Review of Fallout: New Vegas for Xbox 360

Modern day video games can rival major blockbuster movies in terms of budget, story, and sales figures. Fallout: New Vegas is no exception. Like the fantastic movie Kill Bill, Fallout: New Vegas begins with the main protagonist being shot in the head and left for dead. Also like Kill Bill, Fallout: New Vegas provides a stellar plot, and has recently produced amazing sales figures. And for good reasons too.

Fallout: New Vegas is an open world role playing game set in a not so distant post apocalyptic future. Fallout: New Vegas takes place in the Mojave Wasteland of Old Nevada. The Mojave Wasteland is a perilous place, with mutated Rad Scorpions, Night Kin, and many other deadly enemies lurking in wait for any unprepared adventurer.

There are several factions within the game, and each decision you make will impact your reputation amongst them. The two main factions are Ceaser's Legion and the NCR. Each faction has its own beliefs and it is important to note that each side offers different quests and unique companions to you during your hunt through the Mojave Wasteland for the man who shot you in the game's opening sequence.

For those who've played Fallout 3, the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout: New Vegas is a completely different wasteland than that of the one in Washington D.C. In leau of the plethora of rumble and buildings that littered the wasteland of Fallout 3, the wasteland of Fallout: New Vegas is decorated with numerous signs of life. The sky and surroundings aren't as washed out and the game itself is more colorful than the previous installment. This is most abundantly apparent when watching a sunset or sunrise. And while the setting may be in a desert, there are actually more places to explore than in the previous title.

Fallout 3 let players collect schematics to build new guns, and in Fallout: New Vegas the weapon customization is taken to the next level with optional attachments such as scopes. An interesting addition in Fallout: New Vegas is cooking meals at fireplaces and crafting ammunition from scrap metal.

Empty bullet shells can be "bought" from merchants for 0 bottle caps (the form of in game currency) and re-purposed into working ammo. Food can also be harvested from plants to be cooked or used to make medicine. After building my barter skill, I spent several hours working the system crafting weapons and cooking food to sell back to merchants for profit and to purchase better weapons and armor.

One of the things that makes Fallout: New Vegas such a great game is that it is the type of game that is played at your own pace and exactly the way that you want to play it. Leveling up your character is very personal to each individual. Do you like to snipe enemies from a distance with a cowboy rifle, or would you prefer to sneak up upon them and sink your sledgehammer into their skull? How about launching missiles at them or blazing into the battle with chain gun? Fallout: New Vegas gives players many welcome options for personalization of game play.

Fallout: New Vegas simplifies managing your companions, making the task a breeze with a new companion wheel that allows you to forgo painful dialogue boxes. Accessing a companion's inventory was as easy as turning the wheel to inventory. This simple yet elegant enhancement vastly changes the usefulness of any companions that might be in your party.

Another significant difference between Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas is the optional hardcore difficulty. After playing the normal campaign for some seventy hours, I started up a fresh game under the hardcore setting.

Calling the hardcore difficulty in Fallout: New Vegas challenging is a complete understatement. In hardcore mode you must manage your H20 (water) levels by drinking and also make sure that you remember to sleep. Now all of those water fountains have a real purpose! Its important that you pack plenty of purified (or dirty) water with you because the game won't let you fast travel to a location unless you have enough water in your inventory with you to make it to your destination.

Additionally, the hardcore mode makes stimpaks and other items from your aid inventory heal you over time instead of instantaneously. This makes managing your health while in combat a bit trickier. You're also unable to repair a crippled limb status with a stimpak and are forced to either use a doctor's bag or find a doctor. If those changes alone didn't make the game challenging enough, all of your ammunition now counts against the weight you can carry as well.

One tip to dealing with your inventory in hardcore mode is to make sure that you spend plenty of skill points on Melee and Sneak so that you don't have to worry about carrying a ton of ammunition around. Alternatively, you could pick the Strong Back perk to carry an extra 50 pounds of equipment and the Pack Rat perk so that all items under 2 pounds in your inventory weigh half as much. No matter what, make sure you pick up the Lead Belly perk because you'll find yourself drinking lots of dirty water.

During my analysis of Fallout: New Vegas there were only two slight detractions from my experiences in the Mojave Wasteland. My first qualm is that the game itself doesn't have much of a graphical improvement over its predecessor. While a few of the combat animations were fun to watch, there just simply weren't any jaw droping moments.

Secondly, the songs in the track list were segregated into two separate radio channels in the Pip Boy. What this results in is hearing the same song repeated every half hour, rather than each hour if the songs were integrated into one master list. Given the amount of time one spends with this title, this can quickly become repetitive if one doesn't change channels or turn off the Pip Boy radio. Possible solutions would be to release another radio channel in a future title update that allows players to listen to all of the songs, include additional tracks in a future download content, offer an optional stand alone "song pack" to download, or all of the above.

Don't let the minor annoyances discourage you from purchasing the best role playing game this holiday season. Fallout: New Vegas features a massive impressive open world, tight game play, good storytelling, and replayability. Players must make their own choices, align themselves with a faction, and deal with the resulting consequences of their actions (resulting in a different story ending). Fallout: New Vegas provides countless of hours of entertainment and is a must own title for any Xbox 360 owner. Be it for yourself or as a gift for a loved one, Fallout: New Vegas doesn't disappoint and is a nine out of ten.

For more information about Fallout: New Vegas, visit fallout.bethsoft.com. You can purchase can purchase Fallout: New Vegas for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, & PC here from GameStop.com. Fans of the series might want the Collector's Edition.

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