By Tom Hodgson

“War…war never changes.”

The stoic voice of Ron Pearlman leads way into Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian’s follow-up to the hugely successful Fallout 3. Much like war, unfortunately, neither does Fallout.

Outside of a newly realized locale in New Vegas, which stands as an oasis to the harsh and unforgiving surroundings of the Mojave wasteland, there is a profoundly noticeable amount of recycled game design, from character models to weapons to buildings and all they contain within. Why call it Fallout: New Vegas when it’s essentially just Fallout: Old Fallout?

There is also an overwhelming amount of unrefined gameplay. There’s A.I. running around like mongoloid geriatrics with butter shoes on sheet metal, gliding on shaky, pre-determined paths until they eventually glitch into a hole in the poorly designed countryside. There’s character dialogue being repeated by four separate NPCs in any given area. Then the most prevalent: quick traveling and what are far and away the most severe and unacceptable loading times in any game I have ever played. Coupled with this are moments of appalling choppiness, drastic frame rate dips, and system freezing all stemming from graphics that aren’t exactly marvels of modern gaming development.

I had originally thought New Vegas was going to be the crowning example of the graphics versus gameplay debate. On one hand, this realized world, absorbing as its virtual day is long. On the other, this rough and tumble aesthetic that is as unkempt and desolate as the Mojave wasteland that surrounds you. This isn’t the case, and as far as Obsidian can be concerned, it boils down to integrity versus laziness; they’re guilty in the first degree of the latter seemingly at every turn. The game is superbly engrossing only because I am allowing the story and the characters to sweep me away while proactively attempting to ignore the burdens of its design, or lack thereof. With their initial venture into a first person experience, Fallout 3 was an epic and overwhelmingly robust entrant into next-gen gaming, forgivable for its faults due to its ambitious visions of an open, post-apocalyptic world. Having two years to improve upon the problems of the third is ample time for any studio to get it right. It’s as if Obsidian didn’t even try.

For being such a poorly designed/implemented title, I have dedicated more of my time ~ tens of hours, in fact ~ to it than to any other game of comparably egregious bugs and glitches for being nothing more than a title in a franchise I adore.  I think this is probably the same thing that was going through their minds: “Oh, we’re Fallout. We’ll just slap together a great story and interesting characters and call it a day.” I love Fallout, but that shouldn’t mean it gets a pardon from so many of the glaring ~ scratch that ~ blinding issues that take the forefront to its story.

It’s sad but true that the cons far outweigh the pros of Fallout: New Vegas and its achievements are vastly shadowed by its disappointments, but then I sit back and marvel at the fact that I’ve already managed to spend over 40 hours playing through the game’s various plots, and you will too.

Rating: 72%