To get back on the New Vegas topic:
My collector's edition arrived this weekend and I spend sunday playing a couple of hours.
First on the collector's edition:
The artbook/comic novel is kind of useless to me but I knew that from the start. I will probably keep it in "mint condition" and hope I can sell it some time
The poker chips:
Probably the nicest give in of the CE. Look kewl, are not cheap plastic but have some weight. Might serve as nice "card protectors" in real poker games. The platin lucky 38 chip I don't get, just looks a bit lame ^^
The card game:
Bull****. 1st the backside of the cards are not uniform but differ, there is one type of "back" for each casino. This makes the cards useless for playing as someone can always tell what kind of cards you hold in your hands from the backside of the card. Who came up with this idiotic idea??? 2nd I was expecting cool PipBoy images and what do I get? Some "artsy" illustrations of all the characters ingame. Gnaaaaaa. I was so looking forward to the card game deck because I was looking for a good "non standard" card game to play poker. The normal cards just got way too boring for me. Bethesda u suck.
The making off DVD:
Don't know, didn't check it out yet but wouldn't be surprised to find out it's a collection of videos that you already saw in all types of game magazines i.e. on their websites...
Now to the Game:
I like it. I have to say that I got into it much slower than Fallout 3 where the "leaving the vault" scene as in Fallout 1 immediately created that great Fallout-atmosphere (which in Fallout 3 was lost and picked up again several times later in the game). Here it is more like Fallout 2 where u find into the game and its atmosphere more slowly.
I like however
SPOILERS AHEADhow they guide you through the game in the beginning. How Goodsprings is basically the "newbie region" and once you leave it **** starts cookin. I also like the faction system and the faction clothes. I like how I accidently wore NCR clothing when I got to NCRCF, shot the door guard, then realized I could probably converse with these fools if I didn't wear NCR clothes, put on the poweder ganger suit and went on inside talking to some folks. They let me through, nothing bugged out even though I probably would have had to talk to the doorguard hadn't I killed him. They let me walk around freely but the administration building and another one that are of more importance to the gang were still off limits and I got attacked. That's alright imo.
I liked how I met with the NCR and how Cesar's Legion are introduced shortly after. So far everything seems to fit in together well and I like how I am guided through the game in a way that allows for a presentation as meant by the author while still giving me the freedom to wander off my own way. If I wanted I could have headed straight to Vegas of course, which is also cool and I might do next playthrough (if there will be one).
From story and concept it seems like a proper Fallout and Obisidian game to me so far.What I didn't like:
I can't say the game is exactly bugged but I can see that it is poorly coded.
The first time I started and played it everything went very well. No bugs, no freezes, no fps dips and loading problems. An all around smooth experience. However when I did the mission
SPOILER AHEADwhere I help that guy who is holed up in the gas station to fight the powder gangers and they arrived in goodsprings, I had a massive fps dip when they attacked the saloon/store area with the hand full NPCs, me and the 4 or 5 powder gangers. It was unbearable there for a sec. After a few kills and everything was over quickly, it was alright again. Didn't have that fps problem in later situations where I had a bunch of NPCs on screen... even in combat.I quit the game and returned an hour later. When I hit "continue" and loaded my last save, it took FOREVER to get loaded. I thought it froze but it just took extremely long!!! For a whole while it also took extremely long when I entered buildings or loaded savegames. I don't know what I did but several hours, saves and loads later it worked as smooth as in the beginning.
I still experience occasional fps dips.
My system:
AMD Phenom II x4 955BE
4 GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870
Win7 64bit
SSD (but not used for fallout)
So now that I experienced it, I assume IceT doesn't need a new PC, bethesda and obsidian just need better coding.
I find it quite unbelievable that they coded so poorly. I am sure that if I played it on my xbox everything would be running smooth beginning to end which is an athrocity considering what a schweet system I run now. And I don't wanna play it again without the mouse, particularly since the VATS has been somewhat devalued and you just can't aim with a gamepad.
