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When Fallout 3 was announced, there was a sizeable amount of Internet uproar over the title.  There were complaints about the move to first person, moving the game to a new location and most importantly, the idea of a new developer trying to capture the magic of a title almost a decade old.  Of course, everything worked out for Bethesda to the point where they announced a new title, Fallout New Vegas.  However, Bethesda would not man the helm on this title, instead passing the torch to Obsidian Entertainment, and they have put together a solid successor to the Fallout mantle, if you are willing to overlook a strange familiarity to Fallout 3 and technical glitches a plenty.

In Fallout New Vegas, we find ourselves moving back into the familiar territory of the southwest United States, an area that staged the first two Fallout titles.  However, instead of Shady Sands and Junktown, our protagonist starts out on the outskirts of the Nevada wastes.  No my friends, you will not find your character waking up in the plush confines of a luxury suite at The Palms.  As a matter of fact it is lucky that you are even waking up at all, as you find yourself being shot in the head by a shady character named Benny, over a package that you are carrying.  Of course, we don’t die from this headshot, but instead are maimed and rescued by a doctor.  From there, we are set on a mission to find out who shot me and to recover the package that was stolen from us.

Seems simple enough, but as with most Fallout games, there is a lot more to the game than the straight storyline quests.  There are a lot of side quests and plot threads that start to come together to weave a very complex and interesting narrative.  I would go out on a limb and say that the story found in Fallout New Vegas is probably the best of the series.  I found each of the main factions to be fleshed out nicely including goals to shape the Nevada landscape in their image. 

And the factions will end up being a very important point to you as performing missions for each town, location and group will increase your standing in their eyes.  Perform several missions for the NCR and you might have Caesar’s Legion hit men coming after you.  It becomes a challenge to try and meet the demands of all the different factions of the wasteland, and more often than not, you will end up losing out on some quests because of faction loyalty.

Surprisingly, the center of Fallout New Vegas is where it seems to be a bit hollow.  Sure, Vegas looks spectacular and shines out like a beacon on the skyline as you wander towards it.  But once inside the locked gates, you find a city that is sparsely populated and lacks any kind of personality.  Going inside of each of the casinos adds some characters as each have a theme for both the occupants and the look in general.  But while you will have a chunk of quests that originate in the city of New Vegas, I found more of the stories outside the walls to be far more interesting.

For the most part, the interface has stayed the same in Fallout New Vegas, albeit with a few tweaks.  No longer do you have to work through cumbersome dialog trees to get to trading weapons.  Instead, when you talk to a companion, a wheel comes up with all kinds of different options.  You can trade weapons, supplies, talk to them; equip them and more, just by selecting an option on the wheel.  Stats have also been changed up with a few categories getting smashed into a single category, and several more just getting eliminated altogether.  This makes it a bit easier to specialize, as you do not have a ton of extra skills that get lost in the shuffle.  Also, skill books are changed up.  No longer to skill books permanently boost your skills, instead giving you a temporary boost.

This streamline aspect of Fallout New Vegas moves to the weapons as well, as there are a fraction of the weapons available for use.  It was a conscious decision by Obsidian to cut the amount of weapons, because they felt that a lot of the weapons were never used by most players, or that players would focus in on one weapon and stick with it.  While you don’t have as many weapons available to you, a new mod system has been implemented, allowing for silencers, extended clips, stability items and more.  These modifications let players give their weapons a personality that might match their play style.  However, it seems like upgrades and mods were far and few in between in my travels and finally, I just gave up on it and worked on boosting my skills at level upgrade points instead.

While I have enjoyed my 35+ hour trip into the Mojave Desert, it is upsetting to see that a game that is so good with its story is plagued by some horrendous technical issues.  At launch, Fallout New Vegas is either a love fest or a technical quagmire, all depending on the way the game launches.  Sometimes, I would start up a game and it would work fine for several hours, and other times, the game would be a mess from start to the eventual crash of the Xbox 360.  Yes, this game has hard locked my Xbox 360 at least a dozen times, people can be found floating in air, massive clipping issues, and at several points, companions that would die and still would not come back if I reloaded a save.  These missteps have been accepted in the past with Oblivion and Fallout 3, but at this point, several years into the engine, the bugs should be fixed.  I don’t put this at the foot of Obsidian directly, but it was their job to play test this thing and right now, the game is a technical landmine.

So what do you say about a game that changes locations, but essentially stays completely the same to its predecessor.  Fallout New Vegas is essentially the same game as Fallout 3, but it tells a fantastic story that really keeps you going through every crash and every technical glitch.  If Fallout New Vegas had come out with rock solid stability, it would have been an easy 5 out of 5.  But with a host of glitches and bugs, Fallout New Vegas misses the mark.  Come for the story, but try to ignore the crashes.  Fallout New Vegas gets 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out Fallout New Vegas and other Xbox 360 reviews at Test Freaks.