Fallout: New Vegas is a free-roaming RPG that takes place in Las Vegas and the surrounding Mojave Desert, centuries after a nuclear apocalypse. New Vegas resurrects the spirit of the classic Fallout games, complete with dark, tongue-in-cheek humor, while building upon the updated gameplay mechanics of its more recent predecessor, Fallout 3. The result is a compelling and addictive, albeit buggy, experience with high replayability value.

Graphics: 4/10

It would be a lie to say that there is anything state-of-the-art, or even really pretty, about New Vegas' graphics. The graphic effects get the job done just fine, but that's it—don't expect to go "ooh, ah." Compared to other big-name games of the time, graphics aren't really this game's strong suit. Don't get the wrong idea—the graphics aren't bad. They're just average.

Sound: 3/10

As with the graphics, the sound effects get the job done, but that's it. Unfortunately, unlike the graphics which are merely dull, the sound is often annoying. The radio, NPC idle chatter, and even the ambient music tend to be very repetitive. After dedicating enough hours to playing this game, you would swear that if you heard one more NCR trooper say "Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter," you would chuck your computer out of a high window. The only redeeming factor is that the music on the radio—repetitive though it may be—is a fun, appealing blend of cowboy songs and show tunes from the '30's and '40's.

Addictiveness: 10/10

The true measure of a game's worth is its addictiveness, and this is where Fallout shines. Simply put, if a person wants to keep playing it all the time, then it must be a good game. Fallout is so addictive because of its depth (see below), and also because of how fascinating the setting is. The human mind loves to imagine the world as it could be, with humanity still struggling to survive centuries after being devastated by atomic war. Add in a slew of interesting characters (such as a guy who took the title of Caesar and founded a new Roman Legion), a unique sense of humor (just wait 'til you find Indiana Jones' corpse in a refrigerator in the desert), and a healthy blend of action and dialogue, and the result is a fun experience that demands to be played for hours on end.

Story: 8/10

While New Vegas may be lacking in terms of an emotionally compelling, player character-centered story, it has a very complex tale to tell nonetheless. The story of New Vegas is about the political environment of the Mojave Wasteland. The New California Republic, Caesar's Legion, and the mysterious Mr. House all struggle for control over the Las Vegas Strip and Hoover Dam, and the people of the wasteland are caught in the middle. To avoid spoilers, this section will be kept succinct. If you're interested in faction-based stories, you ought to love New Vegas; however, if you're more interested in character-based stories then you might prefer another title, such as Fallout 3.

Depth: 10/10

This game has so much to offer that it boggles the mind. Firstly, the player character is highly customizable. Player characters can be saints who clean up slums, free slaves, and peacefully convince the bad guys to go away. Alternatively, player characters can be devils who casually slaughter innocent civilians, cannibalize their corpses, and then sell the leftover human flesh to unsuspecting traders. Player characters can have a wide range of skills and statistics to specialize in several different combative and non-combative techniques. There is also a variety of gear to choose from. No two player characters are the same, and the game requires several playthroughs to gain a full appreciation of different character builds. Furthermore, there are many side quests in addition to the main storyline. Even the main storyline itself has four main branches, depending on which faction the player wishes to align themselves with. Finally, the world is very large and full of locations to be discovered. The game even offers a special "explorer" perk to high-level characters to reveal all locations on the player's map because otherwise, there would be no way to be sure all locations are found and explored. All in all, it would take many days to complete all possible side quests and explore every location. Finally, there is an extensive modding community for this game because of the easy-to-use modding tools that the game's developer provided—while this does not pertain to the base game, it is relevant because when you finally feel like you've exhausted everything the game has to offer, you can download user-created content to give the game a fresh new twist. These factors cause Fallout to have an extremely high replayability value; it is simply impossible to experience the full game in one playthrough.

Difficulty: 4/10

The combat in New Vegas is disappointingly easy. Once the player gets the hang of combat, it simply isn't a challenge anymore, even at higher difficulty settings. The redeeming factor is that New Vegas, unlike Fallout 3, features an optional "hardcore mode." When enabled, this hardcore mode requires the player character to eat, sleep, and stay hydrated in order to survive. Even this mode doesn't provide too much of a challenge, though.

Overall: 8.7/10

The game may be lacking in sound quality and difficulty, and it may even be buggy at times, but its depth and addictiveness more than make up for its shortcomings. There is so much to do in the game, and it is the sort of game that you will never grow bored of once you get hooked.

Nice write. This is informative and readable.


I never knew there was so much to New Vegas, though I did know there were a lot of sanbox aspects to it. Also I agree completely on the audio. It's just so...bleh. It doesn't offer anything worth bothering to listen to, and actually becomes annoying rather quickly. It sounds like the rest of the game makes up for it though.

CJOLL : this is a really good review for your first time, it was just great nice and long and gives a good gist of what the game is, also the graphics at the time were pretty good for what it was remember this game came out a few years ago, and the music I agree fallout 3 had really good music but I just got annoyed quickly.

Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm obsessed with New Vegas and I thought that this would be a good starting point for contributing to Vizzed. The funny thing is, I started out wanting to give a rating of 9.9. It wasn't until I tried writing an objective review that I really thought about the game's shortcomings.

As far as the graphics go, I stand behind my opinion. New Vegas was released less than a year before Skyrim—a comparable game from the same company—and yet Skyrim is significantly ahead of New Vegas in terms of graphics. Also, I've seen user-created mods that make New Vegas much more beautiful than the base game, so I know the developers had access to resources that would have done more justice to the graphics. Don't get the wrong idea though—the graphics aren't bad. They're just average.

I never played this game, but I really wanted to because I loved Fallout 3 a lot and I heard so many good things about it but I could never manage to really pay for it.

I think that you have done a really good job with this review, its a very good length with very good formatting, you put in a ton of detail and didn't think twice about saying that something was bad, you did a very good job.

Can't wait to see a few more reviews by you in the future.

Thank you very much! Your kind words are appreciated. I've considered reviewing some of the other titles in the Fallout series, and I'll probably get around to it eventually. The main obstacle is that I just moved back in at college. There's just not enough time in the day, haha.

CJOLL : If you haven't done one for Fallout 3, I would definently want to read one for that game for Windows.

I actually haven't played that one in years. I'm not sure if it's fresh enough in my mind for me to do a review about it.