Falling out with New Vegas

I hate that I hate the conclusion of Fallout: New Vegas. The immersive and deep Fallout universe has had me hooked for years. The franchise’s detailed back-story, the spectrum of quirky characters and the freedom of story development all combined to create the most entertaining time sink I have experienced for a long time.

I am drawn into the style and themes of Fallout. I enjoy the 1950’s based b-movie aesthetic and the nostalgic homage to Americana shrouded in the grim realisation of cold war paranoia. I love the figurative tilt-of-the-hat to terrible sci-fi, the clunky and often ridiculous technology that could be lifted straight from Forbidden Planet or Flash Gordon. So much of the make-up of the game appeals to my inner geek. In both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the story is engaging varied and can be approached from various angles depending on player disposition. The main story, the seemingly limitless number of side-quests and the ability to roam and explore endlessly combine to provide longevity of gameplay that far outstrips most other titles.

New Vegas’s gameplay isn’t a leap forward from Fallout 3, but I still enjoyed the mix of RPG and 1^st/3^rd person shooter. The game allows players to approach combat in a variety of ways, employing stealth, strength or guile to achieve their aims, lay waste to foes and progress toward a player-choice determined conclusion. Unfortunately, despite the best part of 70 hours of gameplay and a series of excellent quests and encounters, glitches and plot holes in the ending have left me deflated.

In the story strand that I followed, my ending resulted in an encounter with a character I had not yet met in the course of the game, but who greeted me as an old comrade and referred to a previous meeting and conversation that never happened. To my great annoyance at the height of the final battle the graphics became glitchy, although I had experienced glitches in-game prior to this juncture and an internet search has assured me that it’s not a universal problem. It’s because of the excellent gaming experience leading up to the end that the below standard conclusion annoys me as much as it has.

I do not expect the game to be perfect; perfect probably isn’t possible. However, considering the time and detail put into the game, these few problems at the crescendo of the game should have been ironed out. I’m not sorry I played New Vegas – it was my favourite game since Mass Effect 2 – but I am disappointed that I hated the execution of my story’s conclusion, if not the content. I don’t feel the urge to revisit it immediately and follow the other possible conclusions, but when I do get around to it I hope they will lead to a more complete understanding of the relationship between my character and the random NPC I encountered this time. Hopefully my 360 will choose not to glitch at the critical moment too.

When I was 31, it was a very good year…

2010 has been a very busy and very good year for me; I got married in the summer, flew to the Caribbean on honeymoon and a few weeks later acted as the best man at my brother’s wedding. We moved in to our new house in September and my wife and I got a lovely puppy a few weeks ago, which is conspiring to urinate on my lounge carpet as I type. At work I achieved the advancement I was hoping for within my career and was offered the job I have coveted for a number of years.

I have also been attempting to develop my writing, specifically with regard to video games journalism; this brought me to writing for an online publication, Game Kudos. Writing for GK allowed me to cover my first industry Expo in the form of EuroGamer in London, and gain valuable experience interviewing the lead designer of a top video game developer.

In the gaming world I have invested countless hours saving the Universe in Mass Effect 2, riding the plains of the Wild West in Red Dead Redemption, running and gunning my way through numerous FPS titles, the highlights being Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor (American spelling of Honour!). I’ve enjoyed surviving the post apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout: New Vegas and suffered through the worst game I can remember playing in the form of Deadly Premonition. I got sporty too, kicking around with some of the world’s best footballers in FIFA 11 and beating Tiger Woods in the Ryder Cup on Tiger Woods PGA tour 11. There were lots of other games, but those are just some of the highlights. I also laid my old trust Xbox 360 to rest after suffering the dreaded Red Ring of Death, and got a shiny new one in its place.

Next year’s gaming promises much, but in particular I’m looking forward to Dead Space 2 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (the long awaited sequel to the excellent Oblivion). After such an eventful year I’ll be glad of a rest and a chance for more gaming, but I look forward to 2011 with optimism and anticipation. Happy New Year everyone, see you in the future…

You wait an age for one….

Good games are like buses; you wait an age for one, then several arrive at once. Throughout the middle of 2010, I along with countless other gamers, suffered through a drought of decent titles. Between the release of the excellent Mass Effect 2, early in the year, and the recent release of the much anticipated Fallout New Vegas, only Red Dead Redemption stood out as a particularly spectacular game in mid-2010.

No sooner had Obsidian returned us to the world of wastelands, vaults and super-mutants, than we see the release of other big hitters; Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2, Fifa 11, Medal of Honor, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and what is expected to become the biggest selling game of all time: Call of Duty Black Ops, to name but a few. I left out Halo Reach from that ensemble for personal reasons, but if that floats your boat it could add weight to my argument.

With such a large selection of potentially excellent titles arriving within just a few short weeks of one another, I feel like the gaming equivalent of an emaciated captive presented with a banquet; I want them all but can’t have them all at once. The games industry seems to do this quite deliberately and it’s relatively obvious that the release timing is geared to exploit the lucrative Christmas market.

This appears to be a sound business model, being as how a vast majority of games are purchased in the run up to the holiday season; but is this market mindset counter-productive? Development schedules aside, certain titles can easily lay claim to the holiday market. Over the past 4 years the king of Christmas gaming has consistently been the Call of Duty series. So then, are other great titles that simply selling themselves short by trying to go in direct competition with such a massive title? Would there be more sense in releasing some bigger games 6 months apart from the biggest of the holiday titles, to boost sales and, most importantly, fill the gap of good games during the summer?

Only the developers, or perhaps marketing experts, can answer this, but it should be noted as a combat indicator that Game, the UK’s biggest games retailer - one that is supposed to be recession proof - has seen it’s shares plummet over the past year. Last year their share value sat at £1.60, however today it is hovering around 70p. The retailer actually blamed the lack of big title releases in the first half of the year for the slump, and expects to recover over the Christmas period. That said if this is to be the trend, then Game and other video game retailers could well see their share prices in a constant yo-yo. Meanwhile, gamers will continue to wait many months for another flood of great games.

The Gaming Gentleman at Eurogamer Expo

At the beginning of October I attended the Eurogamer Expo at London’s Earl’s court in the capacity as a staff writer for Game Kudos. Over the past few weeks the content I produced from the Expo has been published at the website, and I’m linking it all up here in this post.

Whilst there I was able to attend developer sessions, get hands-on with preview demos of upcoming games and, most excitingly for me, interview some big hitters in the industry.

Today my interview with Tameem Antonaides, head designer at Ninja Theory and creator of the recently released Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, was published here.

I also wrote about several of the more important game demos I played. As I’m a big Fallout fan, I spent a little time getting to grips with life in a post apocalyptic Las Vegas. My preview of the much-anticipated sequel, Fallout New Vegas, can be read here.

I was able to play a 15-minute demo of the upcoming space horror sequel Dead Space 2. The first game scared the living daylights out of me, read about how the second game’s shaping up here.

I was also luck enough to play the multiplayer component of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Imagine a deathmatch game where whilst you hunt your target, a third party hunts you. The game boasts all of the free-running fun of Assassin’s Creed, playable online with your friends. Read all about it here.

That’s all of the links for now, but watch this space, as I’ll be writing about my experiences covering my first event as a games journalist.