Vegas baby! Vegas

[rattran]

With 75 points in energy weapons, I kill most things faster with The Chopper and 18 melee points. This is not a good thing, I also have a completely broken quest which sadly is part of the main quest line.

So it's an Obsidian game.

[Demonix]

Friend was trying to convince me to buy it and was getting nowhere until he told me you could make your own ammo.  What can I say, I'm a crafting nut.

Bought, downloaded, start playing.  Got to kill geckos, find out that the skill books are temporary now (an interesting idea, even if I wasted the first 3 I came across), collected some items,  made some healing powder, fixed a radio AND have a spectacular video crash that kills my card, no output to monitor.

Never saw that one before, but don't worry it came back on reboot. :)

I may need to scale it down from the detected value (ultra high).  But as far as the game goes...it feels like a big expansion with some nods to older mechanics (geckos, doctor bags).  I like the crafting possibilities, the temporary skill boosts are an interesting idea to play with, and I'm looking forward to beating this in hardcore mode (which I picked first).

I will squee if there is a Frian Bargo character in New Vegas.  Or Warroids :)

[Engels]

Its playing flawlessly so far on my PC. Aside from some extra crafting, some new traits, it looks and plays just like regular Fallout3. That's my only complaint, that the tech mechanics haven't moved one jot. Seems very lazy.

[Lantyssa]

I will squee if there is a Frian Bargo character in New Vegas.  Or Warroids :)

Heh.  I hope there are a several different nods to be found once I pick it up.

Just remember these words of wisdom:  "Nothing will get you past this point."

[MuffinMan]

Played about 8 hours yesterday with the PC version. Haven't run across any bugs, everything on ultra high and not a single crash yet. I do notice once in a while quick blurry circles kind of like a cue mark or "cigarette burn" from a film. I don't know if it's supposed to be there but I pretend it's sand hitting me in the eye.

Roommate has played about 8 hours as well on the 360 and hasn't noticed any bugs either.

A question about the mission "Come Fly With Me" if anyone has done it yet.

[Ingmar]

find out that the skill books are temporary now

Skill books are still permanent, they just added a bunch of skill magazines that are temporary as well. No, this isn't clear at first.

[Rendakor]

Friend was trying to convince me to buy it and was getting nowhere until he told me you could make your own ammo.  What can I say, I'm a crafting nut.

Bought, downloaded, start playing.  Got to kill geckos, find out that the skill books are temporary now (an interesting idea, even if I wasted the first 3 I came across), collected some items,  made some healing powder, fixed a radio AND have a spectacular video crash that kills my card, no output to monitor.

Never saw that one before, but don't worry it came back on reboot. :)

I may need to scale it down from the detected value (ultra high).  But as far as the game goes...it feels like a big expansion with some nods to older mechanics (geckos, doctor bags).  I like the crafting possibilities, the temporary skill boosts are an interesting idea to play with, and I'm looking forward to beating this in hardcore mode (which I picked first).

I will squee if there is a Frian Bargo character in New Vegas.  Or Warroids :)

Skill books are not temporary; they added in skill magazines which are temporary. There are still permanent skill books in game.

[Ingmar]

Its playing flawlessly so far on my PC. Aside from some extra crafting, some new traits, it looks and plays just like regular Fallout3. That's my only complaint, that the tech mechanics haven't moved one jot. Seems very lazy.

Fallout 3 crashed all the time for me, so I think maybe they did make some changes.

[Rasix]

I've only seen a single issue (one guy was stuck, mid-air, with his head clipping into a ceiling, but I could talk to him still, so not a huge issue) and have been thus far surprised with how well its running on my mid-range (slightly generous) computer, with most things at high except for shadows and water reflections (which are both turned to low) as neither matters to me.

What are the specs on your PC if you don't mind me asking?

[LK]

When I got to Primm, the first interior area I went to, the game literally fell apart. It was the single most heartbreaking thing considering how I seem to recall Fallout 3 being very stable on the 360.

[Bunk]

No major bugs so far, other than having to lookup how to force Steam to install from a disk when the first attempt futzes.

Oh yes, in the opening crafting quest, which sends you to the school to find some root - I found Jalepinos, no roots. Wasted half an hour looking around with no luck, when I stumble on the quest giver and she promptly tells me I completed the quest...

I like the DPS info on the weapons. I don't like the limited Radio songs, but that will be modded up quickly enough. I'm pretty sure I could sing the entirety of Big Iron on his Hip from memory now.

[Kitsune]

I'm just overjoyed about the crafting.  All of that random crap strewn everywhere finally has a useful purpose?  Yes, please.  The weapon blueprints from 3 weren't exactly thrilling exercises in salvaging, though they were useful in some situations.

The only problem is that the sheer number of recipes and components makes keeping track of what's useful something of a bitch.  I'm gonna have to write up a document listing the items that I should actually be picking up as I wander, as there's no way I'm remembering every ingredient of every recipe.

[LK]

Yeah the "EVERYTHING MIGHT HAVE A PURPOSE" has kicked in my hoarder sensibilities.

[apocrypha]

GF pre-ordered this for me on the PS3, because she's awesome. It should arrive on Friday. I shall report back on it's bugginess on that platform!

[koro]

Played my girlfriend's copy (PC) some last night. While I can't find any one thing that's a deal-breaker for me, nothing seems quite "right." It's just this vague sense that none of these parts Obsidian put together really fit as well as they should be.

- I ran into that RockPaperShotgun AI bug with the fleeing townspeople. It is incredibly annoying.
- I crash a lot, usually leaving buildings. I assume this is normal, since every Bethsoft engine since Morrowind's done that.
- A DarNified UI can't come quick enough.
- WHY CAN I NOT REMAP MY MOUSE BUTTONS. I HAVE FIVE MOUSE BUTTONS, GAME. LET ME USE THEM.
- "Hardcore" mode is pitiful. Three in-game days without food or sleep and my meters have barely budged. Fallout Wanderers Edition in FO3 would have me dead on my feet after 36 hours.
- Finding plants in the wild seems to be like dumb luck. Most I've seen are practically indistinguishable from normal cosmetic scrub brush.
- Performance dips in weird places for no real reason. I'll be trucking at 50+ FPS running along the wilderness and fighting enemies, but talking to a single NPC in a corner of a room can sometimes turn the game into a slideshow.
- Not sure how I feel about the crafting and ammo stuff yet. I'm leaning more in the direction of "dislike" but haven't gotten enough experience with it to decide yet.
- The radio is a pain. It's either too quiet or way too loud. I can't find a happy medium that has both the music and Wayne Newton at acceptable levels.

I really want to like this game. I loved FO3 (despite expecting to detest it), and I've loved every single Obsidian game except Alpha Protocol (which I didn't play) despite all their issues. Nothing is simply clicking for me here.

I think I'll step away from this until it's had about three to six months of patching and modding before I get back into it. Continuing it now will just sour me on the whole thing.

[ginandplatonic]

You can map actions to the mouse in the options menu. Just click on the device(s) button on the bottom right. Took me a minute to figure it out.

[koro]

I didn't even see that anywhere, since the main menu UI is the same fucking color scheme as the background image.

A moot point either way, since I'm not gonna play it for a while I guess.

[tmp]

Does it have any Bao-Dur? Because fuck that guy.

I don't know, the average NPC rendered by Bethesda engine kinda makes Bao-Dur look like Oscar-level acting material.

[Kitsune]

People in hardcore mode reporting that it's doing nothing must be experiencing some kind of bug.  After two in-game days, I had gotten penalties from starvation and sleep-deprivation, and probably would've had dehydration too except for the steady water boosts provided by my pre-order canteen, which seem to about halve the rate of dehydrating.  Those meters are definitely rising during play for me.

[jakonovski]

some kind of bug

I dunno man, let's not jump to conclusions like that. 

[LK]

Seems like all hardcore does is:

- Add 3 meters that require food, water, and sleeping to reduce
- Require limbs to be fixed at a Doctor's or with a doctor's bag
- Slows healing so it is unfeasible in the middle of a fight but you can rest up between encounters.

...? Not a huge implementation or rules change seems like. The fact that Goodsprings has unlimited free water and healing is something interesting.

[gimpyone]

I dislike some of the mechanic changes:

• Speech is no longer % based, you need to meet the requirement to pass any check
• A perk is only gained every two levels

[il]A high int does not get you the same number of skill points compared to Fallout 3[/il]
[/list]

Besides the save bug, I'm enjoying it.

[Furiously]

They really seem to have ramped the content. Way too much stuff is requiring 100 hacking, 75 speech, 75 repair, 100 science.

[Tarami]

Stutters like shit. Completely unplayable in combat. Horrah.

Edit: Hey, it fixed itself! That said, am I the only one thinking the combat is.... well, ridiculously hard? Fine, I didn't roll a combat character, but common Radscorpions take atleast 20 rounds to kill. It just seems completely out of whack.

[Ceryse]

I've only seen a single issue (one guy was stuck, mid-air, with his head clipping into a ceiling, but I could talk to him still, so not a huge issue) and have been thus far surprised with how well its running on my mid-range (slightly generous) computer, with most things at high except for shadows and water reflections (which are both turned to low) as neither matters to me.

What are the specs on your PC if you don't mind me asking?

Sorry for the delay, missed this the couple times I checked the thread. My specs are; 2.66 GHz Intel Quad Core, 4 gigs of 2.67 GHz RAM that's capped around 3.2 or 3.5 gigs because I'm still using XP, on-board sound and a GeForce GTX 285. Can't recall what motherboard. I don't know if its really barely mid-range or not -- only that the graphics card is the only thing semi-newish (bought early in '09, I believe) and everything is in desperate need of cleaning and de-dusting, but I've been lazy.

Still, performance has been good. Lately been getting the odd stutter (one to three stutters every.. 30-45 minutes, generally after leaving an area I've been in awhile, but sometimes go hours without it).

Had my first crash today, as well; lost a good 7 minutes of play time because I'm a paranoid saver. I rotate through 10 or so save slots. If I haven't saved in ten minutes, its a minor miracle.

[Koyasha]

So, beyond the bugs, most of the comparisons I'm hearing sound like Fallout 3.  Thus far the only hope I had for this game was that since some of the original Fallout people were working on it, it might still feel like Fallout from a story and atmosphere perspective.  Does anyone have any comments on that front?  If it just feels like another installment of Fallout 3 I'm not particularly interested, especially given the bugs, but if it feels like Fallout 1 or 2, then it might just be worth trying to tolerate the bugs for.

[jakonovski]

That said, am I the only one thinking the combat is.... well, ridiculously hard? Fine, I didn't roll a combat character, but common Radscorpions take atleast 20 rounds to kill. It just seems completely out of whack.

Combat is a pet peeve of mine in FO3 and apparently Vegas too. The way I see the Fallout universe, guns should be horribly lethal and consequences grave, even to the player. It would be much more fun to oneshot that radscorpion to bloody bits with your future gun that only has five bullets left in it, and after that possibly deal with a horrible scorpion poisoning, than it is to simply grind down hit points.

[Malakili]

That said, am I the only one thinking the combat is.... well, ridiculously hard? Fine, I didn't roll a combat character, but common Radscorpions take atleast 20 rounds to kill. It just seems completely out of whack.

Combat is a pet peeve of mine in FO3 and apparently Vegas too. The way I see the Fallout universe, guns should be horribly lethal and consequences grave, even to the player. It would be much more fun to oneshot that radscorpion to bloody bits with your future gun that only has five bullets left in it, and after that possibly deal with a horrible scorpion poisoning, than it is to simply grind down hit points.

Yeah, I think I'd prefer for more scarity in ammo, coupled with less ammo to kill stuff, just as a matter of flavor.  Then again, it would either make some guns insanely powerful OR entirely useless (a minigun would demolish legions of enemies, or you'd never really have enough ammo to fire it for more than a couple seconds, though maybe that would be ok, I dunno).   From what everyone is saying, it seems like holding out is the best plan still, so my original wait for GOTY edition in a year with all the DLC (and hopefully bugs fixed) plan seems to be going well.

[Ironwood]

I seem to remember miniguns working exactly that way in the original fallout.
 

[Jimbo]

My son called 1st dibs on the Xbox 360 version, since it is a slow week @ school, no crashes playing it so far & looks great.

[Bunk]

Seems like all hardcore does is:

- Add 3 meters that require food, water, and sleeping to reduce
- Require limbs to be fixed at a Doctor's or with a doctor's bag
- Slows healing so it is unfeasible in the middle of a fight but you can rest up between encounters.

...? Not a huge implementation or rules change seems like. The fact that Goodsprings has unlimited free water and healing is something interesting.

Also adds weight to ammo.

[rattran]

After hitting a showstopper bug, I restarted. 6 hours in? Another showstopper. And, I only get achievements when I have the Steam pre-order stuff turned off :/

Fucking Obsidian. It does feel like a decently done TC of Fallout3, but it's missing on the humor. And I really wish I had a manual to look through to see what the hell some stuff does.

[Demonix]

Stutters like shit. Completely unplayable in combat. Horrah.

Edit: Hey, it fixed itself! That said, am I the only one thinking the combat is.... well, ridiculously hard? Fine, I didn't roll a combat character, but common Radscorpions take atleast 20 rounds to kill. It just seems completely out of whack.

Try AP rounds on the rad scorps.  I just ran away from them myself, my guns are dinky. 

I really like the reloading mechanics...oh look at all this shotgun ammo and this single barrel, slowloading shotgun.  Let me just break this down until I get a decent combat shotty for CQC.  no weight for the parts. :)

NEW - since the update, I can no longer get past the copyright splashscreen.  I knew I should have waited. :(

[Kitsune]

I don't get the complaints about the food and water and sleep being just sliding scales.  What'd you expect, a peggle minigame where you bounce food into your stomach?  I have yet to experience hunger or fatigue in real life as anything other than a linear progression, so I'm having a hard time thinking of any other way for them to handle it.

I've run across an apparent memory leak, things started to get stuttery after a few hours. Exiting and restarting the game cleared it up.

[brellium]

Stupid save game bug, well I kinda wanted to restart anyways.

If you have this game on Steam:

Right click on the game ---->  Properties ---->  UPDATES tab ---->  Uncheck the "I want steam to fuck up my save games" box ----> Exit Steam and restart (I did the machine just to be safe)