Some examples of what I dislike about New Vegas.
The game world is EMPTY. Yes, the towns and points of interest on the map have lots of details and events going on. Everything BETWEEN the towns is a vacant wasteland. Fallout 3 had TONS of places in the world that weren't 'map marker' worthy but still awesome. You could start anywhere in Fallout 3, spin around, start walking and find incredible stuff. For example, in Fallout 3 you'd encounter these old radio towers. Turn the power on, and you'd pick up a signal. Track the signal by using your radio (The signal would get better as you got closer to the entrance) and you'd find an old hastily constructed fallout shelter. They usually just had a few supplies and corpses... but it was incredibly atmospheric. It really brought you into the game world of "This is the post apocalyptic." Other examples: Burned out stretches of houses, looted shops, etc. Heck, the Dunwich building (the chuthulu themed building with tons of ghouls) was awesome... but it wasn't part of any quests. It was just there. Nothing in New Vegas is "Just there." If fast travel was enabled to all locations in New Vegas from the very start, you wouldn't miss anything. The game world itself may as well be flat repeating terrain between the locations. Obsidian claimed New Vegas was "Just as big" as Fallout 3... but that's like comparing Anarchy Online to World of Warcraft. You don't get credit for "bigness" for miles and miles of flat terrain with repeating textures.
The retreat behavior: A human enemy below a certain health usually runs away... and cowers in the corner. Okay, I can understand this behavior for 'civilians' and 'town folks' but RAIDERS and SOLDIERS cowering and just waiting to be shot? Obsidian just plugged in for AI behavior "If health is low, run away and cower" and considered that 'smart enough.' I remember in Fallout 3, one moment that impressed me was I was fighting a group of Super-mutants... one had a missile launcher and the rest had melee weapons. I sniped the missile launcher guy... and then one of the guys with a melee weapon went over, picked the missile launcher up and blew me up with it. Such a simple logical behavior... and it's nowhere to be found in New Vegas. Here's what the AI behavior SHOULD have been
- If health is low, run to cover away from whatever hurt you last. Find a spot to break line of sight. If no obstacles exist, just run. Use stimpack/food to heal up.
- If you are out of ammo, search for a weapon off a dead ally. Return fire from a safe distance.
- If you are trying to run away and are cornered, fight back (This is particularly game-breaking when a slaver who you shot in the leg is just sitting there cowering, you blow him away and find he has lots of weapons).
Guns: $1. Bullets: $1000. So a raider attacks you and you kill him. You loot his body and find a 10mm pistol and... 4 bullets. He only shot at you maybe three times before you sniped him in the head... so he decided to engage you in battle with only 7 bullets? Maybe it's isolated and... nope. Here's an NCR ranger with a service rifle and 5 bullets, a slaver with a submachine gun and 3 bullets. If you could melt guns down into bullets you could make a fortune in New Vegas. I understand that 'scrounging for ammo' is supposed to be difficult, but the way they implemented it is simply ridiculous. There comes a point about 4 hours into the game where you have enough ammo to shoot up a dictionary one word at a time and enemies will still attack you with 4 bullets for their machine gun.
Absolute lack of crowd tactics. Five enemies attacking you behave exactly the same as one enemy attacking you. No strategy, no tactics. I fought down a group of 5 powder gangers (Escaped convicts who use dynamite)... and only ONE of them threw a dynamite at me. The rest charged in with melee (and got blown up by the dynamite). I search their corpses, and they ALL have at least 2 sticks of dynamite.
Enemies who attack like Goombas. "Move in a straight line towards the player, attack." That's the behavior. No "Take cover" no "Use explosives to flush you out" just... straight line and attack. I'd say a full 10% of my kills in the game are from enemies running into walls or just cowering waiting for me to kill them.
No mount system. An enemy is chasing me, I jump over a 2' high wall. The enemy stops, runs against the wall for a few seconds, then turns and starts running around the wall... with me shooting him the whole time. Come on, how hard would it have been to implement "Press spacebar to climb up this obstacle" like so many games have now?
Half the battles feel like I'm cheating. Even playing 'legitimately' the enemies fall into either "Cannon fodder" or "Will insta-glib you so exploit the AI weakness to survive." It's like how you could beat Mortal Kombat (the original) by jumping backwards and kicking... the enemy would just walk into your kick over and over and you could win the game that way... but would you feel like you 'won'? It really diminishes the overall gameplay. Exploitable AI should not factored into the difficulty curve, fix the exploit!
The companions are godly or cannon fodder. Boone is the reincarnation of Cassidy from Fallout 2. Most of the times when he runs off, even on "Very hard" difficulty, I find him surrounded by dead enemies and totally unharmed. The alternative is to turn on 'hardcore' mode, where one headshot and your companion is gone forever, totally negating all the effort you put into getting them. Your companions are either GOD, or a cardboard cutout with "God" written on it. I would have preferred to see it where your companions need to be given weapons and ammo and don't pop back to full health the moment they are out of combat. If your companion goes down, he should get back up at 1 hp and you'll need to blow through some supplies to heal him back up... otherwise he'll go back down if he stubs his toe next fight.
Companion behavior: Great improvement, not far enough. "Okay Boone, you're a great sniper. I want you to stay behind me and shoot whoever I'm shooting." "Got it boss, charge into combat and snipe whoever I want." "No... I need you to stay with me." "Right, charge around the corner from you and stare at a wall because there's someone on the other side." "... Sure we'll go with that."
Maybe when the FOOK team finishes their major overhaul of New Vegas I'll give it a try again. Otherwise, it's just sitting unused and neglected because it simply doesn't offer anything new.
