I finished playing "Fallout:
New Vegas" the other week. It is the 2nd time I have played thru it and I
played all of the DLC. I decided to play "Skyrim" a bit and it is
good, but I miss playing Fallout. It is just a more interesting universe. Fallout, for those who do not know is a dark
comedy action RPG, it is set in a post-atomic war wasteland, but contains
technology that is akin to a 1950’s vision of the future, personal computers
that have black and green displays, robot security guards that look like Robbie
the Robot of “Forbidden Planet”, an emphasis on the “Golly Gee” era of
television, and Norman Rockwell like fashion.
Fallout has laser weapons straight
out of sci-fi b movies of the 1950’s, and it makes lots of commentary on social
engineering, forms of government, and perceptions of who people are, what they
believe, and why they believe it. While
the 1950’s is key to its foundations the post-apocalypse angle is also at the
forefront as ruins dot the wasteland of the old world, most of civilization is
based around scraping together resources from the past, and making due with
what they have (for instance, the currency of the wasteland is Bottle Caps,
because they last for a long time, and are difficult to replicate).
Until the
upcoming “Fallout 4” due later this year, I guess I will just talk about the
four DLC adventure packs for the last game with each of their positives and
negatives, because none of them are flawless… And some of them are more slag
than ore.
Let’s have some categories for evaluation:
Story (which considering how this is an RPG and writing is probably the biggest
draw, it is pretty important), Environment & Characters (because Fallout
has always been about exploration), Enemies and Loot (who do you kill and what
do you get from their corpse), and lastly any Gameplay issues (cause it is a
game and that is a big deal).
"Old World Blues": AKA "The Best One" and "Arguably the Only Good One". |
Story:
After
finding a downed satellite at a drive in theater you are teleported to the
hidden laboratory of THE THINK TANK. A
collection of mad scientists who have removed your heart brain, and spine
replacing them with cybernetics. You
must hunt thru the crater their facility rests in, battling robot scorpions,
cyborg dogs, robots, and mutants in hopes of getting back your brain. This place used to be an underground mountain
fortress until SCIENCE happened and turned it into a crater dubbed the Big
Empty.
Smaller
stories and hints to the events of the other DLC packages are present as
well. Elijah, the mad scientist asshole
who forced you to help him rob the Sierra Madre in “Dead Money” got the bomb
collars he used from here, as a section of the Big Empty is an old style prison
camp used for human experimentation. A
pathetically sad moment happens when your character approaches the prison camp
area, and the prisoners charge you rather than trying to communicate, all of
them still have their bomb collars on (thanks Elijah) and immediately die of head
explosion when they pass thru the gate to attack you. Little stories within the bigger narrative
are what keep Fallout a rich and interesting universe.
They do not really explain why a satellite dish would have been in a mountain facility, I guess it was built in the crater later. |
Environment & Characters:
The
environment while uniform in many respects, all the action does take place in a
single massive crater still manages to be varied and interesting, with pipes, satellite
dishes, hills, bunkers, caves, and a chasm filled with gigantic glowing red
crystal. Some of the testing facilities
are made to look like a high school or an idyllic neighborhood adding another
strange layer to the cake.
There are 6
other characters you must interact with, 5 of which are the THINK TANK who are
responsible for your missing brain and the mutant horrors that are out and
about. They are all brains floating
around in robotic bodies with computer monitors serving as creepy disjointed
faces. They have a variety of
personalities encapsulating scientists, those obsessed with furthering
knowledge, another is standoffish, another is put upon, one is strangely sexual,
and the last is interesting in showing up everyone who ignore him in high
school. The other character you must
interact with is Dr. Mobius who takes residence in the Forbidden Zone
generating a legion of robo-scorpions to wage war and the THINK TANK.
Modern movies have perhaps given us a sense of, "seen it all before". But when you think about it... a lot of this stuff is weapons grade fucked up. |
Some
optional characters are the various artificially intelligent appliances around
your lad headquarters, dubbed “The Sink”.
A tiny robot obsessed with coffee mugs, a couple of catty light
switches, a germ-aphopic sink, and a murderous toaster are good examples of
what you can expect. They all have some
useful abilities that you can augment via finding more files to upload.
I cannot
emphasize enough that this whole DLC has the most and best dialogue in spite of
all of that dialogue happening in 3 rooms.
It is a hilarious salute to the strange over the top and surreal science
fiction of the drive thru era of B-Movies.
Enemies and Loot:
Gold Stars
in both categories.
Since this is the birthplace of
numerous monsters of the wasteland it is populated with a hugely diverse group
of enemies. Too many to list, and more
than a half dozen unique boss monsters that will wreck your shit. They are fun and even though you do not talk
to them they have personality in how they fight and how powerful they are.
Also, bad guys inspired by an episode of "Doctor Who" written by Steven Moffet, so mild-screaming-terror is not unreasonable. |
Expect to find a lot of cool
weapons even when fighting the common enemies.
A highly useful weapon is the Photon Ax a melee weapon that is super
helpful against all the robot scorpions wandering around. There are also lots of outfits with useful
properties, a Gatling gun with a dog’s brain and several items that are plot
points to retrieve and upgrade.
If you conquer the Big Empty you
will get a teleportation device that will allow you to return to the Sink and
use it as a super powerful home away from home.
Gameplay:
Here is the
only real ding in the chassis. This
mother is hard. You will frequently find
yourself getting your ass kicked by legions of bad guys and that ignores the
instances of horde closets, opening a door to a dozen regular guys and a boss
monster and you being totally unprepared.
Melee is a must as tons of mutants will close the distance and wail on
you before you see them let alone before you can ready a gun.
Have
healing supplies, I played this in an instance in which I ran out of stimpacks
having started the thing with more than 100 and had to just abandon the
character to never completing the mission.
It was only later that I tried playing thru again… and had the good
sense to lower the difficulty, so I was not running away from one legion of
murderous monsters only to run into another legion.
I can’t
think of any sort of character build that would give a super advantage… Though Speech,
SCIENCE, Medicine, and perhaps Energy Weapons fit with the theme. The unique energy weapon you get is better
than the unique regular gun, so consider that.
There seems to be an eye motif, but I couldn't tell you what they are trying to symbolize in the story. |
Overall Final Verdict:
______________________________
If you like or hate this
please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter or Facebook,
and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world. I would appreciate it.
No comments:
Post a Comment