More Like OLD Vegas, Amiright?... guys?...

I checked my Steam profile and I may have lied yesterday. I have spent a little over 10 hours of my life wandering the wastes of Fallout: New Vegas and for most of those 10 hours, I was not having fun, no sir, no fun at all.

I played a lot of Fallout 3. I discovered every single location and did every quest that I came across. I deactivated the bomb in Megaton, I helped a group of subway dwelling vampires find a blood replacement, I even came across the happiest town in The Waste, only to find out that their basements hid a dark dark secret (I will give you a hint, they are cannibals). I loved Fallout 3 with all it's flaws. Every computer terminal, every locked door, and every dialogue option was a window into the world of Fallout.

Don't get me wrong, Fallout 3 had problems. The main story could be finished in just a few hours, some bugs made a necessity of saving regularly so that when the game trapped you, there was always a save point to go back to, and V.A.T.S was the only viable way to get through combat.

New Vegas fixes a lot of the problems with Fallout 3, but it feels like too little too late.

The main thing I loved about Fallout 3 was going off the beaten path and exploring. I loved meeting new people in The Waste and learning their story. When I finally found out the dark secret of the happiest town in Fallout, I felt an enormous responsibility to cleanse the town, and I did, right down to the pets. I was so appalled at their behavior. So when I found the cannibal in New Vegas, I just let him go because I didn't care enough about him. I had already purged an entire town.

New Vegas just didn't offer me any incentive for exploration. Going to a random cave would not net me an amazing gun or other piece of loot and more than anything else, I had already seen those caves in the previous game. I already knew what the buildings looked like on the inside. I knew how sewers were constructed and I knew that the only thing in those large metal boxes are spare parts and other merchant trash. In playing through New Vegas I couldn't help but feel, I have already explored all this game has to offer before I even inst

alled it. It felt too much like an expansion to a game in which I had already suck 50+ hours. I was done with Fallout 3 and all New Vegas seemed to want to offer me was more Fallout 3.

The second main gripe I have with New Vegas is how I decided to play. I know that speech is always the way to go, but I decided to do something that I have yet been able to do in any moral decision based RPG. I was going to be evil. and I don't mean Chaotic good, I mean straight up, murder parents in front of their children and leave the kids to starve to death evil. The choice of good or evil should not be the equivalent of choosing paint colors. Black or white, it's still the same wall with the same paint. Moral choices should be like choosing a flavor of ice cream. Chocolate should be very distinct from Vanilla and provide a wholly different experience, not just an aesthetic change. Sure there were gangs of law enforcement officials out for me, but those could have easily been re-skinned thugs out for the life of a law man.

Playing evil may have destroyed the experience for me, but I just wasn't interested in exploring something that looked exactly the same as a world I had already gone over with a magnifying glass.

I bought New Vegas for 8.00 on some ridiculous Steam promotion, so I don't feel cheated, just disinterested and disappointed.