Why yes, Fallout: New Vegas, I am a stim-ply amazing desert survivalist

Unlocked two Achievements last night in Fallout: New Vegas, and they’re both tied to one another in the form of healing X amount of health points:

Desert Survival (15G): Healed 10,000 points of damage with food.

Stim-ply Amazing (15G): Healed 10,000 points of damage with Stimpaks.

For the Desert Survivalist one, I was playing as Zelda, my character specifically crafted to eat a lot of food and rough it in the wild. By the time I had finished up the Dead Money DLC, she had already healed around 8,000+ points of damage, and so I stocked up on some free food from the kitchen area in the H&H Tools Factory. Then I had her head over to the Samson Rock Crushing Plant where I had her continuously climb up to the top of one of the buildings, jump off, and damage herself. Don’t worry…she had plenty of crunchy squirrel bits and InstaMash to make her feel better. This went on for some time, and while it wasn’t the most exciting way to go about it, it would’ve taken a lot longer to do by trying to find enemies to fight.

For the Achievement tied to using Stimpaks, I switched over to my original, first playthrough character Jareth since Zelda barely used any during her 30+ hours in the Mojave Wasteland. He, too, was around the 8,000+ points healed amount, this time for Stimpaks, and he was just lounging around in his fancy casino suite, looking bored. Checking his inventory, I found around 56 Stimpaks just begging to be used–but how could I do so quickly? I decided to throw karma to the wind and have him attack everybody on the New Vegas strip; this incited all NCR troops and RobCo security bots into attacking Jareth, damaging his health fast and constantly, and within a few skirmishes, he had healed more than enough to ping Stim-ply Amazing and earn an extra 100 XP. Double win!

I’m probably going to start a third playthrough soon, with a character focusing on explosives, energy weapons, and sneaking (for pickpocketing purposes). Feel free to suggest a name. Not sure if I want that playthrough to also be the Hardcore mode one. Need to consider what factions I want to side with, and who would make virtual life in the harsh wild easier.

Take the Dead Money and run

Man, Dead Money, the first DLC add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, had the potential to be great, to sit somewhere between Fallout 3’s Broken Steel and Point Lookout in terms of quality and content for the right price point. Alas, it does not get to sit on such a pedestal, but rather in a dark, desolate corner where it will wait to be slowly poisoned to death by an unforgiving toxic cloud.

My first go at exploring the canorous Sierra Madre and its nefarious surroundings did not go well. The DLC is tough, like end-assault-on-the-dam tough, and seems to slant more towards stealthy players that use melee and unarmed weapons, as well as having a high survival skill. Alas, my initial playthrough character relied too much on guns and stimpacks to make it very far. I quit out to an old save before even leaving the Villa, which is where roughly half of the DLC takes place. I would not experience the second half for awhile, waiting until my second playthrough character was high enough in skills and levels to tackle Father Elijah’s cruel maze once again. Having already played this part made it much easier to progress through, and there were new surprises here. The only thing I did differently was let Dog out of his cage, keeping the voice locked away inside; he ate a lot of Ghost People, except for that one time when he glitched across the screen and ate a trash can instead. Sigh.

Once inside the actual Sierra Madre casino, the Courier needs to locate the three companions used to help get inside and…deal with them. You may interpret that any way you want. To spoil, I ended up murdering Dog/God and Dean, but kept Christine alive. Zelda probably felt some kind of connection with her, I guess. Only after you’ve dealt with them can you sneak beneath the casino to find Father Elijah’s vault and the secrets its holds. And sadly, it’s nothing too exciting.

Each of Fallout 3’s DLC gave the player something to look forward to. Operation Anchorage strayed too far from the path of familiar gameplay, but rewarded the player greatly at the end with some unique weapons and armor; The Pitt plays home to some cool melee weapons like the auto-ax; Broken Steel introduced a new level cap, harder Super Mutant enemies, and removed the game’s ending; Point Lookout gave players a huge new place to explore; and Mothership Zeta, despite its linearity, showcased some fine alien tech. You will most likely leave Dead Money for the Mojave Wasteland empty-handed. There’s no amazingly unique weapons or gear to be found here, and much of the secrets inside Father Elijah’s vault is moot, weighing too much to be properly carried out. A dang shame. Seems like the greatest thing Dead Money gives players is a new level cap of 35, and they don’t even need to visit the Sierra Madre to get it.

Dead Money is not fun to play. Yup, it’s true. There is always something to stress over: broken limbs, lack of food, poison toxic cloud, Ghost People, setting off traps, crazy deadly holograms, radios and speakers setting off your explosive collar. It’s a hefty list, and I’m sure one Obsidian guy was like, “Hey, do you think we could throw in some Deathclaws, too?” I felt immense relief upon returning to Arizona’s colorful sky, and stood still outside for some time, taking it in, and not just because I had to wait for the game to recount, one by frakking one, every single thing it was adding back into my inventory. I couldn’t fast travel to Gun Runners because I was overweight, but the walk there did a lot of good for Zelda, and the air had never tasted sweeter.

Oh, and I saved and then reloaded to get both of these Achievements at the end because I truly never want to go back to Dead Money:

Cash Out (30G): Confronted Father Elijah in the Sierra Madre’s Vault

Safety Deposit Box (40G): Trapped Father Elijah in the Sierra Madre’s Vault

The Courier, signing off!

All my greatest critics in the Mojave Wasteland think I’m a hack

Still working my way through Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money. I’ve realized one reason why this DLC is so dang slow, and that is because, if you’re playing anything like I am, you are sneaking all over the Villa, careful to scan every square of ground for traps, careful to hear that terrible beeping, careful to not end up taking on two or more Ghost People at once by yourself. I can’t ever really imagine moving fast through this one, and I even know what to expect (at least for the first half of things), but I will forever err to the side of caution.

Anyways, thanks to some locked doors and unfriendly turret systems, I was able to get this little pinger:

Hack the Mojave (15G): Hacked 25 terminals.

Woo, science! Actually, nah to that. I never tag science as a skill, and only did it because, just like in Fallout 3, knew there would be an Achievement tied to it. And thank goodness this one wasn’t just a carbon copy of the Achievement in the former game. That was called Data Miner and required the player to hack 50 terminals. Fifty…I swear I don’t even think that many exist in the Mojave Wasteland (and Sierra Madre section). It really felt like slim pickings in terms of hacking computers. At least the science skill came in handy a few more times during my playthrough, but otherwise…it’s not very exciting. And I kind of wished Obsidian had updated the minigame for hacking a terminal; it’s too easy to just save before you hack in case you mess up, and obviously they don’t love it immensely otherwise there would’ve been a whole ton more throughout our travels.

Well, in the end, that’s another Achievement done for Fallout: New Vegas. Now to, uh, simultaneously confront and trap a certain someone in a certain something. Maybe the science skill will help me again? Maybe, baby.

Humor is not the weapon of unarmed people

I’m pretty sure I’ve mused before about all the things I’ve never done in the Fallout universe, such as keeping a good distance from using big guns to actually not seeking out Dogmeat as a companion. Another tactic I’ve never tried in my 300+ hours logged over Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas is that of fighting unarmed. Now, to clarify, unarmed doesn’t necessarily mean totally unarmed; some weapons like spiked knuckles, a bladed gauntlet, and the zap glove count, as does using just your bare fists. Regardless, one will have to get pretty dang close to their opponents to do some heavy unarmed damage, and I generally like to keep my distance, imitating a ninja or dustwheel as best as possible. This sort of guerilla style gameplay took a while to get used to, but I did eventually, and soon found myself charging fists-first into battle, ready to uppercut NCR troopers to their new home above the clouds.

And so I’m pretty proud to see this baby pop late last night after I gave a large fire gecko a swift smack to the back of its head:

Old-Tyme Brawler (15G): Caused 10,000 damage with Unarmed weapons.

Zelda, the fiend of the Mojave Wasteland, is around level 17 currently, with an unarmed skill of 55 points. Not bad, and it will surely grow as she’s already rocking a 100 cap in melee weapons. She also has a wonderful perk, which will sometimes knock an opponent to the ground from an unarmed attack, allowing for more free punches and kicks. Teamed with ED-E for support from afar, she’s a decent warrior (except against Deathclaws). And this weapon helps a lot:

What a beauty! That’s a power fist for the uninformed. It’s an armored gauntlet that uses a pneumatic ram to really send the message home. There really is something special about watching Zelda, a thin, redhead dressed as homely as possible, wielding this fist of death and knocking the heads off enemies with ease. I really have to make a conscious effort to make my evil characters appear more evil.

Anyways, I can’t believe I went this long without trying out an unarmed character; it does have its downsides, as big groups of enemies can basically surround Zelda and riddle her with bullets, but otherwise it’s been a lot of fun. And once she hits around level 25 or so, I think I’ll give Dead Money another try, now that I’ve got a character built specifically to handle all their melee and unarmed weapons, as well as a high survival skill for turning junk food into the most delicious thing ever.

Cass was murdered in Fallout: New Vegas by accident, I swears it

I’m tepidly hopping back in and out of Fallout: New Vegas. This second playthrough of a very straight evil run is not as exciting as my first playthrough was though I do love Zelda’s skills with the Rebar Club; currently, I’m stuck on the Render Unto Caesar quest, which gives The House Always Wins a run for its money in terms of being the longest, slowest quest in the game. Given to the Courier by Caesar, Render Unto Caesar is made up of eight parts: Part 1, use the Platinum Chip to downgrade the security bots; Part 2, dealing with Mr. House; Part 3, gaining the Boomers’ help; Part 4, gaining the help of the White Glove Society; Part 5, dealing with the Brotherhood of Steel; Part 6, Caesar’s Illness; Part 7, taking out President Kimball; and Part 8, protecting the Legate’s Camp.

Yeah, that’s a lot of parts. What makes things even worse is that each part might very well be made up of several other quests, making this a neverending story of sorts from a gameplay perspective. For example, getting the Boomers to help means getting them to like the Courier, which also means doing at least five nice tasks for them. I got bored after solving their ant problem that I just went and slaughtered Loyal and that old grandma with a Power Fist. And now I’m stuck on dealing with the Brotherhood of Steel, which leads me to the main point of this blog post…

I accidentally murdered Cass, and she’s dead dead! Can’t get her back. Whoops-daisy.

See, I’m trying to do the alternate method of Part 5, wherein you just kill the Brotherhood of Steel patrols outside the bunker at night. For some reason, according to the world of wikia, this works and will trigger Part 6. The problem is that these BoS dudes take Zelda and ED-E down rather fast, and I’d like a second fleshbag in my ranks to absorb some heat. Can’t have Boone as I’m BFFs with the Legion; can’t use Veronica as I doubt she’d like to help murder her BFFs. Cass was my next best choice as I’ve already visited with her before, but that was back when the NCR and I were pals. Now they shoot on sight, and I guess Zelda was swinging her Rebar Club a little too wildly–and a little too closely–to Cass as she sat at the bar drinking her woes. She died. Quest failed text scrolled by. I looted her body nonetheless and put a bottle of scotch atop her corpse out of sorrow, out of respect.

It’s weird that once they become your companions, they can’t die (at least in vanilla Fallout: New Vegas), only go unconscious, but until you recruit them, they are fair game. I guess I could go after Raul or Arcade next. Not sure if they’d want to join my forces though. We’ll see. I really don’t want to have to do that whole sneak through the Brotherhood’s bunker and sabotage it phase as I’m a level 15 character and have point ZERO points into sneaking. It just can’t be done.

As I mentioned before, this second Fallout: New Vegas playthrough is not as grand as the first one. In fact, it feels like a lot more work. I wonder why that is.

Games Completed in 2011, #2 – Fallout: New Vegas

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: Xbox 360 [reviewed], PlayStation 3, PC
Genres: RPG, FPS, Western
Modes: Single-player
Hours clocked: Last save slot says around 55 hours

::exhales::

Well…it’s done. The final battle for the Hoover Dam is over, and the Courier, my Courier, made his choices, and then just before the credits rolled a series of end-game screens showed how great or not-so-greatly the Mojave Wasteland was affected by my presence. That idea worked, but its execution fell short; I was really hoping for something bigger, something better in the end. I guess the same could be said of Fallout: New Vegas, which might go down in history as one of the most frustrating games ever.

Set many years after the events in Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas opens with a bang. Or a pew. Or however you like your gunshots to sound like. You play as the Courier, a man or woman that ends up getting shot in the head by a mysterious man in a tacky suit because he wanted something you were carrying very badly. Lucky for you, a robot drags you out of your new grave and brings you to the local doctor in Goodsprings where the game truly begins. And that’s the carrot on the stick–revenge. On your journey to find out who shot you and why, you’ll eventually stumble upon a number of factions all striving for control of the Hoover Dam, which is the mega power source keeping New Vegas functioning. That’s all well and good, but the heart of Fallout: New Vegas pumps from its love of sidequests and companions and a thousand other things to do than actually play through the main storyline. I mean, at least in Fallout 3, chasing after someone meant something unequivocably personal–it was freaking Liam Neeson your father!

I actually found myself rather indifferent to tracking down my killer. Sure, he shot me, he stole from me, he left me dirt-deep, but I knew very little of the situation to begin with to even care. Granted, if I had continued after Tacky Suit Man from the get-go then a lot more would’ve been clearer, but for me, waking up alive in Goodsprings was more than enough. I ventured out into the unknown, explored, leveled up, collected stuff, made some friends, made some enemies, and was somewhere around level 17 or so before heading towards the bright lights of the City of Sin.

I never used a companion in Fallout 3, but they’ve been greatly improved for Fallout: New Vegas. A control wheel helps keep them active, healed, and armed. Plus, each companion has a strong personality, as well as their own quest. My two favorites, when they worked, were Boone and ED-E. There’s also a slew of new weapons, outfits, and food items to search for, making it harder to carry everything around. Wish there were more “home” options though as traveling back and forth to the Lucky 38 was a hassle. Perks are only gained every two levels now, which adds actually a lot to the game, forcing you to really think about what ones you pick.

Where there’s Vegas, there’s gambling. Players can enjoy some blackjack, slots, and roulette, as well as Caravan. However, I found I didn’t need a lot of help making caps in the Mojave Wasteland so I never got into this aspect. Or the Survival skill. Or even test the waters with Hardcore mode. Too much to do! That’s the desert motto.

Alas, as we all know, Fallout: New Vegas is not a good game in terms of being a videogame. It is bloated with bugs, glitches, freezes, and wonky design choices. It uses the same engine as Fallout 3, and it shows. Dialogue action screens are still locked in limbo, companions get lost and stuck with the greatest of ease, and for some reason, when wielding a rifle, my character likes to randomly lift his arms. For the final battle, I found myself frantically saving as the game would freeze when going into V.A.T.S. four times out of ten, probably because there was a lot going on what with Centurions getting shot up and ED-E fritzing out. Grrr…

Yet…I loved the time I spent in Fallout: New Vegas. And I can’t wait to do it again, this time as an evil redhead with a deep love of animals and melee weapons. Please suggest names for her in the meantime.

All shall bow before the Master of the Mojave

Last night, while playing some Fallout: New Vegas, I found out how good I am at walking around, stumbling into numerous locales, and unlocking trivial amounts of XP:

Master of the Mojave (25G): You Discovered 125 locations.

Yowza. That’s a big number. And because the world is full of magic, it’s also the same number of comments I currently have over at this Freshly Pressed post (I’m sure this coincidence won’t last long as this link linking to it will count as a comment as well, thus pushing it to 126).

But yeah…discovering locations. It’s an addicting thing, especially in a world as expansive as Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. The hooks are twofold: one is seeing a light gray mark on your HUD, indicating an undiscovered location is nearby, waiting for you, hungering for you…and the other trick is simply seeing a glimmer of something in the distance and fully knowing that you could walk over to it and see what’s happening. And one’s reward for discovering a location is a tiny bit of XP and the ability to fast-travel to it in the future. My favorite part, however, is the sound Obsidian added to finding a location: it’s a deep, low boom that can put nerves on end. I love hearing it every time. In Fallout 3, it was a ka-ching kind of sound, which worked, but does not create the effect of uncertainty and gloom that the Mojave Wasteland loves to ooze.

125 locations is the cap for Achievement purposes, but I suspest there’s still a good number of places left to discover. Haven’t even ventured into Deathclaw territory yet, such as Quarry Junction. Just need Jareth (who is really a Bono clone) to repair his Chinese stealth suit, and then we’re good to go.

Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money DLC is more like deadweight

I really wish I could properly review the first bite of DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, but alas…I cannot. Why? Well, I was unfortunately stuck in the DLC at an unbeatable section with truly little hope to hope for and had to reload an old save from many hours ago (and levels, grrr). Dropped from level 30 to level 26 in a matter of seconds. I absolutely hate doing that as it totally ruins my perception of roleplaying; undoing all my actions, changing my stats and gear and perks yet again, retconning, allowing me to know forthwith what could and could not potentially happen in future locales before I even get there…that’s just not right. But I had to do it. I’ve not yet beaten the main game with my first character, and if I hadn’t made the early save slot, I’d have lost everything.

For shame.

But let me set up Dead Money first. Because, storywise, it’s pretty potent, sinking its hooks in right from the start. The DLC starts like all previous Fallout 3 add-ons, with a mysterious radio signal leading you to a specific location. In this one’s case, it takes you to a hidden bunker where your character is gassed, stripped of all possessions, and forced to wear an explosive slave collar. You wake up near the Sierra Madre hotel before the hologram of Father Elijah. He gives you the big mission: break into the Sierra Madre casino, get into the vault, and pull off a heist. You’ll need to recruit three others for the Ocean’s 11 job, and they also have exploding slave collars on them. They die; you die. The first part of the big mission is to round up the companions; the second part is to open the hotel; and the third is, I assume, raiding it for whatever good loot is available.

I was only able to complete the first two parts…never even making it inside the Sierra Madre. What a crock of Blanco mac and cheese!

The problem with the Dead Money DLC is its gameplay. In the same fashion that Fallout 3’s first add-on of Operation Anchorage was a completely different direction (Call of Duty wannabe), Dead Money is more like a survival horror game with a heavy emphasis on melee and unarmed weaponry. That foretold bad news for my character who, going in at level 26, never put a single point into melee, unarmed, or survival. I’m a stealthy guns dude. The villa around the Sierra Madre is filled with traps, a poisonous cloud, and Ghost People, who are very hard to kill without weapons that dismember. Also, health supplies, ammo, and food are very limited, and the Mojave Wasteland caps currency are tossed aside for Sierra Madre casino chips which, while at first seem bountiful, quickly lessen. So yeah…I got screwed pretty fast.

I’m probably not gonna try this DLC again with my current character. Sadly, it’s the sort of add-on very specific for a type of character, one I’m not ready to build. I can only imagine how impossible survival the villa is in Hardcore mode. No thanks.

That said, God/Dog is a marvelous companion, with topline writing. I wish Dead Money let you take them back with you to the Mojave Wasteland, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that in the last chunk of the heist mission some vital decisions about your comrades-in-collars are made. I’m currently now working on some other side missions like Crazy, Crazy, Crazy and trying to recruit Raul as my last main companion. If anything,for 800 Microsoft Points, Dead Money does boost the level cap from 30 to 35, which will give me a bigger excuse to explore before trying to protect the Hoover Dam from destruction.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to arrive with a new engine

Will a lot of people be getting married on November 11, 2011 (11/11/11) or buying Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Well, I think I know my answer…

But yeah. This new entry in the Elder Scrolls series was just announced over the weekend at some videogame award thingy that I didn’t watch. However, many already speculated that a fifth game was in the works. I mean, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a huge hit; how does one not follow up on it? I personally think it’s a good thing that it’s taken five years (Oblivion came out in 2006 for the Xbox 360) to come into the public view. A lot has changed in terms of gaming prowess, and a lot is seemingly going to change as Bethesda is reporting that Skyrim is not going to be running on its infamous Gamebyro engine. Instead, it’s using a brand new one, and let’s quote a dude here:

“We can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new. And it looks fantastic.” – Nick Breckon, community manager at Bethesda

This is good. Very good. The Gamebyro engine, which fueled Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas, is definitely showing its age. It’s been showing its faults and glitches for many years, and the time for change is upon us. I can naturally only hope that this new engine is in the same vision of Gamebyro, but more beautiful, more capable, more durable. First-person RPGs are all about seeing the world all at once, and when that world is a fantasy world, a place lush with flowers and trees and rocky hills and blazing sunsets, it’s vital that the system can handle everything. I have to also wonder if the fighting/magic system will get an overhaul–I hope it does.

Nonetheless, we have a bit of a wait. So while we all consider how the skill system will work or how X will do Y to Z, we can check out the teaser trailer below:

Dragons! Take that, Dragon Age!

Don’t forget to ::make beeping noise::, ED-E

It is with great frustration and disappointment that I make this announcement: I’ve dropped ED-E as a companion in Fallout: New Vegas. Not that I wanted to; the blasted thing worked hard as heck to make me hate it, and hate it in a way not like the opposite of love it, because I do love it, especially the sounds it oozes during battle, but it has to stay with me long enough to find battle, and that became a frequent problem after awhile. I hate ED-E because it is constantly getting “lost.” What does that mean? Well…

When you take on a companion in Fallout: New Vegas, you gain a special perk. ED-E’s gives you a longer range for spotting enemies, as well as targeting Nightkin in V.A.T.S. It’s a good one, especially when tag-teamed with a sniper like Boone. Anyways, ED-E likes to trail behind and alert me to dangers, but sometimes–and by sometimes I mean nine times out of ten–ED-E gets stuck on a piece of landscape or ends up unmovable. I’ve tried to talk to it, get it motivated, but alas…nothing. And then I’ll fast travel, and only Boone will come along. Yet ED-E’s perk is still activated. It’s frustraging, especially during the last few quests in which I was relying on it to help kill a hive of cazadors. Finding ED-E again is a guessing game; I’ve found it inside Lucky 38’s casino once, another time I had to go back to Primm, and another it just randomly came back to the party after several fast travels.

So, the little flying bot that couldn’t…is gone. And Rex, the cyber-dog, is in. Not a huge fan of the dog (as it’s not a huge fan of Jareth and his hat collection), but we’ll see how him and Boone work together as I close in on the…whatever the end battle thing is gonna be.

Hopefully, all above problems (and more) will be fixed with the upcoming patch, which has hopes of doing a number of good things. Such as:

• Companions now show up as waypoints on the map
• Companions will always fast travel with you, unless told to wait or sent away
• Fix: DLC error/save corruption
• Fix: Entering the strip after Debt Collector causes crash and autosave corruption
• Fix: Using Mojave Express dropbox can cause DLC warnings
• Crafting menu now filters valid (bright) recipes to the top of the list
• Weathered pistol no longer glitches when applying mods

Map waypoints for companions is going to be super sweet. So long as it works, naturally.