Ever since Oblivion, I have been a huge fan of games put out under Bethesda Softworks' umbrella. Fallout 3 will continue to be one of my favorite games of all time. Needless to say, I was so incredibly excited to hear about Fallout: New Vegas. Thanks to someone who cares very much for me, I was able to play it on launch day and I was immediately hooked. I put in about 32 hours in the first few days and helped my fiance through some levels. I scoffed when he kept hitting strange glitches blaming his lack of skills for his problems... That was until I started hitting the motherload. After about 60 hours, I finally made my way to the actual New Vegas. "What?" I hear you say - It was sort of intentional. I wanted to build up my character before hitting the strip. I'm also an explorer - I like to wander the wastelands finding everything I can. This can sometimes be detrimental due to my killing of potential quest triggers but it's my style and I'm sticking to it.
However, when I did decide to hit the strip, I did a quest that had me find a debtor and bring his hat back to some shady people. What I didn't notice, was that even though I had taken the hat, it somehow was still on his head. I returned my hat to the collection department and went on my merry way. That is - until I decided to try to get to the strip again. I go to the gate, go through and BAM! black screen. Ok, I'd been playing it a while so I go reset the Xbox and try again. SAME THING. Ok, this is just inappropriate. I reset one more time and try again. No dice. I am now locked out of Vegas. I wasn't willing to give up just yet, though. I want to love the game too much to just throw in the towel. I go do some other things hoping to trigger some magical un-buggering script and try a few hours later. Nope. I finally go to that Google thing and look to see if there are any other people reporting this. Sure enough, there are several people with this same unacceptable occurrence.
About a week later, someone figures out how to temporarily rectify the situation. Go find a cowboy hat and wear it at all times in the strip. WTF? I'm sorry but I paid $60 for a game where I can wear whatever I damn well please, not be forced to remember to wear a hat just to keep my game going. And the bugs didn't end there. I constantly fell through rocks, lost companions, got companions stuck where they shouldn't be, lost weapons, etc.
This was no longer a game I could stand behind. As much as I wanted to love this, it just didn't live up to my expectations. Getting into the strip is integral to the main story. I very much appreciate that PR can't apologize for things as it's an admission of guilt but I feel not enough was done on Obsidian/Bethesda's behalf to address this game-breaking bug. While a patch was put out to help those who lost game saves (man I would have shipped a bag of stinky... nevermind), nothing was said about this stupid hat thing.
This week is Black Friday - many game/electronic stores will have this game for sale for $35-$40. If the issues aren't fixed by then, I would hesitate on going anywhere near this game. And they're already announcing DLC. While I've almost completed the game, I think it's laughable that they are touting this DLC whlie these problems remain.
Bethesda - For the love of everything Pip, DO SOMETHING.
Was there anything redeeming about this game, you may ask? Well, the voice acting was superb. As to be expected with that spectacular lineup. The graphics left a lot to be desired in many places. The wasteland scenery was done very well but I noticed some interiors that were identical to places in Fallout 3. The main story is ok. Slightly boring but the character backgrounds make up for a lot of it. I am still hoping this will be a great game when the wrinkles have been ironed out but until then, I just can't stand behind it as much as I would love to.
