Fallout New Vegas

As we enter that period of the year where there are no major game releases at the moment, seeing as most game developers are saving them for the christmas period and simpliy because i don't get paid enough to waste my money reviewing every game thats released like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which has recently been released and i have no intention of reviewing it....or even playing for that matter.

So until a new release comes out that i actually want to play i'll be reviewing any other older games i've found myself playing.

Fallout New Vegas was released in October 2010 and is based about 200 years after a nuclear war. The game focuses itself around a war-torn Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert which has crumbled into a wasteland. You play the role of a person known only as "The Courier" and the story begins with you being shot in the head by Matthew Perry.

Now Bethesda Softworks have this strange habit of hiring famous voice actors in order to voice a major character in their games, only for their character to die halfway through the main story and no this is not a spolier, Matthew Perry shoots your character in the face of course i wasn't going to let him live long enough to see the ending of the game with me. Anyway the only exception i can think of to this habit is Sean Bean in Oblivion, who spends the entire game talking about gods and gates you wish he did die and left Patrick Stewart behind instead.

So after being shot in the face and rescued by a robot cowboy The Courier wakes up at a local doctors office in a nearby village (because all village doctors know how to perform brain surgery) you are then asked to create yourself a face followed by the usual method of allocating points into your skill and attribute stats before the doctor sends you on your way free of charge to go in pursuit of Matthew Perry.

Gameplay wise is identical to that of Fallout 3, you have an open world in which you explore, except it is a little bit more restricted at the start of New Vegas as if you go in any direction other then south, you will most likely be killed by some giant mutated creature. The V.A.T.S aiming system also returns which is a feature that slows down combat and allows you to aim at individual body parts of your target with a percentage reading of how likely you are to hit it, this is then followed by a nice mini cutscene, amazingly blowing someones head off with this method never gets old. The perk system is still here and is pretty much more of the same as it was before, little game enhancing bonuses that can obtained by leveling up or by completing certain actions in game.
 
The karma system also returns but plays a less important roll in New Vegas as it is overshadowed by a reputation system which shows how much each faction in the game likes you, which can have an effect on the overall story and gameplay experience, for example on my first play through of this game i happened to of pissed off one of the factions by killing their soliders and stealing their stuff, i then found myself having to cross through their lands to get to my destination, they didn't like this and decided to perform the same act of merciless slaughter that i inflicted on them onto me.

A new feature of Fallout New Vegas is the hardcore mode which was designed for gamers wanting more of a challenge. By enabling hardcore mode your character will now be affected by thurst, hunger and sleep deprivation, healing items take time to work and ammo can now weigh you down,  the purpose behind this is to provide more of a survival feel to the game requiring careful decsions on what items to take with you when you embark on quests. This mode sounds good in theory and is at first quite an enjoyable twist to the game but after a while it just gets boring having to backtrack through recently explored bulidings to find the one working toliet to drink out of.

Fallout New Vegas uses the same game engine as Fallout 3 and Oblivion which means it suffers from the same problems that these two games have, the main one being that the character sprites and the enviroment don't tend to get along well with each other, so you'll often find NPC's and sometimes yourself stuck behind walls and bits of pavement or having to jump up easily walkable stairs....luckly most of these problems have been fixed now due to updates and patches.

Also when you initate converstation with an NPC, time has a habit of stopping dead and both you and the AI awakardly stare at each other almost robotic like whilst you talk to each other until converstation ends, at which point time is resumed and the hammer that was inches away from your face when time paused continues to carry on with it's path to smash your teeth in.

Following on from this i have to say that my main problem with this game is the repetition of voice actors and lines of dialogue. Countless times i've heard NPC's mutter the same lines of dialogue to themselves and to me either as i was just walking past them or in deep converstation with them. In some cases it's bad enough that you can repeat the exact conversation with a character you just had a minute ago, usually with the same voice actor as the character who told you to speak to this weird chap who is obviously suffering from short term memory loss...... Maybe thats why Matthew Perry shot me, as us two are probably the only people in that world capable of independent thought.

I also found out that if you play as a female courier it is possible to have sex with him and then kill him in his sleep......and then eat him.

To summerise if you liked Fallout 3 then you will like Fallout New Vegas as it's pretty much more of the same. It's a game brimming with fresh new content that will keep you playing for hours and hours with a good deal or replayability.

Red Faction Armageddon

So after being bugged continuously by one of my best mates (yes i do have some) to get this game i finally gave in and visited blockbuster to rent this game out for the fair price of £5 for a weeks rental and i have to say I'm quite glad i did decide to rent it.

Firstly because it is a really fun game to play, this game offers endless slaughter and destruction and it never gets old especially as this game offers you lots of different ways to cause such endless chaos such as the magnet gun which works quite simply, you fire one magnetic node at one thing (your enemy for example) and another magnetic node at something else (lets say a building) and watch as they collide against each other (enemy splats into building, lulz are then had), A gun that fires mini black holes which pretty much implodes anything nearby, or once you have completed the game your given a handheld unicorn that can shit rainbows......nuff said.

Secondly because a week is all it takes to fully complete this game, at the time of writing this i have one day left on the rental and only 4 achievements left to earn. Ok one of them is to complete the game on the Insane difficulty setting but due to the rewards given to you at the end of the game, such as the ability to purchase in game cheats and to start a new game with all your unlocked weapons and upgrades, insane mode shouldn't be too difficult.

So in Red Faction Armageddon you play the roll of Darius Mason who is the grandson of Alec Mason who was the protagonist of Red Faction Guerrilla or as i like to call it Saints Row Mars. Anyway the game starts off with a monologue from Darius before focusing on several squads of Red Faction soldiers (Darius being one of them) heading towards a building known as the Terraformer (which allows the surface of Mars to become habitable) in order to aid in it's defense from a terrorist cult who wish to destroy it and drive the Red Faction and the civilian population underground into the old mining tunnels.

Well it wouldn't be much of a game if the Red Faction succeeded in their defense now would it? Sooo the Cultists destroy the Terraformer and drive the population of Mars underground, several years later Darius is a freelance mercenary and is hired by some rather suspicious people to do some digging in some ancient temple and accidentally awakens an ancient bug like alien race which then proceeds to try and kill all of humanity (oh silly Darius) and it's up to him to stop it.

The style of gameplay has drastically changed once again and now its a third person "over the shoulder" shooter filled with linear vehicle and track sections designed to break the flow of gameplay and add moments of "awesome" to whats going on and i have to say it works quite well....It's a method of gameplay thats used over and over again in these sort of games and when its done right it creates enjoyable gameplay and memorable moments within said game.

The main thing that makes this game stand out from similar games like this is the destructive scenery and the fun weaponry. Most things in the game can be destoryed using any of the weapons available to Darius and repaired back together again using the Nano Forge which is a device attached to Darius's arm which can repair almost anything using nano particles, later on in the game you can even upgrade it using salvage which is earned by blowing stuff up to use an array of special abilities such as a protective Nano Shield.

Also like every other recent game Red Faction Armageddon also has a horde/survival mode called infestation in which you and up to four players work together to either survive against wave after wave of alien attack or to defend a building against wave after wave of alien attack. Now as most other game modes of ths type focus more on the survival aspect the whole defend a buliding thing seemed quite intresting.

Unfortunatly this is flawed as every buliding in the Red Faction universe crumbles away so easily like there made from playing cards and toothpicks, so it seems to me that this game mode requires at least a full squad to fully complete as most of your time will be spent repairing the buliding, and not killing the aliens, so your going to need other people to assist you.

Also this game features a Ruin mode which from what i can tell is just a playground for you to endlessly destroy stuff to your hearts content....because i rented this game i'm unable to fully play this game mode as it requires a code to unlock which comes with brand new purchases of the game. Alternatively you can buy a code seperatly but i'm not going to spend my money on a game mode for a rented game.

Red Faction Armageddon is an extraordinary fun game with improved game play machanics that makes it feel like it's own game which was something that its predecessor Guerrilla failed to do. Combined with a mildly intresting story and over the top weaponry this makes this game definitely worth the £5 i paid to rent it.

Also heres a note to end on.....why does everyone in this game refer to the bug like aliens as aliens..... they were on Mars before the humans were so technically we are the aliens.