘the shiny’ so much as the artistic effort that’s gone into the product. This engine is redundant on that level. It’s hideous, especially when it isn’t trying to be.
>>especially considering they didn’t even make it.
>Exactly. So why are you attacking them for it?
I’m not. I’m saying we can put that to one side. This is one area, we can say, where this game will never succeed. This is one area in which it is doomed. This is giving Obsidian an easy ride in this department (Quinn’s screenshots above may be all the proof necessary that there has been little effort to rise above the trappings of the engine) but the failure in this area is not entirely of their design so we would probably be remiss in holding them fully accountable.
>Sequels are a problem of the game industry as a whole, unless you have missed it. As much as a loud and eloquent minority on the web are decrying sequels, they tend to sell better. Much better.
Indeed, but that defence isn’t much use when we’re attempting to raise Obsidian up as “one of the few who show creativity and originality in an industry full of blandness and stupidity.”
>No, not *the same*. But we are celebrating is a return to a gameplay where reading a situation and choosing the right line of conversation can be as important as aim, and where things aren’t immediately black and white, where gamers are given a hard challenge occasionally, and the consequences of your choices aren’t immediately obvious, and quests can interact in unexpected ways which makes a replay a fascinating exploration. Things that the first two games were in the forefront of. And which the third game strayed away from quite a lot.
Fair enough. I haven’t yet finished my download, so I wouldn’t feel confident commenting on that. If it’s as you say, then there seems to be a good argument that the game is creative and original. Alpha Protocol did at least do some of those things. It’s refreshing to hear a response from someone defending Obsidian that isn’t ‘Good dialogue and story’, because ultimately I’ve always thought they were a bit rubbish at those things (Mask of the Betrayer included) but there were some exciting things AP for example did from a gameplay perspective.
>The movie industry is not the games industry
I was messing around a bit, but I think the point remains a fourth sequel can’t really be considered original. I would agree, though, that what’s more important than the story is how the story is told. I haven’t been impressed in the past by Obisidian’s craft in that area, but I haven’t played the latest offering yet, so I’ll just have to wait and see I suppose.
21/10/2010 at 23:13 teo says:
“decline of RPS”
Yeah, right there, commenters like you.
Stop reading reviews for validation
22/10/2010 at 04:27 Jake says:
>I think the most notable thing about the engine is that it uses very complex means to create something very ugly indeed.
I’ve got to agree with this statement, though I have only played Fallout 3. I tried mods but it still just looked ugly, in a clumsy sort of way – like that gremlin that wore lipstick. The screenshots here, especially of the Caesar’s Legion guy are enough to stop me from buying this game. I thought STALKER was a lot better looking than Fallout 3. Actually I thought STALKER was better in basically every regard. and obviously aesthetics are not the only factor for my disinterest in Fallout 3 – I hated the combat and dialogue too – but I really felt they lacked any sort of personality or style.
22/10/2010 at 13:37 adonf says:
“Ouch. It’s just Quinns. Maybe he couldn’t find any iron.”
Anemic journalist gives bizarre review. Gaming community in shock !
22/10/2010 at 14:38 Malibu Stacey says:
“God knows, Nolan needs help from someone…”
Yes because it’s generally accepted that Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & Inception sucked arse right?
Get a hold of yourself.
21/10/2010 at 17:27 brulleks says:
@Delusibeta
Do you mean stick or flack? I’m pretty sure you don’t mean slack.
21/10/2010 at 17:30 brulleks says:
…and I’m also pretty sure I meant ‘flak.’ Oops.
21/10/2010 at 18:00 Delusibeta says:
Flak, yes, that’s what I meant. I’m now wondering why I put down “slack”… hmm…
Need more sleep, most likely.
21/10/2010 at 17:28 plugmonkey says:
“It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
Wow. I would say that that is probably about the most insulting thing you can say about a development team, particularly one that has no doubt just finished crunching it’s respective reproductive organs off.
I haven’t played the game yet, but when I do I will be expecting it to be pretty much devoid of any redeeming features at all, if that level of abuse is to be justified.
21/10/2010 at 17:32 heh says:
Yeah, combine that with him blaming Obsidian wholly for the bugs and glitches and never once mentioning the Gamebryo engine, and you’ve got a man who holds an apparent grudge.
It would be nice to get the view of another RPS writer as balance, even if their view is also a negative one.
21/10/2010 at 17:33 Sunjammer says:
Opinions aside, that language seems a bit uncalled for.
21/10/2010 at 18:16 Bhazor says:
Yeah the whole opening bit really doesn’t fit in with “Now, if it’s purely size you care about, New Vegas has you covered. From the moment your character (a professional courier who gets attacked and left for dead in the intro movie) wakes up in a backwater town, you’re introduced to a sprawling wasteland even bigger than that of Fallout 3. “
21/10/2010 at 20:48 FunkyBadger says:
Shame they couldn’t be arsed to playtest it then, neh?
21/10/2010 at 17:28 Red Eye Commando says:
I have to respectfully disagree. I do know that folks running 64-bit operating systems have had huge problems, and that is a shame. I am running XP Pro and I am apparently in the minority…the game has yet to crash on me, and I have seen none of the bugs that have been reported. I know a lot of folks have so I’m just saying here that I’m very thankful to have the game going so smoothly. I am only about 10 hours in, but I already feel connected to this game in a way that FO3 never managed. For the most part I love everything about it.
I was working on launch day so I read about all the problems and ran a quick steam integrity check on the game before I started playing…it found some issues and re-downloaded the files and away I went. I like the writing much better, the quests are more interesting, the wasteland is populated with many more interesting places to check out and explore, the ammo and crafting system is a big plus, I could keep going on.
There are some things they need to fix (I could do without bad karma hits from stealing things from a dead guy who just tried to blow my head off for no apparently reason, k thx), but for the most part it is a major improvement on FO3 to me.
21/10/2010 at 17:29 Clovis says:
Clearly the only way for Quinns to make up for this is to give us more Onionbog. We will then all love you again.
Or more minecraft when the update hits.
21/10/2010 at 20:00 sfury says:
True. What happened to Onionbog, Quinns? WE NEED CLOSURE !!!
21/10/2010 at 20:08 Chris D says:
On the subject of closure we need more Journey of Saga as well please.
21/10/2010 at 17:29 the wiseass says:
It’s almost like Quintin didn’t even try to review this game properly and was dead set to dislike it form the beginning. Apart from some awkward bugs this game is better than FO3. At least the main quest is not about finding a method of purifying water from radiation, something that can be done by simple earth filtration.
Have you even played the “Come Fly With Me” quest?
21/10/2010 at 21:36 DigitalSignalX says:
That always grated on me in FO3, the supreme importance of pure water to the narrative when any 5th grader with a bucket of gravel and some dirt can make pure water.
22/10/2010 at 06:29 A-Scale says:
Please, find some irradiated water, filter it through a bucket of dirt and rocks, and drink it. Darwin strikes again.
21/10/2010 at 17:31 Nullh says:
Now I don’t know what to think (cries)
21/10/2010 at 20:01 sfury says:
*wot ;)
21/10/2010 at 17:32 Bassism says:
Hmm, the wot I think was heartbreaking, but the comments are promising. I’ll have to give it some time to get fixed up then dig in I think.
Oh, and Kai-zar is the proper way to pronounce Caesar if you’re speaking latin, like Caesar himself spoke.
21/10/2010 at 17:32 stahlwerk says:
I think another big difference between V:TM:B and New Vegas is, that the bugginess and brokenness of the former was reflected in the sales and ultimately (and deservedly* so) lead to Troikas demise, while the hype around the latter guarantees Obsidian will live to see another day (of not fixing bugs, ha!).
*) when I say Troika deserved to go out of business, that’s my opinion as a customer of their software, which I expect, at the very least, to be functional (i.e. a game should actually be completeable). On the other hand, I regard Bloodlines as the flawed gem it really is, and mourn that no studio will have the guts or ambition to risk their neck on a project like this for at least five or six years, still.
21/10/2010 at 17:36 Sunjammer says:
Troika did deserve to go out of business as providers of a service. Their writing was wonderful but the experience as a customer was painful. I wish more games took after the first couple of sections of Bloodlines, but the end of that game is an absolute mess. I would have liked an Arcanum sequel though. I don’t think I ever played a more melancholy RPG. Fantasy in decline.
21/10/2010 at 17:47 Wulf says:
This is what fan patches are for. Wesp’s patch fixes it all up nicely, and adds in content that was left on the cutting room floor, all making for a more balanced experience.
Really, give me a buggy, ambitious game over a mediocre one, any day.
*shrugs.*
21/10/2010 at 18:04 stahlwerk says:
Wulf, that’s the thing, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Yet somehow the tolerance of bugs (at least on release) in this industry is ridiculously high.
One might argue this has always been this way, and kind of at the roots of game development as the past-time activity of computer scientists and business programmers. And, in a strange reversal of traditional market behaviour, the more popular and hyped a game is, the more people are willing to look the other way on quality issues.
Sorry, that’s the programmer in me ranting again. :-/
21/10/2010 at 18:19 Wulf says:
I know where you’re coming stahlwerk, but what I’m getting at is this:
A game is different to every other form of entertainment out there, different to an application, even different to the old retro games of the past, a game with a story is different again, as is a game with a world. The thing is, for each variable you add, you add a way in which that variable can intermingle with the others, thus creating the possibility of emergent gameplay (unintended gameplay effects which are simply incredible and wonderful to behold) but also adding bugs.
Now add another variable, and another, and another. You increase the potential for emergent gameplay, and for an interesting gaming experience, but you also increase the chance for bugs. Complexity and bugs go hand in hand. Now, depending on the complexity of the game, QA could be easy or it could be difficult, or it could even be impossible.
What I get the feeling people are saying is that developers should reach a point where they should stop adding variables, because they don’t want the potential pile of insurmountable bugs that will slip past QA. But my tolerance of bugs is higher, because the bugs can eventually be polished out by later patches and fan mods. Bugs can be squashed, but what I’ve said previously and I’ll say again is that you can’t add ambition easily to a finished product, it’s hard to go back and add variables, but you can add polish. So I’m all for a game being buggy so long as it’s ambitious. I have faith that the bugs will be fixed in time, and I’ll be able to experience the sort of gameplay that only occurs in those sorts of games.
But my worry is that people want to take that away in favour of a more simplistic game, less variables, more polish for how the variables interact. But as a programmer, do you see what I’m getting at, here? The more you polish things to a shine, the more unexpected choices you’re taking away, the less risk there is of emergent gameplay, of brilliant things that just go beyond what the game was created for. Of experiences that the developers just didn’t design, that exist because the variables are interacting in unusual and unexpected ways.
I’m worried that we’re too focused on polish, and in being so we’ll take away what’s brilliant about gaming, and PC gaming especially. The devil is in the details, and sometimes the unexpected details are the ones that can take a game from being simply very good to being unintended genius.
21/10/2010 at 18:20 Wulf says:
Coming FROM.
Sorry about that, one of these days I’ll stop dropping words. Though I have an excuse, recently via an MRI I discovered that I have a brain that’s a mystery to medical science, and unlike anything every documented. I’m getting poked quite often by curious neurology students, and it’s very annoying. :D But a side-effect of that is that I seem to FORGET to write words/partial sentences, it’s a little distressing on times, and this is why I miss an edit function.
21/10/2010 at 19:16 Wulf says:
In fact, a friend of mine just gave me a great example of emergent gameplay, as he was telling me about his Minecraft adventures today.
“A chicken stole my minecart!”
“…what?”
“A chicken stole my minecart, and is now riding it to freedom!”
“…wait, what?”
“A chicken escaped my farm, hopped into a minecart, and rode it to freedom.”
Apparently chickens have enough weight to push a minecart along in Minecraft, one actually pushed a minecart to the edge, hopped into it, and rode it to freedom. This was just an artifact of AI, it isn’t supposed to happen, it just did. And it’s hilarious.
21/10/2010 at 19:23 Wulf says:
Okay, just one more thought on this (Gods I wish RPS had an edit function)…
IF that was due to a bug that was fixed, and chickens could no longer push/hop into minecarts, would you actually be happy, or would you petition for the ‘bug’ be restored because it added something to the game?
21/10/2010 at 19:27 stahlwerk says:
Huh, I find it strangely on topic that you write long, ambitious (and (more often than not) interesting) posts, yet yearn for the ability to patch them only after “release”. ;-)
Of course you are right, a 100% bug free game (if it exists), is inevitably a game where you would notice the developer’s flea comb at every corner (a feeling I get with HL2 and other Valve games, lay off the user metrics, will ya?!). Emergent gameplay, freedom and the occurrence of scripting-bugs go hand in hand, that’s for sure. But engine bugs — like the one described in the other FO:NV post a few days ago, where a NPC model glitched into becoming an infinite wall of polygons — are just stupid and in the end frustrating when it causes you to die or take damage from obscured enemies.
(My guess is that the rag-doll engine somehow set the w coordinate of some bones in the model to zero, effectively causing divisions by zero on the points in the model, which OpenGL and Direct3d interpret as points in infinity. It may have been a type conflict or a misplaced pointer, but in the end somebody messed up when integrating the physics middle ware into the engine. The thing is, after 4 years of constant development, the Oblivion engine should be mature enough to prevent stuff like this from happening, both to the developer and to the player.)
21/10/2010 at 19:36 stahlwerk says:
The chicken/minecart thing is not a bug, it’s a feature!
No seriously, minecraft is actually a pretty good example of a robust product, considering the team size of 1 and the development time of 1 year (up until now). If something unexpected happens, it’s mostly harmless, i.e. it rarely brings down the client, corrupts savegames, or hinders the player in having fun.
I just don’t get how a well-funded team of experienced developers spends 5+ years on a game engine and then it causes glitches like those described in the other post. Why didn’t the typewriter model spawn, but the typist and the sound source did? It’s either an oversight in the script or a scripting engine bug. The former puts the blame on obsidian for not checking their scripts, the latter on bethesda for producing/selling unreliable engine technology.
21/10/2010 at 19:43 Huggster says:
Jet Set Willy had a bug where you could not complete the game.
Go figure.
21/10/2010 at 19:55 Wulf says:
@stahlwerk
Hm… fair enough. Bah, your posts were so reasonable and intelligent that I really have nothing to add.
@Huggster
Thaaat… actually wasn’t a bug, at all. That was the developer saying “Sod it, they’ll never get this far into the game because it’s simply too hard, I’m going to stop developing it here.“, which is quite different than a bug. >_>
21/10/2010 at 20:08 Lilliput King says:
VtM:B had a bug where you couldn’t finish the game.
Man, it was swell. Inspired some truly emergent gameplay. Reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend the other day.
“VtM:B crashes when I try to get into a taxi!”
“…what”
“Yeah! I can’t progress!”
Amazing times.
21/10/2010 at 20:53 FunkyBadger says:
Art without Craft is worthless.
Its the difference between Tracey Emin and Salvidore Dali.
21/10/2010 at 21:51 Matt says:
I dunno, I’m pretty sure she made a pretty penny from that bed of hers.
21/10/2010 at 23:00 FunkyBadger says:
Matt: you got me, but I think you know what I mean…
22/10/2010 at 00:14 Stu says:
@Wulf: The Attic Bug in JSW IS definitely a bug (caused by faulty sprite data); the publisher issued an official “patch” (ie. a type-in program which corrects the faulty graphics) and the game IS completable.
21/10/2010 at 17:36 Matzerath says:
My lovely friend who’s playing this reports that the radio music is disappointing compared to Fallout 3, and that the ammunition crafting is baffling to her. And she’s encountered a lot of glitches, of course. I can tell she’s plugging along, hoping the experience gets better, but I would guess that she is not nearly as captivated as she was by Fallout 3. So there’s an honest report from the front.
I’m glad RPS has a review counter to most of the others, which all seem to wear the same strained grin. Myself, I won’t play Fallout 3 without a ton of balance-fixing mods, so I will definitely wait for the community to catch up before getting this one.
21/10/2010 at 18:17 Outsider says:
I’m kind of in the same boat right now. After listening to Sunny Smiles deliver her canned dialogue with all the ardor, cadence and passion of a background character in a junior highschool play … it’s odd to come in here and read about how awesome the voice acting is.
I’m also surprised that because the reviewer had a bad experience and hence, gave it a bad review, that more than a few people are plugging their ears and cursing the Gods for having to hear a differening opinion. Newsflash, just because the writers at RPS don’t always agree with your, or even popular point of view, does not mean that this is the decline of RPS. That’s overly dramatic and more than a little narcissistic
21/10/2010 at 18:21 Salamander says:
Sunny’s voice actor is terrible and gives a poor impression, but the rest is generally excellent and certainly much improved over Fallout 3.
21/10/2010 at 18:33 Outsider says:
Ah, that’s good to know, thanks. I’m forging on ahead because I’ve liked very much every single Fallout game thus far (yes, inlcuding 3).
22/10/2010 at 15:57 Miko says:
The ammunition crafting (and crafting in general) is one of a number of things I’m less than happy with. As far as I can tell, it can only be used to make type X of ammo out of other ammo of type X – that is to say, .357 Magnum ammo can only be made by disassembling .357 ammo into its component parts and then reassembling it. One of the components is basically caliber-specific and, as far as I can tell from 15 hours of playing, not available by any means other than disassembly. Baffling.
23/10/2010 at 07:24 Nesetalis says:
ah you missed one of the important parts about the ammo crafting.
when you fire a gun, there is a chance the casing is retrieved.
lead is shared between all bullets. primer is specific to certain classes of gun, powder is another set of classes.. and the casing, as i said, is recovered on firing.
So say I have tons and tons of 9mm ammo but I ran out of .357, I can break it down and repack the 357 shells with pistol powder lead and small pistol primers.. you can also buy it elsewhere.. and there are some ammo’s you can craft that are far far beyond the normal ammo. (especially the hand packed ammo you can make after getting the perk)
admittedly I think the system is a bit flawed.. generally powder is powder.. there are differences, grain size, but that has less to do with the gun type than the weight of the projectile and how much oomph you want behind it :p also, a primer is generally a primer, unless its rim fired (think common .22 rifle bullets)
anyway, its not the most wonderful crafting system, but its useful and interesting.
21/10/2010 at 17:37 Vae Victus says:
For anyone having serious performance problems:
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778
It’s a .dll that basically gets New Vegas to use an earlier version of d3d. Just drop it in the game folder. It seems to fix the issues Quintin mentions. It took my game from a laggy crapfest (10 or 15 fps) around NPCs to running on par with Fallout 3 (solid 60 fps).
Vista 64 here.
21/10/2010 at 18:31 Lars Westergren says:
Lots of people have downloaded this and reported a success, I just want to caution people about downloading dlls from untrusted sources on the net. It can be a very bad idea.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/08/new-windows-dll-security-flaw-everything-old-is-new-again.ars
21/10/2010 at 18:50 Wulf says:
There is a solution, if I may? That file is supplied by a random guy on the Internet, and whilst well intentioned, I would never accept a binary from a source I wasn’t willing to trust implicitly. I don’t even use installers created by modders unless they really have a reputation for their work, and even then it’s still questionable. The thing is, even the Emerald viewer for Second Life was recently revealed to have code in it that was used to steal login details, and monitor people. (Isn’t that fun?)
But I did mention a solution. This file is actually just a normal Gamebryo file. Instead of downloading it from there, reinstall Oblivion or Fallout 3, grab the file from there, and dump it into New Vegas. Problem solved!
23/10/2010 at 07:28 Nesetalis says:
Wulf, as one of the people who was involved in the emerald fiasco, quit spreading lies and rumors :p
Login information WAS NOT stolen, or even touched. there was code built in to broadcast (encrypted) what viewer you were using. the stupid programmer who wrote it, did this by grabbing the directory emerald was installed in.. but didnt chop of the full path.. meaning, if emerald was installed to your home folder on linux or (i think) mac, it would say something like /home/Nesetalis/emerald which gave your computer username… if it was installed there. :p
21/10/2010 at 17:38 clive dunn says:
“It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
Yeah, fuck yeah.
I like the new Hardcore Quinns mode
21/10/2010 at 20:14 Shakermaker says:
Seconded.
21/10/2010 at 17:40 Wulf says:
Can’t agree, really. I mean, Fallout 3 had plenty of empty areas, so I’m really… I mean, is that an outright lie? Did Quinns just cheat to open up all the fast travel options at the start of Fallout 3? In Fallout 3, I walked pretty much everywhere, and there were lots of open spaces where there was simply shit all.
Also, as an old Fallout fan, I’ll take any review thus far with a pinch of salt if they haven’t specifically tried Wild Wasteland. There’s a reason that trait is there… And it rather looks like Quinns didn’t use Wild Wasteland.
21/10/2010 at 17:44 Vinraith says:
That last is a good point, I can’t imagine why I’d play this game without “Wild Wasteland” and “Hardcore mode” on, so any review that neglects either simply doesn’t apply.
21/10/2010 at 17:40 Jolly Teaparty says:
I almost cancelled my preorder on reading this, then I compared it to the Eurogamer review and I have no idea what to think. I guess this game is Marmite, so I’ll give it a go and hope that I love it.
21/10/2010 at 17:43 Wulf says:
It’s good, but it’s better for Fallout 1/2 fans than it is for Fallout 3 fans. That’s the truth of it. If you preferred Fallout 1 or 2, then New Vegas is for you, if your game was Fallout 3, then you’ll be left feeling sorry.
The thing is, it’s more… zany than Fallout 3. But I like that.
21/10/2010 at 17:43 Wulf says:
Also, DO try Wild Wasteland.
Trust me on this.
21/10/2010 at 18:12 Jolly Teaparty says:
That sounds amazing, I only played Fallout 3 because it said “Fallout” and I was willing to suffer all sorts of grievances to the IP to get another fix. I wasn’t as disappointed as I was expecting but there was lots wrong with it, most notably how the main quest was like “NOW NOW DO IT NOW OH GOD DANGER EXCITEMENT”, when it really should’ve been slower paced to encourage exploration, and more dialogue-oriented. Also where was my minigun ammo. Also also why does everyone look like Barbie/Ken dolls oh yeah that’s right the Gamebryo engine is a filthy carbunkle made only to be discarded and make us grateful for literally anything that replaces it.
Sorry I’m going off on one; in conclusion, “it’s better for Fallout 1/2 fans than it is for Fallout 3 fans” is pretty much the best possible review from my perspective and now I’m excited again. Thanks!
21/10/2010 at 19:59 drewski says:
What if I like Fallout 2 and 3, but not 1?
Also, how weird is it that I’m more interested in Wulf’s opinion than Quinns’?
21/10/2010 at 20:13 Wulf says:
Not to toot my own horn, but a friend told me a bit back that the reason they listen to my opinions is because I look for strange things in games. Things that do ultimately matter, but also things that most people actually don’t think about as part of the gaming experience, more the experience than the game. The thing is, it’s one thing to make a great game, but it’s another thing entirely to craft a brilliant experience from a game, where you take something away from that game with you, where the developer was so successful at pulling your strings that they did something to you that lasts.
The WTF-conspiracy-I-don’t-even-know-why-this-crazy-world-I-more-than-one-playthrough-it’s-making-sense-I-AM-SEEING-THE-PATTERN stuff in Alpha Protocol, that was about creating an experience. The emergent gameplay in Minecraft, especially if you have other players around, is about having an experience, and sometimes, games developers forget that they’re trying to make an experience for the player, instead, they just make a game. This is something that I think some developers forget, and the measure of a game isn’t how you feel when you’ve played it, but what you take away from it. For the same reasons you don’t judge a book by what you think when you’re reading it, you shouldn’t think of a game that way either.
It’s in the quiet moments after, if you find yourself thinking about the game, about the things that happened, if the experience mattered so much that it lingered, that’s what a game should be judged on, as much as anything. I think this is often forgotten. This is actually why I get excited when developers actually talk more about crafting an experience than a game, and that the game is simply the vehicle to the experience, it’s the thing that gets you there, not what stands between you and it, it’s not a barrier, it’s a conveyance, and if the game gets that right then it’s likely going to be a much more fun, memorable game. And experiences can happen in linear games as much as they can happen in open world ones, they can be crafted, and they can be emergent, but they’re always important.
And one thing I think that Obsidian is good at providing, something they did in Knights of the Old Republic II, something they did in Mask of the Betrayer, something they did in Alpha Protocol, and something they’ve done in New Vegas, is provide an experience. Though part of that experience is admittedly missed out on if you don’t have the Wild Wasteland trait. (Really people, if you’re going to play New Vegas, don’t play without it.)
21/10/2010 at 20:20 Wulf says:
One more quick great example of this is really the Ruined-Tail’s Tale mod, if you haven’t played that Oblivion mod, then… install Oblivion, just to play it. I’ve replayed that a few times and it never ceases to surprise me just how affecting I find that mod, and that it’s just a mod and not official content, that it’s amateur and not professional at all… it amazes me. That’s really the kind of thing I look for in games, I crave it.
21/10/2010 at 17:41 Inglourious Badger says:
Thanks for telling it how it is Quinns! I was in 2 minds especially after 9/10 the eurogamer review.
Have been replaying a bit of Fallout 3 in anticipation but having played Stalker: Call of Pripyat since my first run through I can’t get into it nearly as much as I did first time round. I know they are quite different games under the post-apocalyptic exterior, but that atmosphear and lonliness GSC Game World managed to create in their much smaller game world makes CoP far superior in my opinion. Think I’ll be firing up Call of Pripyat again this weekend on harder difficulty, rather than getting New Vegas and it’s ‘hardcore’ mode.
Thanks for making my mind up for me
21/10/2010 at 17:42 Binman88 says:
I didn’t play more than an hour of Fallout 3, and hit a brick wall with Oblivion at some point for the same reason: the dialogue (and voice acting). I wish I could describe my feelings towards the dialogue a little better than just saying “it’s stupid”, but, it’s stupid. Add to that the dull and monotonous voice acting and you have yourself a not-very-believable game world that I have no interest in playing through.
Also, I don’t know if anyone saw the recent promotional video showing Matthew Perry and other famous people contributing voice work, but it illustrates this quite well. The video shows people sitting in sound booths reading lines nice and professionally, but with no real emotion or “realism”. It’s just kinda sad, considering how much money they’ve spent on this game and marketing it. Money could have been put to better use.
21/10/2010 at 17:44 Bassism says:
Also, holy crap, there were a million posts between me reading the article and my comment, including about 50 mentioning the Caesar thing.
Anyway. I’m going to have to completely ignore everything Quinns has said, and assume it’s the FO3 I always wanted FO3 to be.
And regardless of the writing, it can’t be as bad as FO3. Still the worst ending I’ve ever played. “I have a mutant with me who is immune to radiation….. what?”
21/10/2010 at 17:46 heh says:
The writing is improved tenfold relative to Fallout 3. Smith is off his rocker.
21/10/2010 at 17:48 Inglourious Badger says:
SO TRUE!? That annoyed me for a week
21/10/2010 at 17:49 Inglourious Badger says:
that comment was @Bassism and his ‘worst ending ever’ comment
21/10/2010 at 18:31 Jeremy says:
Haven’t you guys ever played a game that everyone likes but for some reason just pisses you off? It’s like that girl that should be perfect for you, but for some reason, you really just can’t stand her. I’m not about to write off Quinns opinions simply because he had a different view than most, or even because he seemed a little hostile towards NV in his review. I’ve been there before, most recently with Dragon Age.. enjoyable, but something was lacking either as a result of expectations or whatever, while most people would say DA was one of the better games to come out in the last 3 years.
21/10/2010 at 18:39 tomwaitsfornoman says:
@Jeremy
I know exactly what you mean. I HATED Dead Space, while everyone else seemed to think it was the Science Fiction Games Messiah. Quinns has my empathy.
21/10/2010 at 18:42 Jeremy says:
Dang, totally messed up that reply. In an effort to stay on topic… F that Fawkes for not saving my life. Destiny is a poor excuse for laziness.
21/10/2010 at 18:44 Bassism says:
I’m not dismissing Quinns’ right to an opinion. I’m just refusing to adopt his opinion or let it colour my own experience of the game, particularly since so may people describe it as something I’d enjoy. It makes no real difference to me what he enjoys or doesn’t enjoy. Though in this case it’s surprising, since I tend to agree with him 90% of the time.
21/10/2010 at 19:33 Jeremy says:
Yeah, sorry about that Bassism, totally wasn’t supposed to be a reply directed at you. It was more of a general statement. I’m all for opinions, but some here have an “RPS is doomed” mentality because a game they like was disliked by the new guy.
21/10/2010 at 17:44 Don says:
Regarding the different pronunciations of Caesar in the game, I don’t think it’s a mystery that needs to be solved. It’s clear, at least to me, that the Legion was founded by people who had no idea how Caesar was actually pronounced and by the time they found out it they’d been saying it wrong, it was too late to do anything but shrug their shoulders and stake out anyone who claims they’re a bunch of idiots.
21/10/2010 at 18:00 heh says:
The Legion guys are pronouncing it correctly. That’s the point.
21/10/2010 at 17:46 Mac says:
Played it for 30 mins, got bored and haven’t been back yet …
21/10/2010 at 17:50 Sunjammer says:
What person pays full price for a new game then only plays it for 30 minutes?
21/10/2010 at 18:09 Mac says:
Someone who has better things to do with his time than waste it on this game … it’s just teh same game as FO3, but with more bugs.
Infact, without the texture packs, etc that came out from the modders in FO3, FO:NV looks worse – are you really telling me that professional developers cannot improve on FO3 given over two years of development, yet modders were able to improve it in weeks?
What have Obsidian been doing with their time – they didn’t even have to write an engine – just add content that works …
You’re right though – complete waste of money.
21/10/2010 at 18:16 kevink says:
Someone who also likes Quinn’s take on game journalism?
21/10/2010 at 18:36 Bhazor says:
And one of those better things to do is to argue about games he doesn’t care about/has barely played. Cool bro.
21/10/2010 at 18:39 El Stevo says:
@Sunjammer:
He doesn’t like the game, so he’s already wasted his money. If he continues to play it despite not liking it then he’s wasted his time as well.
21/10/2010 at 18:46 Sunjammer says:
I dunno, even when i bought games that i grew to rabidly hate (for instance Jade Empire), I still gave them a proper fair shake if only to protected my own investment. Whenever i hear someone say “I spent [small amount of time] with it and not going back” it makes me wonder if they actually paid for the thing.
21/10/2010 at 18:58 Mac says:
I’ll play it at some point – but i’ll wait for teh fan made mods to improve teh look of the place, and aslo fix the game. Good to see an official patch out already fixing some of teh problems.
21/10/2010 at 17:50 Langman says:
It’s okay guys. I’m pretty sure this is RPS just doing one of their satirical, post-ironic comedy articles in the form of a psuedo-review.
The game itself is brilliant.
21/10/2010 at 19:15 kevink says:
Nah, that’s just Quintin. The only writer here in RPS I used to ignore.
Something that’s proven to be pretty difficult to do now that he’s the “official” Kieron’s replacement and his writing is all over the place.
I’d rather have extra Walker, Rossignol or Meer, though, but adolescent readers seem to approve of him (he adores all indie, hates WoW, and all that stuff). Now he chooses the hit the cool guys used to hate over the expansion all the old-schoolers want to love. Oooh, rebel kid.
That’s your RPS now. You’re outdated, man.
21/10/2010 at 19:42 HexagonalBolts says:
haha, I can’t believe RPS has readers who send angry messages to the reviewers, I thought this was the sort of place for more mature people who appreciated differences in opinion.
21/10/2010 at 19:45 Salamander says:
And I can’t believe RPS has writers who disparage the work habits of an entire development studio because they didn’t enjoy one game.
21/10/2010 at 20:47 Zogtee says:
“haha, I can’t believe RPS has readers who send angry messages to the reviewers, I thought this was the sort of place for more mature people who appreciated differences in opinion.”
Things are okay as long as you paint within the lines, so to speak. Offer an unpopular opinion and it can get really juvenile in here.
21/10/2010 at 22:24 Tetragrammaton says:
You ignored him because has different taste? The whole point of the wot i think is an opinion piece. The writer offers his own thoughts based on his experience and seen through the lens of his personality. Getting upset that he didn’t tailor to specifically match your own opinion is juvenile in the extreme.
21/10/2010 at 23:19 kevink says:
@Tetragrammaton: As you use the “ignore” thing I guess you’re referring to me and not the original comment. In any case, I’ll use this opportunity to properly reply (hopefully) to Zogtee, as I reply-failed before and it got published on page 3.
—–
@Zogtee: I wish it was only something about “unpopular opinions”.
The fact that he’s dissing an Obsidian game is the less relevant aspect, at least for me, the way he does it and the reasoning behind it is. His overall “style” in his trajectory around here is what clashes with what I always expected and liked about RPS all this years.
But, NVM, welcome to the internet!
——
And now @Tetragrammaton proper.
No, I didn’t get upset because his review goes against my opinion. Read above
I have no opinion on this game, as I haven’t played it yet, nor I’m an Obsidian fanboy by any means. If anything, I’m just an average, pretty casual, Fallout fan. The problem, as I mention above, is a different one.
While Mr. Smith is enthusiastic and passionate, which is nice, that also works both ways. When he likes something, he is able to sell sand in the desert. When he doesn’t, he posts reviews like this, which I find lacking on taste, wittiness and, well, fairness. I understand the meaning of this “Wot I think” as much as anybody else, but I also have a grasp (probably idealized) of what the RPS style of game journalism is. And, unfortunately, I find Mr. Smith is usually out of line for one reason or another.
But he also creates the most controversial and hit-hungry posts. So he’s probably good for RPS if only for that.
I know. It looks like I hate the guy.
Not really. The same way I don’t hate Brad for Elemental or the GoG guys for that prank.
But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to read, agree or even pay attention to everything they post.
Anyway, stop feeding me. My trolling is getting too much educate.
21/10/2010 at 17:54 Wulf says:
Also, I’ll repeat it for everyone on page 2, too.
When you start the game, you’ll be offered a Wild Wasteland trait.
For the love of all that’s good, TAKE IT.
That is all. :p
21/10/2010 at 17:56 heh says:
Also, if you’re going to use Hardcore mode (which you really should), don’t pussy out and play on Normal. Play on Hard or Very Hard to maximize the effect.
21/10/2010 at 18:05 Danarchist says:
I play on normal non hardcore and I guarantee I can break your arm before you can tweet “Someones breaking my arm!” so there! Game settings do not a man make.
Also wulf is 100% right, although they should have called that trait “Put the humor back in fallout out”
21/10/2010 at 18:10 heh says:
You can be a big, fat, blubbering vagina in a video game. Don’t fret, Cro-Magnon.
21/10/2010 at 18:19 plugmonkey says:
“Game settings do not a man make. ”
From what I’ve heard, I think the point is that on lower difficulty settings, you have to eat, drink or sleep so infrequently that having Hardcore mode enabled makes little difference.
If the feature is something that you’re excited about, if you don’t increase the difficulty, you won’t get the best out of it.
21/10/2010 at 18:45 Danarchist says:
It was more a comic attempt to make fun of people who have some sort of odd machismo in the settings they play their games on. The single player version of “Hardcore raiderz!” in WoW. I imagine if game settings somehow altered their state of being they would spend less time stuffed in lockers.
I was not aware the difficulty slider effected the speed with which you consume food.
21/10/2010 at 17:57 Tei says:
Is already unlocked here in Europe?
I am waiting for it to unlock, to be able to play the game. This review surprise me, It seems to describe my opinion about Fallout 3. You mean New Vegas is even more dull than Fallout3? , Oh my god.. It could see that I have wasted my money… but maybe not!.. maybe I am a weird type and I will enjoy the game anyway. Lowering espectations is not a bad thing, I will not take for granted anything that the game give to me.
I was very happy playing Alfa Protocol, I was not planning to buy Fallout New Vegas, but all the bug videos picked my curiosity. I have buy New Vegas to enjoy the bugs. If the game is really that horrible dull to play, I will put it on the backlog, and wait for some recomended mods to happend, then I will return. I kind of love Obsidian, these guys have never failed to me. If you don’t buy Obsidian games, what else would you buy? Bioshocks? *laughts*
21/10/2010 at 18:06 Delusibeta says:
Nope, not until tomorrow. And it looks like the aforementioned flak is concentrated on Quinns.
21/10/2010 at 17:57 Wulf says:
Gods damn it, kobzon. Stop having my thoughts and then describing them better than I can, it’s annoying.
But yes, that’s what I was trying to get at, I actually got this feeling from Oblivion, too. Oblivion needed mods to fill it out, it felt empty, in an almost soulless, generated sort of way. There was plenty of stuff there, yes, but at the same time… I spent most of my time just trudging past the same damn trees, through the same green grass. Unique Landscapes adds SO MUCH to Oblivion for me.
And I felt the same way with Fallout 3. Perhaps the reason Fallout 3 felt a lot alike to me was how often stuff is reused in Bethesda games? I don’t know. But I walked everywhere in Fallout 3 and I got that same feeling of emptiness, too. So I know exactly what you’re talking about.
21/10/2010 at 17:59 Qjuad says:
Also, Obsidian…lazy? There are for more locations (and larger ones at that) in NV than FO3. Oh! and everyone play without the radio, the ambient soundtrack is absolutely brilliantly used.
And that opening paragraph is a bit rude.
21/10/2010 at 18:06 Wulf says:
If I were a cynical person, I’d actually say that some critics are hard on Obsidian because it’s ‘cool’ to be hard on them, and that makes it safe. The dangerous thing to do would be to outright call an Obsidian game brilliant, I remember one review saying that Mask of the Betrayer was the current gen’s Planescape: Torment, the comments there were funny. First it was people being angry, then it was people playing the game and coming back to say no, I was an idiot, this reviewer is actually right. This amused me a great deal.
But yes, bashing Obsidian seems cool, so it’s a very safe thing to do. You can’t really come to any harm for doing it, you know? Bash Alpha: Protocol, or this, it’s expected. So you won’t catch any kind of slack for whatever review you write. On the upside, you also get bonus points for ‘telling it like it is’. It’s a very cold, analytical decision to make, and as I said, a very safe one. I suspect that Obsidian games will continue having a few reviews like this until everyone figures out what Obsidian are currently like, and that it’s not cool to bash them any more, then it won’t be safe to bash them.
And really, from all the reports I’ve read around the Internet, Obsidian have fixed most of Bethesda’s worst bugs, it’s less buggy than Fallout 3, whilst having more content, better content, and a larger area. The only reason for a negative review of New Vegas is the ‘cool to bash Obsidian’ factor, in my opinion. What’s interesting though is that most critics seem to have been able to figure out this time around that there’s actually not much of a valid basis to bash Obsidian on, even Eurogamer, who tend to be fairly harsh, gave it a glowing review.
And that Quinns didn’t play it with Wild Wasteland is missing 50% of the point of the game, if you’re a Fallout fan. But I distinctly get the idea that Quinns isn’t specifically a Fallout fan at all, but a Fallout 3 fan, which explains everything. :p
21/10/2010 at 18:21 Lilliput King says:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/fallout-new-vegas/critic-reviews
You certainly do talk a lot of balls, Wulf.
21/10/2010 at 19:02 Delusibeta says:
@Lilliput King: That’s the PS3 version. If Fallout 3 was anything to go buy, of course that version got more bugs (You Mileage May Vary). Here’s the Metacritic of the PC version:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-new-vegas/critic-reviews
Greenorama.
21/10/2010 at 19:28 Ateius says:
“If I were a cynical person, I’d actually say that some critics are hard on Obsidian because it’s ‘cool’ to be hard on them, and that makes it safe.”
Look at this comments thread. Look at the rabid defense of Obsidian making up the vast majority of the posts.
Now think about what you just said.
This is “safe”?
The safe thing to do would have been to gloss over the bugs and hail everything else as pure brilliance. Then Quinns would be getting love and hugs from the comments.
21/10/2010 at 20:11 Lilliput King says:
@Delusibeta
The ‘greenorama’ was sort of my point, but cheers. That is a significantly better example.
22/10/2010 at 06:01 Nalano says:
Ateius, RPS isn’t the internet.
21/10/2010 at 17:59 Phinor says:
I’m not sure the £30 deal is worth it if you actually want to play these games anytime soon. I ordered that Fallout 3 GOTY + Fallout New Vegas combo two weeks ago and I’m still waiting for either of them to be dispatched. Supposedly they haven’t had Fallout 3 GOTY in stock for weeks even though it still says on the product page that usually dispatched in 3 days. And I guess I (well my friend, bought it for him, not myself) won’t be playing New Vegas anytime soon either as the release date is tomorrow but Hut has not done anything with my order yet.
21/10/2010 at 18:02 Graham says:
“If you don’t buy Obsidian games, what else would you buy? Bioshocks? *laughts*”
Tei speaks the truth. I just finished Alpha Protocol, am in the middle of an Arcanum replay (and anyone who wants an interesting, epic, free-form RPG for $44 less than New Vegas should grab Arcanum from GOG) and just started New Vegas. And that wasn’t intentional! Just the sort of games I’m in to right now…
21/10/2010 at 18:04 Matt says:
I was plannign on getting this and sacking my mates tonight.
/caress Quin
Cheers for the wallet saver
Guess Ill go out in to that scarey place with higher defination then blueray even!. If anyone here is from the Chester area, go to Alexanders bar by 8 tonight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbndgwfG22k is playing. Afterwards there will be LAN joy at mine ^^ bring your own copy of WC3, DOW and Q2. :)
21/10/2010 at 18:04 Spoon says:
While I can’t really argue with a lot of your assessments on New Vegas, I am mainly surprised that you liked Fallout 3 so much. A huge farm that is underrepresented is much better to me than say…. an entire world where nobody is farming and everyone is still subsisting off of 200 year old food and/or each other. I really disliked Fallout 3′s wasteland. Many of the qualities you pointed towards favorably (action packed in every corner, comic-book like characters) were things that I had wished they had done differently. Also, F3 was very much the same sort of food pinata that New Vegas is, just of the 200 year old food pinata variety. Granted, F3 has no Hardcore mode to worry about and thus would not really need to worry about regulating food, but it still breaks the “This is a harsh wasteland!” illusion quite nicely.
To me, neither game was as good as it could have been, but so far New Vegas is giving me the more satisfying experience. I think the two main reasons for that would have to be the much-improved RPG guts of the thing and a setting that just FEELS much more like Fallout 1/2. The greater focus on SPECIAL stats, massive increase of skill checks in dialogue, and distinct rarity of permanent enhancement items went a long way towards my enjoyment. I also like how the game makes you struggle for the first few hours with crap weaponry, and how leaving places frequented by humanity quickly becomes incredibly dangerous. If the game uses an autoleveling system, I sure as hell haven’t noticed.
The game is not without its flaws, and you have went over many of them perfectly. The ridiculousness of Caesar’s legion and the broken “Hardcore” mode are particular standouts of disappointing new ideas present in the game. I liked what they tried to do with some of the skills (like science no longer being just a different way to pick locks) and meh’d at some of the others (shuffling of weapons including: small and big guns being rolled into guns, flame-based weaponry moving to energy, missile launchers moving to explosives). I like the new mutants (the cazadors and the night stalkers, in particular) and am happy that feral ghouls and cannibalistic raiders are not overused nearly as much as they were in Fallout 3. I swear, those two groups made up 95% of Fallout 3′s humanoid population.
TL;DR: New Vegas is flawed, but still enjoyable. Some things are a step back from Fallout 3 and some a step forward, but this old Fallout fan rates this game more highly than F3.
Oh, and I’m at around the 20 hour mark, so my opinions could change if I run into some particularly stupid story elements or something later.
21/10/2010 at 18:04 The Klugman Revolution says:
I think there were several points where I was so bored my brain began rotating in my head like food in a microwave.
Like this?
21/10/2010 at 18:06 CommissarXiii says:
Although hardcore mode does not simulate dehydration, starvation and sleep deprivation accurately enough to *force* the player to maintain their health, it does provide a framework so the player *can* maintain their health.
I’ve decided to play so that I find a bed when the sun sets and chow down before embarking on a quest. I enforce my own rules to lend a bit of realism knowing that I can bend or break them as tedium dictates. A more aggressive hardcore mode might only serve as a mechanical challenge rather than a gripping wasteland experience.
21/10/2010 at 18:07 Incognito says:
A very odd review. It really goes against everything said in almost every other review AND the opinions in from people playing the game in the huge thread about the game on the neogaf forum. Not that I think that Quintin should write anything else than what he thinks, but I´m gonna go with the other reviews and pick up this game to try it myself.
21/10/2010 at 18:10 Oak says:
Brutal. It’s leaving me pretty cold as well, to my surprise. The first few missions have been really dry.
21/10/2010 at 18:12 BobsLawnService says:
Wasn’t Quimm the same chick who dissed Alpha Protocol on RPS? If so then I’ll definitely pick up New Vegas. Alpha Protocol is possibly the best game I’ve played this year.
21/10/2010 at 18:21 Delusibeta says:
Nah, that was John Walker.
21/10/2010 at 18:48 BobsLawnService says:
Bugger. I have no idea where that leaves me.
21/10/2010 at 18:15 noobnob says:
There’s something wrong here: not with Quintin’s opinions on the game, but how he wrote them in this article. It feels like it clashes with the other 3 RPS heads’ writing style.
21/10/2010 at 18:18 Salamander says:
You mean in that he writes his words like a complete asshole?
Noticed that as well. That first paragraph is embarrassing. What happened to this site? Oh right, Keiron Gillen left.
21/10/2010 at 18:28 Lilliput King says:
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You clearly don’t know this site well enough if you think Keiron would have been less of an arsehole than this.
21/10/2010 at 18:29 Salamander says:
Gillen peppers his asshole remarks with a layer of charm that Quintin Smith lacks.
21/10/2010 at 18:52 BobsLawnService says:
Lilliput, Keiron has earned the right to be a raging asshole when he chooses to be. Quinn comes across more as a favour that one of the other RPS team members owes to a fiance or something.
“Sure, I’ll let your baby brother write a few articles for our website.”
21/10/2010 at 19:03 Lilliput King says:
If what we’re doing is debating the relative worth of the RPS writers, Keiron lost all the good will he had accrued over the many years long service on the “hey baby” debacle.
Quinns likes a laugh, and I like that.
21/10/2010 at 19:06 Vinraith says:
I must admit, this particular piece made me miss Kieron more than any of his going away messages.
21/10/2010 at 19:30 Web Cole says:
Why is it that upon disagreeing with someone else’s stated subjective opinion (that’s why its called Wot I Think folks!) that people then feel the need to make disparaging remarks about that person?
“I think your wrong and here’s why”
not
“I think your wrong and you have a tiny penis! Ha ha!”
21/10/2010 at 19:37 Man Raised By Puffins says:
You jest, of course. Quinns’ Butchering Pathologic series was one of the formative RPS articles.
He’s thoroughly aggravating when his opinions are grotesquely wrong, mind.
21/10/2010 at 19:42 Vinraith says:
@Web Cole
Indeed, kind of like how a game review should be:
I liked/didn’t like this game and here’s why…
rather than:
I didn’t like this game and the devs are lazy fucks.
A lot of the grief Quinns is getting in this thread isn’t about the opinion he expressed about the game so much as the way he chose to express it.
21/10/2010 at 19:53 kevink says:
Funny. The Pathologic series of articles was precisely what put Quintin on my ignore list. Selling smoke passionately isn’t necessarily good game journalism (or “blogism”? or whatever RPS is).
He was tolerable when he was just an occasional junior writer. But now he’s unleashed, and the hits keep coming! That has to be good!
21/10/2010 at 21:06 FunkyBadger says:
You tell ‘im Kevink. Oh, hang on, who the fuck are again?
Top article, one of the many Quinns has written. (You don’t have to agree with all of them, you numpties. Like Gillen wrote to please everyone. Jesus.)
21/10/2010 at 22:03 kevink says:
“You tell ‘im Kevink. Oh, hang on, who the fuck are again?”
Certainly not someone who idealizes Mr. Smith.
And also someone entitled to an opinion.
Yes. Weird.
21/10/2010 at 23:02 FunkyBadger says:
“And also someone entitled to an opinion.”
This is just one of the points we disagree on.
21/10/2010 at 23:14 kevink says:
Because my opinion is controversial?
Oh, the irony!
21/10/2010 at 18:16 Jaedar says:
Review mentioned Little Lamplight in a positive way. Actions taken:
Stop reading.
Disregard opinion.
Make note to be wary of opinions from the same source in future.
Make annoying post detailing actions taken.
21/10/2010 at 18:46 El Stevo says:
If the residents are forced to leave when they reach adulthood… where do the children come from?
21/10/2010 at 18:53 BobsLawnService says:
Teen pregnancy – Scourge of the wastelands?
21/10/2010 at 18:18 Jimbo says:
Steam being used as the Release Date Police is infuriating. My copy arrived yesterday and I can’t play it until tomorrow, just because I’m in the UK? That’s basically game racism if you ask me. I bet I wouldn’t have this trouble with a pirate copy.
21/10/2010 at 18:33 AVarotsis says:
Or a proxy/VPN.
Just sayin…
21/10/2010 at 20:37 Jimbo says:
Ace, thanks.
21/10/2010 at 18:18 Morrius says:
Yeah, so this review is completely wrong. Utterly wrong. Apart from it manages to get the name right.
21/10/2010 at 18:21 Chapp says:
I’m liking it so far: lots of quests, some of them trivial, geographical framing of the game in terms of difficulty that can be surpassed with luck and skill (think going to San fran right off the bat in FO2)
I know it sounds wierd, but there was always a feeling a ‘long trek through the wastes’ that existed in FO1/2 that was masked by quick travel. And it returns here in a fashion. Maybe its just because i’m only 1/6th of the way through it doesn’t show it all to me, but as from the very start of the game you have ‘where you want to go’ in sight, and it will be either luck or a journey that’ll get you there.
As for DC being chock full of interesting things, it always seemed that the vast majority of anything interesting was in the SE Quadrant of the map, with 1-2 points of interest in the 8 directions of the compass…
I will say that I also have experienced the same kind of ‘huh’? with Hardcore, the cooking crafting is neat, but theres little reason to do so when fridges are just chock full of items to pillage. The rarity of Doctor’s bags also makes it very likely that you’d just as quickly fast travel to the starting docter if you fall too far and lose both legs or what have you. Playing with an IQ of 1 hoping to play a ‘braindead’ tribal, I’m also taken aback by the amount of the game thats open to me. Apparantly I talk just like everyone else save for 1-2 points of conversation that had no bearing on anything.
I just hope the sense of wonder continues elsewhere past the starting areas…
21/10/2010 at 18:24 Christian Otholm says:
Jesus Christ, you’re welcome to disagree with the man’s assessment of the game but to flat out question his professionality after disagreeing with him on one article and then citing it as the entire decline of the website is beyond insulting. Et tu, RPS commenters?
21/10/2010 at 18:27 Salamander says:
If people are questioning his professionalism it’s due to distinctly unprofessional and obnoxious statements such as “It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
21/10/2010 at 18:28 Outsider says:
My thoughts exactly, Christian. So much drama.
21/10/2010 at 18:30 Lilliput King says:
That was funny! What exactly are you people looking for in a games review except an opinion and a bit of a laugh?
Salamander is representative of the death of this comments section.
21/10/2010 at 18:31 Lilliput King says:
That was re: Salamander’s response to the “phoning it in” line.
21/10/2010 at 18:32 Salamander says:
Yes, stating that a development company doesn’t give a fuck about their project when you aren’t privy to even a modicum of the inner workings of the dev cycle is rib-tickling stuff.
21/10/2010 at 18:39 plugmonkey says:
So, a journalist questioning the professionalism of an entire development studio because he doesn’t like their game is fine.
But a commentor questionning the professionalism of a journalist because he doesn’t like his abusive tone is unreasonable and unacceptable?
I think we should tread carefully here. We appear to be on the brink of some sort of paradox, one that may well destroy the entire universe.
21/10/2010 at 18:49 noobnob says:
I, for one, am not questioning his entire career based on this article. Have read his other articles, they were fine and fun to read. This one just feels out of place and isn’t that informative or entertaining as other WITs.
21/10/2010 at 18:54 Lilliput King says:
So, a journalist questioning the professionalism of an entire development studio because he doesn’t like their game is unreasonable and unacceptable.
But a commentor questioning the professionalism of a journalist because he doesn’t like his article is fine?
21/10/2010 at 19:01 plugmonkey says:
Christ man, careful! We’re on the brink!
Although I would say that the journalist has considerably less evidence for his claim, and that the commentors have been considerably more measured in their wording.
Quinns didn’t just say that he thought Obsidian were in decline, and I haven’t seen anyone calling Quinns a lazy, talentless hack.
21/10/2010 at 19:24 perilisk says:
Yeah, I felt a little offended on behalf of Obsidian for that “not giving a fuck” statement, if only because so many of the leads are BIS veterans who I imagine were both pretty excited and pretty passionate about making this.
21/10/2010 at 19:30 Christian Otholm says:
Firstly, even assuming the validity of the “he said they were unprofessional first!” argument: So two wrongs make a right?
Secondly, the game has been reported as being fairly buggy by others admissions – that lays a decent foundation for Quinns’ argument that the rest of the game is mared by the same degree of unprofessionalism.
Thirdly, it’s fair to make claims about unprofessionalism if say Quinns had written a review with nothing but the word “fuck” six thousand times, but he laid out a reasoned argument why he did not think that it was a good game and that the studio was not being professional releasing a game that was buggy and not enjoyable. Yes he used harsh language once and questioned the integrity of the games studio, but are the accusations really about that or are they about people disagreeing with his opinion?
21/10/2010 at 20:07 Bhazor says:
Well I wouldn’t mind his opinion if it wasn’t so wrong. The guy thinks Fallout 3 was well written.
21/10/2010 at 21:09 FunkyBadger says:
Salamander: releasing a bug-ridden game is evidence of not giving a fuck. Doing it again and again and again is, well… that’s something else.
22/10/2010 at 07:35 plugmonkey says:
“Salamander: releasing a bug-ridden game is evidence of not giving a fuck.”
No, not really. It could equally be evidence of a team too passionate to cut features, and over-reaching themselves regardless of the cost to their levels of exhaustion and well being.
I’ve worked on games no-one gave a shit about. They don’t tend to be the most bug-ridden, as any feature, level or character that doesn’t immediately work 100% is simply cut. Because no-one gives a shit about it.
@ Otholm
I’m well aware that 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Hence the paradox. Both extremes of this argument are ridiculous.
21/10/2010 at 18:25 Demoe says:
Review seems pretty spot on. If you enjoyed F3 you’ll enjoy this. If you were expecting a really tight, considered game comparable to the original Fallout you’ll be disappointed. It’s obvious this game would have greatly benefited from a few more months in the oven, but holiday sales need to be made!
And for the record, silly references are not my Fallout. I am a firm believer that the Fallout franchise started to smell with number 2.
21/10/2010 at 19:57 stahlwerk says:
With every iteration of a movie series, the probability of it becoming a (literal) parody of itself rises exponentially.
It’s true for the movie industry, why shouldn’t it apply to games as well?
21/10/2010 at 18:25 Morph says:
Quinns was right about Winter Voices, so I’m hoping he’s not right here because I just bought this. :(
But he’s still a great writer you bunch of internet jerks.
22/10/2010 at 02:43 Lyndon says:
Agreed Quinns is an utterly fantastic writer. One of the best on the interwebs for my money.
Nothing wrong with a bit of sass in a review. Critics shouldn’t have to wear kid gloves when dealing with something they don’t like.
21/10/2010 at 18:29 Severian says:
Ok, the only question I have is does FONV use the same bullshit VATS combat system that ruined FO3? (forgive me for being lazy and not doing my research)
21/10/2010 at 18:36 plugmonkey says:
I’m going to hazard a “yes”. The first pic of the review is a veritable VATS-o-rama.
21/10/2010 at 18:43 Lars Westergren says:
It has VATS, but you are free not to use it. You can aim through iron sights if you want fast paced fighting.
21/10/2010 at 18:46 Vinraith says:
How could an optional system ruin FO3 anyway, just don’t use it. Hell, replace it with the Bullet time mod, or one of the VATS revamps, or any number of other alternative options from the mod pool for that matter. Bethesda games are moddable sandboxes, if you don’t like something just change it.
21/10/2010 at 18:53 tomwaitsfornoman says:
VATS is available, but NV feels more like a decent shooter, so it isn’t neccessary. I’m about five hours in, and I’ve only used it for the tutorial.
21/10/2010 at 21:02 Zenicetus says:
You have the option of using VATS, but it feels very different from the version in F3. There seems to be a reduction in useful range, at least in the early game. It changes the feel of the combat. You can still lock a target with VATS at fairly long range, and it’s useful for identifying enemies, but you’ll waste a lot of ammo and action points in VATS unless you get into basically shotgun range. By the time you’re that close, you might as well be firing manually unless you just want to see the bullet time animation.
Also, all guns now have iron sights of one kind or another. Some are more useful than others, but it’s a big help for firing manually in the zoomed mode. I get much more consistent one-shot sneak attack criticals by firing with iron sights than in VATS, at least in the early game. It makes VATS more of an option where I know I’ve got a fairly easy kill at short range, like shooting inside buildings, instead of something I use to autopilot my way through the combat like I did in F3.
P.S. that’s based on reaching only level 6 in my current game, so it may change later with perk and skill upgrades that boost accuracy in or out of VATS.
21/10/2010 at 18:44 Qjuad says:
@Severian
Yep, and the stupid kill cam still plays almost every bloody time. You can turn off the real time one but not the VATS one which is wierd.
The real time shooting mechanics are improved over FO3 a hell of a lot though, but it still lacks solid shooting mechanics.
21/10/2010 at 21:08 Zenicetus says:
I agree that the shooting mechanics are simplified. There is no ballistics, no bullet drop. You can make ridiculously long-range shots just by lining up the sights or using a scope. But hey, Mass Effect worked like that too, with its projectile weapons, so I wouldn’t call it game-breaking. Also no cover system, but crouching and using obstacles is a fair substitute.
21/10/2010 at 18:47 CFKane says:
I was genuinely surprised when I read this review, but then again, I’ve been genuinely surprised by a lot of the coverage of New Vegas (see especially Tom Chick’s commentary on Fidgit). I have had an entirely positive experience. I have literally not experienced a single bug or graphical problem. I found the storyline to be more compelling, the quests to be better, and the wild wastelands trait (an essential choice) to make the game great fun. I would say that this is most of all reminiscent of Fallout 2, which had a little more pop-culture winking than the original.
That being said, it may just be that I have had very few problems with any of the Obsidian Games. I thought NWN2 was fine, and Mask of the Betrayer fantastic. I even really enjoyd Alpha Protocol, though I wound up playing it with a controller on my PC for the hacking mini-game. I think that hacking problem is the biggest I’ve had with an Obsidian game though.
Despite what I just said, the less that is said about Knights of the Old Republic 2 the better. What a disaster the ending of that game turned out to be. And I found it so compelling up to that point…
So – the gist of the post: I am currently enjoying New Vegas, and I am having nearly the opposite opinion of Quinns. I respect his opinion, but I don’t agree.
21/10/2010 at 18:47 Muddy Water says:
Wow, Quinns, you are literally the first person I’ve come across to claim that the content in New Vegas is weaker than Fallout 3′s. This includes all reviews and all the forum opinions I’ve read. Welp, you’re entitled to yours. I’m going to be optimistic about this and buy New Vegas (only off a sale, though).
Also, please, people, don’t be so harsh on Quinns just because he has a strong opinion that goes against the grain.
21/10/2010 at 19:17 Danarchist says:
Quinn works online, I guarantee his skin is thicker than a radscorpions shell. Anything anyone says online is going to elicit a loudly voiced negative response, and when its about a video game or piece of computer hardware the negativity is multiplied by ten. Gamers by nature are quick tempered ;)
Being the voice of disparity I think is the hardest duty of a reviewer, as long as they are stating their honest opinion I feel no ill will towards them, even when I dont agree.
21/10/2010 at 18:48 Lukasz says:
hehe. Badmouthing Obsidian AND Fallout in one article.
You are brave one, sire!
21/10/2010 at 18:48 Volrath says:
Not really. I hated Fallout 3, absolutely hated it. The world design, writing, quests, npc’s, storyline; I thought it was all complete bullshit. And the exploring sucked too, copy paste dungeon after copy paste dungeon.
So yeah, I was fairly cautious when it came to New Vegas. Another pseudo FPS/RPG? Really? Oh but Obsidian’s making it. Sawyer lead designer? Thinks back fondly of Van Buren. Those guys can do some awesome shit (see mask of the betrayer)
Anyway, the writing is vastly improved. Quests make more sense and are lot more intelligent then the ones Bethesda came up with. And the world building is much better, camps, vaults etc… There’s just more thought behind them, they’re believable.
Downside is still that shitty engine though.
22/10/2010 at 03:21 Duffin says:
I also hated Fallout 3, for specifically many of the reasons Quinn’s cites F3 is better than New Vegas. So by a process of reversal I should like this!?
21/10/2010 at 18:49 TwinkieGorilla says:
“and nothing as eerie or inventive as Little Lamplight”
You’re *@&$ing trolling us all, right? It only took 9 words of your entire review for you to lose any credibility with me which you may have once had (but I doubt it).
21/10/2010 at 18:54 Wulf says:
I’m actually 100 per cent sure he’s trolling us, seriously.
And when you look at it that way, it’s actually pretty funny. Gods damn it, Quinns, you bastard. I fell for it, I R stupid. But yes, he’s trolling us, and doing a bloody good job of it.
22/10/2010 at 00:11 jack says:
Really? You think so? I don’t buy it, Wulf. Saying Obsidian “Phoned it in” isn’t really the kind of thing he’d say if he was making a joke.
21/10/2010 at 18:49 irongamer says:
After reading a bunch of post here, browsing the official forums, and watching that hilarious rotating head + floating body bug I decided to purchase the game.
I was up until 5 am, damn it. I haven’t done that in quite a while. I’m really enjoying the game.
VATS does seem to require you being in someones face to hit them. I can’t remember how far you could be in FO3 at low levels. I am only level 4. I expect VATS to work better at longer distances with better weapons and higher skills. However, if I just shoot enemies without VATS (either iron sights or just from the hip) I can hit guys a long ways off. I think that whole deal needs to be tweaked.
21/10/2010 at 18:53 Crumpled Stiltskin says:
Quinn, that is actually what Las Vegas looks like out side of the city limits. Very large expanses of nothingness upon nothingness.
Go there. Its like a real life apocalyptic wasteland without the radiation. And with Wayne Newton.
21/10/2010 at 18:54 Crainey says:
Good review, exactly what I expected to be honest. I looked at them reviews on sites such as IGN and they just comfirmed my suspicions that they just rate any game thats got hype with a high score (take reach for example 10/10 in UK? Really? Better still the breakdown didnt even recieve a 10 in each department).
I dont mind bad games from devlopers that actualy put some hard work in thus im a indie game fan but what I HATE is a devloper with loads of resources that makes a game and just dosnt try at all making a game with riduclous bugs and well, basicaly what you see above. This same review could be applied to my feelings of Fallout 3 aswell to be honest… Another example of devlopers with lots of cash but just dont put their heart into it is Warhammer online, that game was awesome until you realised the devlopers literally copy and pasted each of the classes and they were all the same. This is an instant ragequit for me.
21/10/2010 at 18:56 Wulf says:
Quinns managed to pull the wool over my eyes, you Sir will have to try harder.
21/10/2010 at 18:57 Turin Turambar says:
Have you played the game? No? Then, how do you know if the review is good or not?
21/10/2010 at 19:03 Vinraith says:
@Turin
It’s simple, really: good reviews don’t get personal. Good game or bad game, there’s never any reason to start a review with personal attacks on its developers, and any review that contains such things is fundamentally suspect.
21/10/2010 at 19:23 Chris D says:
Vinraith (and others elsewhere)
I think you’re misreading the first paragraph as a personal attack. I think its more of an opening statement that the game seems to suffer from attention to detail. The rest of the review then goes on to give specific examples of this.
It’s a little hyperbolic perhaps but I don’t think its supposed to be taken as a literal attack on actual Obsidian staff. As for the rest of the review it all seems pretty reasonable to me. I can’t say how accurate it is as I haven’t played but I don’t think theres anything to take offence at in the writing.
21/10/2010 at 19:31 Salamander says:
Surely you can see how moronic it is to say that a dev team doesn’t give a fuck about their product simply because you didn’t enjoy aspects of their game.
“Lazy dev” is the mantra of the forum-dwelling simpleton. These people generally work hard.
21/10/2010 at 19:49 Chris D says:
Salamander
Unless Quinns has a spy in Obsidian headquarters he can’t possibly know the state of mind of their employees. This is why I take it as a figure of speech commenting on the feel of the game rather than a literal attack against the developers. Admittedly I do assume that Quinns isn’t a moron but I think that’s pretty well justified based on his previous work.
21/10/2010 at 18:57 Sunjammer says:
Sigh. I think it’s important not to get all fussy about the opinion expressed through this review heh. I for one think Super Meat Boy is a painful injection of pestilent mud covered in a sheet of brilliant style. I don’t think beyond that being my opinion however. I think the first paragraph and general tone is uncalled for.. If your goal is to explain to potential buyers the pros and cons of a game from the perspective of someone who plays a lot of games, it would help not to layer on so MUCH personality on your writing.
This was just unpleasant. Even a review tearing a game apart can “feel good”, and this doesn’t feel good at all.
So hey Quinns, guess you phoned this one in too right? This is you not giving a fuck?
21/10/2010 at 19:29 Lars Westergren says:
@sunjammer
Agreed. That is what I meant with my :Decline of RPS: comment above. It wasn’t so much that they disagreed with a game I like (they’ve done that before and I’ve not minded), it was that it has a nasty personal edge to it. Poor writing.
21/10/2010 at 20:31 seras says:
the whole point of “Wot I Think” is that they are opinion pieces with personal flavour/edge…as opposed to the “objective” reviews you would find elsewhere. this editorial slant is what makes RPS special.
much like the commenters claiming “he didn’t like, he must’ve played it wrong!”, i would say “ppl that think his post was too acidic/harsh/whatever were reading it for the wrong reasons and with the wrong mindset”
21/10/2010 at 22:46 Sunjammer says:
Oh i guess i got RPS wrong then from the start, and have been getting them wrong all the time I’ve been reading every single damn post they’ve put up. I guess I don’t get RPS at all.
21/10/2010 at 18:59 arjuna says:
Great write up thanks! Lets move on people.
21/10/2010 at 19:00 BobsLawnService says:
Can anyone comment on the quality of the Collector’s Edition gubbins?
21/10/2010 at 19:01 Demoe says:
The phoning it in comment is a bit harsh since that was probably publisher related, but of course Obsidian does have a tendency to overstretch their resources. They’re practically known for bugs and unfinished, lopsided content.
Also claiming the dialogue is inferior to F3 seems a bit of a stretch, but great dialogue won’t make boring characters interesting, which seems to be Quinns real complaint. I’d like to know if he played with Wild Wasteland or not.
But really, am I the only person who noticed that Quinns recommended this game as a buy with the caveat that you should like Fallout going into it? That’s solid consumer advice right there. He said he enjoyed it, but wasn’t taken by it enough to continue playing, which is disappointing. Not sure what you want from the guy…
21/10/2010 at 19:16 Evernight says:
I think the phoning it in comment was dead on and NOT a publisher thing. I mean look at Obsidians’ track record: SW:KOTOR2, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Dungeon Siege 2 – now this. Sense a theme? Other than Alpha Protocol, these guys have made nothing but a slew of sequels that are regarded as inferior to their originals and most of them use the same engine as the original. Obsidian has been phoning in sequels for years. I know they are the FO devs, but lets not forget that not all Black Isle came over.
If anything, we should have seen this coming.
21/10/2010 at 19:21 Salamander says:
Ugh. This has to be one of the worst comments I’ve ever seen. KOTOR 2 and especially NWN2 were both SUPERIOR to the previous Bioware titles – both better-written and featuring deeper gameplay – and Obsidian had nothing to do with Dungeon Siege 2.
Mask of the Betrayer alone is better than anything Bioware has done since Baldur’s Gate 2.
21/10/2010 at 19:23 Nick says:
Yes, look at their track record.. oh wait, they had nothing to do with DS2 and you have no idea what you are talking about, probably just spouting stuff you vaguely recall reading somewhere.
21/10/2010 at 20:44 laikapants says:
I think Evernight meant Dungeon Siege III, which Obsidian is currently developing. Of course the quality of that currently can only be determined by various trailers. So, yeah.
Also, I too vastly preferred KoTOR II (and to a lesser degree, NWN II) to their respective predecessors.
21/10/2010 at 21:14 FunkyBadger says:
Someone liked NWN2. Oh, ahahahaha etc.
Be still my aching sides.
Why is it always these guys that run into trouble with publishers and release shoddy messy lumps of games?
22/10/2010 at 07:17 Fiatil says:
I prefer NWN2 to NWN 1 for at least the OC. I know that’s kind of not “getting it”, because the first one was a fantastic multiplayer sandbox and all that, but I guess coming off of Baldur’s Gate 2 I was expecting a bit more out of their single player campaigns. The OC for NWN2 does drag ass at points and isn’t fantastic, but I managed to finish it and have a good ride. Then they had to go and make Mask of the Betrayer the best shit ever and all was well. That expansion makes anyone who writes off NWN2 as a whole kind of dumb.
22/10/2010 at 20:15 FunkyBadger says:
Fiatil: after 3 years spent trying to get a) the NWN2 engine to work and b) tring not to vomit at the stupidity of the main campaign on the odd occasion I could stomach the crappy engine I gave up on that particular software atrocity.
Its not that NWN was any great shakes either, Hordes of the Underdark was really good fun but the original campaign was several leagues backwards from the previous gen of DND RPGs.
Looks like I might be missing out with MotB, but if I buy it, it’ll only encourage them…
21/10/2010 at 19:05 Dave says:
RPS, take note, your readers don’t want “Wot I Think”, they want, “Wot I Think You Want Me to Say”.
21/10/2010 at 19:10 mwoody says:
That’s unfair. He didn’t like the game; that’s clear. But read the comments – there are many people basing a purchasing decision on his writings. It would be cruel of us not to point out how he is squarely in the critical minority.
Or, to respond in similarly snarky language: RPS readers, take note. These aren’t “comments,” they’re “agreements.”
21/10/2010 at 19:23 Latro says:
No, thats perfeclty fair.
Quintin may be absolutely wrong, or in the minority, or whatever. He wrote What He Thinks.
Sometimes, people you know, and people that share a lot with you, have an evaluation of thinks you like or dislike that is the opposite of you. Happens all the time. You ask them for their opinion on that book you love, they say it is trash to them. That writer you loathe? A genius.
He has clearly found something he doesnt like at all in the game, and he reported it. You cant ask for anything else.
Even if he is wrong (dear God I hope so). Even if you average the reviews and his is the lowest one and everybody sings the praises to the New Vegas emperor.
21/10/2010 at 19:40 Wulf says:
Right, so… Quinns is allowed to write what he thinks (which I’m convinced isn’t what he actually thinks, but he’s just trolling us with), and we aren’t allowed to write what we think about that? The thing is: it’s perfectly fair to critique a game. But it’s also fair by those same merits to critique a review. No one has an untouchable opinion, and to claim that anyone should displays an elitism and arrogance that’s unbecoming of what this community should be.
The RPS guys fully expect this, otherwise they wouldn’t let us comment. Hell, that’s probably why Quinns was so unnecessarily acerbic in the first place, he’s probably laughing it up right now. And how. And so he should, really. The lovable trolling git.
21/10/2010 at 19:43 Wulf says:
The only thing I wish is that Quinns had picked a bigger title to troll, New Vegas is chick peas compared to some of the juicy meatballs out there. Now if Dragon Age 2/Bioshock Infinity gets this treatment, I’ll be impressed. Then again, RPS might not have the nads for that, choosing only to do this when it’s safe to do so. >_> We’ll see. Still, the gauntlet is down and all that, yes?
21/10/2010 at 20:00 Danarchist says:
I would actually love to start a “Review the Reviewer” site myself. Earlier this year I was shopping for a gaming laptop (e.g. desktop replacement) and was absolutely blown away by how many freaking scores were low due to “weight” “Size” and “Battery Life”. Seriously, which chicken armed gamer do you know that would sacrifice faster pew pew for a 2lb lighter laptop? And I think the best battery I have every seen could run a game for just over an hour and a half or what I call “Warm up time”.
And dont even get me into “ad enhanced” reviews…IG_
21/10/2010 at 20:07 Dave says:
@Wulf
I shouldn’t have painted all the comments with the same brush. I was fixating on that 5% of the comments that didn’t respect Quintin’s opinion. Disagree with an opinion: fantastic, that’s what opinions are for, but accusing Quintin of some sort of bizarre bias is disrespectful.
p.s. But if he IS trolling, he did a fantastic job. He goes against the grain on practically every issue while sprinkling it with just enough justification to make it seem plausible. However, being new to the community, I do feel obligated to take his opinion at face value, not knowing the secret ways of RPS.
21/10/2010 at 21:14 Jeremy says:
I’m not sure why a respected journalist would ever “troll” a review. We don’t have to try and justify why he wrote what he did, I like the fact that he wrote about something passionately, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. Strong opinions are rare these days, probably for the very reason that comment sections blow up with outrage when you express, not just an opinion, but you express it with a certain candor.
But trolling? That’s kinda insulting I think.
21/10/2010 at 21:48 mwoody says:
I don’t think the review is a “troll,” and honestly, if it were my work, I’d be mildly offended by the implication. It’s a fancy internet way of saying, “you must be joking, because no one could be that stupid.”
That said, if you think professional game writers being trolls is far-fetched, read some of Jim Sterling’s work on Destructoid. On second though, don’t. Forget I ever said it. No! I was joking! RUN AWAY!
21/10/2010 at 19:07 Evernight says:
As much as it pains me to say this but I have to agree with a good chunk of this review and I LOVED FO3. There was just so much more to FO3 so much more to see and explore; and when exploring I found more saw interesting things. This game doesn’t even encourage my exploration.
and why, dear god WHY, did you give me a robust cooking/crafting/ammo making mechanic and then fail to populate the world with ANY of the things it takes to create this stuff. I mean seriously! I mean FO3 had too much junk with nothing to do with them. NV has no junk and everything to do with it.
Quinns said the one thing that summed this game up more than any other site – “Obsidian phoned it in” – Not terrible, certainly not remarkable, but disappointing all around Maybe it was the hype that killed it.
21/10/2010 at 19:10 Salamander says:
“and why, dear god WHY, did you give me a robust cooking/crafting/ammo making mechanic and then fail to populate the world with ANY of the things it takes to create this stuff. “
What in the world are you going on about? The world is no less populated by any of the miscellaneous items than Fallout 3 was. In fact, they’re even more available now since you can buy crafting items and such from many shopkeepers than you were never able to in F3.
21/10/2010 at 19:41 Evernight says:
This game is BIG TIME less populated than FO3. Not in terms of NPC’s but in terms of junk and containers. Play FO3 and count the number of containers you see in 3 hours vs how many have something in them. Then do the same for NV. Not only will the number be smaller but the filled ratio will be as well. I explored the Niffton Main Hall last night from top to bottom (other than 1 door I couldn’t get past) and there was less than a handful of containers with something in them. I spent and HOUR looking for a sensor module. AN HOUR. And since there is no Metro or anything like that there isn’t even a good place to go scaving.
I’ll agree with you about the ammo to a point except that the ammo conversion is pretty inefficient and you can’t even make special ammo types like 5.56 AP or 9 P+… I am sure the modders will bring that along.
21/10/2010 at 20:56 laikapants says:
@Evernight: While I do believe that you haven’t found the stuff you were looking for, I do remain a bit baffled at the suggestion that there aren’t enough crafting materials around. I have too many and I’m only up to Nipton. Also, there are 2 or 3 Sensor Modules in Goodsprings and that’s without buying them…
21/10/2010 at 20:58 mwoody says:
Heh, and meanwhile, last night I finished a quest area that was filled, floor to ceiling, with parts of all kind. Including, yes, sensor modules. I stopped picking them up because while yes, I need them for explosives, even 10 strength didn’t give me the capacity for carrying them all.
This amuses me mostly because I found myself thinking, “gosh, Fallout 3 never went this crazy. I’m literally kicking parts of the way.”
Now, white horsenettle, THERE you’d have a point. I can’t find enough of that stuff to tan hides and make poison to save my virtual life.
22/10/2010 at 17:22 Evernight says:
I too have found teh factory FILLED with conductors, paint guns, cans, etc. But again I stress that there is still a lack of the things needed to make crafting a viable anything. I mean they even took the bottlecap mine up to 5 cherry bombs… I think I have 4 so far – 6 hours in. I think I will mod it back to the way it was or change the recipe to dynamite.
Anyone know a good place to find a decent amount of cherry bombs?
21/10/2010 at 19:08 Fathom says:
This is the most disagreeable thing I’ve ever seen on RPS. Maybe the worst, too.
21/10/2010 at 19:11 Gvaz says:
I hated fallout 3, it encompassed everything I hated about Oblivion, except now it was set 50 years ago in a wasteland and had guns instead of magic.
Console oriented textures, design, and gameplay.
Wow now I want to play NV! /sarcasm
21/10/2010 at 19:13 Fwiffo says:
Oh, I get it, you’re parodying the kind of console people that thought the series began on Fallout 3. You almost had me until the Lamplight line!
21/10/2010 at 19:32 Wulf says:
He had me going for much longer than that. I’m dense… :/ I figured it out in the end, though.
21/10/2010 at 19:21 CFKane says:
@Lilliput King
Really? KG lost you based on his “hey baby” posts? I thought that was some of the better journalism on games on the web. I appreciate when games journalists take a minute to recognize/point out when the misogyny in this slice of the web gets a little too blatant.
21/10/2010 at 19:30 Wulf says:
I completely concur. KG might think his best moment was his No Russian moment, but that was really just saying what anyone with an ounce of sense thought, and it was fairly obvious. But because misogyny is rife in the gaming subculture (see: Other M), along with bizarre forms of white supremacy, homophobia, racism, and other problems you’d think were long gone, an article like KG’s take on hey baby would be hugely unpopular with the vast majority of gamers. It was risky, it was dangerous, it was brilliant. It was his high point, I thought. So I completely agree.
21/10/2010 at 19:47 Frosty says:
@CFKane and Wulf
Very glad to see this. Felt like I was the only one. Was a real dark day for the RPS community though, felt like a real let down by the people around me.
21/10/2010 at 19:54 Lars Westergren says:
I’ll add to the group hug. Hey Baby was the best article I’ve read on the site so far.
21/10/2010 at 19:59 Kieron Gillen says:
Everyone loves an outspoken critic until they actually say something they disagree with. It’s the gig.
By the way Wulf – your suggestions that he doesn’t really believe this are pretty poisonous.
KG
21/10/2010 at 20:16 Face says:
“Was a real dark day for the RPS community though, felt like a real let down by the people around me.”
Ditto. Kieron brought me back. Much respect for that man, and that article.
21/10/2010 at 20:36 Lilliput King says:
I don’t “really disagree” that cat-calling is offensive and despicable.
I just didn’t see what it had to do with RPS. I do see what male privilege has to do with videogames. But we could have at least talked about that in the context of an actual game. Deciding to explain male privilege in general terms on a gaming blog to a community the majority of which almost certainly understood the issue was bizarre at best, and smacked of pretension and hubris.
21/10/2010 at 20:46 outoffeelinsobad says:
I thought he WAS talking about it in reference to a video game? Did I add the whole “I’M GONNA TALK ABOUT HEY BABY NOW” in my head? Am I delusional.
21/10/2010 at 20:49 Lilliput King says:
I’m not sure Hey Baby the “game” was ever justifiable cause. I mean, it just… it just doesn’t count. I mean my God, Kieron. It has no resemblance to anything I call a game, and on these grounds alone, I do not call it a game.
Link for those who have not yet had the pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krvA3VHq5as&feature=player_embedded
21/10/2010 at 21:18 FunkyBadger says:
Keiron’s No Russian piece seethed with anger. Anger at a dev wasn’t a chance and not delivering to the best of their ability. As does this piece.
That’s why both of them are worthwhile.
21/10/2010 at 21:50 Jimbo says:
The No Russian article still makes No Sense to me. If it seethed with anything it was misunderstanding. Half of the criticisms become totally void once you understand the story, and the other half were ultra-nitpicky (‘the guards have the wrong guns wtf!?’).
How everybody acts (or doesn’t act) during that level ends up being totally justified, at least within the context of the game.
21/10/2010 at 23:50 Chris says:
nth-ing the Hey Baby love-in. The fact the they game itself was nigh-unplayable is irrelevant: so are most art-games.
21/10/2010 at 19:21 HarrietTubgirl says:
I could see how a fan of Fallout 3 might like this game but it’s just too boring for me, I really can’t get into video game stories. In STALKER I’m on the edge of my seat because of the scary atmosphere it creates so well. Obviously, STALKER: Call of Pripyat is the superior post apocalyptic game.
21/10/2010 at 19:24 Mitthrawn says:
I really liked fallout: New Vegas. It was so much better than fallout 3 which felt lifeless and dull to me. Unlike Quinns, everywhere i went there was interesting architecture, new quests, and interesting stuff to do. The rollercoaster, the dinosoaur, the solar array, everywhere there is cool stuff to do. If that doesn’t convince you MINOR SPOILERS the game involves a paranoid schizophrenic nightkin and his talking skull, space cultist ghouls trying to launch into the Far Beyond, and invisible chupacabras with automatic weapons. END MINOR SPOILERS.
Go. Play it. Quinns is an idiot. That is all.
21/10/2010 at 19:27 Wulf says:
You had the Wild Wasteland trait, didn’t you? It really does make that much of a difference. That trait is awesome.
22/10/2010 at 00:43 Mitthrawn says:
I totally did. The wild wasteland perk really makes everything so much funnier and better. If you didn’t turn it on you’re missing the best parts of the game.
21/10/2010 at 19:30 Evernight says:
God I miss Morrowwind.
21/10/2010 at 19:32 Demoe says:
What’s with the Lamplight hate? Sure the kids were obnoxious, but the area as a whole was captivating and refreshing in its difference. The architecture and lighting did a great job to create a secluded, detached atmosphere and the way the kids coped with a situation that was both present but removed from them really brought everything together.
21/10/2010 at 19:35 Wulf says:
You get it in that the kids are obnoxious, it was actually like a colony of midgets, of fully grown people trapped in the bodies of children. In general, they were far too jaded and worldly to be the actual age they were, or to even fit the seclusion that they were supposed to suffer (which would have stunted their knowledge and intellectual progression). Once you realise that, it’s really not that clever.
21/10/2010 at 19:44 Sunjammer says:
Lamplight was “wrong” in that it tried to shoehorn kids back into Fallout in a PG friendly manner. They were barely children, and in the harsh reality of the wasteland the game was otherwise selling you, they would have been fucking massacred and eaten within days. Lamplight was Fallout 3 breaking character, which is actually kind of impressive in that the game’s character is fundamentally fragmented.
21/10/2010 at 19:53 Demoe says:
I don’t really follow that they should have been more childlike. Kids can grow up really quickly when they have to, usually resulting in the jaded perspective you mention. Why shouldn’t they be jaded and a bit experienced when they’ve been relying solely on each other this whole time? I didn’t really feel they were overly worldly or intelligent either since they ate cave dirt and were scared to leave their small town.
I’m not really sure what a more fitting personality for the denizens of lamplight would be other than jaded and slightly competent.
21/10/2010 at 20:09 Danarchist says:
Man spend some time in south africa, one of the places I was in the kids had the same “100 mile stare” as any ptsd veteran. And thank whatever you pray too that you think its impossible for kids to be jaded and “like small angry adults”. It’s horrible and one of the main reasons I am thankful for the escapism gaming provides me.
21/10/2010 at 20:23 Dave says:
My biggest problem with Lamplight is that the children are immortal. Kids die in books, kids die in movies, kids die in real life, but the developers felt the need to save our digital souls by filling our digital guns with digital blanks when entering Lamplight.
The whole “immoral” pathway in the game is a farce. You can be a good, grey, or a stark raving lunatic, hurling insults, faeces, and bullets at everyone you meet.
21/10/2010 at 19:38 Eidolon says:
Couldn’t disagree more with this review. There must be some kind of cognitive gap between me (someone who loved the original games) and Quintin (who seems to like Bethesda).
21/10/2010 at 19:43 Frosty says:
Question: I get why people are going nuts for the Wild Wasteland trait but I really have to ask.
Why the fuck isn’t it engaged as standard? Why on earth make it a choice that many a player will probably miss out on?
21/10/2010 at 19:49 Salamander says:
For players that one a more pure, “serious” experience. Wild Wasteland adds wackiness to the world.
21/10/2010 at 19:50 Sunjammer says:
Personally I’d leave it off. I don’t play Fallout for the wacky wild funny stuff. It’s the same reason why i leave Blood Mess alone, it robs “the moment” of its moment. The moments of wackiness among the bleakness are why that wacky shit is there; It is not the fuelling force of the game.
21/10/2010 at 19:54 Vinraith says:
According to the wiki:
According to J.E. Sawyer, the trait was added as a compromise because different members of the team often suggested ‘wacky’ content that others thought would be out of place.
There are links in the original article to the source interview: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Wild_Wasteland
21/10/2010 at 19:57 Frosty says:
But so many people here seem to be banging on about how this game feels better then F3 because it feels more like the previous two fallout games. So if you take that away what else is left?
21/10/2010 at 20:15 Danarchist says:
It’s the difference in taste between gamers that prefer “realism” to those that prefer humorous frivolity. Gears versus borderlands (sorry, couldnt think of a better anology). For a chunk of gamers the wackiness that some love would absolutely ruin the game. For me the game was ruined without it. I think of all the complaints I heard about fallout3 the only one that rank truest was the complete and absolute loss of the fallout worlds “flavor”.
21/10/2010 at 19:47 Tom says:
It doesn’t seem so much phoned in as that it has the traditional Obsidian disconnect between ideas and reality. There’s less obvious feature creep than in their previous games, but it’s definitely obvious that the writers had grand ideas, and the programmers responded, “How the Christ do we put that in this rotting carcass of an engine?” and the writers told them to do it anyway.
It’s why writers and idea men shouldn’t be 100% in charge. That said, I don’t feel any bit of the game was phoned in. I felt the opposite, in fact. It feels like these guys love Fallout, and love the universe, and wanted to bring it back to its roots, except there’s a reason it wasn’t with its roots to begin with: namely, that “the roots” have an awful lot of trouble in a modern game where every alternate solution to a puzzle is more expensive.
As it is, I’m enjoying it. It’s a rose colored glasses situation: I tried to replay F3 a month ago before playing this, and I couldn’t. Everything is just so boring. Little Lamplight has some variety, and it’s what we remember, but…for every Little Lamplight there’s a hundred abandoned buildings with nothing in them and metro tunnels with nothing in them. Like, yeah, the wasteland is boring, but I’ve found the main plot much more compelling here, which is important. Because once you’ve wandered the wasteland once, you don’t get excited about finding boring buildings anymore.
21/10/2010 at 19:47 _Jackalope_ says:
I had lost interest in this game. This review put me off even more. then I saw the weapons list. Looks like they took a look at the FO3 user made weapons because there seem to be a couple of them appearing. The lever action shotgun was one addon I downloaded. And then I saw “That gun” the .223. I’m getting New Vegas just for that!
Good thing I’ve just upgraded to Windows 7 hough, I also have XP 64 bit!
21/10/2010 at 19:48 DiamondDog says:
“:decline of RPS:”
After reading some of these comments, I’d have to agree. RPS isn’t here to validate your opinions. Attacking Quinns for “bad journalism” just because the article has some venom in it… well it’s pretty pathetic.
Certainly Quinns doesn’t need me sticking up for him, but I’m also sure Obsidian won’t be crushed by one review. A lot of you seem to have a soft spot for this company and it’s prompted quite a rash defense.
Anyway, how does it feel to be a scapegoat, Quinns?
21/10/2010 at 20:37 Wulf says:
I don’t agree with saying that this is the downfall of RPS, or saying that Quinns is a bad journalist, but I see a lot of people here disagreeing with his taste* and I think that’s valid.
I’ll agree with you though that making a scapegoat out of him is bad. I don’t like and will not support that at all. The writing here is as quality as its always been, and Quinns writing is top-notch, witty, intelligent stuff. He apparently just likes different games to what I do**.
* – …or they’re railing against potential trolling.
** – …or he’s trolling us, just for the hilarity, and I wouldn’t blame him. I think this is the most likely.
21/10/2010 at 21:31 Jim Rossignol says:
I’d have delivered a similar review, I think. Not a fan.
21/10/2010 at 21:58 Huggster says:
Interesting
21/10/2010 at 23:23 DiamondDog says:
@Wulf
Yes, to be fair there are a load of comments from people simply stating why the disagree with Quinns opinion of the game and expressing how much they enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that at all!
It’s just really quite sad and pathetic that Quinns status as the new kid is being used against him. All these “I miss Kieron” remarks? Horrible, really horrible. His Minecraft diary was a complete joy to read, but diss Obsidian? It’s back to the playground.
Plus, I’m not sure what you mean by trolling? I know what the term means, obviously, but are you saying he’s intentionally trying to wind-up Obsidian fans?
21/10/2010 at 23:27 DXN says:
@Wulf:
I usually like your comments, but harping on this “Yeah, nice troll, dude!” schtick is pretty obnoxious. Like it or not, I think we can be pretty sure Quinns actually wrote Wot He Thinks here.
21/10/2010 at 19:49 EthZee says:
It appears that many people disagree with Quinn’s rating of the game. I’ll have to check some other reviews and maybe try the game before I decide.
Right or wrong, though, I thought this article was excellent. You may be wrong but I agree with your writing style. Please continue.
21/10/2010 at 19:50 Ravenger says:
I’d let you know what I think, but my shiny disk version which is located right in front of me won’t install until tomorrow, the official release day.
Now I’m actually a big fan of this sort of protection because zero day piracy is the worst kind, but it’s annoying to me when the game’s already been out a few days in the US so stopping me installing it now is a bit pointless really.
21/10/2010 at 20:34 Wulf says:
It’s also available to dirty, filthy pirates who’ve actually paid for the game. >_>
21/10/2010 at 20:53 Jimbo says:
http://www.usaip.eu/en/free_vpn.php
Close Steam. Download the trial from there ^. Double-Click the file, which will effectively make your PC look like it’s in the US for a few minutes (it auto-disconnects after that because it’s a trial). Install Fallout 3.
You’ll probably have to repeat the connection to get the patch to download and run the game the first time. Once you get to a point where the game has ‘Ready to Play’ next to it in your Steam library you can just set Steam to offline mode and not worry about the connection thing anymore.
(your own risk etc. etc.)
21/10/2010 at 21:00 Tei says:
Where I have to click?
The website is written in american. Do anyone here have a translator?
21/10/2010 at 21:14 Ravenger says:
I knew you could do it that way, but I’d prefer not to risk it. I’ll install and unlock it tomorrow morning, for play tomorrow night.
21/10/2010 at 19:54 derf says:
It’s refreshing to read a negative review, regardless of truth or accuracy.
More of the same, please.
21/10/2010 at 20:08 Jimbo says:
Your comment sucks! The way you typed entirely in caps was particularly galling.
2/10
21/10/2010 at 20:17 EthZee says:
Can-
-can you do me too please
21/10/2010 at 20:35 Jimbo says:
Where to start? Your comment was so bad that I can only assume you were repeatedly dropped on your head as a baby. The single redeeming feature is that you remembered the question mark after your question.
14%
21/10/2010 at 20:50 outoffeelinsobad says:
I can not in any form of good conscience recommend this thread to anyone, ever.
Seven out of ten.
21/10/2010 at 21:02 EthZee says:
…UNNNGGH
…
more please
21/10/2010 at 21:57 Wildcard says:
It was worth reading through all 300 or so comments for this little diversion alone!
1 star
21/10/2010 at 23:34 Tetragrammaton says:
Beautiful. Give the man some cake!
22/10/2010 at 05:08 Jake says:
The head spins around and the dragon doesn’t match the cinematics, clearly you are trolling. Onioncraft or GTFO.
Zero Optimus toes.
21/10/2010 at 20:16 DoucheMullet says:
I really did expect to see a “LOL JK” at the end of this review. Everything you said, has honestly got to be the exact opposite to how I feel.
The voice acting?
Miles better than Fallout 3.
The writing?
Outstanding. How you can call this game’s writing boring is honestly unfathomable to me. Especially compared to FO3′s.
Lazy?
You shitting me? FO3 had so many copy pasted dungeons, something I’ve see in New Vegas once. Obsidian are not good bug testers, but that doesn’t make them careless. Fallout is Obsidian’s lost child. They finally get their chance to work with it again, and you think they just slack off?
I’m sorry, but this review is just terrible. You don’t seem to even know what you’re talking about half the time.
By the way, CL pronounces Caesar “Kai-sar” because that is the correct way to pronounce it.
21/10/2010 at 21:48 Gvaz says:
It’s See-sir or Seeze-er not Kai-ser.
germany=/=rome
21/10/2010 at 23:14 sinister agent says:
Caecilius est pater.
I recall that the German-sounding way is actually right.
22/10/2010 at 00:11 DoucheMullet says:
@Gvaz
Yeah…no.
The Roman pronounce it Kai-ser because Latin c’s are hard.
Where do you think the word Kaiser came from?
22/10/2010 at 01:19 Kandon Arc says:
@Douche Mullet: it would be correct if the rest of the game was in Latin too but it’s in English so it’s sees-er. Just like when you speak in English you say Moscow not Moskva or Nuremberg not Nurnberg.
22/10/2010 at 17:38 Jeremy says:
Being in English has nothing to do with it, this is a group devoted to the concept of Roman hierarchy and such… so obviously they’ll break out the Latin.
21/10/2010 at 20:17 wrathfirex says:
Hmmm, usually I would pick up a game based on RPS reviews. But today, its the comments section that are influencing me to buy and play FLV. I can understand where the buyers are coming from just by reading their positive comments: FLV does address issues and improves on Fallout 3. Although the RPS review (and may others) may not rate it highly, I believe that fans will still appreciate more fallout. Its better than waiting 10 long years IMHO.
Its also strange that usually RPS nails game reviews dead-on… Mayhaps Quinn’s game copy is buggy?
21/10/2010 at 20:18 stahlwerk says:
Is this the RPS-Gate* we all feared? Chill out everyone, you can still go play the game to form your own opinion, I won’t.
I don’t care much for the game (at the moment I don’t need a bleak & morbid virtual wasteland simulator in my life), so I did enjoy the read. As someone above said, angry Quinns is an interesting side of Quinns I thought reserved for quarrels with self-elected, so-called game masters.
*) or RPS-Gate-Gate, if Quinns is actually trolling.
21/10/2010 at 20:33 Wulf says:
He’s totally trolling, Quinns is actually very good at this, and he’s trolled a lot in the past. I wish I’d seen it earlier so I could’ve gotten in on the joke. Though I kind of wish he’d picked a more popular game to troll, a real high-end AAA title. Could you imagine the fireworks? The response here is kind of a bit muted instead.
22/10/2010 at 07:30 Fiatil says:
So does this mean that Wulf is now trolling by continuing to insist that Quinns was trolling? Let’s see how many more layers of trolling we can add to this before the website implodes.
21/10/2010 at 20:21 Xtravious says:
Wow, I don’t agree with this review at all. I feel the exact opposite of Quinn.
This probably won’t help you decide if it is any good or not, but I’ll say this:
This game is really a TON like Gothic 1/2 or Morrowind, in a good way, with much better writing.
Let me explain:
There is this sense of exploration and new, interesting places, that FO3 lacked, but Morrowind had (to me). Then there’s the more difficult combat that makes you feel quite weak at the beginning, especially on the harder difficulties – this reminds me of Gothic. In addition, the NPCs are usually a lot more real and have some actual stories to tell, giving the sense that they have their own views and their own agenda, also like in Gothic.
Things are really very grey and it’s fairly hard to pick sides or decide what choice for a quest would have the “best” outcome. Many times, the options you can select all have flaws and you will just have to settle for one of them.
21/10/2010 at 20:22 oatish says:
got it and so far enjoying it
and I’m a hater of FO3
21/10/2010 at 20:24 Corporate Dog says:
Man, I shouldn’t come here to read about FO:NV. Utterly Irrational Obsidian Fanboys VS. Game Critic Wot Didn’t Like It. FIGHT!
I’ve got it sitting at home, but have been too busy to play. I’m sure I’ll like it just fine, when I finally do fire it up.
21/10/2010 at 20:30 Wulf says:
Gee, I wish I’d had this sort of backup and people citing utterly irrational Dragon Age fanboys when I said I didn’t like that. Golly gosh, I wish I’d been put up on a pedestal for tellin’ it like it is, mang. That would’ve been a bit of all right, wouldn’t it? Yes indeed. Crikey, I’d have loved to ‘ave me some of that cult like praise of my opinions. :p
At the end of the day, some people will like something, some won’t, and everyone’s going to be passionate about their opinions. And the one side is always going to look like asshats to the other. It’s human nature.
21/10/2010 at 20:43 Huggster says:
Quinns strikes me as quite a passionate chap, I just bear that in mind when I read his stuff.
“Wears heart on sleeve” springs to mind – this is no bad thing at all as long as you understand where people come from.
21/10/2010 at 21:12 Corporate Dog says:
Oh, I suspect Quinns also doth protest a little much. As I said: I’m sure I’ll like it just fine.
Unless, of course, your pointed comment was aimed at me, in which case I just used Teh Google to refresh my memory on what sort of back-and-forths we might’ve had on Dragon Age, and I’m happy to say that I acquitted myself rather well in the one exchange I could find.
21/10/2010 at 22:47 Lilliput King says:
Now Quinns knows how Iraq feels.
21/10/2010 at 20:26 Wulf says:
Also, for those who haven’t figured out how I’m playing this in the UK already… >_>
I preordered the game on Steam a while ago, I’m still waiting for it to unlock. But Gods damn it, I didn’t want to wait for this game. You know how I love me an Obsidian game. Besides, all the data is there on my drive, I just had to… *coughmumblemumble.*
21/10/2010 at 20:27 pipman3000 says:
can’t read bad review too busy playing new vegas must return MUST RETURN!!!
21/10/2010 at 20:28 Nullh says:
Gah! Don’t believe I missed that.
21/10/2010 at 20:28 Huggster says:
Vince from Age of Decadence has done a 10 hour ish impressions”:-
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1748.0.html
21/10/2010 at 21:01 Lars Westergren says:
Thanks for that link Huggster, that was the kind of discussions I was hoping for.
21/10/2010 at 21:45 Huggster says:
RPGwatch is normally my “go-to” site for CRPG news and opinion, where I got that from (which I find interesting coming from a game developer)
TTLG can be good for Thief / Deus Ex / Bioshock gossip (Even Levine and a few bioshock devs hung around a few years ago, not any more though). Its mainly full of taffers now I think.
21/10/2010 at 20:29 David says:
I’m 8 hours into the game and I really couldn’t disagree with Quintin more.
So far, at least, the game is what I really wanted Fallout 3 to be. I liked Fallout 3, but this is just a lot more enjoyable to me, and “feels” like a Fallout game.
21/10/2010 at 20:33 Alias says:
This looks like the sort of review you get when someone is forced to review games for a living when they rather try and **** the new European intern.
Also, Hardcore mode item/ water/ loot sparcity can easily be patched. Considering that the game isn’t even out in the UK yet, that is fairly reasonable.
21/10/2010 at 21:05 Lilliput King says:
“This looks like the sort of review you get when someone is forced to review games for a living when they rather try and **** the new European intern.”
Yeah, Quinns. Tei finds your amiable advances inappropriate and uncomfortable.
21/10/2010 at 20:35 Sagan says:
Looks like I’ll wait a little bit about this game and see what the conversation on blogs and forums is going to be like about it.
I didn’t like Fallout 3 particularly much. I mean it really sucked me in for the first 10 hours, but after some time exploring just wasn’t fun any more. I guess because I never came across anything cool. I mean even the stuff that would be cool in theory, like the group of vampires, or the virtual reality thing, was just boring.
And Quinns says that that is exactly what’s wrong with New Vegas. So my main criticism of Fallout 3 has carried over. And looking at that half-assed farm or that empty casino, I believe him. If you create your world with this little care, then I don’t expect to have a good time in it.
Now the comments and other reviews tell a very different story, so I’m not entirely convinced yet. But since Quinns has talked exactly about what I wanted to know about the game, I believe him more.
21/10/2010 at 20:39 Huggster says:
I see your point, I felt the same thing about Fallout 3.
However, if there are NPCs in New Vegas I actual care about it may turn the tables somewhat.
21/10/2010 at 20:41 Ben L. says:
9 hours in, and there is absolutely no question that it has better writing than Fallout 3. If you still think that’s godawful writing, fine, but start ripping Fallout 3 more on that score, geez. Somebody game them an award for that disaster.
Now, that out of the way, is NV writing up to par with previous Obsidian endeavors? Perhaps not, if only because there isn’t much of it, and the Fallout 3-inherited dialogue mechanism basically renders it impossible for characters to speak more than a few sentences at a time.
21/10/2010 at 20:42 Ben L. says:
Typos dangit.
21/10/2010 at 20:42 Face says:
The only real problem with RPS is that it’s on the internet. If I could somehow have RPS not be on the internet, but still be able to read it, and read the comments of my favorite commenters, I’d be set. For all that I spend hours a day on it (slack time at work) I really don’t like the internet. I’m weak-willed, what can I say.
Hi KG! We still love you! Quinns, we love you too, you’re the best. I really want to buy New Vegas and right now this article is the only thing keeping me away. I hope I like it better than you do. If I agree with you I’ll come back and say so. Btw, coincidentally, I linked my brother to Butchering Pathologic a year ago. He just got around to reading it and immediately bought the game on Amazon. Powerful words, friend!
21/10/2010 at 21:09 futage says:
What a lovely comment.
21/10/2010 at 20:43 bwion says:
A prelude: I bought Winter Voices on the strength of Quinns’ rather negative review and am enjoying the hell out of it in spite of nothing he said about it so far actually being wrong. (I have not yet got to the bit that apparently caused him to black out with rage, mind.) Chances are good that I’ll be buying New Vegas as well (though probably not right away; I formed the habit long ago of waiting a few weeks for at least initial patches for PC games, and it will not go away no matter how many crazy pre-ordering bonuses people offer me).
I don’t , of course, have the game yet, and so I don’t have an opinion on the game yet. But I don’t believe Quinns is trolling, though it’s entirely possible he’s letting the things he didn’t care for sour his opinion on all the rest. (I’m just the opposite; I will cheerfully ignore flaws in a game if it does enough that I like. Which is a good reason for me not to review games professionally, I suppose!) More to the point, I would be very displeased if it were to come out that he *were* trolling; I have a lot more time for an honest opinion with which I disagree than I do for ‘hur hur let’s see how badly I can rile up the internets today’.
21/10/2010 at 21:01 Flint says:
More of a general New Vegas query than a comment on the article, but something I’d like to know if the devs have mentioned it somewhere or if someone has already finished the main story: have they added a proper Fallout-esque ending sequence where you’re told what your decisions accomplished, or is it still a F3-style copout? Based on what I’ve read on reviews and people’s comments it seems like New Vegas has fixed most of the things that make F3 a pain to go through for me, but there’s that one thing still that I’d like to know.
21/10/2010 at 21:02 Mister Adequate says:
My experience with Fallout NV so far has not matched that of this review. I’ve not had a chance to play it much yet, but, what I have played has been impressive to me – the world already feels far, far better than the capitol wasteland ever did, I’m liking the characters, writing and voice acting is far superior – and this is a point I consider objective fact, not really up for discussion – and combat feels like a significant improvement over F3′s massively overpowered VATS. There are shortcomings, to be sure, but these seem to stem much more from the engine (Which I’m given to understand Obsidian couldn’t do much about) than the things they had control over. This is not to whitewash these flaws, and any fair review of the game will mention them, but I do think it somewhat harsh to be quite so acerbic towards them for these failings.
21/10/2010 at 21:05 geldonyetich says:
When I saw the Fallout: New Vegas pulling a lot of consisting 80s or above on metacritic, I shelled out for it. I haven’t regretted it yet.
Wot I Think said it thusly: “it’s just… here, offering more Fallout. Do you want some more Fallout?” To put it better, do you want more Fallout 3? Since comparing Fallout 3 to the earlier Fallouts is foolhearty at best: the earlier Fallouts were 3rd person isometric turn-based strategy RPGs, Fallout 3 was Oblivion with guns and VATS, it was always oblivion was guns and VATS, and if you liked Fallout 3 you were okay with that.
Yes, I want some more Fallout 3. The thing is, I explored the entire dearth of Fallout 3, and playing that game right now is basically revisiting the old neighborhood, picking up the same old thing my previous characters picked up, a humdrum chore. There’s a few other things I could do in Fallout 3: Oasis (yes I never did this original and supposedly fabulous area); The Pitt; Mothership Zeta. However, I don’t care anymore, I saved the water purifier already and at that point the plot died, the overwhelming majority of the Fallout 3 world became a humdrum chore I’ve visited with 2 or 3 other characters already, and I’m sick of it.
Fallout: New Vegas is entirely new to me, and this is enough. Just as all Fallout 3 had to do was reskin Oblivion with guns and VATS to be a runaway success, all Fallout: New Vegas had to do is give me a whole new section of Fallout 3 to explore and it was enough for me to feel good about the purchase.
Although I do anxiously await the patches that will hopefully stem the tendency to crash and stop it from inexplicably reverting my auto and quick saves back to when I was level 1.
21/10/2010 at 21:10 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
I wonder how it will take for most of the bugs to be fixed.
21/10/2010 at 21:12 kevink says:
I wish it was only something about “unpopular opinions”.
The fact that he’s dissing an Obsidian game is the less relevant aspect, at least for me, the way he does it and the reasoning behind it is. His overall “style” in his trajectory around here is what clashes with what I always expected and liked about RPS all this years.
But, NVM, welcome to the internet!
21/10/2010 at 21:14 kevink says:
Aahh… good to see that reply fail never fails!
21/10/2010 at 21:13 Nevarion says:
I figure was already mentioned? Just scanned over the posts real quick so don’t mind if that’s actually old news already.
What it is? –> Bethesda allegedly pulls negative Fallout: New Vegas review
Check the link or just hop over to No Mutants Allowed. I got it from over there myself.
21/10/2010 at 21:13 Nevarion says:
Ooops! Messed up the linkage. Sorry ’bout that.
21/10/2010 at 21:15 Jetsetlemming says:
Did I read that right? Did you seriously praise Fallout 3′s subways over New Vegas’s open wasteland? Are you high?
Am I high?
21/10/2010 at 21:25 suibhne says:
That was a bit of a low point.
21/10/2010 at 21:17 Kid A says:
How dares Quinns have an opinion different to the rest of us? GOD DAMN HIM FOR NOT CONFORMING TO SOCIETAL NORMS!
21/10/2010 at 21:35 Om says:
Publish and be damned. Quinns doesn’t need protecting… or rather, if he does then he shouldn’t be writing reviews for public consumption. If people don’t agree with his verdict (or indeed the review itself) should they just shut up and keep shtum?
21/10/2010 at 23:08 Kid A says:
Oh no, they’re just as entitled to say “I don’t agree with you and this is why”. THe majority of what has gone on here, however, is “I don’t agree with you, and you’re a poopyhead and/or second-rate Kieron” which is something no reviewer should be made to endure for an opinion based piece. It’s like insulting someone who showers daily because they’re not doing the full Cleopatra asses-milk gig.
22/10/2010 at 03:42 Duffin says:
I think (the majority) of people are not upset at Quinns expressing his own opinion (which is ofcourse the whole point of the piece) but rather at the hostile tone and his claiming that the game is poor because the developers wanted to shaft us because they simply couldn’t be arsed. The amount of content in this game alone doesn’t make this a very likely proposition.
21/10/2010 at 21:29 irongamer says:
For anyone on the fence here is the thread I read before picking up the game. It is a long read. After reading a number of the replies I figured I should give it a shot even though the OP had a negative opinion of the game.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1123413-is-it-just-me-or-is-this-very-lacking-compared-to-fo3/
I’m glad I picked it up.
21/10/2010 at 21:32 eides says:
Thank you Quinns and posters who have objectively stated what they like about the game.
For those trashing Quinns for criticizing the game, a guide to pronouns:
Wot I think: “I” in this context refers to the author, not the individual reading the title
There’s no reason to be offended…he’s not telling you what you have to think.
21/10/2010 at 21:33 Kyle says:
Is QS gaming’s Armond White? Having played the game, I really can’t believe this isn’t at least a little contrarian.
21/10/2010 at 21:35 steggieav says:
I know this douchebag from RPG Codex. Skyway or something like that. People like him are why I don’t go there anymore. Shame, I remember some good discussions from that place.
21/10/2010 at 21:37 steggieav says:
Whoops, that was directed at a certain commenter who posted earlier on this page. Looks like it got deleted now. Damn reply system.
21/10/2010 at 21:41 Nathanael says:
Agreed on Alpha Protocol. I don’t understand any of the flak it received, as it was the best game I played in 2010 so far.
21/10/2010 at 21:47 Markachy says:
Its far too harsh to judge Quintin Smith on this review, this is what he thinks and he is entitled to that. I definitely don’t like to the way he expressed it though. Reviews are obviously subjective but this strikes me as unprofessional, and against the RPS tone. I think Quinns is fine, just made a hash of this one. And seems to have very different tastes to me (and most people it seems…!)
“It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
You are a games journalist working for some of the top websites in the industry. How could you not realise how WRONG this is before you wrote it? I’m guessing you aren’t a classic-Fallouts fan (or evern played them?!) judging from this level of ignorance. Obsidian is full to the brim of old Black Isle developers, many of whom worked on the Fallouts. Chris Avellone was a main man in developing this, and a good while back he dedicated LOADS of his time to penning the “Fallout Bible”, entirely of his own accord, for free. In his SPARE TIME. I recommend people have a look just to see how much work he put into it. I think that shows how much he cares about the franchise. Names like his, Feargus Urquhart, JE Sawyer, all big names from Fallout’s past. All heavily involved in New Vegas. All massive fans. And you think they don’t give a fuck?! They gave a hell of a bigger fuck (?!) about this game than you gave about this review. Embarrassing is the only way to describe that review opening. Shows a serious lack of knowledge about what it is you are writing about.
“I found nothing as architecturally entertaining as Megaton, and nothing as eerie or inventive as Little Lamplight. Hiking long distances felt like a chore.”
This line worried me regarding this review. I tend to pay more attention to the reviewer when they display tastes similar to mine, and I couldn’t agree LESS with this statement. Megaton had a cool opening door, that was it. The rest of it was just irritating to walk around, navigate and interact with, and only had about 2 characters worth noticing (both badly voiced, natch). Light Lamplight, feck me, full of running around boring brown tubes with REALLY annoying kid voices whining horrific dialogue at you, the absolute HEIGHT of abysmal voice acting. Eerie and inventive? Feck me.
“Bethesda even built a labyrinth out of the subway system.”
Another example of why I don’t think I can take much direction from your views because my tastes are so different. That subway system was an abomination, a terrible design idea and ludicrously irritating. It made me not want to ever go NEAR the main city, and whats even worse was that it made the main city seem like a load of little tiny pieces. It didn’t feel like a city. At all. By far the worst part of FO3 for me.
I think Fallout 3 would have been fine had it not used the Fallout license. It didn’t need it. Bethesda turned the reclusive Brotherhood into irritating, self-righteous do-gooders. Super Mutants into grunts who aren’t to be feared. Basically didn’t make it like Fallout, all they took from the originals was names and art (Pipboy, BOS, Deathclaws etc) – thats what I would call lazy. Obsidian went about trying to return Fallout to what it is meant to be, what many of the team made it all those years ago. And then get accused of not caring. Of not trying to “reimagine” Fallout. Some things don’t need reimagining. Some do. Including Bethesdas boring, tedious, uninventive FO3 universe.
21/10/2010 at 21:51 Kevin says:
I’d say that Quinns seemed to be playing a different game, but I too was frustrated by that prostitute conversation, and I too found Anders tied to a cross and wasn’t given an option of freeing him.
(So I did what I do to all the others dying on the cross and shot him in the head. Mercy sucks in the Wasteland.)
And I THINK the quest to pick up one of my companions is bugged.
That said… I was expecting more FO3, and instead found one of the best, most complex CRPGS I’ve ever encountered. A massive sandbox filled with a lot of politics, moral grey areas, and loads of places to explore. VATS is fixed, combat is harder, the acting is stellar, the graphics are… sigh… the best gamebryo can do on a console port. I haven’t lost this much time to an RPG in a long time.
And choice. I haven’t played a game this wide open in how you do things since Deus Ex, and I think it might actually have more complex choices than that! Even following the main plot, I see other people’s playthroughs that have little resemblance to mine. Creative thinking is rewarded.
There’s mature subject matter handled in a pretty sophisticated way and there’s plenty of comedy, too. (Even w/o the Wild Wasteland perk… though it helps.) The usual Fallout no-win situations are back, where you fon’t know what the Right thing to do is… where there often isn’t a right thing, just what your character would do
FNV is a somewhat buggy game, but is overall (though I’m only about half through it, I’d say? Level 15.) a fantastic RPG of the kind that PC gamers haven’t seen in a while.
21/10/2010 at 21:58 august says:
Tch. Mr. Smith, I thought you Brits were supposed to have a better classical education than us hairy, mouth breathing Yanks?
21/10/2010 at 22:02 Matzerath says:
This is so directly opposite most review forums, where the reviewer likes a game and everyone dog-piles on him pointing out its flaws in the most vitriolic terms possible. I’m sure this game is nifty, but I’ve never seen so many people defending ‘buggy’ and ‘broken’ before. It’s like the American health-care debate, ha ha.
All these problems WILL be fixed, of course, not by Obsidian, but by the mod community, who are just discovering that the mod tools for this are pretty much exactly those for Fallout 3. Expect the never-fixed Gamebryo bugs to live on, though.
21/10/2010 at 22:03 Stijn says:
Just the amount of comments on this one tells me it’s at least partly just fanboys being fanboys, and not Quinns’ review (which I found an excellent read) being at fault.
21/10/2010 at 22:14 sfury says:
I just want to bump the comments to 400, I don’t believe we’ve made it so far on any othe RPS rage-thread. :]
22/10/2010 at 13:38 sfury says:
w00t – let’s go for 600 now! :}
21/10/2010 at 22:15 Narrenschiff says:
The guns alone are worth it. Thank god for iron sights. Thank god for guns that actually goddamn shoot. Thank god I can play this game without ever touching VATS.
21/10/2010 at 22:18 Wizlah says:
Disclaimer: I’ve just recently finished up a run through Bloodlines again. I’ve got sitting on a shelf, waiting to be played (at some point in the distant future) NWN2 and Mask of the Betrayer, both RPGs that I’ve read interesting things about and would consider worth a look. I gave Alpha Protocol serious thought then decided I was going to leave it alone, because I’ve enough going on, and it sounds like it won’t be a stable game for a while. I fall neither in the love Obsidian nor loath them camp (and yes, I realise troika isn’t obsidian, but Bloodlines could be said to be very obsidian like – heavily bugged and really only playable after much patching, but with interesting writing and characters). I tend to take each game on its merits. With that said, I’ll plow on.
I think its interesting that some of the more measured RPS readers like Lars and Vinraith are so appalled by Quentin’s use of language. Interesting because those guys are usually very measured, and not prone to such strong reactions. That, to my mind, is where the question of taste and opinon comes in. Granted, for Lars to say that this is the decline of RPS seems a bit strong, but still, I can appreciate where someone wouldn’t like the tone of the review.
Having said that, He sounds pretty pissed off to me, and if he wants to express it in that manner, I can’t fault him. And reading that review, he sounds like he has things to be pissed off about. The barlady/prostitutes thing, for instance. the lack of people round and about. a character describing a farm as massive, but the vista on your screen showing something different. crucially, the sentence where he describes the lack of ambition. which is where, I presume, the ‘phoning it in’ line comes from.
various people have cited how the choices are complex, and the NPCs interesting. But Obsidian have a track record of doing that. I would imagine the lack of ambition has more to do with a setting which tips its hat to fallout 2 a lot, but doesn’t do anything new with the universe. I’d guess ‘phoning it in’ is doing what obisidan always do – solid enough writing but not polishing up the other areas of the game.
I enjoy CRPGs, I really do. But the form comes with necessary limitations – you can’t talk to everyone. A massively complex hub comes nowhere close to the complexity of a local neighbourhood in real life. There is no clever ad-libbing GM to help suspend the belief by adlibbing furiously when you decide to find out if this place has a cat, and whether you can talk to that cat’s owner by ringing the number on their collar. It is easy as a fan to allow the shortcomings, dismiss the related bugs that arise from trying to overcome those shortcomings, and then say ‘yeah, but I had a really tricky dilemma with these three competing factions, and none of them are black and white and there were great consequences from the choice’.
Quentin is a man in love with many things in gaming, but unique enthralling worlds, and testing your ingenuity and gamers ability are high on his list. Now to be fair, he makes clear that he enjoyed accomplishing some tasks without having to shoot everyone. And possibly he did get the hardcore mode confused. But still, I think what he’s getting at here is that obsidian did what they are very capable of doing – give you a location (the casino, say) with a smattering of people (enough, I’d wager, to interact with. and maybe some of those characters are neither black nor white, but somewhat nuanced), and made sure this could lead to some testing dilemmas in quests. But it sounds like they’re relying on you liking fallout. and giving you a bit more. and that’s especially understandable if some of them were involved in the original games. but it may be to quentin that what’s on the screen is neither especially inspiring (because how many times can we usefully visit this setting when the tropes seem to stay the same with each iteration) nor enthralling and all encompassing (because they’re letting their technology cripple the experience).
But it *is* displaying a lack of ambition in terms of the setting. and in not attempting to rectify some of their usual mistakes (the glitchiness, adopting CRPG shorthands such as a describing a busy location with only a few people in it – ask yourself, how is the casino pictured above, any different to the one in the original fallout?)they could be said to be lacking ambition, of doing what they always do, of, if you like, phoning it in. And it sounds like, from what quentin (and others are saying), the way they are trying to get around these problems is by doing what bethesda did – giving you shit loads of terrain. and stuff. Now maybe it’s more lovingly crafted (because the dialogue’s better, say) and there’s no doubting that’s a lot of effort to do that, but it doesn’t make quentin’s criticisms any less valid.
This sounds like a solid, engaging, very glitchy RPG. In their own way, obsidian are no better than bioware in doing what they do – they’re very good at the bits they’re good at, and they can’t be arsed with the other stuff. The review makes me think that I’ve already got two rpgs sitting on my shelf (waiting to be played at some point) that are very similar to this one. Maybe with mods in a couple of years time, it will be a more enthralling setting.
But judging from what people have described of the game in this comments thread, and from what quentin has said, it would be wrong to dismiss Quentin’s review as merely a) a difference of opinion to yours and b) unfair on obisidian.
21/10/2010 at 22:21 BobbleHat says:
Ouch. Wasn’t expecting that. Well, I was expecting the crappy performance bugs, but not the rest.
I would be having second thoughts about buying it if I hadn’t won £20 worth of HMV vouchers for being the best at microwaving pub grub at work, which effectively means I can get New Vegas for a tenner. Surely it’s worth that.
21/10/2010 at 22:27 A-Scale says:
This was a powerfully scathing (and hilarious) review that has utterly turned me off the game. Perhaps i’ll acquire it some day, but probably not even that.
21/10/2010 at 22:30 Ryuga says:
Strictly speaking, Latin is a dead language.. nobody at the time of Julius Caesar took the time to write re. phonetics – at least nothing that has been preserved. So how to pronounce Latin really is guesswork. Add to this a slew of dialects and the language changing over time.. and you got yourself a bit of a complicated situation.
21/10/2010 at 22:34 Ryuga says:
Woo hoo, reply fail!
Yeah. I guess ambitious people can sorta guess where I wanted that…
22/10/2010 at 00:09 Saiko Kila says:
Actually your comment fits into many places in this thread. It’s nice so many people are still taught Latin, but it’s strange that not many of them are taught that Latin is dead and there is no consensus on spelling. There are couple of schools, points of view on that matter, some probably better than others, but… All these assumptions are more or less educated guesses, nothing more. Since Latin ceased to be used as a main language (in original areas) and before it started to be used again, there was one big cultural breakdown. Barbarians invaded and ruled. New languages were born and intermixed.The pronunciation of words evolved, there were different pronunciations in one country, depending on cultural (religious mainly) center. Compare it with different pronunciations of English, despite sustained communication and no cultural catastrophe in the meantime. The scholars are trying their best to recreate the thing, and the changes, but there are limits. Until we have time machines…
21/10/2010 at 22:42 Freud says:
I get the feeling that those that hate this review also were delighted when they read a negative review of Fallout 3.
Having not played this game, I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy it when I get around to playing it (patched of course).
21/10/2010 at 22:57 Jack says:
Controversial (sensational?) statement in lead sentence, plus gratuitous swearing? Review article that cherry picks in order to make facts fit an opinion? Attacking from a postion of ignorance?
Quinns is the tabloid hack of RPS.
RPS is a little – no, a fair amount actually – crapper because of this move.
21/10/2010 at 23:01 Nihileth says:
Completely non-rage related, why does it want to launch at 2 am and not midnight on Steam :(
21/10/2010 at 23:05 7rigger says:
Quinns, don’t ever change :)
(Need more onionbog though)
21/10/2010 at 23:07 Langman says:
“It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
That’s a shame. RPS never used to be this kind of site.
21/10/2010 at 23:21 Dan says:
A refreshingly honest review. Thanks Quinns.
21/10/2010 at 23:23 Samuel Bass says:
Repeat after me, people…
The
Role
Of
A
Critic
Is
Not
To
Validate
Your
Purchases
Also, all this “RPS is going downhill” piffle….sigh….double sigh, with sprinkles.
21/10/2010 at 23:39 subedii says:
The role of a comment isn’t to validate the critic.
If people aren’t allowed to say they hold a different opinion to the posted article then there’s no point in having a comment system in the first place.
21/10/2010 at 23:56 Tetragrammaton says:
@subedii
I think you are missing the point – I for one am thoroughly enjoying NV (although I do believe the criticism of sloppiness rings true) But i respect Quinns opinion as it is just that. Equally there are plenty of people who disagreed with his review who have left thoughtful and even headed comments. What people are reacting to is the large amount of personal attacks with the only justification being ‘you have said bad things about something i like, you are a stain on this good site,burn in hell etc’
There is no point in a comment system if people cant keep it civil.
22/10/2010 at 00:42 subedii says:
Funny, I’d have said the vast majority of posters are keeping it civil.
22/10/2010 at 02:59 Robert says:
Erm…
I don’t have an opinion of this game yet, I came looking for opinions actually. And “It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.” is not what I look for in game journalism. It might be fun writing, but I’d call it bad journalism.
Am I now trying to validate my not-existant purchase, or my opinions about journalism and writing? I am puzzled my dear chap.
22/10/2010 at 18:09 Dave says:
@Robert: My dear chap, when I read your post, I could tell that you were puzzled straight away, for you’ve confused “bad journalism” with a writing style you simply don’t agree with. But I don’t begrudge you for it: everyone make mistakes! Cheerio!
24/10/2010 at 19:48 Robert says:
Thanks for the condescending ad hominem attack!
21/10/2010 at 23:34 Armyofnone says:
Oh dear. Divisive article. I for one appreciate your opinion Quinns!
21/10/2010 at 23:36 MD says:
Guys, please! If you disagree with Quinns: express your opinion! If you think Quinns mis-stated a fact, or skipped some necessary research, or overlooked something important: point this out!
But please please please don’t let yourselves slip into attacking the author/website for expressing an opinion you disagree with. Those sorts of reactions are largely to blame for the bland, cheerleader-squad mentality of most of the gaming press.
21/10/2010 at 23:40 MD says:
Basically, people get a lot angrier about negative reviews of games they like than positive reviews of games they don’t like. Combine this with the natural pressure to be on good terms with the publishers who feed you review code and advertising, and there’s a pretty clear path of least resistence leading to blandsville.
21/10/2010 at 23:37 Alex says:
You guys crack me up.
21/10/2010 at 23:39 ZanibarBuckBuckMcFate says:
This thread was the most unpleasant thing I have ever read on RPS! NERDRAGE!
The review, on the other hand, was a pleasure to read. Mr. Smith is fast becoming my fav RPS reviewer.
21/10/2010 at 23:43 sinister agent says:
OHMYGOD YOU SAID THINGS ABOUT A GAME I JUST BOUGHT YOUR WORDS FILL ME WITH RAGE SHOUTING COMMENCES NOW
22/10/2010 at 08:00 plugmonkey says:
It’s very much like you haven’t actually read the thread.
21/10/2010 at 23:45 Tetragrammaton says:
Its obvious to me that Quinns is either a troll or a black-hearted villain. There is no other possible way he could have expressed opinions that run contrary to my own!
21/10/2010 at 23:53 Delusibeta says:
Timezone issues, I guess. It’s supposed to launch 12 midnight GMT, which is not the same as British time for another couple of weeks.
21/10/2010 at 23:55 Delusibeta says:
Reply fail, that was a reply to Nihileth.
21/10/2010 at 23:54 Evo says:
To all the commenters complaining about people disagreeing with Quinns:
Most people disagreeing with the review have played New Vegas and Fallout 3 and have given clear reasons why they disagree with the review. Isn’t that what a good comments thread should be? Or would you prefer sycophantic agreement from everyone?
Also, does anyone else find it funny that positive reviews are never called “refreshingly honest” by anyone? When a critic gives a critically acclaimed game a negative review they’re suddenly hailed as some sort of messiah, while other reviewers are derided as bribe-taking liars. It’s completely bemusing.
22/10/2010 at 00:00 Tetragrammaton says:
See my reply to subedii above.
21/10/2010 at 23:57 Shadram says:
I’m a fan of Mr Smith’s work (particularly Journey of Saga and his game diaries), and haven’t played this game long enough to form an opinion yet, but
“It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
That’s just rude. Sure, there’s issues, and the game could have done with a bit more time for polish and play testing (like most Obsidian games, then), but to suggest they were lazy, didn’t try hard enough or didn’t care? What a horrible thing to say, really not something I’d expect from this site. I couldn’t take the rest of the article as valid opinion after reading that.
22/10/2010 at 07:23 mrmud says:
After Quinns recent trolling attempts with regards to World of Warcraft it is exactly what I would expect from this site.
While I have enjoyed some of Quinns AARs, the rest of his writing is starting to put me off the site.
22/10/2010 at 10:29 Jolly Teaparty says:
I thought it was funny.
22/10/2010 at 00:07 bwion says:
Quinns hates New Vegas?
Kieron would have liked it fine.
RPS declines.
22/10/2010 at 00:11 jaheira says:
“It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.”
That’s punchy writing right there.
Don’t tell the other three, but stylistically Quinns is the best games writer I’ve ever read.
22/10/2010 at 00:18 Ashbery76 says:
“the characters in that game were often interesting or disturbed enough that you were curious about what they had to say.”
What? I must have missed that in Fallout3.I do not recall any interesting characters whatsoever.
22/10/2010 at 00:24 Debaser says:
It’s a good thing that the article isn’t called “Wot I Think”, eh?
22/10/2010 at 00:27 Some Yank says:
Sounds like someone phoned-in this ‘review’.
22/10/2010 at 01:14 Thants says:
Sounds like someone phoned-in this ‘comment’.
22/10/2010 at 00:30 Lazarus says:
Why do people complain about there being massive stockpiles of guns and ammo everywhere in Fallout? This is America! There’s a gun or twelve in every house! (and twenty-five thousand rounds of high-velocity hollowpoints).
22/10/2010 at 00:35 kedaha says:
I’m getting seriously sick of people saying “OBSIDIAN ARE THE GUYS WHO MADE PS:T AND THE ORIGINAL FALLOUTS” as if that will make this game awesome.
Know who the lead creative designer and writer was?
John Gonzalez
Never heard of him? That’s because the only other thing he’s written is Tom Clancy’s Endwar.
Yeah.
22/10/2010 at 02:37 Salamander says:
Lead designer was JE Sawyer. I don’t know what crack you’re smoking.
22/10/2010 at 12:47 kedaha says:
I may be smoking crack, but I’m not a full fledged retard!
Lead Designer
* J.E. Sawyer
Lead Creative Designer
* John Gonzalez
Lead World Builder
* Scott Everts
gg pld
22/10/2010 at 00:39 Mitthrawn says:
I totally did. As soon as I saw that I said yes, please. Everything really fun and interesting I found was based on wild wasteland. I recommend everyone turn it on.
22/10/2010 at 00:41 Mitthrawn says:
I totally did. The wild wasteland perk really makes everything so much funnier and better. If you didn’t turn it on you’re missing the best parts of the game.
22/10/2010 at 00:42 Mitthrawn says:
D’oh! reply system fail.
22/10/2010 at 00:43 thebigJ_A says:
This review…
I don’t get it. If it weren’t for the horrible bugs, this would be a FAR better game than FO3
22/10/2010 at 00:45 malkav11 says:
I honestly wasn’t expecting this review. I have no idea how anyone could play New Vegas and find it bland, characterless and boring. Certainly not in comparison to Fallout 3.
And let me be clear here. I adore Fallout 3. I think it’s very likely Bethesda’s finest game to date, and all the little individualized nooks and crannies one can find make me very happy. I am continually baffled by people describing the “dungeons” as cookie cutter. Sure, they get a bit architecturally samey as they just don’t have a very wide palette to work with, but every one of them has its own unique qualities that makes it a -place- in a way that Oblivion dungeons were almost unanimously not. Computer records, audio logs, puzzles, bits of side stories, items and skeletons placed in ways that insinuate weird and intriguing scenarios. I guess I can see where the repeated combat scenarios would eventually pall enough that exploration stopped feeling altogether worthwhile (I’ve hit that point from time to time, although I’ve played the game off and on over months). Not all of the set pieces were brilliant, but they do all right and places like Rivet City are really pretty cool.
That said, in the hours that I’ve played New Vegas, which are admittedly still few, it is unquestionably better in several key respects, from RPG systems (picking skills and perks is actually difficult now as there are more than a few worthwhile approaches and you can’t just spam bobbleheads and skill books to max everything out, plus the return of traits), to crafting (much more useful and expansive), to voice acting (not universally, but some of the voice actors are quite good) to combat (much less fixedly reliant on VATS, more approaches work, more weapon variety, recycling ammo, more visceral feel) to story (I’m already wondering what’s up with Victor, for example, and unsure if I’ve made the right decision re: Primm’s law enforcement) to radio (terribly limited song list, sadly, but the Black Mountain Radio station is -hilarious). System by system, Obsidian have improved on what Bethesda achieved.
And buggy? Well, it is a bit. Not a broken trainwreck like some people are making it out to be, at least not for me, but they absolutely need to fix the Steamcloud bug fast-like. Otherwise it’s actually performing better and bugging out less than Fallout 3 did. I continue to believe that Obsidian’s reputation for poor QA is largely undeserved and their accomplishments in storytelling, game design, and consistently dramatically improving on the games they’re following up far less recognized than they ought to be. (Troika, on the other hand? Well. Brilliant conception, but they actually did fail quite a bit on the whole execution thing.)
22/10/2010 at 00:46 stahlwerk says:
450 Comments, only 6 occurences of the word fanboy including this one, leading to an average amount of 1.3 centifanboys per post. That’s pretty good, folks.
22/10/2010 at 00:52 Enigmatic Gray says:
This is a brilliant metric. I’m not exactly sure what that proves, but It sure sounds scientific.
22/10/2010 at 01:01 stahlwerk says:
It’s akin to thread-fuel ppm, but more directly measureable. Low value: a civilised discussion has ensued, maybe the subject could be more divisive? High value: don your asbestos, and don’t forget to feed the trolls – it’s flamewar time!
22/10/2010 at 01:01 Mitthrawn says:
I’d just like to correct a few things Quinns said. First of all, the sharecroppers. That farm is not just the little patch of ground right there. Look around Quinns, explore a bit. There are at least 4-6 greenhouses ( at least by my count) full of crops. Its not just that tiny patch of land. If you had bothered to explore a bit more you’d have seen that.
The casino. That is one room in one casino on the strip. There are three functioning casinos on the strip, most with multiple gambling rooms, all of them with plenty of npcs and extra people. I never though, wow, the strip is a ghost town. There are plenty of people there. Remember, its a goddamn wasteland, not everyone has money to blow at the casinos, not to mention the freeside casinos and the demilitarized zone (or whatever you call it).
The writing. Its top notch all the way throughout. I’m assuming you, Quinns, did not play through with the wild wasteland perk on. Do me a favor, turn that perk on, then do the quests at the rocket factory and navoc. Now tell me that the writing is terrible. Simply put, I laughed out loud repeatedly loud enough to scare my roommates and there was one point in time in the Come Fly With Me quest where I said out loud, “There are no words. No words.” It was simply too awesome. Seriously go play it with that.
These mistakes, and your harshness in previous posts when confronted with “bugs” which turned out to be “not knowing the control to put your gun away” seems to point to a lack of thoroughness on your part. Especially in not following up on the bugs or, say, noticing that there were half a dozen greenhouses sprinkled like daisies around the sharecropper lands. In this case, I would not be the one accusing anyone else of “phoning it in.”
22/10/2010 at 01:23 Kevin says:
Time of day also effects the population of the casinos.
22/10/2010 at 01:48 malkav11 says:
And, frankly, while I have no doubt that the population of any given area in Fallout: New Vegas is unrealistically sparse, this is a scale issue that Oblivion and Fallout 3 both had, as do many other RPGs. It’s a “bustling town” of five or ten people plus a few nameless extras. Nearly invariably. But there’s not a great deal to be done about it because of performance limitations and the enormous task that a genuinely bustling town, much less city, would be to write with any kind of depth.
23/10/2010 at 02:15 thebigJ_A says:
While I don’t think for a second Q phoned in this review, everything else you said is absolutely true.
I just think he took a dislike to the game early on, which colored his view of everything else. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the feeling the game gave him, and he wrote it down as per his job.
I’m just glad I didn’t have the same problem.
22/10/2010 at 01:10 jack says:
Wow. I come onto RPS early in the rosy-feeling morning, and this is what I find?
It’s a bitch-slap of a review, and the comments are just reacting to that, although saying that Quinns has ruined RPS forever is ridiculous and uncalled for.
I haven’t played New Vegas, so I can’t say whether it deserves the slap or not. But coming straight from an internet of nothing but goodwill towards the game to this is jarring. I might have to try it out before buying, but seeing as you’re one of the only people who dislikes it, I think I’ll still be giving it a shot.
22/10/2010 at 01:17 Nimic says:
So… is this really that bad, then?
22/10/2010 at 01:18 stahlwerk says:
Sounds like someone phoned-in this ‘reply system’
22/10/2010 at 05:20 Jake says:
Yeah well I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck captcha.
22/10/2010 at 01:22 Sui says:
skalpadda:
Yes, but games are harder to make than comic books and films.* Programming is an incredibly tricky thing, especially when handled by a large team, and sometimes it’s just not feasable to carry on throwing money at a project. It can get to the point where a publisher only has two choices; scrap the project entirely, or release it as it is.
Sure, in an ideal world everyone would have infinite amounts of money and all game companies could spend 7 years making their ‘Half-Life 2′. But this really isn’t feasable. Personally I’d rather have the game in a broken state than not at all.
*Also, to elaborate on this: films are not ‘easier’ to make per se, but most of the problems arise BEFORE shooting starts and BEFORE all the money is spent. Once the directors, actors etc. are locked down, shooting is an organised, coordinated and relatively brief affair. In contrast, problems arise DURING a game development process (e.g. STALKER). Things that were promised suddenly are no longer feasable; parts of code become broken and must be scrapped; things simply take longer to do than the developers thought. Listen to any of the HL2 commentary and you’ll realise what an organic process game development is – things are constantly changing, evolving, growing. You can’t just write down the whole game as a ‘screenplay’ and develop the game like you would shoot a film. That’s impossible, and it would probably turn out to be a very boring game.
So, some games turn out to be a mess, even though a group of very intellegent and very capable people were developing it. That’s life.
22/10/2010 at 10:44 skalpadda says:
I certainly won’t argue against the fact that games are far more involved than most other entertainment projects. I’m very sympathetic to the fact that your vision and ideas often clash with the realities of budgets, time and other constraints; it’s something almost every creative endeavour has to deal with.
What I oppose is the notion that reviewers and critics should gloss over faults or tone down their opinions to cut the developers some slack. I think the tone of this review is bordering on abusive and unnecessarily rude and hence don’t consider it a very good one, but if RPS writers start ignoring faults and not giving their honest opinion I’ll stop reading the site and cancel my sub, because I do expect honesty from them, and as far as I’m concerned their obligation is to themselves and their readers.
As a counterpoint on negative reviews done really well by the RPS writers I’d point at their coverage of Clear Sky, like this:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/02/eurogamer-stalker-clear-sky-review/
22/10/2010 at 01:38 Walsh says:
I would like to be able to play the fucking game to compare to this review. As it is, this pos is unplayable due to a crash to desktop after the intro movie. I can’t remember the last game that just wouldn’t work right on my computers.
Goddamnit.
22/10/2010 at 01:39 hiver says:
Regards from RPGCodex.
Heres i wot it thinks about this “review”
http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=50924&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
cheers :lol:
btw, personally i dont think ive ever read anything so mindbogglingly silly presented as a review.
22/10/2010 at 02:57 Freud says:
No one really cares what RPGcodex likes or not. Especially when it comes to RPGs.
22/10/2010 at 03:40 Jake says:
Web browsers need an opposite of ‘favourite’, that website is terrible.
22/10/2010 at 04:23 Thants says:
Ah, this did get linked to on some forum. That would explain endless trolling.
22/10/2010 at 05:16 Thants says:
Alright then, the explosion of posters who’ve suddenly decided that they hate Quinns and that the site has gone downhill right when he disliked their pet game, even though they’ve never expressed anything like that before, must be a total coincidence.
22/10/2010 at 06:29 Thants says:
Hey, he might be totally wrong about this game for all I know, I haven’t played it yet. People have every right to disagree. But suddenly deciding that he’s the worst thing to ever happen to this site is fanboy bullshit, yes.
22/10/2010 at 07:10 Bret says:
I care what RPGCodex thinks.
It’s useful keeping an eye on, and I do not say this lightly (and would apply it to none of the people here, RPS has a swell bunch of folks, even (especially) when I disagree with ‘em, and/or tempers get heated ) the vermin.
Lurked a little for some cultural anthropology, and I can safely say they are, if not the worst community on the internet, by far worse than the (low) standards of this brave digital frontier.
Seriously, RPGcodex is just icky.
22/10/2010 at 07:18 Thants says:
Now I look crazy.
22/10/2010 at 12:50 suibhne says:
@Thants: If you look around in these comments, you’ll notice that many of the people disappointed with the tone of Quinns’ article, and in some cases its factual accuracy, are people who have posted at RPS for years. I think it’s not very reasonable to dismiss all negative reactions simply because there may be a subset of “new” posters (tho who’s to say they haven’t lurked for just as long as the rest of us have been posting – and even if they haven’t, who’s to say there’s no value in their views?).
22/10/2010 at 01:41 Kandon Arc says:
After the frankly embarrassing launch of AP I’m stunned that Obsidian has once again released a game in such a buggy state. That, if nothing else, justifies Quinns’ anger in the opening paragraph – Obsidian, regardless of their merits, deserve to be chastised for consistently failing to improve their quality control.
22/10/2010 at 10:52 Jolly Teaparty says:
I never really gave it much thought because bugs just seem to be part of PC gaming that I ran out of steam getting angry about. That being said, yeah, I recall playing a few Obsidian games with a number of literally gamebreaking bugs.
22/10/2010 at 01:46 TariqOne says:
It has long been apparent from his insistent trolling that Quintin Smith is simply not up to snuff. Another in his oh-so-cool-contrarian series.
Please replace this gentleman. His credibility is shot and he does an otherwise fine site a disservice.
22/10/2010 at 01:54 MD says:
Assuming this isn’t a joke: piss off. Go back to every other site on the internet, and let the rest of us enjoy reading a genuinely interesting writer.
22/10/2010 at 02:04 MD says:
To elaborate: Kieron Gillen’s tastes differed pretty widely from mine, his reviews were sometimes worse than useless to me as a buyer’s guide, he often annoyed me a bit, and I don’t think I even like him as a person. But he’s a bloody good writer, and his articles probably made up about 50% of the interesting games writing I’ve been exposed to. Quinns has the potential to fill a similar role; give him a chance! If his ‘lack of credibility’ (i.e. disagreeing with you too often, in a manner you consider obnoxious) bothers you to the point that you’re unable to do so, please read other publications and let the rest of us enjoy his writing.
22/10/2010 at 02:11 Sunjammer says:
Quinns is, in Kieron’s absence, by FAR my #1 favorite RPS writer.
22/10/2010 at 04:21 Thants says:
Did this review get linked to on another site or something? The trolls are out in full force.
22/10/2010 at 04:35 Jake says:
I think Quinns is cool, even if he doesn’t like Warcraft. I would totally be happy for him to write Thor and/or X-Men in the future, if he wants to.
22/10/2010 at 01:52 Anthony says:
I love your writings, Mr. Quinn. And I fully appreciate this is your considered subjective analysis.
But everything else I’ve read on this game disagrees with your verdict. Not just one or two of the major sites, but practically every review along with the plebs that have already bought and played it for a bit. Even bloody Destructoid like it, and they do angry reviews as a matter of course.
As it doesn’t come out here until next week I’ll just have to withhold my own personal opinion. But the promise of “More Fallout 3, just better” that I’ve heard everywhere else still has me excited.
22/10/2010 at 02:18 Nimic says:
Eeh… I just got into the game, and the mouse is acting crazy. There’s something very funky going on with the sensitivity, or acceleration, or something. Any way to change that? I can change the actual sensitivity, but it makes almost no difference to that particular problem. I genuinely don’t know if I can play the game like that.
22/10/2010 at 02:30 steggieav says:
@Nimic: There’s a fix for this over at New Vegas Nexus. Try it out:
http://tinyurl.com/2fmohds
22/10/2010 at 02:24 Torgen says:
I’m just boggled, boggled, that people can call a supposedly AAA title that looks like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKIkw3LIoQ&feature=player_embedded
a great game. I can’t tell if the first page smells of manure or astroturf.
And one of the reasons I read RPS as my only gaming site (besides being too old to spend hours every day going through others sites) is that they write how they feel, not what makes the advertisers happy. I truly don’t trust any other PC games review site at all.
22/10/2010 at 02:32 John says:
Torgen, that seems to be a unusual bug that doesn’t affect the vast majority of people, and the video poster urges people not let it ruin ‘this great, great game’. I’ve not played New Vegas, but writing it off because of a bug in one video is a bit silly.
22/10/2010 at 04:20 Thants says:
You’re boggled that a game that has a bug can be a great game? I’m boggled by that!
22/10/2010 at 04:30 Narfesis says:
“The now infamous Doc Mitchell video, while very funny (and horrifying) was not a bug. Unfortunately during our launch day, there was a brief window where Steam was pushing out corrupt or incorrect files. In the event that a user wound up with a corrupt meshes.bsa file, they would get that error. It was easily (and instantly) corrected by simply re-validating your files with Steam. At most, a handful of people ever saw that issue, and even then, only for a moment before fixing it.”
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1125221-please-read-from-the-teams-at-obsidian-and-bethesda/
22/10/2010 at 02:25 tariqone says:
No. I could care less if he agrees with me. And I don’t disagree with him. I haven’t yet played it.
It is the inability to handle nuance, the color-blindness to shades of grey, that makes him uniquely unsuited to review subjective material. It’s never an inventory of pluses and minuses with the fellow. It’s either hagiography or a chop-job and therefore wholly without utility.
He could write like David Foster Wallace for all I give a shit (and his writing is fairly propulsive and punchy). Doesn’t mean he canreview his way out of a paper bag.
And he can’t.
22/10/2010 at 02:29 tariqone says:
Reply Fail. That was @MD. Mr. Inclusion-Slash-Leave-RPS-If-You-Dislike-My-Fave-Reviewer.
22/10/2010 at 03:07 Shadram says:
I think you mean you couldn’t care less. To say you “could care less” implies that you do care, since it would be possible for you to care less.
One day, I shall banish this heinous grammatical failure from the earth, and on that day there shall be much joy and feasting.
22/10/2010 at 03:16 tariqone says:
Funnily, I read my post and chided myself for not writing correctly, then cursed RPS for it’s lack of an edit feature.
Yes, I’ve seen the graphic. Yes, I gather that “could” implies the ability and room to go below the current level. And yes, I knew an RPS wag would be about presently to correct me.
I’m an American. A New Yorker. It’s how we say it. Hell, I saw “irregardless” in the dictionary the other day. Cut me some slack!
22/10/2010 at 03:17 tariqone says:
GAAH! “ITS!” “ITS!!” Not “it’s.”
Time to shut up now.
22/10/2010 at 08:06 Lilliput King says:
Erm, you got it right. “its” is possessive.
22/10/2010 at 09:25 MD says:
What about his Winter Voices review of a few days ago? (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/18/wot-i-think-winter-voices-avalanche/) Obviously not ‘hagiography’, but you could hardly call it a ‘chop-job’ either.
I can’t really think of any recent hatchet jobs other than this one; he took the piss out of WoW once or twice, but they weren’t reviews, nor were they particularly extreme cases of negativity.
I hope Quinns isn’t out to be negative for the sake of negativity, but if his overwhelming impression of a game is that it’s shithouse, I certainly don’t want him to hold back. (Except in certain cases: for example, a small indie game that could just as soon have received no coverage, where feelings would be unnecessarily damaged.)
Also, sorry about my tone earlier. I stand by the general sentiment, but telling you to ‘piss off’ was immature and needlessly aggressive.
22/10/2010 at 09:36 MD says:
That said, calling me “Mr. Inclusion-Slash-Leave-RPS-If-You-Dislike-My-Fave-Reviewer” was pretty silly too.
Leaving aside the ‘favourite reviewer’ assumption, you’re misrepresenting me. You’re perfectly welcome to continue to read RPS while disliking Quinns. But if you really can’t bear his presence, please move on to other websites rather than trying to ruin RPS for the rest of us.
22/10/2010 at 02:26 The Innocent says:
A lot of these comments are sad. Not frustrating, just sad. Personally, Quinns is my least-favorite RPS writer, but that doesn’t mean I dislike him or his writing (Ah, but give me some MeerProse though). In fact, I think he’s a fine replacement for Mr. Gillen in a sort of thematic sense, and he’s certainly passionate and talented. And I don’t understand why someone not liking a game that you like means that he must be touting some lofty ivory opinion-edict that he barely condescends to shower upon our proletariat heads. He didn’t like the game, and yeah, I completely disagree with him. So?
The RPS community tends to be great, but sometimes (I think of the L4D2 threads from a while back), the assholes come out to play. Sorry if that’s harsh — most of the comments here aren’t all bad, but man, some people are are really going overboard and need some perspective.
22/10/2010 at 02:38 John says:
I haven’t played New Vegas, so I won’t comment on the thrust of the article, but I felt the opening paragraph was uncalled for. Obsidian has always seemed like a company of people who care a great deal about what they do, so to accuse them of ‘not giving a fuck’ seemed unfair and unprofessional. You can say a game lacks soul without personally attacking the people who made it.
22/10/2010 at 03:46 suibhne says:
That’s my primary irritation with Quinns’ “WIT”. Sure, I disagree with nearly everything he said and I don’t even understand how humans could hold some of those views – e.g., the notion that FO3′s writing is superior to FO:NV’s. But the only “over the line” bit was the personal attack on Obsidian’s motives.
On a larger level, tho, I’m concerned that these “Wot I Think” pieces sometimes exhibit less journalistic rigor (even new-journalistic rigor) than a “review”. Quinns’ examples of the farm and the casino, e.g., are just plain wrongheaded – he’s either choosing to quote the game out of context, or he’s demonstrating his own lack of percipience. My ideal “Wot I Think” would have all the fact-checking, evidential support, and journalistic responsibility of a well-written review in a reputable trade rag, but with the personality and canny subjectivity offered by RPS at its best. But really, subjectivity isn’t a worthy replacement for reasonableness; it’s most effective when both go together.
22/10/2010 at 03:54 Salamander says:
It’s also particularly obnoxious since Chris Avellone wrote a fucking thing called the “Fallout Bible.”
Insinuating that he doesn’t care about Fallout would be like saying the Pope doesn’t care about Christianity.
22/10/2010 at 02:41 Baron says:
Review does seem to be missing the game’s intent. The examples he gave (the spartan crops, the empty casino) seem like dark humour to me. It’s appropriate that it’s not a bustling metropolis! And you shouldn’t be able to rescue every gimp chained to a pole… this should be how things are. It’s the landscape, the atmosphere; to free every slave would be like stopping to polish a burnt out car, or watering a dead tree. The player should just accept that there are also many people chained to poles, and that this is the world they live in. (Different voice actors saying the same like is a ES:Oblivion sin, I admit.)
When I read a review like this, by someone who strikes me as not the sharpest tool in the shed, it makes me want to go out and buy the game (it’s released today in Australia). Maybe the reviewer should treat himself to an icecream cone, go sit in the sun for a bit, and write reviews when the stabbing pains of his dog’s passing has subsided.
22/10/2010 at 15:50 7rigger says:
“When I read a review like this, by someone who strikes me as not the sharpest tool in the shed,”
That’s the spirit! If he doesn’t share your opinion, he’s obviously just stupid…
Please grow up or GTFO
22/10/2010 at 02:42 nmute says:
probably has little to do with “agreement” as a general concept as opposed to “omfg this game sux and heres why” livejournalism.
22/10/2010 at 03:01 Kamisama says:
I’m confused, i usually trust RPS when it comes to reviews and “wot i think” but this review is clearly confusing me. When i first read it i was like “well much ado about nothing, FNV seems to be crap, better move along …” but i still wanted to see what other reviewers thought about it.
And canardpc (major french pc gaming newspaper) has a test coming in 2 weeks, and here’s the insight the reviewer shared with us : http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56505&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
It is totally opposed to Quentin’s opinion, ans i don”t know which i should believe !
22/10/2010 at 03:04 bhlaab says:
Only a few hours in and I could not possibly disagree more. Some of the complaints in this writeup simply baffle me.
22/10/2010 at 03:06 bhlaab says:
And I’m all for personal attacks, but saying that Obsidian “didn’t give a fuck” is SO out there you must have delivered this review by space shuttle
22/10/2010 at 15:52 Joey-joe-joe says:
You mean you are ok with personal attack so long as it’s not a developer you like?
22/10/2010 at 03:23 Matt says:
At least there aren’t any fuckin’ mudcrabs.
22/10/2010 at 03:54 Olivaw says:
Wow. This is pretty crazy. I figured RPS would like this game a lot more, considering what they usually cover.
It’s weird that he didn’t talk about technical issues once, though. That’s telling about how much he didn’t enjoy the actual GAME.
I appreciate the honest opinion, though. I have a feeling this particular opinion is going to be wildly unpopular, though.
22/10/2010 at 03:55 Quark says:
Wow, this is the worst, most disagreeable article I have ever read on RPS. I expected better from this site.
22/10/2010 at 04:07 Soobe says:
Instead of pecking away at the merit of another’s opinion and his ability to express it, I’d like to dive a bit more into what I thought the meat of his criticism was–
I’ve not had the pleasure of playing New Vegas yet (I will for sure be buying it), but I do recall a distinctly ‘unfinished’ feeling from some locations in Fallout 3.
A good example is Tenpenny Tower. I mean here you have–for no doubt hundreds of miles–what has to be the most habitable and safest spot you can find, and yet no one’s banging at the front door to get in. No siege, no bandit assaults—nothing.
Of course once you’re in you find, despite the almost total seclusion the populace has, an almost antiseptic environment. Nothing feels lived in or used. There was no personality in what should be the most hotly contested places for hundreds of miles. The building had no stories to tell, and neither did the inhabitants (yes I know what happens with the ghouls!).
Anyway, this created an awkward feeling of disconnection in the world between what I was being shown and what the games reality was. Mind you it that’s one instance in a very large world and I generally enjoyed Fallout 3, but that feeling underscored what I thought was Fallout 3’s main issue.
To expand a bit, dare I say it, but it’s almost as if the game worlds a little too bat-shit crazy. Certainly humanity would, after an event like all-out nuclear war, band together just a bit stronger? Psychologically speaking, I think it’s safe to sat that most humans basic nature is to organize and form communities. Yet in Fallout the only communities you find are of the crazy type.
When you combine these two ideas, a lack of personality in some locations and a dreary sense of desolation and hopelessness in humanities ability to rise up in the face of adversity, something just feels off.
Now I could imagine, and again, I have not played this game yet—a situation where these feelings of disconnection spread to not just a few locations, but the majority. Should this be the case I would very much reflect the same opinion.
I wonder if that feeling I had is what’s being referred to in this WOT?
22/10/2010 at 10:56 skalpadda says:
Soobe:
“A good example is Tenpenny Tower. I mean here you have–for no doubt hundreds of miles–what has to be the most habitable and safest spot you can find, and yet no one’s banging at the front door to get in. No siege, no bandit assaults—nothing. ”
Except the first time you come there, where there’s an angry ghoul banging at the front door to get himself and his fellows in, and you then have a quest to either help the ghouls or wipe them out.
22/10/2010 at 18:44 perilisk says:
See, I agree with you, but the thing is — I don’t get that feeling from New Vegas the same way I did from Fallout 3. Fallout 3 never worked as a plausible world — it was a virtual theme park with a post apoc theme. No one ever actually seemed to do anything, everyone lived off 200 year old food (but very few people scavenged). The cities and areas weren’t well thought out, they were just someone saying “hey, this would be cool!”.
Most of the towns in New Vegas have a landmark of some sort, but it’s mainly a way for you to locate the place in the distance — if Bethesda had developed Primm, the town would be based on people riding the rollercoaster there around to houses built around the track and maybe having gang fights from the coaster cars or something ridiculous like that. Everyone says that Obsidian makes stories and Bethesda makes worlds, but Fallout 3 fails as a world as did Oblivion (but Morrowind was much better, so it’s their new direction that sucks).
Honestly, I can see why people are skeptical about this review. By way of analogy:
Not-Quinns: You know, I really didn’t care for Batman Begins.
Reader: Strange. I really liked it, most people I know did. But I guess it’s not for everyone.
Not-Quinns: Yeah, it really failed to entertain me the way that Batman and Robin did.
Reader: It.. what… I… I mean, I guess I can see that. Like, each movie has its strengths. If you really enjoy campiness and homoerotic banter, then I guess maybe that outweighs the strengths of the other film for you.
Not-Quinns: See, the problem with Batman Begins is that the acting and directing, and especially the screenplay, really fall down compared to Batman and Robin.
Reader: Wait, is this performance art or something? I’m pretty sure that monkeys aren’t smart enough to operate computers.
22/10/2010 at 22:55 Soobe says:
@skalpadda – As I tried to allude to yes, their was some conflict with the Ghouls, but it was my impression at the time that this should be a more hotly contested place.
@perilisk – Indeed.
Look, I’ll be buying this game for sure, but although I really appreciated your comments, you didn’t convince me of why this game is better than Fallout 3 in terms of setting and realization of a world as opposed to a collection of unrelated set pieces with varying levels of logistical and moral disconnect.
And yes, I found your analogy very adapt at proving why Quinns thinking my be wrong on the issue of the game, but again, I want someone to show how his point are wrong.
I know many are enjoying this game, but I thought he did a very solid job of pointing out things that were wrong from his perspective.
In other words, how is he wrong?
22/10/2010 at 04:50 Hardtarget says:
Holy cow, super surprised by this review, especially since I usually agree with RPS about most things.
I’m not 14 hours into the game and having an absolutely Blast. Got to the strip at around the 9 hour mark and now there is even more stuff to do. The content is huge and I’ve been finding the atmosphere, the writing, the acting, and the overall direction to be a lot more enjoyable than Fallout 3 (and I liked fallout 3!)
22/10/2010 at 05:09 Matzerath says:
Quinns is definitely not a team player, and will be missing out on some juicy ad-revenue with this tomfoolery. Get with the times, man! Pull this review until all the bugs are fixed, and THEN tell us your feelings! And if they are the correct feelings … well then we’ll all be a lot happier, won’t we?
22/10/2010 at 05:37 GGX_Justice says:
I tend to take a global view of these things.
When deciding whether or not a game is worth my purchase, I listen to my own common sense, instincts, hype dog and opinions of people on the internet whom I trust.
These are few and far between – Tom Francis (www.pentadact.com), the Hivemind of RPS and a few others – I’ve liked Quintin Smith ever since he introduced me to Pathologic, and his position at RPS is very well deserved in my eyes.
To cut this short: I’m going to see what he says, and take it on board. I’ll see what the folks at PC Gamer say too, and hopefully Tom Francis will make a post about New Vegas. I’ll then make up my own mind, from the supposition of all of these opinions.
He’s reviewed the game and given his thoughts. Has Quintin committed thought-crime? Not at all.
22/10/2010 at 06:03 Dude says:
What a shame.
Needs a scientist salarian.
Fire axe + sledgehammer = DEFILER.
Fallout 3 + NV = pretty good deal!
22/10/2010 at 06:28 Fnerp says:
It’s Kai-Zar because the C in caesar is actually a hard c, as in curriculum or cogent thought, coherent, etc.
And latin ae sounds like ay / ai. So out comes Kai-Zar.
And, not for nothing, the german “Kaiser” as in emperor came from this very word, caesar, and is pronounced the same way.
But all of this was just dropped in favor of a little man saying “Pizza Pizza” and advertising the new cheese crust stuffing or similiar.
Kinda related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhctidk9jIk&p
So clearly a man without an understanding for language and culture MUST be unable to correctly judge the awesomeness of a vast, empty, sprawling desert wasteland to walk around in and swap bottle caps with peepz at.
22/10/2010 at 06:40 Jim Rossignol says:
Thanks for the comments, gentlemen. Please keep the discussion civil and curb the trolling.
22/10/2010 at 07:44 Shadram says:
And ladies, surely? :P
Hmm. Are there any women here? I don’t believe they’re allowed at stonings such as this.
22/10/2010 at 10:25 Olivaw says:
Heh.
Ladies.
Riiiight.
23/10/2010 at 00:40 Slaphead says:
Isn’t it a bit disingenious to ask for civility at this point, when even the original article didn’t contain any?
23/10/2010 at 09:08 bill says:
RPS used a bad word??? Well, that’s a change…
22/10/2010 at 06:46 Jethro says:
I’m surprised this review hasn’t been pulled yet. Some of his statements are bordering so close to objectively wrong it suggests that he didn’t actually play much of the game. The misleading screenshots don’t help his credibility either.
22/10/2010 at 09:26 Shadow Aspect says:
Misleading screenshots? That’s an odd comment, care to elaborate?
22/10/2010 at 15:50 Wulf says:
Well, the screenshots do seem to support the idea that Quinns is trolling, I think he’s a brilliant writer, but I also think he’s having a bit of fun with us in a Yahtzee sort of way. The thing is, no RPG ever has lots of NPCs, but the New Vegas casinos have quite a few providing you don’t take your screenshot in the middle of the bleeding night, when it’s obviously going to be a ghost town. That screenshot seemed to be taken very specifically to back up a fallacious point, I can’t honestly believe that Quinns would make a mistake like that.
22/10/2010 at 19:37 Grey_Ghost says:
@Wulf
Well IIRC, Fallout 2′s New Reno was jam packed with NPC’s (at least in the Casinos). God forbid you got into combat there since you’d be waiting an hour to cycle through every NPC’s turn (I’m exaggerating, but it was quite long)
22/10/2010 at 20:34 dhex says:
Well, the screenshots do seem to support the idea that Quinns is trolling
how? i disagree with mr. smith on most of his points, but the screenshots aren’t particularly humorous or ill-placed. they illustrate his talking points.
22/10/2010 at 22:18 Jethro says:
The sharecropper screenshot is framed so you see on small plot of plants. There are many, many more plots out of view because of the angle the reviewer took the screenshot from, as well as maybe a dozen greenhouses. The casino shot is misleading because the casinos are dead at night but have a crowd of people during the day.
24/10/2010 at 05:02 Patrick says:
@Jethro
Wow, really? That’s kind of throws what little credence I gave to this review out of the window. The only valid complaints I’m willing to believe at this point are the bugs and the weakness of Hardcore mode.
22/10/2010 at 07:40 clownst0pper says:
This may sound really shallow, but the graphics look so shit, it actually makes me want to cover my eyes.
I think they need a new engine…
22/10/2010 at 12:52 suibhne says:
I always felt that way in FO3, too – it baffled me that many reviews praised the game’s graphics. Texturing especially was just an eyesore, and FO:NV really isn’t any better.
That said, I got over it pretty quickly in FO3 once I got involved in the game, and I found the same thing to be true in FO:NV.
22/10/2010 at 07:40 Freud says:
I went ahead and bought the damned thing. I had planned to wait a while but I had to see what all this barren wasteland drama was about.
Damn you and your reverse psychology salesmanship, Mr Smith.
22/10/2010 at 07:43 Ruiner66 says:
I’m trying to figure out how the reviewer is being so bored with the game. Reading this review, it’s almost like he is playing a different game than me.
22/10/2010 at 08:06 Lewie Procter says:
The thing about Fallout 3 for me was that there was big open spaces with nothing in them.
But, in my experience, a quick 360 degree turn would always reveal something interesting on the horizon, or some kind of unique derelict building.
I’d be disappointed if the same wasn’t true of New Vegas.
22/10/2010 at 08:35 Danny says:
Mr Smith is pure gold for RPS. Imagine the increase in advertisement revenue caused by the Holy Crusade when he puts a new article online.
22/10/2010 at 08:38 Danny says:
Seamus, ye olde time traveler.
22/10/2010 at 08:37 Adam Curtis' Freaky Jumpcuts says:
I think Quinns does super-fine work and the attacks against his character/dress-sense/taste in music in these here comments (fewer than you’d probably see elsewhere, thankfully) are totally uncalled for.
But. Wait, that needs to be larger. BUT. This review feels like it came from opposite-world. I mean. I actually can’t wrap my head around how some of the conclusions in it were reached. That’s kind of new for me, because I can normally apply my EMPATHY POWERS and figure it out.
Pretty much ever criticism here (tone of script at odds with reality of visuals, empty space, wonky dialogue) feels like it applies to Fallout 3 rather than New Vegas – which, I admit, I’m only about 4-5 hours into. From what I’ve seen so far though, it improves on FO3 in … well … everywhere.
So, yes, this was a confusing piece. Welp.
22/10/2010 at 08:46 Incognito says:
I think that it might be fair to actually say that this review is bring RPS down a bit. I´m buying the game today to test it. If it turns out that Quintin is right and everyone else is wrong when it comes to writing, dialogues and quests, then fine. If not, then we have an RPS writer than I will not trust when it comes to writing in games. And since RPS has been my absolute favorite site, than that is a problem for me.
The problem is not that he dislikes it. I for one has always asked the question how the whole world seems to have the same opinion when it comes to games if you look at gamerankings.com. And F:NV is obviously an uneven game, which deserves varied ratings. No doubt. But what Quintin does here is codemning the one thing that other reviewers seem to agree on, and doing it a very arrogant way.
If this is his opinion, then he should stand by it and publish the article like that. But I´m having my doubts that he is someone I will listen to from now on. When I get to play the game, I will now for sure.
The one thing I like with this review though is the same as all others on RPS – it´s a review without a score. Thumbs up for that. :)
22/10/2010 at 10:19 clownst0pper says:
So because Quintin doesn’t like it, but mainstream media do (there’s a suprise) you won’t trust Quintin again?
Get down from your high horse you imbocile. Your coming across as a disgruntled fan boy.
Vegas has scored well in other reviews because the magazines they are written in are shit. To put it politely.
22/10/2010 at 13:07 suibhne says:
You totally missed his point, clown. Wrt the specific case he cited, Incognito seems to be saying that he has a problem with Quinns’ reasoning – particularly the fact that Quinns thinks FO3′s writing is considerably better than FO:NV’s. That judgment is leading Incognito to think that Quinns might not be someone whose opinion he should trust in the future – particularly on the question of the quality of writing in games.
22/10/2010 at 13:11 suibhne says:
Also, clown, your insults and ad hominems don’t do much for your credibility.
Why is it that, every time people perceive there to be an anti-RPS backlash, they put together an anti-backlash backlash that’s at least as abusive as the behavior they’re criticizing?
22/10/2010 at 13:46 Incognito says:
suibhne: Exactly. Thank you for that. :)
23/10/2010 at 00:27 LoveIsGood says:
I’m sorry, but I have to defend Vegas here, I played it and I found its pretty good and that I’m agreeing a bit with the mainstream media that I never read. I have no idea what the heck game he was playing. It does have a lot of bugs though, but I’m hopeful they will be fixed seeing the track records we have here. Bethseda gets about a B and Obsidian has a great bug fixing track record as long as the publisher doesn’t stop them and I don’t think Bethseda plans on stopping them.
22/10/2010 at 09:34 Wang Lo says:
Ignore the haters. You make a good case for your criticism unlike the people who seem to like this game so much, especially ones who say stupid things like obsidian made the original fallouts. Fallout 1+2 were great but obsidian has never made a game that was truly good to date so I doubt this one is any different. Some people have riled themselves up that this is somehow a more legitimate fallout but if caesar’s legion and some of the other crap weren’t in the jefferson design I can’t imagine them grabbing anyone very much.
23/10/2010 at 15:18 LoveIsGood says:
Pretty much all of Black Isle Studios went to Obsidian when Black Isle folded. Hence why me and others are talking about Obsidian as if it was involved because quite a bit of the company was involved in the originals.
22/10/2010 at 10:15 bill says:
Well, everyone loved the writing for fallout 1, but i found it dull and characterless… so i guess it’s all about personal taste…
22/10/2010 at 10:22 clownst0pper says:
The writing in oblivion an fallout 1 is absolutely dire; in fact both games are, yet everyone lapped them. Lord knows why.
22/10/2010 at 11:00 bill says:
I mean the really old fallout 1, not the bethesda one.
22/10/2010 at 22:26 Nick says:
Yes.. as in Fallout 1, not 3.
22/10/2010 at 10:31 Unaco says:
Honest review Quinns. Well done… it obviously takes a brave games journalist to do it, especially for such a big game. Also, maybe expanding the RPS readership quite so much wasn’t the best idea… it may have brought in some ‘undesirables’. As long as we only lose the comments though, I’ll be happy… don’t let it change the writing and the articles!!
22/10/2010 at 10:32 HexagonalBolts says:
RPS, for the love of god, close this comments thread! And don’t worry we all still love you and your writing.
22/10/2010 at 10:38 clownst0pper says:
Everyone banging on about the writing is waaaay better than FO3 is crackers. Anything above dogshit is an improvement, so FO:V probably is…
22/10/2010 at 23:49 Tycho says:
Wow, and you accused someone of being on a high horse earlier…
22/10/2010 at 10:39 hoverdog says:
Yes, bethesda used to make good games. What they are doing now is disturbingly bad.
However, this one’s content was made by Obsidian.
22/10/2010 at 10:47 GenuineEntropy says:
“Jim Rossignol says: October 21, 2010 at 9:31 pm
I’d have delivered a similar review, I think. Not a fan.”
Just thought I’d repeat that for the benefit of those claiming they’d have been happier if someone other than the new guy had done this W.I.T.
See, Rossignol agrees and he’s been around for ages, not to mention he’s written proper grown up, published books and everything!
That said, I still went ahead with my steam purchase of the game having read this article and the initial 3 pages of comments last night.
Allow me to explain:
I have been coming to RPS since the start (and before that Eurogamer and PCG mag), to help inform my opinions, not to have them dictated to me.
I have continue to follow these writers around because I respect and trust their opinions and find their writing styles engaging and entertaining.
This absolutely applies to the newly arrived Q. Smith too, (sorry reactionary drama queens).
In this case however, Q.Smiths slightly angry/ insulting tone just left me feeling cold.
It felt rather lazily mean spirited, in the way that some shock journos trying to seem withering and caustic can be (I don’t mean the good ones like Brooker or Croshaw, more their poor imitators).
I suppose it could be down to the the raft of ‘comedy angry reviewers’ we’ve gotten since Zero Punctuation popularised the ‘Angry Gaming Nerd’ thing? I’m all for journalism that runs contrary to popular opinion and with things like with ZP, the angry insulting stuff is just as much a part of ZP’s schtick as badly animated, hilarious visual aids.
With RPS however, I have come to to expect the snark to be subtle, the insults to be justifiable and everything inbetween to be either insightful, puerile, slightly daft or both. And that;s why I keep coming back.
Whatever the case, Q.Smiths tone seemed to have a very odd effect on me, as usually I adjust my expectations/ commitment to buy things based on RPS’es utterings (something very few sites or mags can now claim).
This time, the combination of pointy, sweary and seemingly mean spirited words, as well as the contrary opinions being spoken by veteran RPS commenters who have actually played the game and whose names I’ve come to recognise, led me in the opposite direction.
The last comment I read before purchasing was the one quote above from Rossignol.
While I’ve only had a few hours with the game, I am very glad that I picked it up.
I will report back in if that opinion changes as I spend more time with it.
22/10/2010 at 10:54 GenuineEntropy says:
Typed out on my mobile… So many typos…. No edit button… The horror… DON’T JUDGE ME!
22/10/2010 at 14:04 bill says:
I don’t think one can really say that the writing style is pointy, swearing or mean spirited. Or at least, no more so than any other RPS article… they are often pointy and sweary, and i didn’t find this article mean spirited or badly written.
I haven’t played Fallout 3 or New Vegas, and i doubt i’ll have time for either. So i feel a little like an impartial observer. I think people’s feelings, or the responses of others are coloring people’s views.
When i first read the article there was nothing in it that struck me as unusual, sweary or mean – but when you read lots of comments claiming that kind of thing you start to believe it.
I do agree that there are a lot of RPS commentors who’s opinions i agree with, but then i often agree with the RPS guys too… but everyone has their own opinion and no-one will agree on everything.
Er… lost my train of thought.. be careful of reading too much into the article due to the comments, i guess.
22/10/2010 at 16:11 GenuineEntropy says:
Hmm, well Bill I would never claim to be infallible so it’s certainly feasible that the comments I read coloured my perception.
While RPS certainly isn’t above amusing snark and even out and out name callery, it just struck me (immediately and prior to comment reading) as a little unnecessarily harsh:
“You’re obviously lazy, don’t care and I feel your game is terrible”
Rather than:
“Well, you tried, but I feel your game is terrible”.
Being rational about it, that’s probably just me projecting my own personality onto the words of a writer/ group of writers whose work I enjoy.
I certainly giggle along like a simpleton with everyone else when reading/ listening to comedic vitriol from the likes of the previously mentioned Brookes or Croshaw… Dirty little enabler that I am…
22/10/2010 at 11:43 Furius says:
Controversial Review? 5 pages of comments? When did Jim Sterling start writing for RPS?
22/10/2010 at 11:54 Nallen says:
I think what I’ll be doing is waiting for patch or two. What with running W7x64 and all.
22/10/2010 at 13:10 sfury says:
You’re in luck then – already 2 patches out on Steam.
22/10/2010 at 12:36 Dudefella says:
Quintin Smith: The new Jim Sterling?
22/10/2010 at 12:42 Daniel Carvalho says:
I read this review, and it just reminds me of what I thought about Fallout 3 itself, and why I stopped playing such an unpolished and overwhelmingly boring game.
22/10/2010 at 12:50 Halfthought says:
oh hush, you stupid idiots are why the game journalism industry is such utter crap.
OH A REVIEW DISAGREES WITH MY OPINION IT MUST BE BAD.
22/10/2010 at 12:52 Halfthought says:
this was suppose to be a reply >.>
22/10/2010 at 13:10 the_fanciest_of_pants says:
Woah, enormous shitstorm or what?
I’m still looking forward to playing it, but I’m sure I’ll come to much the same conclusion as quinns.
At least with mods it may become something.
22/10/2010 at 13:24 Jethro Bunnwacketwalrustitty says:
Lies, you didnt play it, you just want to be like a NMA fanboy and bash it.
Good for you, heres a cookie.
22/10/2010 at 18:47 Kevin says:
You want scary? There’s actually a lot of positive talk about NV on NMA.
22/10/2010 at 19:37 Corporate Dog says:
Nah. That’s about par-for-the-course.
If Bethesda takes a stab at Fallout, they’re producing Oblivion With Guns, and pissing on the fans.
If Obsidian (née Black Isle, which is less an aside, and more my main point) builds a game on that same engine, the piss magically transforms into mana from heaven.
22/10/2010 at 22:30 Nick says:
Um.. well. yes. That’s like being surprised that people would be happy if Ridley Scott did another Alien film after AvP/AvP2 were made.
22/10/2010 at 22:34 sfury says:
Good comparison!
23/10/2010 at 00:18 TCM says:
It’s closer to being happy that Ridley Scott is making AvP: The Spinoff.
In terms of analogy.
24/10/2010 at 03:59 Bret says:
But, he is making one.
And it looks bad.
22/10/2010 at 13:24 Unaco says:
Ooooh!! This one just came to me…
There seems to be quite a lot of Fallout from this WIT.
22/10/2010 at 14:08 GenuineEntropy says:
That’s… Well done you. :-)
22/10/2010 at 15:59 7rigger says:
You nuclear win-ter this thread :)
22/10/2010 at 14:19 Komus says:
Can we please delete every comment except this one? Far too much teenage angst flying about for a friday afternoon. See you all in the pub.
22/10/2010 at 14:20 Komus says:
Not this one, that one above! DAMMIT ><
22/10/2010 at 14:20 Danda says:
Wow, this review is wrong on so many levels… But then again, like with the Alpha Protocol review, thankfully the people commenting here know better :)
22/10/2010 at 14:41 ezeleolos says:
“God I miss Morrowwind.”
QFT.
22/10/2010 at 15:40 CrazyBaldhead says:
@Wulf: STFU at last man. He wrote what he thinks about the game and just because you disagree with him doesn’t mean he’s trolling. Jesus, take it easy.
22/10/2010 at 15:52 Wulf says:
He was very aggressive in the way he wrote it, and some of the screenshots taken seemed to be shot in such a way as to support arguments which didn’t really fit the truth of the game. STFU, seriously. Jesus, try playing the game.
22/10/2010 at 16:01 7rigger says:
Why would Jesus want to play the game?
(WWJP – What Would Jesus Play?)
22/10/2010 at 22:37 sfury says:
One of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_video_game of course.
22/10/2010 at 16:32 king kong says:
The quests are more interesting in New Vegas, but I agree that the locations are much worse. The strip was a huge disappointment, considering it’s such a huge part of the game, and the tribes I visited, like the Boomers, were not visually interesting or unique either.
Fallout 3 had its problems, but it definitely had a better looking and more memorable world
22/10/2010 at 16:40 king kong says:
also Ceasars camp is awful! seriously terrible design
22/10/2010 at 16:44 GenuineEntropy says:
Also.
“Obslivian”
Problem solved. :-)
22/10/2010 at 16:49 UK_John says:
Like so many ‘console orientated’ PC games, this, like Fallout 3, seemed ‘phoned in’. the antitheses of, say, The Witcher. So much of the quests, the conversations and even the code is buggy. Worse than many companies that have to build a new engine to boot!
It also seemed immediately unimmersive to me that there was an army of men that found a way to have Roman garb on – who made it? Where did all the metal and cloth come from? Every time I saw a member of this ‘Roman army’ it took me out of the game. the same as hearing the voice of the Dark Brotherhood recruiter when speaking to exactly the same evil type character who wanted me to blow up Megaton!
I wait for European titles now. Like Two Worlds II and The Witcher 2. American companies just don’t have a clue about PC gaming anymore!
It will be very interesting to see where this title appears in the chart!
22/10/2010 at 17:07 Jonp says:
Good thing people aren’t sperging over this or anything. Just a healthy 600 posts.
22/10/2010 at 17:07 laikapants says:
@UK_John: While I get what you’re saying, wasn’t the Witcher similarly buggy as hell on release? And for that matter aren’t most of the ambitious Eastern European games swimming in bug soup (at the very least on release, if not perpetually so)?
22/10/2010 at 21:57 countingdown7 says:
I played Witcher early on and I can say it was pretty damn buggy and saving/loading/area transitions took forever. But they did fix it eventually. I guess Obsidian doesn’t get that chance.
22/10/2010 at 22:37 ScubaMonster says:
Yeah I thought that was part of the reason they made the Enhanced edition. It fixed a lot of stuff.
22/10/2010 at 18:00 Hold Reload to Holster says:
I certainly appreciate Jim saying he would have given a similar review, and if he’d constructed one in the same way I’d have had much the same reaction. I’m not sure he would’ve though, as Jim’s always struck me as a polite fellow. And because I’ve been reading his stuff for years, I would doubt that he’d blame a game rather than his own ignorance, or pick screenies to illustrate his opinion that didn’t in fact objectively meet the facts of the matter.
Because I don’t have experience of Quinn’s writing, he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.
So all I have to go on is a deliberately tryhard review with a “insert games developer are a bunch of lazy fucks” lead paragraph and several instances of the reviewer either apparently not understanding things, exaggerating/making things up and more deliberate contrary/provactive opinion (as well as some points that I don’t object to).
Bad article. RPS doesn’t normally run bad articles. I am disappoint.
22/10/2010 at 21:52 Heynes says:
I think it’s quite a good article. Even if Quintin may seem to be overcritical in his review, most of his points still stand and many of them are as much a critique of the game as they are for the genre as a whole – persistent flaws that are minor enough we’re starting to get desensitize to them, but valid flaws nevertheless (“Do you want some more Fallout? If so, New Vegas can provide, so long as you don’t mind your every hour with it being laced with some small amount of disappointment.” is to me the most poignant sentence to take away here).
Personally, I am enjoying the game moreso than not, but it’s mainly because I didn’t hop on the hype-train and had very tempered expectations based on the framework it’s being built on and Obsidian’s track record.
23/10/2010 at 01:46 Lilliput King says:
“pick screenies to illustrate his opinion that didn’t in fact objectively meet the facts of the matter.”
How did this become consensus?
There is no ‘objective fact of the matter.’ Are the casinos well populated enough to not break the player’s immersion? Quinns says no. I say no, after actually having a look. They’re awful. Obsidian were, of course, limited by the engine, so fair enough.
You say yes, I suppose? Fair enough. But this isn’t something that can be quantified. A consensus can’t be reached with respect to evidence. Whether or not Quinns finds the casinos convincing is not something you can doubt. Do you understand?
22/10/2010 at 18:44 Richard says:
The reviewer is really short a couple of bricks isn’t he.
If you think subway system in FO3 was good design, and that Rivet City was good, you deserve your hopeless, meaningless, bland lifeless existence you already have.
Fire this guy from your magazine.
New Vegas is much better for RPG fans, not console munchkins who are as intellectually and creatively engaging as a dismembered radscorpion.
22/10/2010 at 22:41 sfury says:
Oh wait, it’s not actually a magazine…
22/10/2010 at 18:45 Hélder Pinto says:
Yeah whatever! I loved f3 with all my heart, I really did. But this is purely someone trying to milk the ip in a horrible way.
22/10/2010 at 22:41 sfury says:
Obvious troll is obvious.
22/10/2010 at 19:07 TariqOne says:
@MD, re the Mr. Inclusion-blah-blah being a massive assumption, I’m glad you caught that. It was solely intended to highlight your own assumption that I “disagree” with Mr. Smith and therefore criticize him. Again, much as I have no idea who your favorite RPS writer is, you had no idea what my stance on FONV is. And as I said, I haven’t played it.
It’s Mr. Smith’s TONE that perturbs me, and it has been a constant in his writing here, potshots and general volume-raising and judgment-snapping (Elemental controversy, anyone?) and nasty snark.
I also take issue with your “the rest of us” dichotomy. I’ve read RPS multiple times every day for many moons. I’ve commented in threads from time to time. I’m one of “us” as much as you are. Because I have less tolerance for the addition of Mr. Smith’s polarizing tone than you, it does not place me on the outside of some group of officially sanctioned RPSheads with my lonely face pressed against the clubhouse window, watching “us” slapping each others’ backs over self-congratulatory snifters of brandy.
Mr. Smith is a writer. He has posted his writing in a public forum. A forum with comments enabled. Just as I reserve the write to make a disapproving comment about a painting in a museum, I reserve the right to say that Mr. Smith’s overall tonal quality isn’t up to the usual RPS snuff. Just as he reserves the right to keep writing whatever he wants in whatever tone he chooses.
I suppose you reserve the right to tell me to “piss off” as well. I do appreciate the apology, however. And I extend my own regarding my sideswipe at you. We’re all just folks.
23/10/2010 at 03:25 MD says:
The thing is, you didn’t say “I don’t like this review; here’s why…”, or “I don’t like Quinns’ writing in general; here’s why, and here are some examples…”. You said:
“It has long been apparent from his insistent trolling that Quintin Smith is simply not up to snuff. Another in his oh-so-cool-contrarian series.
Please replace this gentleman. His credibility is shot and he does an otherwise fine site a disservice.”
Later, you accused him of an “inability to handle nuance… color-blindness to shades of grey… [making him] uniquely unsuited to review subjective material.”
You also criticised him for failing to provide “an inventory of pluses and minuses”, claiming that his reviews are “either hagiography or a chop-job and therefore wholly without utility”.
You also said that these failings rendered the quality of his writing all but irrelevant.
Frankly, the “inability to handle nuance” and “hagiography or chop-job” comments seem like bullshit to me. I pointed to a strong counter-example (which didn’t take any searching; it was an article I remembered well which was written only a few days ago), but you ignored this, as well as my implied request for examples of previous hatchet jobs.
The ‘rest of us’ thing wasn’t about the RPS readership being some cosy little club in which you’re not welcome. RPS fills a niche in the gaming press which is otherwise close to empty. The ‘rest of us’ are those who like RPS for what it is, and wouldn’t have many alternatives if it lost the qualities and/or writers that make it special. From what you’ve written, you seem like someone whose tastes and preferences would be well-served by most of the other major gaming websites and magazines.
You criticise Quinns for failing to provide “an inventory of pluses and minuses”, call what could well have been an entirely honest negative review an example of him being an “oh-so-cool-contrarian”, and (given these ‘faults’) see the quality of his writing as irrelevant.
If you want buyer’s guide-style reviews and can live with mediocre writing, you are already well-served by many other major sites. Those of us who can’t stand much of the gaming media, and enjoy the current mix of writers at RPS, would not have an easy replacement if your complaints and preferences were acted on.
23/10/2010 at 17:50 nmute says:
@MD you don’t appear to understand nuance or shades of grey. you sound like someone who’d be better off with some other radio shock-jock style publication, where the top-down style hierarchy of guy-who-tells-it-like-it-is disseminated through red-blooded-guy-who-parrots without analysis or doubt drives off everyone with a shred of reason.
please leave RPS for the rest of us.
festivus.
23/10/2010 at 18:03 TariqOne says:
@MD: If I wanted struthious ideological wagon-circling I’d join the Tea Party and chase liberals out of America. Happily for me, I just like games and writing.
And thus, sadly for you, I’m stayin’. You can have my RPS when you pry it outta my cold, dead hands, hippie.
25/10/2010 at 02:26 MD says:
That’s just a complete cop-out, from both of you. You’ve ignored every actual point I made, and opted for empty parody and calling me an ostrich.
22/10/2010 at 19:18 dhex says:
jeeeeeeze louise guys. grab the pill marked chill and follow the directions on the bottle.
more interesting, i think, is this:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_13_canteen
that’s kinda insulting to the xbox crowd, no?
22/10/2010 at 19:42 Corporate Dog says:
Can you, err, give me a rundown of what that link says?
My work firewall blocks it (and yet, not RPS).
Shamed as I am to admit it, I opted to move to one of them thar console thingamabobs for all the latest games in the Fallout series.
22/10/2010 at 19:48 laikapants says:
@Corporate Dog: Here’s the text in full (I have no idea what dhex is on about): “The canteen essentially stores an infinite source of water, automatically lowering the player’s H2O meter on a regular basis, and is useful primarily to ward off dehydration in hardcore mode, as well as restore a very small amount of health, even when not in hardcore mode. The canteen can also help with the Achievement/Trophy “Hardcore”.
In both hardcore and casual mode, as long as the canteen is in the player’s inventory, the player will periodically receive a message at the top left corner, “You take a sip from your trusty Vault 13 canteen”, and the H2O meter will drop. Since H2O is not important in casual, non-hardcore mode, this may become more annoying than useful.
The canteen seems to trigger the player’s drink and subsequent notification when the H2O meter reaches a certain level (something just under 200 where dehydration would set in). However, under certain circumstances – such assleeping or fast travelling right before the hydration level reaches the trigger point – the player can “jump past” the trigger point and become dehydrated. The canteen will not work again until the player lowers their hydration level below the trigger point using some other means.
There is no way to deliberately force a drink from the canteen. It only works as an automatic hydration source.
There is no player animation associated with drinking from the canteen; the screen notice and H2O meter drop are the only indications it is working. Location: The Vault 13 Canteen is acquired exclusively from the Classic Pack”
22/10/2010 at 20:27 dhex says:
what i meant was that a canteen that handholds against what’s not really a particularly onerous kind of “realism” (or particularly realistic, i.e. the larger beef against hardcore mode) struck me as something akin to a joke you’d see at the rpgcodex. i.e. “consoletards”
22/10/2010 at 20:54 laikapants says:
@dhex: I squinty eyed nod in acceptance of your reasoning. Having no experience with RPGCodex (and the comments here give me the idea that I should keep that up) it flew over my head.
22/10/2010 at 20:49 Severian says:
I’m not sure if anyone has linked to this yet, but Tom Chick has given FONV an F in his recent review:
http://www.gameroni.com/posts/298.html
I would like to note that I have not played the game, but Tom’s review does give additional credence to Quinn’s claim that the developers “phoned this one in” – or at least, failed miserably in QA.
22/10/2010 at 22:36 Nick says:
Who the fuck is Tom Chick?
(please note: rhetorical)
22/10/2010 at 22:44 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
Tom’s issue was entirely that he ran into a game-breaking bug that he could not solve by any means. The entire tone of his review is much more reserved, and his harsh score much better justified than Quintin’s.
23/10/2010 at 00:22 tariqone says:
Chisk’s review is excellent. Tells you the good, tells you the bad, and that the 360 version is deeply, unplayably, and inexcusably broken at this time. Perfectly reasoned, supported, and well-written F for New Vegas. Very helpful.
22/10/2010 at 21:36 NotGodot says:
I tried to post this earlier, but:
Most of the legion metal armor is scavenged. The concept art actually has references. For instance one suit has combat armor boots, shoulder armor from the armored vault suit, shoulder and arm pieces from T-45d armor and a chest piece from Supermutant Brute armor. Plus belts and pouches from NCR Ranger Armor.
That said, mining and stuff happens in Fallout. FO3 is kind of the exception but FO2 had multiple mining towns, one of which was highly important because the NCR Dollar was pegged to gold in FO2.
22/10/2010 at 22:08 countingdown7 says:
Boy this review feels phoned in. It’s like they stopped caring about quality at RPS. They just don’t give a fuck.
But seriously, anyone that tells me the originals weren’t terribly broken, buggy games either doesn’t know anything about them or is lying. Speaking of which, Daggerfall is still the buggiest game I have ever played in my life. I literally would fall thru the graphics on average 3 times in every dungeon/castle. It was abysmal. As for Fallout 3 being well written… you are either insane or trolling. I actually kinda liked Fallout 3 but it was poorly written, poorly voiced and paced badly. No one remembers villagers REGULARLY disappearing from towns FOREVER? I mean, unless you checked every town before saving you could be 20 hours in before knowing a key questgiver is gone forever. Everyone has ADD and damaged long term memory.
22/10/2010 at 22:37 simpleton says:
Hell, I want to play this game just to see what all the fuss is about. Frankly I’m intrigued by the idea that any game could possibly be more boring than Fallout 3. Needless hyperbole? Perhaps.
22/10/2010 at 22:59 1984 says:
Gotta agree as well. DC was just about perfect while Vegas is kind of a bore.
23/10/2010 at 00:03 Sunjammer says:
New Vegas is good because I love playing it. New Vegas is bad because you hated it. Many worlds theory!
The game taps into a primal mechanism in my brain that causes me to completely forget about time and space. It takes me to a space where my brain is at ease and enjoying itself.
That’s the vibe i get from a lot of Fallout players. SPECIFICALLY Fallout. I think the franchise hits a vein in society that causes some people to utterly cave in on themselves when a new chunk of it is made available. I don’t know of a game that unifies more of my gaming friends in the desire to call in sick for days just to play. RPGs like Dragon Age or KOTOR even in all their brilliance don’t inspire that kind of mindlessness. They are GAMES. Fallout feels like an ESCAPE.
I’m 100% behind this game, bugs and all. I love it to death and it would be a huge shame for anyone who enjoyed Fallout 3 not to pick this up, because it’s the Bioshock 2 of Fallout; It improves the mechanics and tightens the plot and gives a better drive forwards. It’s the same, but sounder.
And it uses the fucking Fallout 2 soundtrack, which i still think is fantastic.
23/10/2010 at 00:10 dhex says:
laikapants: ahh, well, they are passionate, to be sure.
23/10/2010 at 01:40 Ruiner66 says:
I dunno, I find myself entertained by Fallout New Vegas. Then again, I’m the odd one that likes FO3 and despises FO1 and 2.
So, either I’m easily entertained or you are easily bored. Or some combination of both. Then again, I find several games to be downright boring.But not FNV
23/10/2010 at 02:21 Hold Reload to Holster says:
“A consensus can’t be reached with respect to evidence. Whether or not Quinns finds the casinos convincing is not something you can doubt. Do you understand?”
You’re creating and ascribing a point to me that I didn’t actually make, and being unpleasant while doing it. Going to stop? Thanks.
What’s that, Captcha? FU 8P? Who on earth is 8P and what nasty thing has he gone and said now?
23/10/2010 at 03:59 Terence says:
What is it with old school gamers and worshiping at the altar of Obsidian?? They write kinda interesting stories but their grasp of the technical side of things is terrible! You cant blame the engine when they’ve had this long to work with it, either make a new damn engine or hash out the bugs. also do people really remember fallout 2? Like before Big bear dude fixed it up? it was also a buggy mess with so many lameass pop culture references it was almost vomit worthy. Making everything “grey” isnt compelling. Yes we get motive and consequences matter, some of us have gone to college and read John Dewey thanks for the refresher course! And for the people that keep mentioning KOTOR2, really, really! Kreia’s surprise was about as surprising as looking down and seeing my feet. OMG there they are again!
This constant “at least they are trying!” is what we hear every time they make a game now. Along with blame everything and everyone other than Obsidian for bugs, missing parts of a story that leave giant gaping holes and other issues. They are a game company that cant figure out how to make a game that isnt a mess.
What I would love is for Obsidian to merge with a small developer that can actually put together a decent code and realizes that sometimes a cool idea here and there have to be left out when you arent Blizzard and cant spend 15 years making a game. or even better I would love it if they can go back to Fallout 1 and realize what it was that made that game great. Which was *drumroll* treating a deadline like *gasp* a deadline and not like a conga line that will be really funny to cross with all this broken stuff in our pockets. ok that last line didnt make a lot of sense but I’m on my 3rd glass of wine and wish that obsidian would figure out how to make a game that doesnt need 5 major patches.
23/10/2010 at 04:03 Terence says:
I should stress that I didnt think Fallout 2 was vomit worth, just the obscene number of pop culture references
23/10/2010 at 09:56 Incognito says:
So I played three hours of it now.
*I do have the impression that Fallout 3 had a much tighter world design. In the beginning you get dropped of in the middle of the desert, and so far it´s a mixed variety of locations. The hotel built around a rollercoaster and the town with the big dinosaur are nice, but other than that it has so far been mostly desert and small shacks.
*The third character I talked to talked about people saying prounoncing Ceasar differently. What´s the problem?
*Dialogues are great so far. Quests are nice. They have a sense of purpose, and have different ways of being solved depending on playstyle.
*And people actually respond differently to my offering to help. In some cases they are glad, but in other cases they question why I try to help them, or almost laugh at me when I at level 2 with just a small gun offer to help them take down a whole group of Death claws.
*And you directly get to decide which sides to support..
So after three hours I can already feel that the world in New Vegas is much more alive and convincing than in Fallout 3. I also wish that it would have had a tighter design on the locations already on the beginning but based on what I have seen so far, I would have to be pretty ignorant and a bit stupid to question Obsidians ambition with the title.
I can´t really say that Quintin is “wrong” with so few hours put in it so far, but I´m not getting the feeling that him and I have been playing the same game.
23/10/2010 at 15:25 Blackberries says:
Read the review, started reading the comments, realised there were quite a lot so scrolled back up to see how many.
Currently retrieving my socks from the other side of the room.
That is all.
24/10/2010 at 05:11 The Juice says:
I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve played Fallout 3, so this type of game isn’t something new and exciting, or New Vegas simply isn’t that good. Overall I’d describe the game as being uneventful.
24/10/2010 at 06:19 Wang Lo says:
That’s a good point but I really think the original fallout team members that went on to troika were the important ones. I don’t see how for example josh sawyer is more legitimate than any other developer, not due to any association with the originals I mean. He worked on jefferson but not fallout 1 or 2 I am pretty certain.
24/10/2010 at 14:27 Volrath says:
I guess you didn’t visit the old black isle forums. Sawyer was lead designer on Van Buren (you know the original fallout 3). Good times.
24/10/2010 at 16:42 Greg Wild says:
I’m really, really liking NV myself to be honest. Easily the game FO3 should have been.
Interestingly, I think the point Quinns makes about empty spaces is one of the reasons I like it. FO3 had way too much going on in too small an area. It needed far more empty regions.
Though yes. The guards talking about Mojave being hot is now getting on my tits.
24/10/2010 at 20:43 Poly says:
bold, bright reinvention that Fallout 3 was………
AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
stupid review is stupid
24/10/2010 at 23:26 sammich says:
i’m sorry to say it, but this guy’s a fucking idiot
26/10/2010 at 16:03 patricij says:
And I’m not sorry to say you’re an annoying fanboy and I don’t care about your opinion…
-Frankie The Patrician[PF]
25/10/2010 at 02:15 Gareth says:
I agree with the review. I Liked Bethesda’s re-imagine of Fallout, with its edgy Sci-Fi slant.
New Vegas just plays feels like some incredibly bland Western. I don’t feel I’m in the future, I don’t particularly feel there’s anything post apocalyptic about it. Whole buildings have been cut-and paste from the original, terrible re-skinning in places, and the desert plants are a complete embarrassment.
I’ve even found cut-and paste graffit on wall after wall…loli, no effort has been made to make things more beleivable. Also where’s all the humour? Even the long loading screens just contain “images” from the 1950s…ok where’s the punchline and wit?
All the quest so far have been boring beyond belief. There’s nothing like Riley’s Ranger or the Android man, get your own slave, nuke a town…New Vegas is utterly bland and lacking in any real humour.
25/10/2010 at 13:18 malkav11 says:
Evidently you have blithely stumbled past the considerable amount of humor present in the game (and probably didn’t pick Wild Wasteland, either). From Black Mountain Radio to the Vikki & Vance Casino in Primm (make sure to talk to Primm Slim) to a scientist at a power plant to good ol’ No-Bark, there’s been plenty of humor in -my- Mojave wanderings, and my game is far from over.
This is contrasted with a fair amount of brutal violence, of course, but that’s Fallout for you.
25/10/2010 at 05:29 Thirsty.professor says:
I have to say that after spending 26 hours with this game it is much more like Fallout 1 and 2 than 3 ever was and there is tons of humor in the game that bring me back to the good old days. To be blunt I believe that Quinn either didn’t play the game for more than a couple of hours or didn’t play the game at all and went off of personal opinions and other reviews. Also, it’s a possibility that he wanted to hate the game from the start. I feel that this review is way off base and his skills as a reviewer are lacking at best. At the worst he is a liar or someone easily influenced by previous opinion. Play the game next time idiot and you would have seen the humor, heard the explanation of Kaiser, saw the snow/greenery compared to the desert, and basically wouldn’t have sounded like a moron. Thanks for giving me something to laugh at.
25/10/2010 at 10:33 Gareth says:
@Professor,
Nice to see you engaging in cheesy ad-hominem attacks against the reviewer. There are so many fanboys on here it’s unreal. If anything the reviewer went LIGHT on this game. On top of the IMO boringingness of the game, it is *chock* full of crashes and game breaking bugs, not just on PC, but also on xbox360.
Ye, it’s closer to FO1 and 2, and that is also why a lot of people hate it. I prefer the edgy Sci-Fi re-imagining of Fallout 3, I *dont* want to go back to 1990s inspired vision of the game. I don’t care that some of the “originators” of the FO universe worked at Obsidian, the game still stinks, hell George Lucas worked on the original Star Wars, and look how a good “attack of the clones” was.
On top of bugs and crashes, there loads of signs of *laziness* everywhere, whole re-used buildings., terrible looking graphics on elite “Rangers”, stupid looking plants sticking out everywhere.
BTW there’s a HUGE thread of people in the official forums asking for a *complete refund* this buggy mess.
25/10/2010 at 17:59 Adam Curtis' Freaky Jumpcuts says:
A lot of people are clearly having bug-related issues with this, which is a terrible shame because it’s an amazing PARP(g.) That’s post-apocalyptic role pl … oh whatever, I just wanted it to spell PARP(g).
I wish both sides would tone it down in that regard though. I’ve played for about 25 hours now and experienced about two crashes and no other bugs whatsoever (unless you include the AI sometimes walking into inanimate objects but that’s rather churlish.) But I’m not about to wave my arms around and say IT’S BUG-FREE YOU LOONS because obviously that is not the case for some and I can quite understand why they feel the game is taunting them right now.
New Vegas, then. It has quite a few bugs. Unless you’re one of the people who doesn’t experience any of them. Which is a difficult number to quantify.
25/10/2010 at 08:49 mrmud says:
Having played the game for about 10 hours now I have to say I completely disagree with the review.
While I do agree that the spaces are more open, I dont neccessarily think this is a bad thing. But thats the closest I come to actually agreeing with anything Quinns has to say.
The characters are good, the dialogue is good, the amount of detail is good, I havent had a single bug or glitch and everything is working perfectly.
Quinns is obviously allowed to think whatever he wants, its just that for me it has become obvious that I can never rely on what he has to say ever again.
25/10/2010 at 10:11 Bah says:
Funny, I haven’t found anything wrong with the game so far that wasn’t present in Fallout 3.
Everything so far has been improvement upon improvement.
25/10/2010 at 15:26 TariqOne says:
Bought it and logged 11+ hours this weekend. Far more enjoyable and true to the spirit of the original Fallouts, which being an old man, were germinal gaming moments for me. Exploring and scavenging are far more engaging. Crafting is deeper. Factions and standings therewith play a more meaningful role. And while it’s not a rigorous overlay by any stretch, hardcore mode is a welcome addition to the overall RPG balancing act. The writing is improved, as are the quests and setpieces. The locations are more interesting and colorful (roller coasters, giant dinosaur-shaped gift shops, max-security prisons, solar power plants). They are a bit oddly devoid of life, but no more so than Fallout 3.
And satellite lasers, OK? I’m just sayin’.
The Gamebryo engine needs to be dragged out back and shot, however. The old girl does her best but it just isn’t what it used to be. Fair amount of chugging and slowdowns. New Vegas (and Fallout 3) would have been better served by state-of-the-art (or even 2005′s state-of-the-art) tech. I’m tired of the weird faces and odd textures and clunky performance this engine consistently delivers (and enough Unreal, while we’re at it — can someone develop a new industry standard?).
In all, not only do I disagree with the tone of this piece, I don’t agree with the content. New Vegas is Fallout 3, now with 45% more Fallout! And satellite lasers. Enjoyable title.
25/10/2010 at 15:41 KR4 says:
I can’t believe this piece on FNV. What happened to Quentin in the days leading up to the playthrough to give this game such a terrible review. I would surmise that the person who wrote this had something bad happened, or was lacking sleep, or hungry, or all of the above – making him overly crabby.
New Vegas has been the most fun, the most enthralling Fallout to date for me. The landscape is more traversable, more vistas, more areas to find, or to see in the distance and go explore. The addition to weapon mods and an actual story line that contains some real parody, and real meaning are making this iteration of Fallout ‘unputdownable’.
I can’t recommend this game enough.
25/10/2010 at 20:02 Seraph says:
Hmm, what is this? I have to disagree completely. New vegas is what fallout 3 should have been, with almost everything better in it including main quest that isn’t a total joke. Really have to wonder if you even played the game this time.
25/10/2010 at 21:08 Incognito says:
10 hous played now, and I just don´t think that Quintin has been playing the same game as I have. I have never come across any RPG that feels as alive as this. There are so much to do, and everything feels so convincing. The quests, the factions, the dialogues, etc. And despite being a really immersive dark RPG, it still manages to be hillarious at many points, without breaking the atmosphere.
It was a bit slow in the beginning, but after just a couple of hours, and it really took off and haven´t lost any pace since then.
It´s not perfect by any means. I will not question those screenshots, but I can easily post pictures of dozens of location that are extremely convincing.
I feel no urge to trash Quintin, but I hope that he let other people review games like this on RPS from now on.
26/10/2010 at 16:35 Mungrul says:
Regarding pictures, Quintin’s picture illustrating the sparsity of the crops at Sharecroppers is incredibly misleading. The fields in-game are nothing like that, and as well as Sharecroppers itself, there are lots more fields outside of that are on the outskirts of Vegas.
The rest is opinion, but that comment in particular is disingenuous and does more to damage my opinion of Quintin than anything else in the piece.
In short, it’s a bare-faced lie.
25/10/2010 at 21:09 Wulf says:
Also, I have to add that Fallout: New Vegas has some of the best written gay characters I’ve actually seen in a game, ever. I’m being completely honest with you, here, it’s really caught me off guard. The writing, how one flirts, and the actual characters themselves, is subtle and not over the top and cheesy. I’ll be honest with you, this is one thing that usually makes me twitch, as often gay relationships are often portrayed very poorly, in very cheesy and stereotypical ways. That they don’t go over-the-top with it is endlessly appealing, and it doesn’t lead to endless sex scenes, instead these instances come over as much more of a relationship.
It’s also a bonus that one of the gay characters is a left-leaning idealist, a scientist (research in the field of medicine), and unusually witty is just a testament to this. Usually, in games like this, the gay relationships tend to come off as ‘prison buttsex’ if they’re there, it sounds more like desperation than anything else, and that’s always annoyed the snot out of me. But then you have New Vegas.
And the writing overall, through and through, is amazing. It’s lead to some of the most affecting scenes I’ve ever seen in a game. The perversion of humanity when you first encounter the Legion, further shows of the evil of the Legion portraying itself as knights templar, out to save the world by killing it first, intermixed with elements of the dark side of humanity, the story behind the slavery of Boone’s wife, for example, was surprisingly well done. The writing in this game shines through. To be honest, I think Quinns review is criminal if he is serious… and I urge anyone who enjoys a bit of decent writing in the game to give it a look. I really must implore you to do so.
26/10/2010 at 03:49 fgf says:
damn queers.
26/10/2010 at 04:27 Wulf says:
/slowclap
A truly thrilling and stimulating riposte, there, “fgf”. Thanks for that. >_>
26/10/2010 at 17:30 mlaskus says:
See Wulf? This is a troll. Your implying, in some earlier comments, that Quinns was trolling us with the article was probably the worst thing I have ever seen you write.
Thanks for this informative comment though, I hope the writing is as good as you say it is. :)
@fgf
Go back to 4chan or wherever you crawled out of, nobody wants you here
26/10/2010 at 19:24 Wulf says:
@mlaskus
Actually, feeling factors into perceived trolling a lot. I don’t see fgf as trolling much, he’s just being an arse for the sake of it, but actual honest-to-goodness trolling takes more effort. To me, I usually see trolling in something that’s unnecessarily negative and aggressive, and something that makes either veiled or open attacks in a way that’s not relevant to the topic.
Now, in my opinion, Quinns was unnecessarily negative and aggressive, there have been many reasons here as to why that is, it seems like he rushed through the game and played it with not liking it in mind, missing out on a lot of sidequests and things on purpose (as has been illustrated by other posters), all of this seems to be to justify a pre-formulated negative opinion. A lot of the elements of the review have been successfully countered in negative comments, and it does give the impression that Quinns didn’t actually play the game much, either that or he rushed through it, just skipping over the best parts (or not bothering to illustrate them). That’s why I consider it unnecessarily negative, because there are obvious high points that aren’t even considered. It’s unnecessarily aggressive because it concentrates on bugs and nitpicky things, things that would get overlooked in other reviews (and have been in past Wot I Thinks in the game is good enough). And in the opening paragraph, an unprofessional and very insulting attack was directed at Obsidian.
For these reasons, I feel that to an extent Quinns actually is trolling. But trolling is a very subjective thing, it’s something that you perceive happening, and it’s hard to quantify just how fully the necessary tenets of trolling are fulfilled by an instance of trolling. Now, I think that yes, there was a lot of unnecessary aggression and negativity, to the point where the Wot I Think felt somewhat dishonest to me (TO ME, I stress), and the insult gave the idea that Quinns wanted to hate the game before he even started playing it. Now is that trolling? Honestly, I think it is. YMMV.
26/10/2010 at 19:45 mlaskus says:
I have to disagree with you Wulf, but as you pointed out, trolling can be perceived very subjectively. For me the intent to play on people’s emotions is what makes someone a troll.
Quinns expressed his opinion, now he may have worded it more cautiously or make the article more balanced to also show the game’s strengths, but he wrote about what he felt was important about it.
I sincerely doubt he wanted to spite anyone or cause a controversy.
I understand your point of view though, thanks for the clarification.
26/10/2010 at 22:00 TariqOne says:
It’s not the first time. If you recall, Eurogamer pulled Smith’s slam of the Age of Conan expansion because of accuracy concerns. Not that Rise of the Godslayer was good. It apaprently just wasn’t bad in the ways he claimed.
People are confusing good writing (one of his strengths) with factual rigor (one of his apparent weaknesses).
25/10/2010 at 22:03 Tengil says:
I probably shouldn’t write anything as this whole thread has gotten rather histrionic, but to me (after 15 played hours) NV essentially feels like Fallout 3 done better in all important aspects. The fact that the game actually ties into the older Fallouts is also nice.
26/10/2010 at 03:48 fgf says:
Hey stupid ass! the reason Caesar is pronounced Kaizer is because that is the correct Latin pronunciation. not only does “ae” make an “eye” sound, but there were no soft c’s in latin. so Kaizer is the actual pronunciation. douche.
26/10/2010 at 15:57 Latterman says:
No it’s not:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Caesar#Pronunciation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_Latin
(it’s a strong K followed by a combined AE as in terrAE or the german ae/ä).
what they are doing in FO:NV is more close to the german kaiser:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kaiser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_phonology
check your facts before calling someone a douche.
26/10/2010 at 15:58 Latterman says:
No it’s not:
en.wiktionary.org /wiki/Caesar#Pronunciation
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_Latin
(it’s a strong K followed by a combined AE as in terrAE or the german ae/ä).
what they are doing in FO:NV is more close to the german kaiser:
en.wiktionary.org /wiki/Kaiser
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/German_phonology
check your facts before calling someone a douche.
26/10/2010 at 06:05 Felix says:
blahblah, this addon is not a worthy sequel, blahblah, Fallout 1+2 were made by gods…
26/10/2010 at 06:51 T-Risty says:
I’d just like to point out that the reviewer states that there are no prostitutes to be found in the Atomic Wrangler; that’s because you have to undertake a quest to find those prostitutes. After that, you can easily partake of their services.
This review seems to hasty.
Add me to the list of loving this game!!
26/10/2010 at 07:21 tka says:
Now that I have played New Vegas several hours I can say that I wholeheartedly disagree with the review.
Reads like Quinns had already decided he doesn’t like it before starting the game…
26/10/2010 at 07:55 geldonyetich says:
After my experiences some 19-20 hours into Fallout New Vegas, I can sort of see where Quinns is coming from. There are some very rough patches in New Vegas, a lot (if not most) of the areas are little more than architecture with a few mobs and loot, and this is jarring after playing Fallout 3 where nearly every building has a story behind it. In these ways and others, Fallout 3 is a lot “tighter” than Fallout: New Vegas. Boot up one game, the boot up the other, and you can feel the difference almost immediately.
However, to an extent, New Vegas makes up for it in other ways. There’s more everywhere to be found – more weapons, more enemies, and a full 30 levels supported out of the box (where Fallout 3 ends at level 20 until you expand it with Broken Steel). The writing is also a bit better in some ways, in between our copy-pasty nobodies there’s some characters whose dialogue is a lot more gripping than anything I heard in Fallout 3 somehow. Perhaps it’s no coincidence given that some of the original Fallout talent is behind New Vegas, but it feels more canon.
So while the game takes a few steps back, it also takes a few steps forward. We’re in “worthy successor to Fallout 3″ territory despite the easy nit picks.
26/10/2010 at 09:23 lemonparty says:
Allow me to join the chorus and proclaim that the reviewer is full of crap. This game is better than the original Fallout 3 in every way, and I’d go as far as to say better than Fallout 1 and 2. Sure there are occasional bugs… which you have to be a real Nazi to pay attenton to, considering how enormously big and full of stuff, quests and features the gameworld is. Remember when Fallout 2 came out, it was considered the buggiest release of all time? Now imagine Fallout 2, only 2-3 times bigger and in full 3D – yet there are still less bugs than in F2.
26/10/2010 at 15:42 Latterman says:
What reviewer, i don’t see no review.
And if quinn really is a nazi your argument is invalid.
15/06/2011 at 17:26 Bhazor says:
You can’t see the review? Here let me help.
“Obsidian’s pseudo-sequel to Bethesda’s Fallout 3 hits the UK tomorrow, arriving amid a raft of positive reviews. But I see you there, perched atop that blasted rock, canteen in hand, waiting for the official RPS review. That wait is over. Here’s Wot I Think of New Vegas.”
26/10/2010 at 13:12 Stitched says:
I won’t comment for / against the review because I see them as opinion pieces.
However, after 10 hours of playing, I am enjoying the game. While there are some bugs, which I also encountered in Fallout 3 (shredded creature meshes stuck in the ground, physics errors, etc.), it still feels like a Fallout game; vast wasteland to explore, weird stuff to see, the tension of trying to walk around a giant rad scorpion when you are horribly under level and carrying a 9mm pistol and single shot rifle.
And of course, the surprise you get when you realize the old soundtrack from the classic Fallout game was playing.
The writing is better, as is the voice acting, in most places. The factions idea, while not a new idea (STALKER says hello) , it is new to THIS universe and it’s better for it.
I am sure, with time, the bugs will slowly be fixed. I am playing the Steam version so I have only encounter really small bugs and no crash bugs so far (*knock on wood*).
I wasn’t expecting to get this game because of the polarized reviews and many bug threads over the game. I have to say, in the end, I am happy to have picked up this game and glad that it feels and plays like a Fallout game.
27/10/2010 at 04:52 Coillscath says:
Not being critical, but the faction reputation system was present in Fallout 2 as well. I don’t remember if it was in the first game but I’m pretty certain it was in Fallout 2.
26/10/2010 at 16:05 patricij says:
Boring fanboys are boring…that is all
-Frankie
26/10/2010 at 18:29 Lulz says:
What a lol review, man, you better dedicate to another thing.
26/10/2010 at 18:37 mlaskus says:
Quintin is one of the best games journalists around.
Wot I Think is very subjective and opinionated by design, it is not supposed to be a review.
If you have a different opinion on the game, write about it eloquently and without resorting to ad hominems or stay silent and begone from this splendid website.
26/10/2010 at 21:57 TariqOne says:
From the opening paragraph:
But I see you there, perched atop that blasted rock, canteen in hand, waiting for the official RPS review. That wait is over.
Just sayin’.
26/10/2010 at 23:40 mlaskus says:
Yeah, that’s a bit confusing. Poor choice of words on Quinns’ part there, I guess. For as long as I remember, Wot I Think was being clearly distinguished from a typical review by the Hivemind.
27/10/2010 at 15:20 Seraph says:
If Quintin himself can’t write eloquently and without resorting to ad hominen attacks towards whole Obsidian entertainment, why should anyone else do this. Not to mention that his “review” is full of misdirections and outright lies. It is funny how he says those two screenshots aren’t staged because that is exactly what those are.
If quintin can’t do professional reviews about games then he shouldn’t do them at all. It is one thing not liking the game and saying that and one thing telling audience how game developer apparently don’t give-a-fuck.
26/10/2010 at 18:31 Lulz says:
patricij, you are the boring one here, is obiously that the game is much better tha Fallout 3, so this is a shame.
26/10/2010 at 21:42 Mister Adequate says:
Hmmm, I don’t particularly want to wade into the thick of this, especially as I’m rather a neophyte of RPS and deliberately pay little attention to things like writers coming and going. And yet, it is the Internet, and so I am compelled to stick my oar in nonetheless!
The major thing about this review that I can’t quite wrap my head around is less the talk about NV and more the talk about FO3. It had some good ideas, no doubt; the Pentagon was a particularly nifty place, for instance, but overall it felt like an incredibly bland, cut-and-paste world. I can see why someone would dislike NV or not feel able to give it a good report; I am at a loss to understand how they could give NV a bad review in comparison to FO3.
The comments about the writing are especially at odds with my own experiences. Where FO3 was sophomoric at best (With a couple of admitted exceptions) and downright insulting at worst (As anyone who reached pre-Broken Steel endgame with Fawkes in their party can attest), NV seems to be sophomoric at worst and at best? Well at best it’s some of the finer writing I’ve come across in games. The pacing of the story is excellent, as it ramps up gradually and you realize you’re caught up in something huge, but the various side quests on the way are slotted sensibly and seemlessly into the overall experience and they feel both organic and as though your choices have impact. I’ve got more doubt and second-guessing about Primm’s law enforcement than I ever did about blowing up Megaton. I care overwhelmingly more about people in Goodsprings than I ever did about Vault 101. A skill or stat check when talking to someone makes sense and is well matched with the relevant skill needed. Characters, except the nobodies who you can’t actually talk to, give a sense of being developed and motivated even if they’re just a trader in some nowhere pit stop.
“With an unforgivably small number of exceptions (and one character who does actually approach the cast of Bloodlines in his likeability), the characters in New Vegas are all tedious constructs, voiced by people who sound like they’re boring in real life” This is a statement I have particular issues with. If Quinn honestly feels this way then I’m not going to say he’s lying or trolling or anything – that’s his opinion and I respect it. But it is a stretch for me to see what this could possibly be based on.
Whilst this is all disagreement (and some measure of befuddlement), I’ll admit I’m a bit skeptical about whether Quinn’s opening paragraph struck a fair tone. And I can categorically say that the picture and comment on the sharecropper farms is misleading; it’s fair to say that it is not an overwhelmingly extensive complex and if a reviewer feels this is serious enough to impress the point that is entirely their prerogative, but nonetheless the area is quite a bit more developed and dense than this review makes it out to be. I’m not saying that it’s necessarily enough, but I do think – regardless of other areas where I disagree – that this issue is disingenuous and, in so being, harms the whole of the review. There are plenty of things to criticize in NV, the bugs being foremost among them, and I would expect any honest review to be critical. I am disappointed to see something which is frankly false to go out, however, as I tend to find RPS one of the fairest rags around even when taste means I don’t agree with what is said.
28/10/2010 at 05:38 Adam Curtis' Freaky Jumpcuts says:
Thanks for writing this out, it echoes a lot of what I felt about the review (wait it’s not a review .. wait, yes it is .. etc) and tried to articulate somewhere up there in Mt. Comments Thread.
I’d love Quinns to do a followup that expands on his reasoning regarding the writing and dialogue and, well, creative bits of New Vegas vs FO3. I genuinely want to know why he prefers how it’s presented in the latter. Help me understaaaaaand, man.
26/10/2010 at 22:01 Skubby says:
I actually think this review is interesting, while I don’t agree with everything and I feel like he asks just a LITTLE too much.. he is critical, and I enjoy that about a review instead of ZOMG THIS IS TEH BEST GAME EVAR!
But he needs a little splash of positive back in, which he fails to do. Look at it this way, the modders CAN fix the stuff wrong with it because they built a good engine and ALREADY released a SDK (I think, right?) and good mods are already coming out! I know I know.. they should of maybe fixed it in the first place.. but in this day and age we are learning that it just doesn’t happen like it should! BUT THAT’S WHAT PC GAMES ARE FOR! MODS! Im proud to start up my $1500 godlike watercooled machine and tinker with mods for the most enhanced and uber custom game play, that’s what its ALL ABOUT. Sure the game should be complete, but I for one am happy something can be done about it!
I didnt like FALLOUT 3, but I feel like NV is refined and adds the DEPTH back in that was so missing from F3. Im looking for mods that will fix the survivalist problem because the only thing I enjoy about the game is to feel the bleakness at all times.
27/10/2010 at 02:49 derpa says:
So is this one of those “yahtzee” like reviewers? Who gives a poor angry review for entainment?
27/10/2010 at 09:07 mlaskus says:
No, read some of his other stuff, Quinns’ writing is exceptional.
30/10/2010 at 19:31 Nick says:
Yup, normally top quality stuff, not sure what happened with all the blatantly innacurate sniping and uncalled for attacks on the Dev team.
27/10/2010 at 08:12 spacebeets says:
This may be the most comments I’ve ever seen on a gaming blog. Haven’t read all 715, but the first 200 seemed to be written by intelligent people, which is mind boggling for the interwebs. Well done RPS, love this site.
Anyway, On Topic: Totally disagree with this WoT. 30 hours into NV and loving every minute. Will probably end up with 100+ hours played and I’ve only put that kinda time into maybe 2 games, FO:3 and Diablo 2.
27/10/2010 at 12:35 Rane2k says:
Didn´t play this game, or any of the Fallout´s, but it seems like Quinns is in good company with his “Obsidian-phoned-it-in” opinion:
Shamus Young on Obsidian & New Vegas:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8241-Experienced-Points-Obsidian-Does-it-Again
Russ Pits open letter to game makers:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/writersroom/8252-Open-Letter-to-People-Who-Make-Games
(“unplayable”)
27/10/2010 at 16:13 TariqOne says:
It’s funny you cite Russ Pitts as a detractor, when his proper FONV review for the Escapist is almost glowing. He, like Tom Chick, primarily if not solely takes issue with the bugs, many of which are endemic to the Gamebryo engine and the FO3 architecture (in Pitts’s words, “years-old bugs,” “the exact same bugs [as in FO3]“).
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8229-Review-Fallout-New-Vegas
27/10/2010 at 16:37 Wulf says:
Thanks for pointing that out, TariqOne, if you hadn’t then I would have.
Some people will do anything to further an agenda, and the agenda at this point seems to be ‘herpderp’, if I’m not mistaken.
The thing is is that I’ve been a modder, I’m known in some circles, and because of that I follow mod scenes. The interesting thing about New Vegas is that there’s one thing I hear said a lot amongst people who’re working to compile bug fixes for that game, and that is, almost invariably; “This game isn’t that bad, and it’s definitely nowhere near as buggy as Fallout 3 was on release!”
Either some people are comparing the release of New Vegas to Fallout 3 GOTY with the Unofficial Patch, or there’s just this distinct air of ‘herpderp’ to the whole bloody agenda.
27/10/2010 at 16:49 Rane2k says:
True, he seemed to quite like the game, but even subtracted 1 star from the final score, solely because of the bugfest.
You don´t take away 1 out of 5 stars because of a few minor glitches.
And the open letter sounds really depressed about these kind of things, though i can´t quite figure out which other games he meant (Microsoft and 2K, maybe console stuff?)
Again, I have not played any of the Fallout games, I´m just very interested in the “developer delivers a semi-finished/unpolished game” aspect of this entire story.
The fact that these are “year-old bugs” just makes this even more depressing, as it means there was plenty of time to fix them, or maybe even just ask the engine developer for support.
27/10/2010 at 19:33 TariqOne says:
@Ranek2K: I agree wholeheartedly. I excuse some bugginess on the part of PC titles. It’s less prevalent (and much more bewildering) when titles present bugs on closed console systems. PC is always going to be something of a crapshoot.
But you, me and others such as Pitts are right to be interested in and looking aksance at how developers take that inch and make it a mile. It’s not a license to engage in this continuing release-then-patch approach that has taken root.
Really, I question the entire decision to go with Gamebryo for these titles. DAoC used Gamebryo. It’s just old and very bad.
I’m not giving Obsidian a pass on that, but by the same token this is one of the most enjoyable titles I’ve played in some while. It treats me like a smart adult and immerses me in a clever and subtly artful world and it’s a shame to see people turned away from it in droves because of what really are limitations/defects inherent to this generation of the title. We should be rooting for games with this level of craft and wit.
27/10/2010 at 15:00 skavenhorde says:
I never experienced anything like what “this reviewer” experienced. I’m 20+ hours in and loving every moment of this game.
This is the Fallout I’ve been waiting for since Fallout 2 hands down. The writing, setting and characters are excellent.
I’ve liked Quin’s stuff in the past, but he needs to get rid of his “Kill Obsidian” attitude and actually try playing the game.
27/10/2010 at 16:34 TallTroll says:
I’m in the “what game was he playing?” camp. I’ll freely acknowledge that I have seen a couple of glitches with the engine (creatures and items sinking into the floor or other background items, for instance), that I have found a couple of issues with slightly bugged quests and companions, but for me the inconveniences have been slight, and way outweighed by the good points.
If you’ve been getting horrible stuttering and / or crashes, I can understand that that would suck, but I haven’t really experienced it. I’ve had one crash, during a visual heavy cutscene, and such events are hardly unique to any genre or developer. I wish it didn’t happen, but then I remember loading Ocean games, from tape for 5 to 10 minutes on the Spectrum 48k, and *then* having them crash to the reset screen, so I guess I’m just a bit more tolerant.
The writing is far superior to FO3, if you take the time to actually talk to people, and find out about them, with more of a sense that the things you do, and the decisions you make really can make a difference. The sequence in Nipton, for example, where you find most of the populace has been massacred by the Legion, was well handled. If you just want to get the damn quest activated and move on, you can (handy for subsequent playthroughs), but if you ask Wolfy some actual questions, you can find out why they have done it, and yeah, Nipton kind of deserved what happened (if you can find the Mayors journals, you’ll be quite pleased he got thrown on a pile of burning tyres, alive), even if the Legions’ response is a bit harsh.
I’m also playing with Hardcore mode active, and actually I’m quite pleased it doesn’t make the game a survival simulator. The food / water / sleep aspect stops you from wandering the wastes for a straight week of gametime without ever attending to your needs, you do actually have to devote some space to carrying food and water, you can’t just susbsist on Stimpacks like you could in FO3. Ammo having weight makes me think more about what I carry, and having different weapons for different tactical roles.
Biggest change is probably how hard it is to regenerate limb damage. Yes, if you make your own doctors bags, it’s a non-issue fairly quickly, but then you need to get Medicine to 40 (skill points that could have gone elsewhere), and find 4 “ingredients” which aren’t super common – and if you just charge headlong into combat all the time, you can end up using quite a lot of them. Stepping on a mine often cripples one or two limbs instantly too
The weapons are just a massive improvement in *every* way. Even the very basic 9mm pistol you get given right at the start can have it’s useful life extended by using specialist ammo types to take on tougher enemies, and adding a scope and extended mags makes it handy for taking on critters and lighlty armoured humans quite a way into the game – but woe betide you if you try to kill a giant radscorpion with one
27/10/2010 at 21:07 MaulYoda says:
The snowglobe collection is in the presidential suite of the Lucky 38, just saying. Furthermore, I think you mixed up Fallout 3 and New Vegas: Fallout 3 is the bleak one, and New Vegas is the populated one. I’m not going to comment on the BOS and super mutant thing in Fallout 3 and why it was a mistake because that’d be several paragraphs long. Caesar’s Legion came out of Black Isle’s Fallout 3, and they all pronounce Caesar differently because it’s the Latin pronounciation (not that this makes much sense either, but just stating the reason). If by the heavily guarded thing, you mean that you can waltz in and take food, you can if you’re on good terms with the NCR; besides, Fallout 3 had that exact same problem (a BOS Outcast would call me a “primitive” while I’m dressed in power armor and carrying around a plasma rifle). You seemingly ignored the ammo thing about hardcore mode I guess, and frankly, considering that your character in that screenshot has all but two of his limbs crippled, it’s just a disconnect between the writer and the whoever picks the screenshots. Maybe I’m just being a fanboy, or maybe I don’t think you grasp Fallout canon all that well, or maybe I just disagree with a lot of what you say in this review; probably a combination of all three. Anyway, that’s all I have to say
28/10/2010 at 00:50 Dan Bolivar says:
Did you actually PLAY the game before reviewing it?
I couldn’t DISAGREE more! Fallout New Vegas is the PERFECT GAME man.
The dialogue IS FINE.
The stories ARE FINE.
The characters ARE FINE.
The world is teeming with challenges. You have to struggle and count bullets when you start.
In Fallout New Vegas I nearly peed my pants when confronted against the first DeathClaw in the game… it took me quite a few levels, skills and upgraded (repaired) weapons before I would venture out to where the DeathClaws had camped out.
I’ve been playing for roughly 50 hours… tentatively everyone says this game is roughly 100 hours… I would say triple that if you REALLY want to RPG it.
I plan on completing it, really slow, taking it all in and enjoying myself, because I’VE NEVER enjoyed a game as much as New Vegas, and I’ve been playing computer games since the TRS-80.
This reviewer need to not quit his day-job.. because as far as reviewing goes, HE SUCKS.
28/10/2010 at 16:16 Wulf says:
This reminds me of my first encounter with fire-ants. I actually think this is where a lot of my growing dislike of Fallout 3 comes from, and how different New Vegas is. Fallout 3 is a sledgehammer to the head in subtlety, whereas New Vegas is more of a slap with a silk glove.
In Fallout 3, the first fire-ants I encountered were in a town, that had been ravaged.
“There might be fire-ants there.”
“I saw big insects breathing fire.”
“There might be evil insects there.”
“Beware stranger, evil insects.”
“DID WE MENTION THE GIANT FIRE BREATHING INSECTS YET? WE’RE SO PROUD OF THOSE!”
x_x
So I went to that town and, yes, lo and behold, giant, fire-breathing insects. Yawn.
My experiences in New Vegas with fire-ants were a little different.
“Hm, this area is interesting, dry lake… whole place is a sand storm, I wonder what I’ll find here–”
*CHIRRP CLIK CLIK FWOOOOOSH!*
“AAAAHHH, DO NOT WANT!”
(I leg it back to Helios One, ON FIRE. Thankfully I’m in good standing with the NCR, so they save my sorry arse.)
[Later]
“So…. that’s why it’s called dry lake, huh? I guess that would be the perfect place for fire-ants.”
And the whole world feels like that, everything fits, everything makes sense, but at the same time you don’t know what you’re going to find, because the game doesn’t cram it down your throat. Instead you start looking for clues as to what to expect, but sometimes things still catch you off guard, sometimes they’re brilliant, sometimes they’re just disturbing, and there are some brilliant set pieces that catch you off guard, but when you think about it, everything makes sense within the context of the area and what happened.
And as for the game feeling organic (as mentioned elsewhere), I have an example of that, too: I had a quest at one point to uncover the corruption of the Van-Graffs and the Crimson Caravan, I tried my best to actually do it by the letter of the law, this is because I had quests with them, but the more I learned about them, the more I actually felt that the wasteland was better off without them. So I did acquire one piece of evidence, but when I got to the Van-Graffs, I decided to finish them off the old fashioned way , with a laser-bolt to the head. What was interesting is that I’d convinced one of my companions (who had a stake in this) to wait for me to gather evidence to put them down with the power of the law. And she chewed me out (quite a lot) for changing the plan without telling her.
Of course, I lost my quests with the Van-Graffs and Crimson Caravan, but those people I didn’t exactly want to work for, anyway. It felt good to get rid of them. Now all of the possibilities there were scripted, they actually accounted for me changing my mind half-way through. That sort of shit would’ve probably broken Fallout 3 and lead to a quest that wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do (I had that happen to me twice in Fallout 3).
New Vegas is a far, FAR more complex and subtle game than Fallout 3. New Vegas is like Fallout 3 but not for idiots/children.
28/10/2010 at 00:54 Dan Bolivar says:
@ TallTroll
Once you get the insect killing perk, and a couple more, you can kill a rad scorpion with two shots.
I love playing the silent sneaky sniper type with that pistol.
29/10/2010 at 12:52 TallTroll says:
@ Dan Bolivar
I, personally, don’t have problems killing Radscorpions, but I’ve seen a lot of people moaning about how “overpowered” they are. Well, yeah, if you try and shoot a dinky little subsonic pistol round at a giant, rad-mutated, armoured arachnid, you aren’t going to do well. I think a lot of people haven’t cottoned on to how the change from DR to DT *really* canges the dynamics of combat.
In FO3, it didn’t really matter what you used, even a powered armoured opponent went down if you put enough shots into them, just having a good CND rating, and decent skill for the weapon meant you’d do it soon enough, but in FO : NV, you’ll pay for not suiting your attack to your opponents defences. High DT ratings just stop small stuff working at all, really
28/10/2010 at 02:31 Sid says:
I’ve been playing this for 3 or 4 days now, so I finally feel qualified to comment.
The game is good. Not ‘great’, but good. But then, the original Fallout 3 was good for different reasons. Where FO3 had a near-antiseptic level of polish, this feels more organic. The NPCs in FO3 were glorified quest givers; the NPCs in NV feel like real people. And so on.
I think part of the problem is that us older bastards who were old enough to play RPGs when FO1 came out like to remember video games past with seriously rose-tinted lenses. BY THE STANDARDS OF ITS DAY, Fallout was the best post-apocalyptic RPG ever released. It had, for 1997, deep characters, a handful of voice acting, and an engaging story. It also had a time limit, that thing was harsh.
If you released a video game with Fallout 1 levels of immersion, dialogue, area design, etc. today, I suspect people would find it a bit lacking. I replayed it a year or so ago, and everything was a lot… worse… than I remembered it being (save the turn-based combat, that shit is ace.)
So, where to in 2008? People are trying to reinvent this game. Bethesda release one, and completely Oblivionize it. It was a fun enough game, but it was, ultimately, Oblivion with Guns. No meaningful consequences or NPC interactions, maybe four unique voice actors, etc. Fallout 3 was to the originals what Oblivion was to Morrowind (another game which revisited loses some of its nostalgic shine, but that’s ok, cos you can mod it to shit and back.)
Then Bethesda throw the assets at Obsidian for their take (including the engine which might as well still date to 2002, just with shaders that can handle specularity and some slightly higher poly models. Christ, it doesn’t even support full shadowing.) While arguably not having the same focuses as Bethesda, Obsidian have released a game. A game which, working within the constraints of the art and the awful engine, could not be any more different to the original Fallout 3.
Yeah, it’s got some rough corners, but the dialogue, the quests, the NPCs, etc contribute to the feeling that you’re actually hanging the fuck out in post-apocalyptic Vegas. You’ll go somewhere to do something, and wind up talking to somebody about something completely unrelated and then haring off in that direction for 3 or 4 hours. The quest and world design is fantastic. Contrast this with Fallout 3, which at (most) times felt like you were playing a FPS set in the desert with ‘pause’ mode.
Simply put, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV are both good games. One’s a polished, Oblivionized attempt to reboot the universe in DC as a shooter, the other’s an RPGish sequel to Fallout 2 using the same engine.
I hope Fallout 4 has proper shadowing support. It’s not like it’s HARD.
28/10/2010 at 07:06 JacknPoke says:
While i do think that the review is valid. there are some just plain sparse things about New Vegas.
I gotta admit that over all while ruff fallout New Vegas has been entertaining. I’ve enjoyed my 20+ hours in the wastes so far.
besides *SPOILERS*
how can you not love a game that gives super-mutants stealth boys before you’ve reached level 10.
I mean that sh** is just f***ing evil. Awesome… but Evil.
28/10/2010 at 11:42 Chupacabra says:
“Kai-zar” is actually the good pronunciation for Caesar, “Ce-zar” is also good, though.
But it’s not wrong to pronounce it “Kai-zar”.
So now you know.
I agree with your view on the game, though, seems that a lot of content is indeed missing due to getting the game out on time.
A shame.
30/10/2010 at 19:24 Nick says:
what content is missing exactly?
31/10/2010 at 01:36 Wulf says:
No content is, it’s just some people being used to content being placed just two pixels away from other content in Fallout 3, and when they’re actually shown a more believable world, when they encounter something that was created with love and care, so that the environment actually feels like what it’s portraying, you have people saying stuff is ‘missing’. This ‘missing’ feeling comes from the game not having content every single step like Fallout 3, all in a cramped, tiny ‘wasteland’ that didn’t feel big at all. Stuff is more spaced out in New Vegas, and this leads to people scratching their heads confusedly.
This is why we can’t have nice things, because people are hacked into thinking that game mechanics are more important than having a beautifully constructed, believable world, that if you don’t put all your content in exactly the same, cramped, enclosed space then things will be ‘missing’ because there’s empty space. This really is why we can’t have nice things. I swear, of all the people I’ve encountered on my travels, gamers really are the most hacked. If most gamers could get over being hacked, then perhaps we’d actually appreciate games which are trying to pull us up and out of our anti-intellectual quagmire. Games like New Vegas, games where morality isn’t black & white, and where all the content isn’t stacked up against the rest of the content for the sake of convenience.
Yes, there’s a lot of empty space in New Vegas, and there are even interesting places to see and hang out in which quests don’t lead to, that were put there just to be seen. I do believe that was the point, more to create a believable world than the perfect game. Explore the wasteland as a wasteland, rather than just the ‘content zone’ of another game, and you’ll have a lot more fun with it.
28/10/2010 at 17:46 Cyanyde says:
Yup. I personally thought while reading this that I must be retarded.. I’m glad the majority disagree with this review cuz I sure do. I felt that the side quests in this game were more epic than most games’ main quest lines. *everything* you do feels like it’s going to affect something, and even the most useless character usually has something important to offer in some way. I was around back when the original fallout games were released and I absolutely loved them. I was looking forward to Fallout 3 literally since it was announced and I did like it, but when I heard New Vegas was on the same engine, I was dissapointed. Guess what, I don’t remember being impressed by a game in a looooong time but New Vegas actually managed to be better than I expected.. That doesn’t happen very often.
29/10/2010 at 16:20 Stitched says:
Fallout 3 was the same. A lot of the side quests were more interesting than the main one. Same thing with Oblivion, for that matter.
I’m still playing, now with some mods installed (the extra radio station, better lighting conditions, etc) and now I remember why I like the PC version so much.
29/10/2010 at 23:57 Dustin says:
I’ve never seen a more objectively wrong opinion in my life. Fallout 3 is lifeless, derivative, soulless and shallow. I’ve never seen someone positively mention Little Lamplight and the DC metro system before; those things were abominations of game design.
New Vegas is a bit higher brow and I guess that’s where it tripped you up. It’s really hard not to go with the douchey sentiment of “you didn’t get it.” Maybe having characters written like real people with genuine wit and emotion isn’t preferable to people who are randomly vampires and superheroes fighting when it comes to your tastes, but I prefer it.
Fallout 3 also literally only had 20 sidequests and a far more sparsely populated world with fewer landmarks and no real visual variety aside from “urban” and “rocky grey desert.”
31/10/2010 at 01:29 Wulf says:
I think it must be the high brow aspect that’s just throwing some people off. I mean, the Little Lamplight thing was an unbelievable Never Never Land. “Let’s put some kids here, have them act like gnarled veterans who aren’t emotionally unbalanced or mentally scarred in the least, because that’d be clever and just like Peter Pan! I know, let’s add a kid named Pann Peterson!”
I found Little Lamplight jarringly unbelievable, I could accept that the kids would be slightly competent, but they had a life’s worth of training in gun use, engineering, and medicine, not only that but despite their situation they showed no psychological scarring whatsoever. It really was just Peter Pan in the wastes, it was cheap, nasty, and horrible, and it was one of my least favourite parts of the game.
Compared to that, I’ve been having a blast in New Vegas as an intelligent sciency character, who’s playing all sides against the middle to create the most interesting outcome, like one giant experiment. No one really knows where they stand with me, and if most games had given me the level of sheer choice that New Vegas did, they’d be broken many times over by now. But New Vegas is somehow still accounting for all of my scheming, and it amazes me.
30/10/2010 at 00:03 Dustin says:
“I had a long conversation with a bartender about the etiquette for hiring one of her prostitutes, before discovering after three increasingly confused laps of the bar that there were no prostitutes in the building. Later, I encountered a man tied to a pole, begging to be cut down, but there was no way to do so. And in one awesomely surreal instance, I had a chat with a character about their impressive snowglobe collection when there wasn’t a snowglobe in sight.”
Also, all 3 of these examples are wrong. The bar has no prostitutes because you need to hire them yourself. It’s a quest you get right at that same spot, so what the hell? The man tied to the pole, begging to be cut down can be cut down later, but doing so earlier would break a quest. Also, why would you need Mr. House’s snowglobe collection to be in sight? Why would he put it in his abandoned casino? You can see your own collection in your Lucky 38 suite.
30/10/2010 at 00:54 Matt says:
After finishing one playthrough and having started another, I have to say I couldn’t disagree more with this poorly written review. I think this guy would be much happier playing a game which didn’t require thinking on his part; may I suggest Halo: Reach?
30/10/2010 at 01:41 Andrew says:
I just finished my ‘neutral’ play through and liked I could beat the game as a talker and not have to fire a shot in the finale and got a satisfying ending for my trouble.
I was really engaged with ‘the house always wins’ main quest and appreciated that the game let me double cross the NCR who I was ‘accepted’ with and that Mr. House even knew that fact and instructed me in how to act as a double agent.
I haven’t had this much fun in an RPG since morrowind, most games I beat and take a break from. I beat new vegas and made a new game again to experience all the factions I had murdered in my first play through, just because I was curious about their story. For me, this game is better than mass effect and dragon age as an RPG simply because you are in the driver’s seat from start to finish.
I think most of the PC bugs have to do with the new line of video cards on such an old engine, my nvidia 9800 has zero issues.
30/10/2010 at 01:56 ravaged says:
I find myself agreeing with this review more and more. While there was a certain amount of charm in the first ten hours as I explored and enjoyed the world, I inevitably ran head on into the paper thin construct that is the games plot and quest system. A handful of quests here, a handful of quests there and people magically adore your character. While this can sometimes be an engaging experience when tied to fantastic voice acting and storytelling, New Vegas has neither and suffers greatly for it. Ultimately I didn’t care about anyone or anything in New Vegas because none of them are very memorable.
31/10/2010 at 01:19 Wulf says:
And yet more trolling.
“A handful of quests here, a handful of quests there and people magically adore your character.”
This is, of course, complete nonsense. Anyone who’s actually played the game knows that, so I have to ask, did you? There’s a faction system in the game, and what you do, be it quests, simply helping out, being nice, or such, raises or lowers your karma with that faction, this, in turn, can lower your karma with other factions. Now, in Fallout 3, you had a Universal karma rating, and if you were good, then you were good to everyone, and everyone adored your character. This is not so in New Vegas. Are you sure you’re not getting the two confused?
But yes, what you do in Goodsprings, the people of Novac couldn’t care less about, and so on. The system in New Vegas is much more fleshed out, and every action you take could have reactions across various factions, even choosing to make New Vegas independent can make factions you were previously friendly with more hostile, as you step on their toes since they’re all vying for power and control over New Vegas. So it’s a careful juggling act to get a large amount of people to like you, and if you aren’t good at speechcraft, the majority are likely going to end up hating you.
“While this can sometimes be an engaging experience when tied to fantastic voice acting and storytelling, New Vegas has neither and suffers greatly for it.”
What’s your idea of good voice-acting? Having Nolan North voice 50% of the game’s cast? New Vegas has been spoken of highly around the Internet and of by critics for actually not falling prey to the Nolan North issue, since everyone sounds different and the standard of voice acting is actually really good. Either you’re just trolling here, or you’re hacked, and you really do believe that having every human male you encounter sound the same qualifies as good voice acting.
Honestly…
And as for the writing? Vault 11 (see below) counters that.
Trololololol I suppose.
30/10/2010 at 10:28 Dance on Numbers says:
I’ve been reading this site for a long long time, and never felt the need to register because the review and couple first posts really give a good impression of the game they’re reviewing as a whole, but this review is the worst review I’ve ever read on this site. I mean this literally, not only do I disagree with the verdict, but the actual review transcends the spectrum of opinions that reviews are entitled to and into plain personal attacks. ” the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed
charges, not-giving-a-fuck” is not criticism because he did not go through the developmental phase.
If he wants to say the game blows, that’s his prerogative. However, he attacks the developers without any kind of understanding of what they were trying to do then he’s an amateur blow hard, period. That’s hard for me to write because I’ve trusted him up until now, but there’s no other way to describe it. Anyone who reads these posts, remember, this review is as bad as you can get in gaming journalism and you should ignore it. New Vegas is the only old school CRPG that has been made in the last 10 years, if you liked Fallout 1 or 2 or Baldus Gate, or plane scape: Torment, or Vampire Bloodlines you’ll like this game.
30/10/2010 at 19:21 Nick says:
“New Vegas is the only old school CRPG that has been made in the last 10 years, if you liked Fallout 1 or 2 or Baldus Gate, or plane scape: Torment, or Vampire Bloodlines you’ll like this game.”
Vampire was released 6 years ago, BG2 10 years ago (throne of bhall 9 years ago).
But yeah, other than that I tend to agree.
31/10/2010 at 01:12 Wulf says:
Precisely. I mean, how could this happen… ? I’ve always liked Quinns, but the last thing I expected from him was to slam this game, a game with the best writing I’ve seen in years, and slam it with more personal insults and fallacious representations than anything else. The review reads like he’s trying to make it look bad, you don’t even have to have played the game to see that, it’s right there in the first insult. It’s like he was determined to hate this game, for whatever reason, and just picked out the worst parts of the game to review them, whilst completely ignoring the rest of the game. And Gods damn it, I’m going to be insistent and call trolling.
Want proof of that writing?
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nothin%27_But_a_Hound_Dog
That was an unsettling quest, where I had to find a canine brain to fix up a bionic dog, a dog that had likely been converted by Mr. House to keep him company over the long years he was alive, I really felt so sorry for that dog, it’s odd that a dog could be a tragic character, but this one is. That poor mutt’s been alive for 209 years now, going from owner to owner, Caesar’s hound, the loyal pet of an Elvis Presley impersonator… and now he wanders with me.
Then there’s this…
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_11
Please read that before you make your mind up on the game. It was honestly very disturbing to blunder into the sacrificial chamber at the end of that, and I felt really angry at how seriously messed up the Enclave are, which is probably the first time I’ve felt that. None of the prior Vault experiments got a rise out of me, this one did.
Also, progressing through the game, I’ve only had one bugged quest, which I managed to fix after some tinkering in the GECK. One funny thing I spotted in the GECK was how Obsidian’s own coders were amused at how broken the Gamebryo engine is, and how they had to work their way around some of Beth’s lazy hackjobs, which only really backs up the claim that Obsidian went out of their way to try and fix up some of the shortcomings of the Gamebryo engine. It’s all there in the scripts, open up the GECK and read them.
So really, considering all this, I’m at a loss as to how anyone could pan this game and praise Fallout 3, it seems the exact opposite of what any old RPG fan would do, anyone who values story, or a believable environment should like New Vegas. Sure, it doesn’t have the instant gratification of Fallout 3, it doesn’t have the carrot-on-a-stick grind-to-reward mentality, it doesn’t have content set pieces spaced mere pixels away from each other… but isn’t all of that a good thing? I suppose it has to be down to taste, but if you disliked Fallout 3 for those reasons, you’ll love New Vegas.
30/10/2010 at 19:17 Eric says:
I disagree with this review.
30/10/2010 at 21:27 Huggster says:
I am about 18 hrs in (steam tells me) and having a blast.
Yes, it is more sparse than Fo3. Does it feel like obsidian left things unfinished in these sparse areas? First I thought yes, now I think not. You only really get items *in places they should be*, and settlements *in places they should be*.
Fo3 was literally swarming with bad guys, locations, items – you could not move without finding a new location. Therefore it devalued the experience of finding them.
I dunno. This game feels a lot more grown up. The world makes more sense. There are actual reasons for characters and where they are going / what they are doing.
The guns are more staggered (at least for me as I am taking my time) so I am making more use of pistols etc.
It makes you question most of the stuff you kill, as in many cases you can choose not too if you are careful. I wont spoil anything.
Although distances are compressed in open world games, it has done its best to put some decent walking time between the settlements – and the townsfolk comment on the other places. (I spotted a fire …. etc.)
no crashes, though some bad guys in walls a few times (geckos and whatnot).
so, pretty damn fun, solid RPG.
31/10/2010 at 01:52 Wulf says:
Also, another note for the mod fans out there… it looks like Obsidian hired Oscuro (yes, he of overhaul fame) to actually work on New Vegas with them, this is why a lot of his efforts can be seen in the game, and a lot of the things you’d normally have to mod Oblivion or Fallout 3 for are actually already catered for in New Vegas. A lot of people have been seeing this, that there’s no need to create mod X, Y, or Z because it’s actually in the game. So if you were a fan of Gamebryo mods, especially Oscuro’s stuff, then you’ll be happy to know this, I suspect.
Source: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Jorge_Salgado
31/10/2010 at 21:26 jennix says:
Completely disagree this sounds forced just to cause controversy. I almost always agree with the rps reviews but this time it just seems so forced and labored and you compare NV to fo3 and say it doesn’t come out favorably? So many people disagree and hopefully by the volume of comments you will learn to do a proper review instead of just trying to get hits for your website.
Never visting rps again, have fun cashing your check from whoever gave it to you for slandering the game.
03/11/2010 at 00:42 Dance on Numbers says:
As much as I agree with is assessment of the review, don’t leave RPS just because of one asshat review. Really where else are you gong to go for a fair review, IGN Gamespot? The only site that compares favorably is Giantbomb, and they are a bit too console oriented for my tastes. Yeah, it sucks that one of the reviewers showed themselves to be incompetent, but the site itself is still pretty good.
10/11/2010 at 19:28 panther says:
We allow different opinions here at RPS. Don’t let the door hit your ass.
31/10/2010 at 21:30 Out Reach says:
I’ve Rushed through the 3 main storyline paths, and I’m currently on a 4th play-through, taking my time to explore the wider wasteland. I’ve so far experienced the sum total of 1 bug in some 40 hours of play, which was mostly caused by me messing around with the console.
When I read this review just before release I felt New Vegas might be a let down. However everything Quinns said has proved to be wrong.
The idea that there are no places like little lamplight or Oasis from Fallout 3 in New Vegas is truly laughable. 1 word – Jacobstown. The trip there has the same magical properties of discovering Oasis, and its population is just as interesting as that of little lamplight.
Next take the farm for example. I went there and found there are at least 5 times the visible crops just out of shot. Meanwhile the red huts with white tarpaulin roofs in the background? They’re about 20 of them and each is being used as a hot house to grow more food.
The stretch of empty desert? If you turn around Helios 1 a huge and magnificent set piece with a wonderful quest, can’t be more then 1ft away from where the screen-shot was taken.
Finally the empty casino? that area of the casino is being occupied by the casino boss and a collection of heavy goons with guns at the far end. It’s a staged scene that can end in a shootout. Clearing the area of civilians seems like a good idea if theres a shootout coming.
The only thing in this review is a collection of carefully staged screenshots, and a quick line to make them all seem terrible. New Vegas is a great game.
01/11/2010 at 04:44 Irondog says:
Well… I’d be a lot farther in the game if I didn’t get pissed and walk away every time the thing freezes on me. Seems to happen every time I need another beer so its not all bad. Still, come on guys. Your testers have the two dozens consoles that it DIDN’T crash on??? Aside from that I want to see another difficulty mode, “The Road”. Where there is almost nothing to be found in structures, the water is filled with crap and most everyone wants to eat you. Oh, and your companion is some little kid with no perks or combat abilities. If you can make him sound like the feral brat from Six String Samurai all the better. The game really isn’t hardcore enough, why stop at eating and drinking? Why not go whole hog and have clips to reload and unsafe ammo? I don’t know, I didn’t give a crap about this game until I heard about the hardcore mode and so far its no challenge at all. Its not like I care if my avatar gets his nosh on from dog meat and truly disgusting toilet bowls rather than a medium rare steak and a bottle of Fiji water. Lets see it get REALLY hardcore, I want to really think about eating people as a last resort. Now where did that soccer team crash?
02/11/2010 at 02:06 Wulf says:
Yep, the console versions of New Vegas do freeze a lot, but I suspect that’ll be patched eventually. The thing is though is that it’s a Gamebryo thing, not a New Vegas thing. Oblivion and Fallout 3 on the consoles were also notorious for freezing. In fact, Fallout 3 had one bug where it became impossible to complete the main campaign, I remember this because my roomie was playing it on the 360 at the time, and no matter how he tried to approach the memorial, the game would lock up. A patch came out for that about a week or two later, but it was one of the worst freezing bugs in any game, ever. And he had plenty of random freeze-ups too, he couldn’t play more than a few hours without FO3 freezing, which I chuckled and felt amused by because at the very least my PC version of Fallout 3 wasn’t so freeze-happy.
That New Vegas, built on the same engine, is a bit freeze-happy in its initial release does not surprise me in the least. I would’ve been more surprised if they’d somehow jury-rigged the Gamebryo engine to not freeze under mysterious circumstances. But that’s just it, the Gamebryo engine itself is a bit of a hackjob, very jury-rigged, and any modder worth their salt will tell you this, just ask any of those who’ve worked on bigger mods, it’s very, VERY hackish. The problem with hackish engines like Gamebryo is that you’re going to have random, bizarre hiccups, like freezing. These will be discovered and patched out eventually, but it’s pretty much par the course for anything that uses Gamebryo.
01/11/2010 at 09:08 mrmud says:
The more I play this game the more Quinns seem either insane or a flat out liar. Pretty much everything every negative thing he brings up have turned out to not only be not negative, but a great feature (bugs, of which i have seen few, obviously not included).
If it was all down to subjective issues that would be problematic (in that I know I cant trust Quinns oppinions) but still understandable. The really worrysome parts is where he is objectively wrong, such as the staged screenshots and the comments about how hardcore mode has no inpact at all.
02/11/2010 at 01:59 Wulf says:
I think I can explain the hardcore mode thing at least. Going by the tone of the review, he was undoubtedly playing it on easy, probably to plow through the game at such a speed that he’d be able to consider that he’d seen enough to be qualified to review it, I’ve heard that reviewers do do this, some have openly admitted as such, but you can’t base the difficulty of the game on that, you have to crank it back up occasionally to find out what things are really like.
Playing the game on a harder difficulty, the hardcore mode has more teeth, and I’ve had to carry around a supply of food and drink to deal with it, I’ve been madly scavenging Wasteland Survival Guides just to get my skill up so I can cook all the bloody meat I’ve been finding, because that means that I don’t have to keep buying food.
But yeah, the staged screenshots really bugged me, that’s one thing that people keep dodging when it’s been said that I’m apparently being a poisonous liar myself. The thing is though is that there’s much in the review that’s highly wrong, objectively wrong even, and that’s what grates. There’s just no way he could’ve been so unobservant. Complaining about a lack of hookers in a bar, when talking to the NPC who gives the quest to find them, for example? That either shows that Quinns has a really short attention span, or that he was purposefully trying to pan this game. The screenshots also give this impression too.
What I don’t get is why.
:/
02/11/2010 at 08:52 Huggster says:
I think the lack of NPC in some locations is a limitation of the engine – even Oblivion had that issue in the large battles and town. If its an engine limitation you cannot really blame the developers.
Anyway I hardly noticed, just got to the strip and it seems fine to me. I really do not see it as an issue. I have just found there are about 7 ways of approaching a problem I just got to. That is pretty goddam impressive. Plus the plot just spider-webbed on me in a big way.
Perhaps Quinns and Jim do not like RPGs. Who knows. Its a very, very good RPG so far. On the strength of this I will install my copy of Alpha Protocol once I have done a play-through..
01/11/2010 at 20:08 TheTourist314 says:
Man, everyone’s going up in arms about this something pretty serious! At only having played for 2 hours or so, I’m inclined to agree with the reviewer so far in that it feels like a lot of detail was neglected. Thus far, it’s been boring to walk around rather than “What weird thing will I find next?”. In Fallout 3, my favorite thing was to explore every single nook and cranny, as it better enveloped a sense of survival to me rather than this weird hodgepodge of an environment. But I shall have to play more and see, it might get better. Hell, it may even suck more, but I still payed for it and there’s nothing left I can do but play it and see.
02/11/2010 at 01:52 Wulf says:
Every time I see this complaint, I’m baffled by it. Do gamers never go outdoors? There’s usually open space between any town or settlement, and often even that land can be interesting to look at in its own right, it’s nice to have space in between things, interesting looking space, but space nonetheless. That’s what New Vegas has. It’s actually got more content than Fallout 3 overall (and it certainly excels in the compelling sidequest department), but it’s on a far, far bigger map, more spaced out, and thus more real. You actually have to wander more than two pixels to ‘find’ something.
The thing is, there was no exploration in Fallout 3, the ‘exploration’ was really non-existent. The reason for this is because Fallout 3 was a broom closet, ‘exploring’ in Fallout 3 is the same as looking around in a broom closet, and ‘finding’ something is the same as spotting and picking up a broom. There were hardly any revelations, and you could see pretty much all the content in the game from any averagely high look-out point, which detailed just how tiny and cramped the world was. Yes, you actually have to walk a little bit to discover things in New Vegas, but I don’t see how that’s a bad thing at all. Not in the least.
02/11/2010 at 09:25 Huggster says:
I prefer a realistic world to a cartoon world in my RPGs.
Suspension of disbelief and all that. You know, small things like that.
I would rather have a town PROSPERING ON NON RADIOACTIVE WATER than a TOWN BUILT ON A NUKE.
My first walk to Vegas yesterday was great – getting more and more built up. After the wasteland it was quite the contrast.
I take that over the DC ruins any day.
02/11/2010 at 11:43 Marat Sar says:
Whoah! This is exactly the kind of review I was waiting for when F3 rolled out – but not New Vegas! I am in complete disagreement with this. And I’ve even heard from a friend who gave up playing it because of this review!
One really, really should pay no heed to this review. Chris Avellone has done an amazing job, it’s almost a dialogue with the fans for christ’ sake! The real long time hardcore Fallout fans.
10/11/2010 at 19:26 panther says:
Do Obsidian have a PR team that targets blog comments?
02/11/2010 at 22:50 Truth Stater says:
being playing this a lot lately, was impressed. And I hated fallout 3.
it’s just an interesting, believable world with lots of interesting stuff to do. Some boring sidequests are present though.
Much much better than fallout 2 and 3 in my opinion.
03/11/2010 at 17:11 Me says:
Wow, the reviewer is a completely ignorant excuse of a human being. The original pronunciation of Caesar is actually (Kai-sar.) Do some research b4 you take the time to belch out a review of a highly applauded game and just show your ignorance.