I was on the Fallout 4 train, it being my first Fallout game but after playing New Vegas, heads were turned, love the game, graphics are alright, gameplay and combat is fairly decent, but I just like the random encounters and out of the blue missions given to you, my idea for this game was straight "Lord Death of Murder Mountain" with the most silly stats I could of given myself, unlike Fallout 3, NV accounts for your stats and you can see them being used properly during the game, but it isn't too OP like in Fallout 4 where a basic 10mm Pistol could 1 shot a Alpha Deathclaw, pretty cool game, can't wait to finish it.
S - 10
P - 1
E - 7
C - 1
I - 1
A - 10
L - 10
try it and your life will be changed, be ruthless, have 0 sympathy, only seek reward.

I went into this game blind (albeit i knew a bit about the lore of fallout and played 4) and was surprised by how much this game has to offer.

First things first, the story cooked with a lot of good twists and i like the way that many of the quests have multiple endings depending on your choices and can honestly be different on multiple playthroughs. Combat is hit or miss sometimes just because of the jank sometimes but overall a fun and complete package. Def my new favorite Fallout games and maybe one of my favorites of all time. 9/10.

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will hold
I heard somebody whisper, "Please adore me"
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold
Blue moon
Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper, "Please adore me"
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold
Blue moon
Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue moon
Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

I have a weird tendency to forget how good a lot of games really are.

Like, NV is and always was a near-perfect 10/10 experience for me, but I kind of forgot how good it really is with time.

When I booted this game up again for my recent run, I ended up playing for 8 HOURS STRAIGHT. And it did not feel like that at all. That shit disappeared in an instant, that's how good this game is.

New Vegas takes everything Fallout 3 did and just improves on it to near-perfection. This game is what Vice City is to GTA III. A pure refinement of the formula to near-perfection. It's so funny looking back to see those initial launch reviews call this game a "glorified DLC", because honestly it doesn't feel like that at all. It has all the stuff from 3 sure, the engine and gunplay and such, but it's all just improved here. It takes everything fo3 did, threw away all the stuff that didn't work, and creates something that actually FEELS like a sequel to fallout 1 and 2, both in narrative, and in gameplay. Playing Fallout 1 has honestly given me a bigger appreciation for this game's quest formula and how it handles it's world, because it honestly isn't far off from what the classic games did. It really does feels like Fallout 1/2, but in first person. Hell even the map, for as much as some do complain about it, gave me that vibe too with just how much of fo1 and 2's map was just select named locations with desert plains between them all. Sure, it does mean you do need to go out of your way to find all the actual named locations that are worth exploring (I recommend either picking up the explorer perk or looking up a map online), but even with that this game's map still feels fun to explore and engage with all these years later. There's so much choice, be it in dialogue, how you accomplish quests/objectives, your general gameplay style, and much more. It's as much of a sandbox game as it gets, for this series at least. Every time I beat a quest, I think "man what if I did THIS instead?" and that inevitably becomes what I'll do next time. If you think you can do it, you probably can in NV, and that's the mark of a great RPG. I'm still discovering stuff about this game all these years later, be it stuff about the factions (which are already incredibly fleshed out despite the obvious cuts like with the Legion), quest details, gameplay, companions, and much more.

The only real things that haven't really held up aside from the general Bethesda gamebryo jank that's in basically all of these games is really the vanilla gunplay and specifically, stealth. It's really not a fun playstyle imho with how it's basically just for sneak attacks before inevitably going loud and nothing else and it's so easy to steal items so long as you either have a stealth boy or are out of the general NPC's line of sight (and sure, stealth boys are rare, but with how many you find just from doing come fly with me alone (which you WILL be doing early on) you'll have at least 5+ sitting in your inventory for when you really want it). But again, like before, that's an issue in basically every Bethesda RPG.

Only other real thing is the Karma system is really stupid and especially doesn't belong in this game. At least in 3 you can argue it made SOME kind of sense with just how basically every single evil choice was so painfully obvious with how comedically supervillain it was that you'd have to be stupid to pick it on pure accident, but here it just doesn't make sense. Why do I lose karma when I steal from LITERAL CANNIBALS THAT EAT PEOPLE? What about from the Legion if I DON'T agree with slavery and how they treat women?? Imagine if in Deus Ex you got an alert saying "YOU'RE BEING EVIL!!!" if you decided to follow orders during the first Liberty Island mission and kill all the NSF when you as the player don't know what UNATCO is really up to. It just makes no sense and it doesn't help that in this game it impacts absolutely NOTHING. Give me a red alert when stealing a certain item that if I get caught will gain me infamy sure, but don't pass me with that "stealing is evil no matter WHAT even if you think they're bad" shit. Let me decide for myself whether or not it's justified and let me deal with the consequences.

But even with all that, it's all minor at the end of the day. I can still play this game vanilla and have a great time, something I can't say for Fo3 or even some other Bethesda RPGs. Even on console, Xbox 360 backwards compat at least, I can have a good time. Which I did back when my old PC went under and I had to stick with my Xbone for a while (altho I've heard horror stories about the PS3 version and you should prolly avoid it). Some people'll say this game's overrated, and I can understand that to a certain extent with just how annoying some of the fans can be, but I genuinely do believe that praise is there and is warranted for very good reason. You'd have to be a pure frowning friends ass cynic if you wanna believe this game is truly awful, or at least not above average. New Vegas is just THAT GOOD, nearly 25 years later. It remains to be seen if this series will ever reach this high ever again, but even if it doesn't, I'll be comfortable replaying this for the rest of my life.

...and here I go on ANOTHER re-play. My last run of the game, I roleplayed a character with 10 CHR which effects companion nerve (taking the Ferocious Loyalty / Animal Friend perks too), only putting roughly 50 points or so into guns, pumping everything else into Skill-based stats. I let ED-E and Veronica do all the heavy lifting while I would provide some support. My character instead was the Mojave's biggest smooth talking, charismatic and equally degenerate gambling junkie. My character didn't give two shits about the conflict in the desert, he just wanted to get blitzed and play the tables.

My newest run: Louis Cypher. A pyromaniac devil of a man with the only goal of wreaking as much havoc on the Mojave as possible with deadly burning fire. All factions will be wiped out leaving nobody breathing in this wasteland.

Again, my favorite game.

"Would a mentally ill person do THIS?"
[plays all the way through Fallout: New Vegas four times in two weeks]
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"Every time you play this I feel like you're doing something completely different. I've never seen that Casino mission [Dead Money]. How much stuff is in this game?"
-Conwife

Joke's on her because I'm not doing different stuff. For 14 years I've been making Primm Slim the sheriff of Primm. Good karma, bad karma, how about a yee-haw for law and order in the fine town of ERROR: TOKEN NOT FOUND.

Obviously there's no shortage of Fallout: New Vegas glazers, but you're in luck because I truly cannot express how much I love this game. I have been pulled back into its vortex many, many times; if nobody got me, New Vegas got me. One of the most important games in my life, and one that I look forward to replaying in the future despite claiming to my loved ones that I'm done.
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"I sort of tasted human flesh once. Mmm mmm good. Tell me all your secrets."
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MESSAGE FOR PHIL SPENCER, TODD HOWARD, AND ANYONE ELSE IN CHARGE OF FALLOUT:
Why does Fallout 3 have a 4K update but not New Vegas? Both got the FPS Boost. What gives? Also if you wanted to license the Fallout IP to other studios again that would be cool. Plus who needs Spider-Man games when you have gamebryo Y-spam climbing? More Fallout! Get on it!