Next on my top ten First Person shooters is none other than, Fallout 3 New Vegas, although this is more of an adventure open world game, it’s still a FPS in the traditional sense. Like most games from Bethesda, the Fallout games feature extended story arcs, massive open play worlds, free play, go anywhere do anything game play, although you might want to be armed to the teeth when wandering around the Wasteland! The Fallout series follows individuals that were originally locked underground in nuclear bunkers. America and Russia have gone to war, and inevitably nukes were used, and destroyed most of the known world along with it. The world is now a dreary, radioactive, mutant filled, warring and violent place to survive. Various clans or settlers have established cities, towns and villages fashioned from scrap metal and other random materials. One of the cities featured in Fallout 3 was actually an old aircraft carrier, and New Vegas features the main Las Vegas strip and the Hoover dam as hubs of human life.
Fallout New Vegas begins with your character, a courier, being shot for transporting an unknown package across the wasteland. You are then saved by a robot, and patched back to health in a small prospector’s town. There is of course a basic tutorial, teaching you how to survive, shoot, and so on, this part of the game also includes your first consequential choice, as Fallout gives you the opportunity to make good and bad decisions as you progress through the game. This of course has an impact on how NPC’s react to you, as well as factions, and in some cases how towns operate. For example your first choice is given when a gang faction decides that in order to gain revenge on a former associate they will fight all members of the town, kill them if necessary. You will have three options here, you can either resolve the matter peacefully, fight the gang off, or destroy the town. If you destroy the town, then in future visits you will find that it is run by that faction.
The Fallout games feature various different weapons, which are upgradeable, as well as a levelling system and the ability to choose certain perks to enhance particular skills. These abilities allow a very wide array of different interactions as well as enhancing your combat and agility. Fallout also contains some very weird and wild creatures, some friendly, some not, and some are just pure anger. From radioactive fly’s, to giant powerful animals called Death Claws that can kill you in a single sweep. There are large mutant people that quite often wield mini guns, and some feral creatures that were once human.
New Vegas features a couple of major and minor factions, one resembles a similar government to that of we have today; another is an Ancient Roman styled, vicious bureaucracy, that prefers brute force and violence. These factions feature in the final battle of the game, and you must side with one of the factions, including the two mentioned above to finish the game….Or do you?
As for game play New Vegas is simple enough, it would have to be for the shear amount of missions, NPC’s to interact with, and different locations. The weapons you wield can be auto targeted, blunt weapons and unarmed included. The auto targeting system informs the player the likely hood of a round hitting the target and tells you how many rounds you can fire for that particular target.
Like all Bethesda games, you will unlikely ever run out of things to do, there is always somewhere new to go, a mission to complete or new NPC’s to talk to. There certainly isn’t a shortage of DLC for New Vegas either; I believe it’s a total of five DLC’s that feature some very unique content indeed. There are a few downsides to Fallout though, for example, as with all open ended games, it’s very buggy, prone to crash and doesn’t come armed with any online or offline multiplayer. You may get bored with being chased through the Wasteland by robots, Death Claws or other annoying enemies. It’s also quite difficult to obtain some of the more powerful weapons, but I suppose this is quite realistic as finding guns and ammunition would be hard to do in a nuclear wasteland desert!
Despite the few downsides I am looking forward to another Fallout title as I thoroughly enjoy exploring and fighting across the desert. Even though it’s terrifying the thrill of being chased across the landscape by large hungry, radioactive monster does actually appeal to me. The sense of achievement you get when you finally get your hands on a 50. Calibre anti material rifle and start popping off some the wastelands more aggressive species with ease.
#9 on the Top Ten FPS games list.