Video Games!

[Ryan_DuBois]

I figured I might as well go ahead and make a thread for this, even if we don't discuss video games quite as often as movies.

Anyway... Are you planning on getting FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS, End?! I think I'm going to try to get a copy right around Christmas (I really don't want to drop the entire $60 into it). It looks like it's been getting positive reviews so far, but apparently it's also more buggy than a hornet's nest.

As for Chrono Trigger... I stopped playing it. I liked what I did play a lot, but I just got busy. With stuff. I'll probably finish that one and Zelda sometime before the year is up, but maybe not.

[End Master]

I've basically been playing it since I went to get it at the midnight opening last night and I've taken exactly two breaks. One when I fell asleep at 6 in the morning, (waking up at around 9 am) and this would be my second break right now. (Stayed home from work obviously)

So far I'm not even IN New Vegas yet, I've been doing a lot of random exploring and I doubt if I've even explored 10% percent of the map, let alone the main quest line. I like this one better than Fallout 3 since it ties in better with the first two games. I'm playing it on hardcore mode where you have to be more careful since you have food/water and sleep meters. If you go too long without taking care of them you'll suffer stat penalties and even death. They don't seem to be annoying though and it's really easy to take care of them. (I haven't suffered any penalties yet) Ammo has weight (not much though) and you have to use a doctor bag to fix crippled limbs, just using a stimpack won't cut it. Healing isn't immediate either, things like stims and food just regenerate your hitpoints over the course of a few seconds.

They put in a bunch of survival/crafting stuff too. Like you can find items to craft your own bullets, drugs, food, weapon parts, etc. You have to have high enough stats to craft certain things as well as having the parts though.

Reputations are back in from the earlier games, you can even disguise yourself if you've done some rotten things to the various factions in the game. Like If you piss off the NCR, you can dress up like an NCR trooper and they won't immediately recognize you so you'll be able to walk around in their territory. Of course if you walk around like that everywhere, you can leave yourself open to attack from their rivals, even if you happened to be friendly with them because they'll think you're an NCR trooper too.

Next week I'm getting Fable 3 as well since I had that on pre-order too, but I think I'll probably be playing New Vegas for a long time before I even get to it.

[Ryan_DuBois]

Sounds awesome!

Maybe I'll have to get it before Christmas, after all...

[ChubbyTeletubby]

I whooped ryan twice in Starcraft.

Although game two was close.

He's actually quite good.

I used both of my aces on him, so now he's prepared. I'm fearful of game 3.

EDIT: Or am I? MWUAHAHAH!!!!

No but game 2 was pretty close.

[Ryan_DuBois]

It's true.



I can't believe how badly I lost that first one.

But, I'd be lying if I said I didn't love cheesing, myself (at least when I'm not on the receiving end)! A lot of people will get pissed off over a photon push or a zealot rush, but that's what StarCraft is -- finding out what your opponent isn't expecting and then exploiting that. It truly is a great war game.

That reaper rush is an absolute killer, though. I'm STILL not sure how to counter it when it's done right. Zergling rush? I can usually handle it. Once in a great while it might work. Reaper rush? No way. Zealots are too slow to kill them when they're micro-managed properly and it's too early in the game to surround every corner of your base with photons. They are the bane of my gaming experience.

I actually think my biggest downfall is not scouting early enough. Usually my APMs are high enough to win against an opponent who uses a typical attack -- masses of mixed ground units, in other words. If my opponent is Protoss, I go for early immortals. If I'm up against the Terran or Zerg, I usually try to put two Colossi with extended thermal lance in with my army (heavy on zealots against Terran, heavy on stalkers against Zerg. And of course, I'm usually checking out the other mineral patches with observers and spare probes about 8 - 10 minutes in.

Yup, I just need to do more early scouting. For some reason it's always hard for me to sacrifice that early probe, though. I feel like it's a waste when I don't have it mining minerals.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to our next 1v1, Chubby!

[EDIT]

By the way, I wouldn't put it past my roommate to impersonate me, so if I ever seem a little out-of-character, you can safely assume that you probably aren't playing me (or, whenever I lose a game, you can just assume it was him ).

[Ryan_DuBois]

Just got "New Vegas"; I've only played for about 10 minutes so far, but I can tell I'll like it -- it basically looks like "Fallout 3" with a new setting and a couple tweaks, which is a good thing.

[End Master]

I still haven't made it to New Vegas yet (It's in sight though), I'm still getting distracted by all the exploring. So far I got a Ex-NCR sniper and an Enclave Eyebot following me, which made combat a lot easier when I found this irradiated vault full of tough ghouls. It's probably the hardest area I've experienced so far in the game. (More to come no doubt) It was dark, you're absorbing rads by the second and the ghouls are so fast they're upon you before you can even kill them most of the time. In the past I rarely bothered taking any of the drugs in the fallout games and usually just sold them for bottle caps. I was popping pills left and right when I was going through that place just so I could get some extra damage and increase my own defense rating. (How I didn't get addicted I have no idea.)

I've encountered a couple of places where the radiation is a constant danger if you want to explore it (And get some good equipment). Makes having stuff like rad-x, rad away and radiation suits a lot more necessary.

I found having the cannibal trait helps in hardcore mode. No need to carry as much food anymore since you can just eat the people you kill. You can even upgrade it to "Ghastly Scavenger" which allows you to eat ghouls and super mutants too.

[Ryan_DuBois]

Man, I haven't found the cave yet, but the game is awesome. I didn't realize how much I missed "Fallout 3" until I started in last night and went in a Fallout trance until 6:00 a.m. I too, am doing the hardcore mode.

I have been doing less exploring, I think (I've followed the main quest to New Vegas already, but I'm not yet in the main strip -- you have to pay a robot 2000 caps to get in), but I did end up doing some sweet side quests. My favorite so far was helping a bunch of "friendly" ghouls and a disillusioned human (who believes he is a ghoul) fly off in a bunch of antique rockets. They probably all crashed, but my reputation went up for helping them!



Just like in "Fallout 3", my character is pretty much a pill-popping drunk, but I'm doing alright. I put all of my initial points towards strength, endurance, and charisma, which I feel are the most important. On top of that, I always drink water from a toilet, sink, or lake to restore my health and then just go to the doctor from the beginning to cure my radiation sickness when it gets too bad (I wear a space suit and drink from the 0+ radiation Lake Las Vegas when possible to prevent it).

The hardcore mode isn't as difficult as I expected, but I still like it, since I feel more like a true waste-lander when I have to drink out of toilets and go to doctors and such, rather than just sleep in a bed to heal everything.

Great stuff.

I like it about the same as "Fallout 3", and I feel almost like it IS "Fallout 3" with a new setting. Which is a very good thing. Hopefully they'll bring the expansions for this one to the PS3, since they only released them with the game of the year edition for "Fallout 3".

[EDIT]

I think I ran into that vault, by the way (Vault 34?). I died several times in there, although I found the golden gekko to be a worse threat than the ghouls. It sucked when I dead-ended and had to leave since I still have basically no lock-picking or hacking skills yet.

[End Master]

Heh, my science skill was really high so I just said some passcode and the securitron let me in without checking my caps. (Yes, I eventually did get to the strip!)

So Ryan, did you beat it yet? I just finished it, and the ending was way better this time around since they actually showed you what happened to various people, places and factions depending on what you did.

Ultimately I instituted a completely independent New Vegas, and nobody really owned it in the end. But I was still friendly with NCR so that sort of helped in the final battle since they weren't attacking me. The final battle is a lot more challenging than it was in Fallout 3. The last legion guy takes a lot of damn punishment. You can hit him multiple times in the head with a gauss gun or anti-material rifle and he still doesn't go down. Fortunately I managed to recruit the Remnants of the Enclave to help and got some of their power armor along with upgraded securitrons from New Vegas.

Lot of replay value, I'll be taking a break from it for awhile, but I know I'll come back to it a few more times to side with the other factions and get the different endings.

[Ryan_DuBois]

Beat it this morning!



I have to say that I liked "Fallout 3" better, before I go on about how good it is, though. I think it was the fact that the main story in "Fallout 3" was more structured/longer, and somehow I liked the setting better. And there were way less bugs.

Anyway.

"New Vegas" is still badass, and probably has a LOT more content and side quests than "Fallout 3". I ended up killing both the Legion and the NCR (I didn't really want to wipe out the NCR, but my charisma was so low that I had no hope of convincing them not to fight -- I stopped putting points into the more "diplomatic" skills). My ending was sorta grim, lol. I did have an independent Vegas, too, though.

I kept trying to find the remaining Enclave members, but I never did (kinda sucks, since they were probably pretty cool guys -- that weird president from 3 was the only thing keeping them down). The only faction that I met and really liked was the Great Khans -- the Brotherhood and the NCR were constantly doing weird shit to me (the Brotherhood put an explosive collar on my neck and forced me to smash an NCR dude's radio while in my pajamas at one point). I never got to separate the Great Khans from the Legion forces, though, due to a bug where I can't get some guy off a crucifix. Anyway, great stuff. Oh, and those mutants at the ski resort were pretty nice.

I'd write more, but my roommate wants to go head-to-head on StarCraft, and since I've been bragging to him, I'd better go decimate him!

[EDIT]

He handed my ass to me. Not sure how he did it, since he's in Silver League and I'm around Gold/Platinum (based on how I generally beat gold players), but he did. I'm never going to hear the end of it now.



I think it's that unconventional strategy of his. Never expected mass vikings.

Anywho.

Yeah, I'll be playing "New Vegas" for months to come, I'm sure. For one thing I'm going to track down the Enclave guys. Then maybe work on my charisma so I can get a better ending or something. I like the fact that the level cap starts out at 30, since I'm only like 16 - 17 right now (stumbling upon the Alien Blaster early in the game helped a lot). The hardcore mode was easier than I expected, which is probably good. I tried putting the game difficulty on "hard" at one point and died like four times in a row before I realized that normal was a better option. Still, I like the constant need need to drink, sleep, and eat for some reason.

The final battle was fun; the Alien Blaster made the final Legion boss easier to kill, I think, but from the Hoover Dam onwards, I was still dying about every ten minutes. I had securitrons, too, which helped up until I entered the Legion base. Since Boone had died, my only other help on the Dam was this ghoul named Raul (who is mostly just an old mule for extra items, if you didn't already rescue him).

[End Master]

I was playing on hard difficulty along with it being on hardcore mode, but I imagine having the alien blaster (I never found it) would've helped a lot for the Legion boss. At the time I got to him, I had ED-E, Boone with an Anti-material rifle and a displacer glove, an upgraded Mk2 Securitron, and an Enclave guy with a gatling laser. I had a gauss rifle and a unique displacer glove (Pushy). With that many people helping me I managed to run around long around healing myself (and my followers) and shooting him and the rest of the legion until they were all dead.

Those displacer gloves are powerful, they're like the ballistic gloves the Praetorian guard wear except with a much lesser strength requirement so you can get a lot more punches in. You don't even have to high unarmed skill, you can pretty much one shot punch someone in the head and they'll usually die barring some of the higher up legionnaires and the last guy.

I had a pretty upbeat ending for independent New Vegas. But I ended up wiping out the Khans, Powder Gangers, the Fiends and the Omertas so I didn't really have any organized "gangs" left in the ending to raid the surrounding areas, though it said the Khans regrouped again moved to re-establish in Idaho I think.

Killed Mr.House and the Legion of course. I actually killed Caesar when I visited his camp for a quest before the final battle, that was pretty hard due to all the Praetorian guards he has around him. I had to kill the NCR General in the end, but that was about the only time I had to fight NCR troops. Pretty easy too considering I had an army of Securitron Mk2s show up to help.

Most of the settlements mentioned in my ending were better off. Primm had a robot sheriff, Goodsprings and Jacobstown started thriving, Novac still got attacked, but the ghouls from the rocket quest came back and helped rebuild it. Oddly, the main ones who were the most in favor of a completely independent New Vegas were the Followers of the Apocalypse and they got one of the "bad" endings. Said their little compound was constantly swamped with wounded and they were always overworked.

Left the Brotherhood alone since I was on good terms with them (They upgraded ED-E to have more defense). I didn't get the slave collar put on me since I was traveling with a scribe of theirs when I visited them. I replaced their Elder and they became more aggressive in the end. The Kings were still in power too, but they were pretty fair.

The Boomers helped me at the final battle by dropping a bunch of bombs from their B-29. Getting the old guys from the Enclave is sort of a complex process, you have to recruit this guy Arcade and travel with him for awhile and eventually towards the end of the game he'll mention being ex-enclave and tell you where to find them all, then you go meet them in their old bunker. It's cool when they arrive in battle, they swoop down in a vertibird and they're dressed in their old enclave uniforms or power armor. (You get an ending for them too)

Since they all lived, my followers got endings except for Boone for some reason. ED-Es ending is sort of amusing because it's just a system of beeps and bleeps rather than a regular voice over.

[JJJ-thebanisher]

Installing New Vegas right now.

[Ryan_DuBois]

Installing New Vegas right now.

Gl, hf.

[EDIT]

Am I the ONLY one wearing a Halloween costume, by the way? I was sorta hoping everyone would join in...

You know.

Switch the avatar to something cool for a day.

No?

Maybe?

Alright, just me. But I'm still wearing this costume with pride!

[End Master]

Okay, I'm a sport. I didn't bother changing it too much, but still appropriate considering the topic in this thread.

[JJJ-thebanisher]

This game kicks ASS.