Review: Fallout: New Vegas: Dead Money

[Geekeric]

So, they released this game in a rather buggy state and then rather than focus on a patch to fix it, they work on DLC. And that doesn't offend the people that bought New Vegas? I'm not buying some buggy game made by a greedy developer; bad for the medium.
This franchise deserved better, way better. Obsidian, you're dead to me.

 

[darth gditch]

Are you serious?

Dead Money is pretty much an exercise in bad game design.

Enemies that a nigh-invincible to anything less to a maxed-out melee character, stealth is impossible (I know, I've tried), constantly draining health courtesy of the "this DLC was still too easy before, so lets a BS health removal mechanic to add artificial difficulty" desk, and a useless end-of-game reward that can't be carried by most player characters, and even those who can won't get much use out of it.

Some nice characters can't make up for that.

I took those facets a completely different way. The cloud limited the safe environment, it made me keep moving and rethink strategies. The end of game reward I saw as a classic greed trap. Do you drop everything else and take the gold or do you save yourself and leave the treasure that you've bled for? Which I thought was a fitting way to end.

The entire point of the superheavy gold was to make you choose. Plus, gold actually is really heavy.

And one last tip: sell the gold to the Sierra Madre vendors. They have a lot of weightless Pre-War money. Like exactly 500,000 caps worth. So exchange the gold for the weightless money before you leave.

 

[darth gditch]

So, they released this game in a rather buggy state and then rather than focus on a patch to fix it, they work on DLC. And that doesn't offend the people that bought New Vegas? I'm not buying some buggy game made by a greedy developer; bad for the medium.
This franchise deserved better, way better. Obsidian, you're dead to me.

Well, to play devil's advocate, it's a lot more complicated than that. This DLC has probs been in the works for about a year now. So they weren't working on it instead of a patch, in order to snub loyal fans, but rather they'd been working on it because that was what they planned to do years ago; they were not going to drop everything and disrupt production schedule, which could cost a ton of money, in order to work on a patch.

But this justification is unnecessary. A patch came out the same day as the DLC, so, they DID make a patch.

 

[Mr Godfrey]

I disagree about the companions. I got really attached to Boone and Veronica.

 

[beema]

DLC that I would really like to see for New Vegas is one that takes in to account what you did in/how the main storyline ended. The problem with the ending of New Vegas is that no matter which one you chose they all felt pretty much the same, and nothing really is affected, since the game ends right then and there.

Since I play on PC, my question to people who have played this DLC is: are the other (previously visited) areas of the Mojave different? Have they been affected by the outcome of the main game?
eg: If you supported Ceasar's Legion at the Dam, is the NCR completely gone and has CL taken over all the NCR outposts? Are there crucifixes up all over the place and have portions of the populace been enslaved?
If the answer is "no" then that is pretty lame and really cheapens the whole experience.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Are you serious?

Dead Money is pretty much an exercise in bad game design.

Enemies that a nigh-invincible to anything less to a maxed-out melee character, stealth is impossible (I know, I've tried), constantly draining health courtesy of the "this DLC was still too easy before, so lets a BS health removal mechanic to add artificial difficulty" desk, and a useless end-of-game reward that can't be carried by most player characters, and even those who can won't get much use out of it.

Some nice characters can't make up for that.

That's old school fallout. It doesn't play nice, It wont hold your hand, nor be your shoulder to cry on.

Except thats BS and I don't think there is a single person here who can cover that up. While I don't feel like turning my 360 to get the exact specifics on everything, I can tell you this much:

Going in, Level 30.

100 Guns
100 Sneak
50-ish Explosives
100 Lockpick
30-ish Energy Weapons

Yadda yadda yadda.

A whole bunch of Critical, +Damage for Guns, VATS and Sneak related Perks.

Even with all this, on Hard and Very Hard the enemies are impossible to sneak by. They will see you, and see you through two walls, and hear you when you are dead.

On Normal, they just have ESP, but really good ESP that lets them see me on the other side of a wall.

On Hard and Very Hard, companions will die before you get anything. Enemies are barely tickled by VATS-assisted Sneak Critical headshots with the only solid-state gun they give you...and the full magazine of VATS headshots later. There is not enough ammo in the entire DLC to deal with enemies; that is even if you survive long enough to make use of it.

On Normal they down-able, but you'll still run out of ammo too soon and too frequently, so Light help you if you don't have Melee or Unarmed.

The whole losing health thing would've been fine.....if Stimpacks had been more plentiful, or you didn't have waste all your healing items patching your brain back together after every single fight.

And the whole "Insta-Death" thing with the collars was pretty BS too; it cuts off so many options and plans and routes one can help but wonder if it wasn't put there to kill fun and exploration on purpose.

And while I had the Light Step perk (so thankfully I didn't have to deal with the trap BS), peace be to the person who doesn't and forgets to check every single fucking doorway.


So, yeah, the DLC is playable, maybe even enjoyable, for specific kinds of characters. At least none of the DLC in FO3 made that mistake; sure it may have been easier to sneak or attack, but at least they were both viable options, not with one being "bash your head on the wall 'till it comes down".

And to top it off, the end reward won't even be claimable by 90% of characters or so who do this DLC, because of the high weight cost.

Its always excuse after excuse with you isn't it? Deaths are common in fallout regardless of character build. Just retry again and again.

Excuses?

When a character with a maxed-out Sneak skill cannot sneak, and even with a maxed-out Guns skill cannot actually physically kill an enemy with a Gun on anything harder than Normal, the DLC has a problem.

Thats not an excuse, thats a fact.

Fallout has never been about BS death after BS death. This DLC however, revolves around it.

 

[Russ Pitts]

Play the tutorial for fallout 2. You don't know "BS death" until you die in the tutorial.

QFT.

 

[Communist partisan]

It dosen't seem so great I get a feeling it's more boring than Mothership Zeta and anchorage.

 

[Hargrimm]

Are you serious?

Dead Money is pretty much an exercise in bad game design.

Enemies that a nigh-invincible to anything less to a maxed-out melee character, stealth is impossible (I know, I've tried), constantly draining health courtesy of the "this DLC was still too easy before, so lets a BS health removal mechanic to add artificial difficulty" desk, and a useless end-of-game reward that can't be carried by most player characters, and even those who can won't get much use out of it.

Some nice characters can't make up for that.

That's old school fallout. It doesn't play nice, It wont hold your hand, nor be your shoulder to cry on.

Except thats BS and I don't think there is a single person here who can cover that up. While I don't feel like turning my 360 to get the exact specifics on everything, I can tell you this much:

Going in, Level 30.

100 Guns
100 Sneak
50-ish Explosives
100 Lockpick
30-ish Energy Weapons

Yadda yadda yadda.

A whole bunch of Critical, +Damage for Guns, VATS and Sneak related Perks.

Even with all this, on Hard and Very Hard the enemies are impossible to sneak by. They will see you, and see you through two walls, and hear you when you are dead.

On Normal, they just have ESP, but really good ESP that lets them see me on the other side of a wall.

On Hard and Very Hard, companions will die before you get anything. Enemies are barely tickled by VATS-assisted Sneak Critical headshots with the only solid-state gun they give you...and the full magazine of VATS headshots later. There is not enough ammo in the entire DLC to deal with enemies; that is even if you survive long enough to make use of it.

On Normal they down-able, but you'll still run out of ammo too soon and too frequently, so Light help you if you don't have Melee or Unarmed.

The whole losing health thing would've been fine.....if Stimpacks had been more plentiful, or you didn't have waste all your healing items patching your brain back together after every single fight.

And the whole "Insta-Death" thing with the collars was pretty BS too; it cuts off so many options and plans and routes one can help but wonder if it wasn't put there to kill fun and exploration on purpose.

And while I had the Light Step perk (so thankfully I didn't have to deal with the trap BS), peace be to the person who doesn't and forgets to check every single fucking doorway.


So, yeah, the DLC is playable, maybe even enjoyable, for specific kinds of characters. At least none of the DLC in FO3 made that mistake; sure it may have been easier to sneak or attack, but at least they were both viable options, not with one being "bash your head on the wall 'till it comes down".

And to top it off, the end reward won't even be claimable by 90% of characters or so who do this DLC, because of the high weight cost.

Its always excuse after excuse with you isn't it? Deaths are common in fallout regardless of character build. Just retry again and again.

Excuses?

When a character with a maxed-out Sneak skill cannot sneak, and even with a maxed-out Guns skill cannot actually physically kill an enemy with a Gun on anything harder than Normal, the DLC has a problem.

Thats not an excuse, thats a fact.

Fallout has never been about BS death after BS death. This DLC however, revolves around it.

Play the tutorial for fallout 2. You don't know "BS death" until you die in the tutorial.

Or one of those armor bypassing 8x damage criticals in the later game.
Or the fact that you take damage when your rad or poison counter is maxed out (a massive problem with Floaters).
Or your guns exploding in your face with a critical failure, leaving you completely helpless.
The only thing they deactivated was instant kill criticals for the player.

*sigh* they don't make 'em like they used to. At least back then the wasteland was as scary and dangerous as everyone said it would be.

 

[anonymity88]

Are you serious?

Dead Money is pretty much an exercise in bad game design.

Enemies that a nigh-invincible to anything less to a maxed-out melee character, stealth is impossible (I know, I've tried), constantly draining health courtesy of the "this DLC was still too easy before, so lets a BS health removal mechanic to add artificial difficulty" desk, and a useless end-of-game reward that can't be carried by most player characters, and even those who can won't get much use out of it.

Some nice characters can't make up for that.

I had a character with 60 Stealth plus the Assassin suit and could walk in front of ghost people and not be seen. My Melee skill was at less than 30 as well and I didn't suffer too badly. The cloud was bs though.

 

[Meggiepants]

I really loved this DLC. I thought the atmosphere, the story and the companions were hit out of the park. Hell, I think the companions for this DLC make the ones in the main game seem dull by comparison, and that's saying something considering you get Danny Trejo as a companion in the core game.

I also don't really understand why everyone bitches about the end loot sucking because you can't take all of it with you. That's kind of the point of the end loot. It's like that old and simple raccoon trap. If you get all tied up in how much gold you can take, you're going to get stuck. The whole game harps on how greedy men get trapped in the Sierra Madre Casino. Did you think you could trick the Casino into giving out all it's riches? If so, then maybe God was right about you.

I think some people need to be schooled a bit. Read up on some Aesop, perhaps a little "The Dog With Two Bones." Maybe then, you'll get it.

Also, if you come in at level 20, what do you need all those extra caps for? By level 20 I'm swimming in caps. I just took a couple gold bars to display in my Novac room.

 

[Necromancer1991]

Am i the only one that has had zero issues with this game? I have yet to come across any bugs in this game and i am on the 3rd play through.

Oh really? Try doing the Van Graff's last mission just after receiving Render Unto Caesar from Vulpes Inculta. It took me ages to get the main mission to a playable state, and I had to kill everyone at the fort to do so, let alone actually complete Render Unto Caesar.

What the Van graffs give quests, I just shot them all in the face and stole their guns (for Cass' quest)

 

[akibawall95]

I hope there is a DLC like Broken Steel coming soon

 

[akibawall95]

why Russ was playing as a girl?

I'm on my second character. Decided to play a female on the second go-round to see how it effects the story, etc. and figured attacking Dead Money with the then level 18 character would be more fun than playing it with my lvl. 30 badass male character. I usually play males except for when I'm trying gender-specific mechanics or screwing with my table-mates heads

Cool lol. It made a hilarious joke all the same

 

[tgbennett30]

How many gold bars did I leave with?

All of them, actually. I also took at least one of every armor and weapon, plus the big haul in the vault (the 2000 .357 rounds, which is a sizeable chunk of weight in Hardcore, plus the multiple machine guns).

All you have to do is make sure you find the ONE Stealth Boy in the DLC. If not, well, I've heard of glitchy ways to pull it off, but this one is purely in line with the game mechanics (and even the "Optional" goal of sealing Elijah in as opposed to killing him).

SPOILERS BELOW:

As soon as Elijah tells you he's coming to get you, simply turn around and walk out.....veeerrrryyyyy slowly, as you might expect; make a big sort of "P" shaped pathway - walk forward and up the stairs, go forward some more, turn right and go a bit, turn right again and then activate your stealth boy AND sneak, Elijah will see you if you don't sneak, and simply walk forward to the escape door that Elijah came in through. All told, your stealth boy will run out about 4-5 seconds after you get past the force field, and the instant it does, the field comes back up - but it's too late to catch you, and it means Elijah is trapped forever.

 

[remmus]

DLC that I would really like to see for New Vegas is one that takes in to account what you did in/how the main storyline ended. The problem with the ending of New Vegas is that no matter which one you chose they all felt pretty much the same, and nothing really is affected, since the game ends right then and there.

Since I play on PC, my question to people who have played this DLC is: are the other (previously visited) areas of the Mojave different? Have they been affected by the outcome of the main game?
eg: If you supported Ceasar's Legion at the Dam, is the NCR completely gone and has CL taken over all the NCR outposts? Are there crucifixes up all over the place and have portions of the populace been enslaved?
If the answer is "no" then that is pretty lame and really cheapens the whole experience.

so far as I understand, the content of this DLC doesn´t affect the main world, it doesn´t add to the "timeline" after the end, just to what happens up to the end of the main game.

 

[mjc0961]

I think we'd all like to take an attractive mute girl home with us. *ba-dum-tish*

Anyway I can't get any DLC right now because it's not on PC. But that's fine with me because I still haven't finished the main story once yet. I'm starting to wonder if it ever ends, actually. Every quest sends me to new characters that have new quests I have to finish before I get any progress on the original quest. I mean it's fun but I just want to get to some kind of ending already. Plus the count for how many things I want to do differently in new playthroughs is skyrocketing. I think I'll be playing this game all year at this rate.

 

[Jeffro Tull]

Are you serious?

Dead Money is pretty much an exercise in bad game design.

Enemies that a nigh-invincible to anything less to a maxed-out melee character, stealth is impossible (I know, I've tried), constantly draining health courtesy of the "this DLC was still too easy before, so lets a BS health removal mechanic to add artificial difficulty" desk, and a useless end-of-game reward that can't be carried by most player characters, and even those who can won't get much use out of it.

Some nice characters can't make up for that.

Soo... It was difficult for you and didn't play out quite the way you had hoped it would, thus it is broken design?

 

[camazotz]

The vital, missing piece of information here of course is: when is th PC version coming out??? Damn you Bethesda and your Faustian deal with XBL exclusives!!!!!