Monday Musings - 22nd Aug, 2011

This week i will be primarily talking about Fallout: New Vegas. With that said, let's muse.


Persona 4 (PS2)

I only played one evening of this last week. To say that Fallout: NV has a hook on my game time is putting that sentiment lightly. Still i spent a couple hours dungeon crawling and fusing personas into better personas. I now have a spell that can exit from a dungeon if i need to go renew my SP (the mana of the game) so that's really handy.

I said last week that the dungeon crawling is my least favourite aspect of the game so this is another factor to my lack of playing the game. I do find it amusing though that the two main games i am playing at the moment happen to be an Eastern RPG and a Western RPG. Good examples of both genres too in my humble opinion.


Fallout: New Vegas (Steam)

I hit the 20 hour mark last night. I'm up to the final mission, so since i'm loving the world so much, i've decided to travel and see all the other quests i can do. I had a lengthy discussion with my friend Andrew (our gaming podcast is returning soon by the way) last night about it, as the game didn't click for him, especially after Fallout 3 and i'm the opposite. His main criticism is that there seemed to be no reason for people to trust you and main story aside (until you get to New Vegas) he felt like he was wandering a desert wasteland.

Now last week i said part of the appeal of the game was this cowboy atmosphere, and that has continued, but now that i've played so much of the game and started clearing off all the side quests, the reason for my enjoyment is becoming more apparent. Those who have played a Fallout game know part of the charm of the series has been the multiple ways to finish quests and solve people's problems. This can also come at a cost. Sometimes you don't have the skill points to finish a quest the way you want to and things end sub-optimally. Other times you finish a quest and get the feeling you've missed out on a large chunk of the story. Part of this i put on the back of the faction system (although my plans for the White Glove Society were ruined by a glitch in the quest chain i believe).

There are a few factions i am hostile with, and a couple of those are by choice, but what's funny is that even with the White Glove Society glitching out (which caused me to slaughter them), i'm sticking by my decisions. Sure it makes things annoying having to deal with groups of enemies ambushing me whenever i travel the Mojave, but it makes things interesting.

I've kind of sidetracked off my point though. By exploring and side-questing, i'm filling in the blanks of all the story. I'm finding areas that other groups talked about. I was questing for the Van Graffs and picked up a companion called Cass. In the end this made me turn on the Van Graffs and i felt bad for having to do so until more of the story unveiled itself. I think what it's teaching me is make no assumptions about any of the groups, play things out to the end, and deal with the consequences.

Also funnily enough, in New Vegas i'm enjoying levelling up and becoming a badass. I dunno if it's cause i stuck to the main story and was always looking for better weapons (i love my hunting rifle) or that it's just cause i'm enjoying the game that much more. I'm level 19 now, and can't wait to max out. Heck, i'm even wondering if i'll still be enamoured with the game enough to purchase some DLC. We shall see. We shall see.


Final Thoughts

The past couple weeks have seen domination of this column by pretty much one game. Before New Vegas it was Persona 4. Now i've talked about having trouble sticking to one title (and i think this column benefits from that trouble as talking about one game a week might be kind of boring), but perhaps it's a sign of my attention span growing more focused. I have a form of Attention Deficit Disorder. It's a mild form, and i've never taken anything for it, but the signs are there, especially when it comes to focusing on things.

In the past i have put the blame of this on the games themselves. If they don't hold my interest, it's not meant to be. Then again, if a game holds my interest to the end, i have cherished it. I think it's a gamer thing though to always be lured by the new. I bought New Vegas in a steam sale last week and i wanted to give it a try so i put down Persona 4 and did so. If NV was a bad game, i would have returned to Persona, but the opposite happened. I've been hooked and almost exclusively playing New Vegas for over a week now. This also makes me feel really bad about leaving Persona 4 alone because i want to finish that game (and even have made plans to max out all my social links and create perfect fusions of every persona). Perhaps once i'm done with New Vegas i'll return to Persona and there will be no issue, but in the past leaving a game for a new game has meant that the game left gets put on the back burner.

I guess i'll have to let this ride out and see what comes. I try and make sense out of all my gaming habits but most of the time they're just confusing. Still, playing one game exclusively is a nice change of pace. It changes my normal game time from "Do i want to play a game, and if so, which one?" to "Ok, game time! Loading up New Vegas!".

Till next time, happy gaming all!