Fallout: New Vegas = Just okay. It's predecessor, Fallout III, was a masterpiece, in my opinion.

FO3 felt epic. The storyline was phenomenal, and the cityscape of a destroyed, post-apocalyptic Washington DC (complete with a massive hole in the ground where the White House used to be) was just a perfect environment.

Fallout NV was fun, but the story was lacking. It seemed petty in comparison to FO3. Just a handful of competing gang-like factions battling it out, with a new Californian government structure (The NCR: The New California Republic) playing the role of the "goodest" of the bunch. The action was fun, but I never felt all that interested in helping the NCR, and they never once seemed like the underdog. So I was a bad-ass mercenary, fighting for the good guys who seemed heavily favored over the other factions.

The most powerful bad faction, Caesar's Legion, was just too lame to join up with. With their silly costumes and annoying leader, I didn't really want anything to do with them, and my first instincts were to just kill them immediately, which is how I ended up becoming part of the NCR.

Where FO3 was dark and the odds seemed stacked against you, FO:NV was light and scripted. Not a terrible game, mind you, in fact I enjoyed it. But it didn't live up to the sheer adrenaline rush of FO3.

I noticed that as well. The mountainous terrain made the pip-boy difficult. "I'm right next to the stupid marker, but I'm on a cliff next to another cliff. What the hell?"

For New Vegas, it just seemed that I only really enjoyed the action, which is pretty much the same as FO3. I really enjoyed and immersed myself into the plot in Washington DC. Vegas was relatively boring -- i.e., not much going on besides seemingly petty squabbles.

Perhaps expansion packs will change all that. Or maybe I need to go through it all again and be an evil jerk.

robth wrote on Feb 19^th, 2011 at 7:58pm:

I see what they're doing now. They only released the basics for New Vegas.

In FO3, after a lot of success, they released add-ons like Broken Steel and Operation Anchorage. There were 4 1/2 total (the half being some weird alien add-on that I didn't even get because I heard it was short and lame).

With New Vegas, there are already 8 additional add ons planned. They're putting more and more content into the add-ons because it jacks up the revenue.

Smart. I'm pissed. But it's smart. I'll pay for all of them like a sucker.