Within the first five minutes of playing Fallout: New Vegas, I noticed two very distinct, unsettling qualities: one, that I wished the game would quit skipping (and subsequently freezing), and two, that the create-a-character looks a hell of a lot like Lieutenant Mauser from Police Academy.  I kept thinking of the scene in Police Academy 2 where Mahoney replaces Mouser’s shampoo with industrial strength glue, and Mouser shows up in the next scene sans eye brows.  If you are there with me, then you know exactly how the default create-a-character looks.

Exposition

Fallout: New Vegas achieves what Bioshock 2 could not: involve gameplay that matches the stunning visual ambiance of the game.  If you ever tried to find Glitchoris’ mid-game thoughts and final review of Bioshock 2, but you could not, there’s a reason.  I returned the game after the first 3 hours because not being able to invert the y-axis is akin to not being able to enter your car with electronic entry.  Sure, I can get used to it, but what is the fucking point?  The tutorial opens up the possibility to get a little out of hand; I accidentally punched a guy in the bar when I meant to talk to the poor bastard, and the fucking lady that I was supposed to talk to started shooting me.  So, naturally, that sucked.  I had to start the game all over again…Thankfully that only took me about 5 minutes.

Remember that part about not wanting the game to skip?  The potential is as high as once every four to five seconds where my PS3 felt like it was “thinking” about what to do next: skip or just freeze.  It mostly just skipped, but ultimately, it did freeze three times in the first two hours of gameplay.  Not easy to get too high on a game when it just…fucking…stops…for no good reason.

Slow Motion Death Patrol

Similar to Red Dead Redemption, New Vegas employs a system of aiming and firing and taking people’s heads off their shoulders.  Doubling as a battle-pause, the V.A.T.S. system allows the player to pinpoint where on the body the player wants to shoot.  Now, this is good fun.  This is what Glitchoris loves about video game developers.  They love that we love to watch ourselves destroy/kill/maim/terminate people whether they are NPC’s or online people.  Once arranged, the V.A.T.S. plays out the kill and we watch the corpse fall to the ground in any number of positions.  My favorite so far is the Tony Hawk 1080 corpse-drop.  You can see the corpse reaching for the heal of her boot to complete the spin move.

This system rocks.  While I still prefer Red Dead Redemption‘s Dead Eye system, the V.A.T.S. functions as the Dead Eye’s close sibling that is a bit awkward, but just as fun to hang out with.  Plus, watching them fall is a quick boost to your confidence because the moment an enemy spots you, it is noticeably easier to get killed than it is to kill them.  So, thank God for a cover system.  It’s quick, it’s manageable, it saves your life.  Which brings me to my next point:

Borderlands Ruined It For Me

Take 2 and Gearbox spoiled us with the fast-action gun slinging genre.  I mean, I want my games to be realistic, but I don’t want to get caught out in the open by some jackass from 100 yards away only to have to replay the last 15 minutes of game time.  I want to be able to heal fast, move faster, and shoot the shit out of somebody early on.

Mid-game thoughts coming soon.  I am looking forward to seeing more of the scenic landscape and less of the frozen tundra screen.