Fallout: New Vegas - Finishing games before release is a thing of the past.

Again, little late for this, but I guess I'm catching up on some overdue homework.

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If you've heard anything at all about Fallout: New Vegas, then you've heard about how buggy the game is. For the uninitiated, here's a taste: Quests break constantly and cannot be continued; NPCs disappear when you leave the area and come back, making quest hand-ins impossible; World entities such as items or even characters get jammed or lost or clipped about a mile below the ground. You NEED the developer console and the respective commands to just PLAY the game. If you're playing on the PS3 or the Xbox, you are fucked. Fortunately, the story is alright, and the setting and events fit together well. You'd expect that the major unification faction of the West (developed in previous Fallout games) the NCR, would eventually make its push eastward and encounter resistance. And the location matters: an invaluable energy source post-apocalypse, the Hoover Dam, and the blast furnace of a new economy, the casinos and resorts of Vegas. Trading companies from all over struggle for control in the area, but are considered insignificant in the highly discerning eyes of Vegas. However, the city needs power (the dam), and the power needs the city (money to operate and maintain it), and everything in FNV seems to fall into the balance in the same way. Fallout 3 wasn't quite as good in terms of seeking that balance in setting and lore, but felt like it had more content and hours of fun regardless. In fact, a lot of my experience in FNV was spent retreading old territory because of the bugs and the constant need to replay a segment to avoid it. Statistically, I made a total of fifty saves in FO3. FNV was near 800.

Bugs aside though, I was also a little disappointed by the lack of a climactic super weapon at the end of the game ala Liberty Prime and the FEV. While Helios One was a very very very cool location, it didn't have the significance and impact I wanted on the outcome of the story. The Boomers and their carpet bombing is pretty awesome though, but was unfortunately just a short fly by and a result of an isolated sidequest.

Hoover Dam, the final battle site, and also the major location talked about from beginning to end, is a popular topic in our reality for conspiracy theorists, who believe it was constructed to house a top secret American weapon. What better location than to put something awesome in an alternate universe storyline where America has plenty of money, no ethical boundaries, tons of robotics and is willing to pulverize their communist enemies in any manner? Disappointingly, FNV doesn't try to explore that at all, and the Dam is just a regular hydroelectric plant. After all that build up, that's all we get? Really? I was really hoping for a result or weapon that would have consequences on the world, not just the west coast, like you know, when in previous Fallouts they were developing viruses to turn EVERY human into a mutant, or maybe in Van Buren, where they were going to control all the nukes stored in the orbital bombardment satellites. That's heavy stuff.

FNV was good enough overall, but next time I really hope the developers actually finish their game before releasing it next time. The industry is already starting to copy their style of 'release first, finish later'. Just look at Age of Conan, or perhaps worse, Magicka.