::Snipes Elvis Chimney for sticking his head above the parapet… this time from within the mouth of a large dinosaur::
Ok I’ve been a naughty boy. I haven’t bought a strategy guide for a game since… well, since the internet. But I now own it, in case anyone has questions.
Got back from Wal-Mart a few hours ago, installed and started playing. I love this world. In fact, I would trade it for my real life in a heartbeat. OK, maybe not, but still…its as immersive and fun as ever!
PCGamer.com has a write up on hardcore mode:
The one thing that bothers me is number 5. If dumb companion AI means that most combat is deadly to them, and if they dies the stay dead, that’s going to get old right quick.
What’s the point of playing in hardcore mode if you just quick-travel all over the place?
I didn’t use quick-travel in F3, I wont be using it in NV either!
I would like a way to move quicker over the wasteland though. Perhaps a car like in F2 or a motorbike. How about an F.E.V.-mutated intelligent Deathclaw mount (declawed)? I just hate the immersion-breaking way it’s implemented in Fallout3/Oblivion.
Gah, defeated near Goodsprings by stupid geckos trying to help a feller’s woman out (which turned out to be a ruse).
Killed him no prob, but too many geckos and weak weapons afterwards. Cock.
Yeah, in Fallout 3, the first time I saw Dogmeat, he became an ally of mine. First fight I got into, Dogmeat jumps across my field of vision during VATS.
Dogmeat got a combat shotgun round to the back of the skull.
So, yeah. That was it for Dogmeat for me.
As someone that had to schlep thousands of pounds of gear across the wasteland to Megaton after defeating the Enclave, I don’t appreciate your love of immersion.
I’ve played for about 2 hours, I like it. It’s the same setup as Fallout 3 but thats great. I really liked the Fallout 3 music so I’m not a huge fan of the lounge lizard/western tunes but I understand had to change it up. Fallout 3 had the hazy post apocalyptic atmosphere making it realistic (however depressing) but New Vegas seems to harken back to its more humorus roots…since I haven’t played tons of 1 and 2 I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like.
I picked Hard Core and pumped up my speech, I want to experience the ‘expanded story lines’.
Had several more crash-free hours. I think the problem was in trying to fast-travel before I was prompted to; you get a chance to re-customize your character as you first leave Goodsprings.
I’m really diggin’ the setting so far. The radio stations seem to have a rather limited selection of songs, though. Also, I have a sudden craving for sarsaparilla, and I’m not even sure what it is.
It may be worth noting that Obsidian is made up at least partially of people from Black Isle Studios. As in, the original developer who created the Fallout series. 
So it’s definitely not surprising that it’ll feel more like the first two than FO3 did.
I was reading up on Obsidian due to some of the comments made in this thread about their crash-prone games, and it does look like their only non-licensed venture Alpha Protocol suffered in the gameplay and technical aspects even though the story was very deep and interesting. Given that they’re using Bethesda’s engine, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to spend a lot more development time on story and setting than actual infrastructure, resulting in the best of both worlds.
Everything I’m hearing says FO:NV is really good, aside from a few minor issues (which, let’s be honest, FO3 had in spades too). Shame, too, I’m not sure I should put down the money for it just now…
I’m looking into creating a new radio station with the NV GECK, which will allow users to listen to the tracks I provide or their own. Yes, I was spoiled by the 100 track mod for GNR.
I’ll wait and see what people say about the ending, first, since that’s traditionally where Obsidian buggers it up, but sounds good so far.
I wonder how difficult it would be to Frankenstein bits of FO3 into the new game, with the modding tools?
Well, I pre-ordered and downloaded; now all I have to to is gnash my teeth until Friday. Damn you Westerners and your early releases.
Not just this, but the primary writer is Chris Avellone, who quite literally wrote the Fallout Bible.
Just wanted to say if you’re kind of iffy on the game, you might want to wait until the black friday Steam sale. I don’t know how much it will be discounted for sure (if at all) but I’d guess it’ll probably be 33% off in a daily sale.
I’m never in a rush to get single player games since they’re just as good a few months later as on release day (better, really, with some patches and mods). There’s no pressure to start soon with everyone else like there is in multiplayer games. Plus now with steam most of the games I buy I wait for a 75% discount anyway.
Well, I’ve played for 12 hours and still haven’t actually made it into New Vegas. It’s been fun so far, though a few odd things have happened. One of them was that I was attacked by the Powder Gang before I could really make any sort of choice…was just wandering around and a bunch of them jumped me. I guess they are a faction, but they were hostile immediately, so I just started killing them…and every one I killed my reputation went down with them (and continues to go down, though it’s the same level that gets announced all the time).
The weird thing is that when I went into the prison to rescue the sheriff, all of the items laying about are red…I can’t take any of them without a karma hit. Even after I killed every gang member the stuff stays red and says I’m stealing it when I go to take it…hell, even opening the vending machines is enough. That’s…odd, at least I don’t remember anything like that in the other games.
I’ve started to run up against what is probably the nastiest mob I’ve ever even imagined…freaking super-mutants that are completely stealth-ed. Woofa! And unlike their Chinese compatriots, they don’t become unstealth-ed (at least not to my character) even when they are bashing you with a sledgehammer.
It’s been fun thus far and I’m looking forward to actually getting to New Vegas sometime in the near future.
-XT
Are they Nightkin?
WARNING:
There is a quicksave/autosave issue with the game!
I just lost 3 hours of gameplay 
Gonna have to start from scratch.
Apparently Steam is borking the saved files and either corrupting them, or reverting to a save from early in the game (that’s what happened to me).
If it should happen to you, open up your saves folder. If you see a fos.bak set of files, those might be your lost save. You need to copy those to a safe place first, then delete the .fos files, and rename the .fos.bak files to just .fos. And you need to do this while the game is RUNNING (so alt + tab).
This is really just unacceptable though. Damn it! I was doing so good.
Another option is to rename the .fos.bak file to something else like and changing the extension to just .fos. The game then treats it as a hard save. Which is what I should have been doing!
I didn’t bother hardsaving, just quick saving then exiting the game. Not sure if Steam will mess around with hard saves too, it might.
Played about 4 hours last night. I loved Fallout 3, and so far this is more of the same, maybe even a little better. Loving it. I’m surprised by how little I’ve actually accomplished in the game in that amount of time, though. I spend too much time going through every dialogue tree and selling every tin can I come across.
I do feel like the song rotation might be even shorter this time. Man, I’m really going to hate “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” by the end of this game.