Author: Jungle

Another adrenaline pumping, solid and action packed shooter, but an overly familiar feeling with this franchise has set in.

I really like the ratings battle Activision has going on with the Call of Duty (COD) Brand. Each year Treyarch and Infinity Ward studios release the best first person shooter games the genre has to offer and surely this can only be good for us consumers? Infinity Ward of course does the now legendary Modern Warfare series, but Treyarch produced the surprisingly fantastic WWII shooter, World at War, back in 2009 and has now attempted to beat the ludicrously popular Modern Warfare 2, with a new offering, Black Ops. Of course it must look to distance itself from Infinity Ward’s finest but ensure the action packed gameplay and vast multiplayer elements shine brighter, a tough call in a packed and hugely competitive market. So, is Call of Duty still the king of shooters and could Black Ops possibly be better than its close relative and rival Modern Warfare? Black Ops’ setting remains relatively historical, mostly being set in the cold war days of the late 1960’s. You take the role of several different characters, in a first person perspective, mainly from various Special Forces divisions that frequently go on clandestine military black operations behind enemy lines. The majority of the campaign is spent in the shoes of Alex Mason, an American Black Ops soldier who awakes in an interrogation room in 1968. He is interrogated by his captors and the single player campaign is played through Mason’s memories of missions of the last decade. Mason was originally sent to Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion to assassinate Fidel Castro, which he does (or at least he thinks he does) only to be captured upon escaping. He is then sent to Vorkuta Gulag, a prison complex in Russia where he is subjected to years of intense torture and strange experiments at the hands of several scientists, who are looking for a way to invade and take down the United States using an experimental nerve gas called Nova 6. How they plan to do this is a seriously complex and secretive method, where the remainder of the single player campaign is played out through Mason’s memories of the Black Ops missions that lead him to trying to stop such a plot against the free world. But as the story unfolds across various locations around the globe, such as Russia, Cuba, and Vietnam, things are not all they appear to be, as Mason constantly has a set of seemingly random numbers burned on to his mind, he starts to doubt who he is actually fighting for, who he can trust and even who he really is.

What’s good?

The expected action packed set pieces are the highlight of Black Ops. You spend the whole game going from check point to check point through the missions and the enemy will do their best to stop you. A lot of them though are on a fairly huge scale with many troops fighting on each side, particularly the Vietnam missions. There is also an equal amount of stealth missions, more often than not for infiltration rather than assassination, where taking down opponents silently and using their clothes for disguise for example, is the aim. Black Ops regularly differentiates itself from other shooters by often not necessarily being involved in a pitch battle between two forces but rather making your way through such a conflict using it as cover. This is obvious from the beginning in one of the first missions in Cuba where you fight through the Bay of Pigs invasion. Legging it across open fields while bullet ridden hell irrupts around you is something you will be getting used to. You will use machine guns, shot guns, LAW’s (Light Anti-tank Weapon), sniper rifles, jeeps armed with cannons, attack helicopters and spy planes to carve your way through this violent adrenaline filled action packed gun fight. The Vietnam missions stand out the most, especially as the first mission there is the most bullet ridden, explosive and brutal in the whole game, as Vietnamese forces invade the American base you are in and are hell bent on sticking every US troop on the end of a bayonet. You will also infiltrate through dense jungle taking out troops silently, which is literally like something out of Apocalypse Now, and you’re even forced to play Russian roulette after being captured by Vietnamese forces (aka The Deer Hunter). It really is like playing a summary of all your favourite ‘Nam movies and they really are spectacular (they are so good, I actually kinda’ wished the whole game was based in ‘Nam). Others don’t disappoint either, as the prison break mission from Russia, where you don a portable mini gun, is a real adrenaline pumper, as is infiltrating a Russian space rocket base and blowing a huge launching rocket out of the sky, as is piloting an attack helicopter as it launches and assault on a huge enemy freight ship. You will also fight through the roof tops of Hong Kong, pilot the Lockheed Martin Blackbird spy plane while picking out targets for troops on the ground, picking out targets for a helicopter gun ship whilst fighting through the streets of Vietnam (a particularly intense mission), escaping a mountain military base as an avalanche falls on it and even meeting John. F. Kennedy himself makes this a game of many memorable moments with big action, explosions, guns, knives and blood. The constant jumping around of locations, mission objectives, guns, vehicles and soldiers mean they have maintained COD’s ability to avoid things going stale and if you’re a fan of action or first person shooters, there is very little in this game that will disappoint.

Though not modern, there is still some serious and inventive fire power. One thing the COD franchise seems to nail perfectly is guns, and the sheer quantity of them. Black Ops of course is no exception. It doesn’t have the same technology as its Modern Warfare brethren, it’s the 1960’s after all, but still has some cool unique weaponry. There is of course the expected assault rifles with grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, shot guns, sniper rifles and missile launchers, but some of the highlights where, for example, a cross bow that fires explosive tipped arrows. Lots of vehicle destroying and maiming fun is to be had with such a cool weapon. There was also a ludicrously powerful shot gun called dragon’s breath that not only blows limbs clean off enemies but sets them on fire as well (as if having them bleed to death through limb loss was not quite enough). Another excellent one was remote control cars rigged with explosives, that you drive up to the enemy and blow them to pieces (sadly only available as a kill streak reward in online matches). Vehicles play a much bigger role in Black Ops as well as you will frequently be in control of motorbikes, helicopters, jeeps, cars, boats and jets, and you have full control of the helicopter and boat missions, not just the guns but movement as well. As always with COD games it’s a gun nut’s heaven.

Treyarch certainly know how to make their games more brutal, bloody and violent than its Modern Warfare rival. This game is real tester of your stomach as not only does it have the copious amounts of blood you would expect, its how they are delivered that really makes you wince. Within the first few missions you are garrotting someone to death with wire or jamming a knife in the neck of an enemy to severe their spinal chord, and the hand to hand kills you make in the ‘Nam missions are horrific. Grabbing some poor unsuspecting bastard from a raft, pulling them underwater and literally sawing their throat out with a knife borders on the disturbing. You will also pull the pins on people’s grenades and watch them get blown to pieces and brutally torture suspects whilst trying to gather information, and “yes” you are in full control of the torture, it’s not a cut scene. This is added to the fact you blow limbs off people with more powerful weapons, such as shot guns and watch as they slowly bleed to death. It fully deserves its 18 certificate.

The multiplayer stuff is vast and, at last, accommodating to all. The single player campaign is only a portion of the experience in Black Ops as most people will get the most enjoyment out of the online battles. This includes all the things you expect, team battles, mercenary battles, death match, capture the flag etc, with an addictive upgrade system. The more you play the more experience you earn and with that you unlock weapons, weapon customisations and perks. You can add a grenade launcher to your favourite assault rifle, throw C4 explosives instead of grenades use dual magnum pistols as a secondary weapon and pretty much become a multi weapon wielding instrument of death. You also have a list of perks, such as making you run faster, able to take more hits, taking a last stand with a pistol after being killed and their are rewards for kill streaks. This is basically when you kill several people in a row, without dying yourself, you get a reward which ranges from deploying a few remote control cars with explosives mounted on them to drive round and blow up people instantly, calling in a spy plane to reveal enemy positions, deploying an automated turret machine gun and piloting an attack helicopter that circles round the level mowing people down with a mini gun. Where Black Ops stands above others is that it accommodates all players with all skill levels. It uses a ranking system that is based on how much you have played how many you have killed etc and sets you up automatically against opponents with similar stats, so you will never be thrown in the deep end and simply spend your online gaming dying and respawning constantly. I’m not a fan of online multiplayer stuff at all, but even I liked the one offered by Black Ops. It will probably annoy the elite COD veterans initially, but I’m sure you will get ranked up soon enough (it’s not like you have jobs or girlfriends to worry about ayy), but for everyone else this is one of the best yet.

The zombie level is a big laugh. World at War had Nazi zombies, which was a strange but fun addition to the multiplayer, where wave after wave of zombies will try and get into a house your defending, each wave intensifying, and you simply have to last as long as possible. It was daft but really good fun and an excellent addition to the multiplayer aspect as you can take it on with mates. The Zombies return for Black Ops and it is practically identical, with the exception there is a maximum of four players, its set in the Pentagon and you play as (no joke) J. F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro or Robert McNamara. As I said, stupid but fun.

What’s bad?

It’s pretty much a total clone of the last three COD games. The thing that bothers me most about Black Ops is that it is literally an identical clone to the last three COD games. You infiltrate the same snowy mountain bases silently, fight through the same streets picking out targets for a helicopter, land on the same freighter boat and work your through the ships bowels, fight to take the same enemy stronghold, defend the same base with explosives, take out the same anti air craft guns etc etc. It’s just all the same, literally exactly the same. It just feels too familiar now, like a slight update to Modern Warfare and if you have played said Modern Warfare or World at War, there is nothing here you won’t have done before or is executed any better. It is literally a clone and if you’re a big fan of the previous titles, and still play them, it’s hard to find a reason to recommend spending more money on Black Ops.

Eternally re-spawning enemies continue to infuriate in Black Ops. Why, for the love of god why, do Treyarch persist with this idea? They did it in World at War and despite the heavy criticism, they decided to ignore everyone. It’s an issue so heavily criticised that Infinity Ward got rid of it for Modern Warfare 2 and was better off as a result. For those not in the know, this game (like all older COD games) will constantly spawn enemies forever and ever and ever until you advance past a certain invisible line or check point. Or run out of ammo and die. It is interminable! It doesn’t happen for every mission (they don’t re-spawn for stealth missions) but it does happen a lot and is just as infuriating as ever. There are often so many enemies constantly re-spawning, no matter how many you gun down, and you are expected to sprint towards the hundreds of machine gun wielding troops simply to cross an invisible line that will stop them from appearing. It’s just stupid and on the harder difficulties it becomes ludicrously difficult, as one shot kills you. Plus you have to do all the work/advancing as your AI pals will just sit there for an eternity until you advance. The first Vietnam mission is the pinnacle of this as you have to run down a hill with a million heavily armed enemies at the bottom, in order to push over some barrels of flammable liquid, and they will not stop or pause at any point no matter how many you kill. Whenever one is killed he is instantly replaced and you have to spend an eternity edging down this hill millimetre by millimetre. I hated it! Treyarch, why do you do this? Just stop it! It really does put a downer on the whole experience.

Your AI pals are the most infuriating and irritating team mates ever. A criticism of World at War was the retarded nature of your AI comrades and it’s sad to say I think they are even worse in Black Ops. Every mission in the single player campaign has you working through levels with computer controlled partners, often loads of them, and they will constantly drive you mad. They bungle around the level totally disregarding where you are at all times as they will try to run through you if you are in the way of their pre-designated path. They very rarely kill anything despite the fact they blast away constantly and will not advance in anyway whatsoever until you have done all the work. Often they will completely ignore an enemy hiding round a corner, run straight past him, and as you follow, assuming everything is fine as your AI pals only advance when everything is dead, the enemy soldier shoots you in the back. To make it worse they will push you out from behind cover if you happen to be in the way and being fired at, get stuck on you ceasing your and their ability to move, particularly annoying when a grenade explosion is imminent. You try and escape the blast radius only for a moronic computer sprite to run into you gluing you to the spot. They will leap in front of you when aiming down the sites of a sniper rifle, steal really good places of cover leaving you out in the line of fire and generally be of no help at all and really irritate constantly. You will frequently wish they would all simply commit suicide as doing the whole game on your own would be considerably easier.

The enemy will target you and only you. It’s hardly surprising that the enemy is only after you considering how your AI pals offer no threat whatsoever, but this was another frustrating flaw in the single player campaign. Basically all enemies on screen, even if there are a million other people shooting at them will fire at you and only you. It is ludicrous as often they will charge in a kamikaze style towards a flank of your AI pals just to get to you sitting at the back behind cover. It is utterly preposterous. There’s nothing worse than being in a line of 50 troops and all the enemy on screen are shooting at you.

The check points mid mission are way to far apart. A minor gripe would be that the check points on some missions are too far apart. About half the game is set on saving your game after every action set piece, as expected, but the other half of the levels demand you go through at least three or four, which on the harder difficulties is incredibly difficult and takes a very long time. Starting pretty much from the beginning of each level every time you die, which you will do a lot on Veteran mode, is anger inducing stuff. Again it’s just further unnecessary frustration.

It’s too hard to control a vehicle and shoot from it at the same time. A further minor gripe is that I didn’t like having to control the vehicle your in and shoot at the same time. Possibly more a reflection of my skills, but it did seem a bit overwhelming. Its hard enough having to pick out a hundred enemies with a machine and rocket launchers at the same time, whilst avoiding incoming RPG rounds and other enemy vehicles. The majority of vehicle stages are based on the computer players driving and you shooting, as in Modern Warfare, which is simply better as far as I am concerned and putting you in control of everything is a step to far.

Conclusion

It goes to show how spoilt we are as game fans at the moment, as a title as good as COD: Black Ops is just a bit unimpressive. The single player has issues, such as retarded AI pals and the infuriating respawning enemies, but it is still the action packed bullet blazing brutally violent romp across the globe fans will want, the online multiplayer is as robust as ever and now more accommodating to newcomers and you can slaughter zombies with your mates, yet it just doesn’t blow you away. This is Black Ops’ biggest problem, that an overly familiar feeling has crept into this game and it feels too much like your just going through the motions, like some DLC for another COD game. Please don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid and decent game, but in the same way World at War was excellent but not quite as good as the first Modern Warfare (which I still think is the best shooter ever made), Black Ops is very good but not quite as good as Modern Warfare 2. If you’re a fan of said Modern Warfare 2 and still play it, which I am sure is a hell of a lot of people, there is not really any incentive to hand Activision another £50 of your cash. The single player isn’t quite as entertaining, the multiplayer is just as good/identical (with the exception of Black Ops being friendlier to newcomers) and the zombie level is not as entertaining as Spec Ops mode (the two player levels) in Modern Warfare 2. Considering Black Ops has already broken all sales records I have no doubt it will sell in ludicrous numbers so my opinion is utterly irrelevant, but I maintain, despite how good it is, and it is really good, unless your completely new to the franchise/genre, I cant think of many reasons to buy it. CA.

Summary

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.5

Everything is simple and easy to use and the control scheme is the same as all previous games, perfect and instinctual. Getting online is a piece of cake and you are set up against similarly ranked people automatically.

Is the story any good? – 8.0

Its told in a epileptic fit inducing way, far too many flickering images and flashes, but is otherwise interesting, fast paced and full of unexpected twists.

How does it look? – 8.5

Very good if a bit un-noticeable. Character animations are vastly improved, especially facial features and general movement, and all levels are teeming with detail, especially the ‘Nam missions. Not quite as eye popping as slightly better visually awesome titles, such as God of War III or Vanquish.

How does it sound? – 10.0

Background music always suits the action and the character you are playing, especially the Rolling Stones in the ‘Nam boat mission. Gary Oldman provides voice acting again, and his Russian is as good as ever.

Is it good to play? – 8.0

Action packed, gun blazing, brutally violent and explosive. The COD experience to be expected. Online multiplayer is as vast and addictive as ever and more accommodating to newcomers. Eternally respawning enemies, very unaware and stupid friendly AI and a few other gripes make the single player not quite as excellent as perhaps it should have been. It’s not quite as good as Modern Warfare 2 in general.

When will I get bored? – 8.0

Single player doesn’t take too long (around 6 to 7 hours), but the online multiplayer and zombie levels will keep you playing for a while, especially with addictive ranking and upgrade system. A general feeling of “I have done all this before” is very apparent however and interest is likely to not last as long as previous titles.

OVERALL – 8.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.

This identical copy of Fallout 3 may look a bit out of date now, but this enormous game is still one of the most addictive & enjoyable experiences to be had on a PS3.

I was never a fan of role playing games (RPG’s), but 2008’s Fallout 3 totally won me over, and gave me a gaming experience unlike anything I have ever played before. It mixed action with role playing elements, gave a really engrossing story and a ridiculously vast nuclear war devastated wasteland to explore, with huge amounts of customising, side quests and exploring to do. It was so addictive that I just couldn’t get enough of it and it was easily in my top 3 of the best games I have played so far on the PS3, and the vast majority of the gaming world agreed with me as it won many accolades of “game of the year 2008”. As you can imagine I was anticipating this follow up, Fallout: New Vegas, with huge amounts of eagerness. So can lightning strike twice, can Bethesda Studios make another masterpiece? This game is an action RPG set several hundred years into the future, but from the perspective of how society perceived the future would be in the 1950’s. So you have nuclear powered tail finned cars, robot waiters, duke boxes etc. In 2227, inevitably, mankind wiped itself out in a nuclear war between the USA and China. Few people survived but the humans that did, being humans, emerged from the ashes as greedy and willing to kill each other as ever before. Several hundred year’s later people are surviving but society is struggling to be restored and technology is still few and far between. The concept of every man for himself is the most widely adopted attitude. Las Vegas somehow managed to avoid the apocalypse and is still a vibrant neon town, powered by the Hoover Dam which is still functioning, but is in the charge of a mysterious overlord with a robot army, called Mr House. Several societies battle for power in the nuclear wastelands, such as the “New California Republic (NRC)” and the “Legions of Caesar” for example, each one wanting to enforce their particular rule over others. You play a simple courier who was delivering a package when a group of gangsters intercepted you, robbed you and shot you in the head, leaving you for dead. Luckily though a robot finds you and takes you to a nearby doctor, who heals you. Several days later you emerge from the doctors house and go on a mission to try and find out why those people tried to kill you, what was so precious about your package and survive the savage nuclear wastelands long enough to find out.

What’s good?

As before (in Fallout 3) the sheer size of the game is mind boggling. It isn’t quite as big as the capital wasteland of Washington DC, from Fallout 3, but it’s still a monster of a game. Walking across it in its entirety would take hours. There are far more towns and settlements to discover, than its predecessor, including the fully modelled New Vegas, which represents Las Vegas from the 1950’s, so this is casino’s run by mob bosses and crooks in general. There is no subway system as in Fallout 3, but you can still go in practically every house and building and there is still a myriad of underground sewers, caves, bunkers and vaults to explore. There will always be something worth getting in all nooks and crannies so exploration of the wasteland is highly advised. For example, I came across a small group of heavily armed robots defending a crashed aeroplane, and after killing them I found a huge bazooka like laser cannon. I also found a mini nuke launcher, called a Fatman, in a cave which had a nest of night stalkers in it (half dog, half lizard, mutated beasts). There is also the noticeable gang element to New Vegas, as there are loads of these societies. All are very different such as the organised, but desperate, “New California Republic” army, the drugged up rapist murdering psychopathic “Fiends”, the warrior tribe “The great Khans”, the supremely cool “Brotherhood of Steel” (my favourite), the heavily armed “Boomers” and loads more. There are also loads of companies to work for as well, such as caravan companies, weapons dealers, tradesmen, mercenaries, casino’s etc, and all require investigating and communicating with as most will offer you work with high reward, or attack you causing you to slaughter them and fleece their corpses of all their fine weaponry and armour. For example, the “Fiends” will attack anything and everything on sight and are armed to the teeth, but gunning down just a small group of these lunatics will enable you to pick their cold dead hands of their very fine arsenal. You should wander into “Fiend” territory now and again, despite the risk, as you are far better off in this desolate future killing and stealing from those who mean you harm, than earning and purchasing things honourably. The sheer amount of content blows Fallout 3 away and it vastness is unmatched by anything you will have played on the PS3 before.

It trumps its predecessor in the ludicrous amount of game time you will get. Fallout 3 was a big game in the huge amount to do, but New Vegas has taken that and just gone ballistic. I got 5 hours into this game and I was yet to undertake the first mission from the main story. It packs out the hours spent playing by having an untold amount of side missions. They are literally everywhere, in every town, from everyone you speak to. It encourages you constantly to chat to people all the time, and it will always serve you missions as a result. Although not technically essential, side missions are hugely influential, as performing the main story mission is much much harder if you don’t utilise all the favours gained from others in this world. Getting into New Vegas, for example, will cost a fortune, however if you get on the good side of a gang boss called “the King” it’s completely free. This of course involves doing missions for him. Doing missions for others can ultimately end up with them accompanying you on your wasteland trek, and company is often a hugely beneficial asset. Added to this is your need for experience points, the vast majority of which will be gained from missions, to level up your character to make him a jack of all trades. If the vast amount of exploration to undertake didn’t already consume a huge chunk of your life, the sheer amount of missions and tasks alone would still cease your social life. It is a serious amount of game for your money.

This game has so many moral choices to make. Although Fallout 3 had choices to make it never went too far into it and you were often better off being good anyway as the advantages were more obvious. New Vegas completely evens out the playing field though as being “good” or “evil” have a totally equal amount of pros and cons. An innocent old woman wants money for some items you badly need so do you a) pay her or try and barter her down and then pay her, or b), blow her head off with a shot gun and rob her. New Vegas has no issue with either. Depending on how good or bad you are affects how the whole game plays out, including the main story, and especially how others treat you. This packs out the already huge amount of content even further as nearly all main story missions have at least two alternative ways of dealing with a quest, normally involving doing the decent thing or having the back stabbing murderous approach, but please be aware its carefully constructed so that neither moral choice will ever have an advantage over the other. I worked for some very unpleasant energy weapon dealers, in a shop called “silver rush”, which gives you bad karma and makes others dislike you, but the rewards for doing so where huge, with the most sophisticated weapons and armour being handed over as payment, along with loads of money. I also hated “Ceaser’s Legion”, as they are slave dealers, but working for them, which again has negative impacts, allowed me access to an essential character in the game. On the other hand, if you are super nice and helpful to the “Boomers” you receive essential help from them later on in the game. Don’t ever be afraid to mix it up, don’t always choose the path of good, as there is no method that serves you better than another. Never have I come across a game before that gives you so much free will to play with.

There is a lot of customisation and personalisation to do. Customising, or levelling up, your character is pretty much the aim of the game. You can choose superficial stuff of course such as your sex, facial feature arrangement, facial hair, hair, eye colour, your armour/clothes, everything. But the main purpose is to add to your experience points. Every thing you kill and every mission you complete adds points in order for you to evolve your character’s skills and abilities. You can make him/her linguistically suave, physically strong, a good shot, a good trader, a lock picking expert, a computer hacking genius, improve your healing ability, the list goes on. Plus, there are loads of levels of this each with it’s own set of “perks”, which include being able to carry round more supplies, having heightened senses at night, increasing your luck when aiming for a critical strike, increasing your abilities with explosives, energy weapons or normal guns etc. The more game time you put in the more levels of experience you will unlock until you can pick the hardest of locks, heal someone who’s on deaths door or barter every merchant to give you seriously discounted supplies. The clever thing is, however, that New Vegas limits the amount everything can be upgraded so you will never be able to have maxed out points of every skill. You have to decide in advance how you are going to approach this wasteland, what sort of character you are going to be. For example, in Fallout 3 I had made a physically strong character who was able to kill the largest of mutated beasts with his bare hands and carry shit loads of stuff, but couldn’t argue his way out of a paper bag and got financially buggered by every trader. This means I could never convince anyone to do anything making many missions very difficult to overcome, and always got ripped off by traders costing me a fortune in caps. So in New Vegas I wanted a character who was linguistically mighty. So it was awesome having the ability to convince a stone to give me blood, however the consequences of this slapped me hard round the face when I realised it was at the cost of not being strong enough to hold my weapons for aiming, so I was constantly missing my targets, wasting ammo, being killed a lot and couldn’t carry many supplies with me to go long spells of surviving in the wasteland. You have to approach every situation using your pre-selected advantages and make the best of problems where you have none. The depth and detail of choice and its implications is immense and even more so than its predecessor.

V.A.T.S is still awesome. The Vault Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) is one of Fallout’s unique combat systems. Whenever you encounter an enemy you have the choice of, simply by the push of a button, to enter this mode which allows you to pick an enemy and then choose what part of him you want to shoot at. If you shoot a leg, it will disable the enemy, shoot an arm and he may drop his weapon and if you choose his head you will likely blow it off resulting in a “critical strike” (I’m sure you can guess what that means). You have an unlimited time to choose these targets, once in VATS mode, but it is restricted by your action points (AP’s) displayed in the lower left hand side of the screen. You only have a certain amount, so you can’t use it indefinitely, and they slowly build up over time. You can also take various chemical concoctions that will increase their regenerative ability temporarily. Once your chosen target is selected it will zoom out and show you a slow motion replay of what the kill looks like. Although its not quite as effective as you might think (more on that in a bit) I have come across few more satisfying experiences than watching, in slow motion, your character blow a mutants head clean off with a double barrelled shot gun, blood and limbs splattering everywhere. It is so very rewarding, in a slightly disturbed way, and I have yet to get tired of it. It is often the best method of killing and you should use it a lot.

There is a seriously huge amount of fire power in New Vegas. A criticism I had with Fallout 3 was how unspectacular the weaponry was. It did the job, but other than a few highlights, it didn’t do much to ignite your love of fire power. New Vegas rectifies that though with a huge amount of crazy futuristic weapons. The Gatling lasers, missile launchers, shotguns and machine guns remain, of course, but now you have things such as the immensely powerful Gauss Rifle, a laser sniper rifle that can decapitate at a considerable distance. You also have a laser “Tommy Gun” (basically a smaller Gatling laser), much more variety of hand to hand weapons, such as the ludicrously destructive chainsaw or power glove, a punching mitt that can literally blow your enemy to pieces with one punch. I could go on. There is also a new weapon that combines the two best words possibly in gaming: “Grenade Machinegun”. Yes, it is as awesome as it sounds. The AK47 has gone, but you can use a myriad of carbine weapons, such as an M16 machine gun, a magnum revolver and rifle, all very powerful. There is also many different shot guns, not just the few found in Fallout 3, and many varieties in general of all weapons. I also found several special guns, such as a rocket launcher called “Annabelle”, a mini gun called “The Avenger” and a grenade launcher called “Thumper”. These special weapons often require you to kill their particularly tough owner, but they have an advantage over its normal brethren such as being more powerful, holding more ammo etc. Plus, of course, the legendary “fat man” remains, and if you don’t know what that is it’s a device that launches “mini nukes”, which are exactly as the name states. They are small nuclear missiles that vaporise anything in a glorious, yet miniature, mushroom cloud. Its particularly entertaining to launch one through VATS and watch it in slow motion, as your target feebly tries to leg it, blow everything sky high. You need to be fairly careful when using it however as ammo is seriously scarce, far more rare than it was in Fallout 3. Power armour is also back and still awesome, though you have to work harder to get it, but it is still particularly cool and very effective. Of course everything has to be maintained and repaired to keep it at full maiming capacity, and there is an untold amount of customising to do on most weapons, such as adding sights, larger magazines etc, and there is different ammo available for every weapon, such as explosive or armour piercing rounds. If you like fire power and weapon customising this will be your nirvana.

This game oozes atmosphere like no other. One thing you will notice is that Fallout doesn’t do things in halves; it has to have ridiculous quantities of everything. Huge amounts to do, vast wastelands to explore, an obscene amount of guns and ammo, but what it has most of is atmosphere. Bethesda Studios really know how to suck you into a game and make you incapable of turning it off. Atmosphere comes from the world that’s been created, for example, very early on you meet a trampy looking wastelander who pleads with you to rescue his sister on top of a hill from irradiated geckos, and upon doing this you find nobody on the hill accept some supplies. The bloke then turns up behind you, states he used you to get rid of the geckos and now needs to kill you to claim the supplies, which he of course tries to do. What a cruel but realistic introduction to this savage wasteland. I also found a house in the mountains full of giant super mutants that were intelligent and you could converse with. There was another mountain that had a massive “nightkin” (a huge dark blue super mutant) dressed as a woman, complete with hat and wig, and broadcasts on the radio bizarre messages of hatred. I found a club in a sewer called “The Thorn” that rears mutated creatures and gets them to fight for sport. There’s a gang called “the Kings” where every one of them is dressed as a 50’s greaser. I got a cyborg dog with an exposed brain called “Rex” as a companion. In a town called “Freeside” I saw two children chasing a rat, and upon shooting the rat, the kids fell on it and started eating it. I explored many deserted vaults often filled with ghouls (mutated human killing machines) and one that was filled with killer plants as a result of an experiment that went wrong. I even found one vault that had become deserted as the computer that ran the vault had become corrupt and demanded a human sacrifice once a year or the oxygen would be turned off. I couldn’t resist going into the sacrificial chamber, where you walk down a brightly lit hallway and into room with a single chair in the middle. It then plays you a really creepy film about accepting death, appreciating your life’s achievements, before the walls drop down and a load of turret machine guns turn you into Swiss cheese. It was disturbing to say the least. I was even walking through the wasteland at one point and came across a man kneeling over the bloody corpse of a woman. As I approached he took a gun out and shot himself through the head. Who comes up with this stuff? “Imaginative” doesn’t come close to describing the mood and atmosphere in this game, it is fantastic.

What’s bad?

As with Fallout 3, glitches and bugs make this a technical nightmare. Fallout 3 was ridden with glitches that often left you stuck and having to restart from a previous save point, and unfortunately New Vegas takes this technical inferiority to new extreme levels. It’s embarrassing for Bethesda Studios. Playing this game is a lot like walking across a very rickety old bridge, such as you would find in an Indiana Jones film. It’s going to collapse; it’s just a matter of when. It pauses, admittedly very briefly, constantly, and every time it does there is fairly decent chance it will crash entirely. This isn’t every half hour or once in a while, this is every ten seconds or so, I kid you not, it’s that bad. Other characters get stuck on each other and their surroundings constantly, or sink into the backgrounds so they have no legs. Then things will start moving randomly, such as metal cans falling repeatedly from the sky, wasteland animals walking up trees (as funny as it is to watch), people standing perfectly still but gliding across the floor, people talking without moving their mouths and just lots and lots of cock ups. It’s easily far worse than the already seriously dodgy predecessor and this is really something that should be improved upon, from previous games, not allowed to deteriorate. There are deeper problems as well as you can get completely stuck as glitches will suddenly not allow you to go through a door which is vital to a mission or a character you have to meet will get stuck on a surface and you can not remove them, or they will simply not be where they are supposed to, meaning the mission can never be completed. I could never gain favour with a gang called “The Great Khans” as I couldn’t complete a mission for them as I had to talk to some woman who simply wasn’t where the pip boy indicator showed, and never was. It is literally tough luck! I also had serious issues with the controller input as if things got a bit frantic on screen, and I needed to change weapons, simply fast selecting them (using the directional buttons) stopped working. Even the fire button ceased on several occasions, leaving me to hammer the trigger whilst screaming “shoot you bastard, I’m pressing the fucking button!” only for there to be a huge delay whilst the game catches up with the input and several minutes later, well after the danger has passed, the gun then starts blasting away unprompted, as a result of my earlier infuriated crazed button mashing. I can’t imagine getting huge games like this to work flawlessly is easy, but other large games, like Rockstar’s “Red Dead Redemption”, can manage it, so I’m not sure how much I can excuse Fallout New Vegas for its glitch ridden technical crapness.

I still have issues with V.A.T.S. Although I love using VATS, and watching your character blow a raiders head off, it is really only effective at close to point blank range, as it was in Fallout 3. If you are anything less than right up close to your enemy you will almost certainly miss. The problem is that you are not really fully in control of whether you make direct hits on your enemy or not. As you pick which part of the body you want to shoot at it displays a percentage number next to it which indicates how likely you are to actually hit. Obviously the bigger the body part, like the torso, and how far away they are, the more or less likely you are to hit it. If it’s below the 80% mark however, I would not bother. This throws the percentages into question, as surely at 50% it should be 50/50 whether you hit or not, but you will miss every single time. Maybe I’m just unlucky, but it does seem to encourage VATS to only be used for particularly close up messy kills. VATS also encourages you to target limbs for the best killing effects but it is so inconsistent. I have unloaded many double barrelled shot guns at point blank range in the enemies face and he is fine and continues to attack you. I have also shot pistols from a mile away, at an enemies’ leg, and it hits him straight between the eyes for a “critical strike”. The inconsistency does take a lot of the skill out of the game and can often involve luck more than anything else. I prefer to rely on my skill personally, and if I miss it doesn’t bother me as much if I know it’s my fault.

Shooting and combat is still a bit rubbish and clumsy. Although it’s better than Fallout 3, as you can now aim down the sights, aiming and shooting is still very difficult. Just because the cross hairs of your rifle are lined up at an enemies head does not mean you will incur a head shot, as unless you’re close, crouching, aiming down the sights, with 100% condition weapon and not moving you will almost definitely miss, whether you like it or not. If you are doing all you can to be as accurate as possible then the enemy will shoot you way before you even knew he was there, or started to aim, or even had your gun drawn! Plus, trust me when I say, the enemy is a much much better shot than you. Your gun’s accuracy and damage dealt are affected by its condition and your skill abilities but generally you will not have full accuracy skill and not a hint of damage on your weapon until you have put in some serious hours into the game, so you basically miss a hell of a lot. It is frustrating. There is not really anything you can do to be more skilful than your enemy as it nearly always comes down to who has the more powerful weapon or the best armour. Skill is pretty much irrelevant. You can jink, duck and dive, but, as I said, you will definitely miss if you shoot whilst doing this. Plus, the enemy is, again, much more accurate. It’s not terrible it’s just so simplistic and out of date by today’s standards. I just found it annoying as I am doing everything right and it is still not having the desired effect. I keep telling myself that it’s not a FPS as such and that I shouldn’t expect such traits, but there is far too much shooting and killing to be done, in first person, to let this fact go.

The enemies can be ludicrously difficult! Of course this depends on the difficulty setting, which you can change at anytime in the main menu, but even if you have it on the easiest difficulty it will still present you with foes that will appear to be indestructible. My main issue is the amount of fire power it takes to kill some enemies, as it is just preposterously stupid. I mean a seriously, ridiculously, unbelievably, ludicrously, hideously, unfeasible amount of damage needs to be done. Killing some thugs that try and mug you is easy enough, as is killing some small RAD scorpions or bloat fly’s, a simple hunting shotgun to the face solves such niggling issues. But often you will come across some armoured raiders, some nasty huge poisonous mutated insects and, the most abominable of all, Deathclaws! I appreciate that playing a game on a hard difficulty is supposed to be hard, but unloading a double barrel shotgun into a raiders face, at point blank range, and it does minimal damage is just ridiculous. That is a one shot kill that is not even easy to pull off so it really shouldn’t take a further 47 point blank shot gun shots to the face to kill what is basically a normal person. It is ludicrous! Even worse is when giant insects, particularly fast moving giant fly’s called “Cazadors”, swarm you and each one delivers a poisonous sting that effects your ability to aim and shoot, so even if you had the required 4782 machine gun rounds to kill one of them, you couldn’t fire anyway or have enough ammo to kill the other six. Then you have the Deathclaws, not only the hardest non-boss enemy in the game but possibly one of the toughest enemies ever encountered in gaming ever. Mere point blank shotgun shots to the face don’t affect this guy at all; I mean it will literally do nothing! You need at least 2 mini nukes to make a direct hit before it is killed, or around 3 or 4 missiles or several Gauss rifle head shots, on the easiest difficulty, otherwise you’re a dead man. Plus bear in mind that’s just one Deathclaw which you will never encounter as they are always found in packs. Let’s just be clear about this: that is TWO NUCLEAR MISSILES to make direct ground zero contact on a flesh and bone organic creature! To make it worse this thing has an unavoidable attack that will kill you with one hit, unless you have the toughest fully repaired power armour on, and even then it only takes two or three hits. This makes missions where you have to take out a horde of them, with even tougher alpha male and female variations, a total ridiculously impossible nightmare. Believe it or not though, even Deathclaw’s are out done in the bullet sponge competition when compared with the end of game boss. I won’t reveal too much detail but it is literally just a man with some armour on. I had to switch it to the easiest difficulty to do it (pathetic I know) and I launched (yes I counted) 167 explosive round grenades at him from my grenade machine gun to kill him. 167 explosive grenades, which are more powerful than the normal 20mm grenades, at point blank range on a flesh and bone human! There isn’t enough words in the dictionary to describe how ridiculous, and I mean RIDICULOUS, the amount of punishment some enemies can brush off and it leaves me wondering if anyone at Bethesda Studios actually played this game before it was released? Did they not think they were overdoing it slightly? Basically, be prepared to unload round after round at enemies, as they shrug off such things as a missile to the face (for fucks sake!), and if you come across more than one Deathclaw, run. Run for your life!

The game still finishes after the last mission, whether you like it or not. As with the previous game they have maintained this incredibly annoying feature in New Vegas. Basically, when you have completed the last main story mission the game is over whether you like it or not. To be fair it does warn you this time by having a menu pop up before the final mission which states that if you continue now you can’t go back, which is fine. However, you acquire so many awesome weapons and experience whilst doing the final mission that you really didn’t have the money for while doing the game, so if you were looking forward to using them whilst continuing your exploration through the wasteland, then tough luck.

The graphics look really out of date. The funny thing is, I remember how good I thought the graphics of Fallout 3 were, at the time and considering the size of the game. New Vegas uses the exact graphics engine as Fallout 3 and it’s strange to see how much a difference two years makes. The graphics look really out of date by today’s standards, and are by no means bad but when compared to other games out at the moment, such as the eye popping “Vanquish”, they do look like something from the PS2. You can live with it, don’t worry, but things have clearly moved on since 2008.

Conclusion

As much as I loathe using the expression, Fallout New Vegas, much like its predecessor, is a game that has the “X-factor”. There is just something about it that makes it so addictive and hugely enjoyable to play, despite the many things wrong with it. There is a hell of a lot wrong with it, I assure you. Particularly the ludicrous fragility of the game with its constant crashing and technical feebleness, bad graphics, really simplistic and often futile shooting, enemies that absorb a stupidly, soul crushingly, monumentally, ludicrous amount of fire power (It is beyond anything feasible) and an ending that comes and ends the whole game whether you want it or not. It frequently infuriates and frustrates and I don’t think it’s as good as Fallout 3. Cloning a previous older title then shoe horning content into it at a cost of quality doesn’t make it better in my opinion. But despite all that sucks, I still absolutely loved it. It is a strange feeling that only someone who’s played Fallout can understand. It’s like finding an old toy you loved as a child, and even though in reality it’s broken, rubbish and useless to you, you still love it more than anything. It was like crack to me for the hundreds of hours I spent playing it and I just couldn’t get enough of it. The thrill of saving enough caps to buy a favourite gun is so satisfying. Exploring an underground vault that’s filled with mutated inhabitants trying to figure out what happened to them all is thrilling and scary. Exploring a mutated beast filled abandoned mine looking for survivors is exciting. Hacking computers and finding ridiculous emails in abandoned robot factories is pointless and hilarious. Setting off a giant orbital laser frying many people is a brilliant moral choice and just the entire bizarre, humorous, violent and desperate atmosphere Fallout New Vegas creates is ridiculously addictive and keeps you playing and exploring for more gaming hours than you will find on anything out right now. If you liked Fallout 3, New Vegas is your next fix, and if you have never played any Fallout game, New Vegas will be an experience worth having. CA.

Summary

Is it user-friendly/easy to get into? – 9.5

Your “pip boy” is as excellent as ever and will be overly familiar/identical to anyone who played Fallout 3. Will be a little overwhelming if this is your first go. Very well thought out, you don’t need to be an RPG fan to get the hang of it and the controls will offer you nothing unexpected or unpleasant.

Is the story any good? – 9.0

Main story is very engaging, intriguing and can alter depending on your in game decisions. The hundreds of side quests range from tragic to hilarious, but never dull and add to this wasteland atmosphere.

How does it look? – 6.0

3 years ago they impressed, but now they look really out of date. There is a lot of detail, but everything is so wooden and rigid and just looks like an old graphics engine doing its best. Not terrible, but not good either.

How does it sound? – 9.0

No music as such but all voices and eerily quiet wasteland sound effects are very atmospheric. All music changes with the scenario, such as when your attacked, or exploring a vault.

Is it good to play? – 7.5

VATS are awesome but combat is very “old-school” and often futile. Skill has very little to do with it. Character interaction and general exploring is fantastically addictive and very immersive. It is the most glitch ridden, fragile and technically feeble games I have ever played however, it really is bad, and some enemies are so stupidly tough to kill it will drive you mad.

When will I get bored? – 10.0

For those who want the full experience, ice ages will come and go before your addiction is fulfilled. There is an unbelievable amount to do in terms of exploration and side quests and a stupendous amount of guns and ammo to discover and accumulate. Be prepared to sacrifice your social life.

OVERALL – 8.5

Review created by C. Armstrong.