[The Final Dakar]

Decided this probably needs its own thread as there's been some chatter about it on Live and the old 3 thread has fallen by the wayside.

I've mentioned to sek and Bogues that I was considering this one after the first didn't really appeal to me, but it seems like I was under some kind of mistaken impression that it would feature some kind of co-op. Everything I've read recently indicates that it won't. Which kind of pushes it back to a more optional non-launch day status.

[subego]

Had it pre-ordered for a good two months now. I think I've already complained that the Amazon pre-order bonus inventory items suck, as if any of the bonus packages will be useful a few hours into the game anyway.

Of course, I haven't finished F3, or the "subego should play this" poll-winning Bioshock. I've refused to start another game until I've put these two down.

Okay... Maybe I played Portal, but who could blame me?

[sek929]

I think the fact that you can have larger in-game parties confused me and bogues into thinking it would be multi compatible. Nevertheless, I cannot wait to dive back into the Wasteland.

[The Final Dakar]

What's an in-game party (Fallout newb)?

[sek929]

You can gather followers to help you on your quest.

F3 was limited to one 'real' follower and the Dog companion. In New Vegas it would appear that they are going to allow a couple more followers, much like the older Fallouts.

[The Final Dakar]

Yeah, that must have been it. Bastards.

[subego]

Also, it'll let you adjust their "stance" to make up for brain-dead AI.

The old Fallouts were notorious for having your companions fill you full of lead if you happened to be between them and an enemy. The more recent one has companions charge any and all enemies. It doesn't matter if that enemy can see you, or if there's a wall of crossfire in the way.

At least, this was the way during escort missions, I've somehow gotten really far (maybe 70%) without finding a single companion, or finding Dogmeat. I'm a bit worried that if I find one at this point, most enemies are powerful enough that a companion would make rest of the game into a giant escort mission.


I'm not a big multiplayer person, so I'm not too familiar with the state of the art... Would there even be a way to swing multiplayer while leaving VATS intact?

[subego]

Does ballbuster hard mode appeal to anyone? I kind of like being an unstoppable freight train of destruction in F3.

[sek929]

Did you find the GECK in vault 87 yet? If not that Vault houses the best companion in the whole game, one who has an enormous amount of health, and eventually a really bad-ass weapon. You need to have good karma though.

Dogmeat will die, all the time. The only way around this is the Puppies perk included in the Broken Steel DLC, where a new Dog will appear in a short while after the old one has died.

[subego]

Not yet. As soon as I was able to get access I immediately wanted to do anything but go on with the main mission. I was way too resentful for having felt forced to do it in the first place.

Afterwards, I did Mothership Zeta (which I enjoyed, especially compared to "The Pitt" which was a letdown), and have now started clearing non-essential vaults in the hope of finding some bobbleheads.

Right now, I'm in the one where all the vault dwellers are clones of the same guy. Creepy, but thin on the loot.

I do have Broken Steel, but I've got my last few perks planned out. Also, I think having my dog die all the time would be unnecessarily depressing.

Also depressing is it's been about 2 months since I've been able to get back to it.

[sek929]

Yeah I know that Vault, everyone is named Gary, and all the Garys say nothing but Gary. Very creepy.

Next Vault on your list should be 92, it's the musicians Vault and a very rare violin is held within. It can be traded for the second-best .44 Magnum in the game.

[The Final Dakar]

[subego]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Yeah I know that Vault, everyone is named Gary, and all the Garys say nothing but Gary. Very creepy.

Next Vault on your list should be 92, it's the musicians Vault and a very rare violin is held within. It can be traded for the second-best .44 Magnum in the game.

Interesting... Of course, I'm pretty sure I converted all my .44 ammo to .308 in the Pitt.

Did you end up using it for awhile? I'd have to look at my current loadout to be sure, but I think I'm almost all energy weapons (gauss rifle/android plasma rifle/tri-beam laser rifle/alien disintegrator).


I understand the new game is going to get rid of the big guns/small guns split, but it would make more sense to me to get rid of the energy weapons/not energy weapons split.

I can see using a rocket launcher being a different skill than using a plain old pistol, but is a laser pistol going to be really that different in use?

[sek929]

Eh, well by the time I'd get the special .44 I usually have an armory of weapons.

My main weapons are usually Ol Painless (special Hunting Rifle), .308 Sniper, A321s Plasma Rifle, Alien Blaster, Nuka Grenade and Bottlecap Mines.

One of the first weapons I try and get is the Xuanglong Assault Rifle (special Chinese Assualt Rifle). At full condition it deals an amazing amount of damage per shot.

[subego]

Haven't come across it (don't tell me!). I do still have a Chinese assault rifle in my loadout for insects and stuff, though it's more fun to shishkebab them.

How many times did you play through? As I play it, I'm always imagining how I'd do a "proper" character build (maxed-out intelligence for starters), but considering I'm still on my first a few months out from the second, that doesn't really seem to be in the cards.

I may not even be finished by the time New Vegas comes out. I pre-ordered it, but I don't mind having some DLC in the pipe by the time I get around to it. The T-51 power armor and the gauss rifle are probably my favorite items in the game.

[sek929]

I've beaten the game in entirety (including all DLC) three times.

[subego]

[Does a "we're not worthy" bow]

How did you break them down? I mean, did you do a good/evil/neutral, what were your different builds, etc.?

[sek929]

I did good / evil / neutral , with neutral being the most difficult by far. The last character I beat the game with I did so on Very Hard difficulty, which was only marginally more difficult and you get loads more XP.

My first character was kind of all over the place but, as with all my characters, I would put a heavy interest into small guns, lockpick, and science. I avoid stuff like Medicine, Big Guns, and even eventually Stealth since it isn't implemented very well in this game. I bounced around with Energy Weapons, but finally decided they weren't all that useful. Barter is worthless since you should end the game with more money than you can use. Charisma became a focus of mine during my final run since it can triple your pay out in some cases and open up entirely new dialog options. Really it wasn't much use besides maybe ending a few quests early. Steal was fun for my first character, but again not much use besides exploding pants. Explosives are very important for me, as two of the most powerful weapons in my arsenal are the Nuka Grenade and BottleCap Mine. The latter is able to deal over 1100dmg with a high explosives skill, couple that with the drug Psycho (25%dmg) and you can kill most any enemy in the game with a single mine.

My perks usually focus on maximizing critical hit damage, carrying lots of stuff, and bonuses to my big three I mentioned first. Any new perk that ups your Action Points is a must as well.

I guess I am a little boring in that I didn't really vary my weapons used or overall builds, but I guess you could say I refined my approach with each player. Also, with each new player I would try to hit up special weapons and schematics as soon as possible so I could get through the game quickly and have really good weapons right off the bat. Point Lookout is great for a couple weapons (Repeater, Backwater Rifle) and the Gauss Gun from Anchorage is awesome. The Pitt has some sweet weapons, but they are tied to the tedious find 100 steel thingies quest which I cant be bothered with after doing it once for the achievement . I'm also very fond of the Tri-Beam Laser Rifle from the Broken Steel DLC.

Besides that my multiple playthroughs explored new areas, some so massive I wonder how I missed them to begin with, and found interesting ways of completing quests. Like protecting an individual for his weapon only to tun him in seconds later for a character upgrade. The game really lets you go about in any number of ways, I only wish that being Evil would at least make other evil characters no longer hostile towards you, but that is not the case.

[The Final Dakar]

Funny, I thought it said "New Vegas" in the title.

[sek929]

How can I resist being asked to talk about one of my favorite videogames?

Plus, you might have started this thread but I predict I will own it.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Plus, you might have started this thread but I predict I will own it.

I don't care about that. The only reason iI started the thread was the F3 thread was almost a year out of date and my question wasn't about F3.

[sek929]

I'm sure a mod can move all F3 discussion to the appropriate thread if it bothers you that much.

[The Final Dakar]

The only thing that bothers me is your attempt to deflect my busting your balls.

[sek929]

My balls remain un-busted.

[The Final Dakar]

Did you see there's a 75% off deal on the STALKER series on steam this week?

[sek929]

Hot damn, really?

I got a copy of the first one legit for real cheap on eBay, but I pirated the last one in Russian so maybe I'll throw the team some money since I enjoy their games so much. Unfortunately Clear Sky (the second one) is kind of an abortion.

[The Final Dakar]

I read something along those lines Friday (on Joystiq, I believe). Not sure what the details are.

[sek929]

They are going for pretty cheap. Call of Pripyat and Shadow of Chernobyl are going for 20 bucks, Clear Sky is miraculously only 10 bucks. Says on Steam that if you own a Steam version of Clear Sky or Shadow of Chernobyl then you get an even bigger discount on Call of Pripyat.

I know you're not big on ultra-realistic FPSs, and STALKER is certainly a hard game compared to what we are used to, but if your machine is up to par then I think you could do worse than 20 bucks for the first STALKER, which in my opinion is the strongest in the series overall.

I'm actually playing the first one, again, but with a massive mod called Oblivion Lost, where the developers actually took alot of their ideas for Call of Pripyat from. I suggest playing the original, or vanilla, game first.

That is, of course, if you can tear yourself away from the 360....or even have Windows installed on your machine.

[The Final Dakar]

Yeah, I'm not into ultra-realistic nor do I have dual-boot capabilities.

[sek929]

As in no Windows partition? You have a newer iMac than me now, right?

[The Final Dakar]

No windows partition. This is my third intel machine.

[sek929]

A true purist I see.

Nearly the first thing I did after my iMac arrived was get XP up and running, more for the "I can do this now" factor than anything really useful. Now that I game so much on the 'PC' I find myself booted into XP for weeks on end. Of course I have to restart every few days because XP decides to start running incredibly slow for no reason, something I've always noticed about Windows boxes.

[The Final Dakar]

I really thought I'd add it, if only for the flexibility, but what few situations I'd want use windows for would be even more tedious than the install process.

Aside from gaming do you use it for anything?

[sek929]

Well, for some reason, I can only send files from my cheapo phone to my iMac via Bluetooth in XP. I can only send files the other way in OS X. Figure that one out.

Besides that, nothing.

[The Final Dakar]

Yup cellphone ringtones would be the only reason for me to do it. Too tedious.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Yup cellphone ringtones would be the only reason for me to do it. Too tedious.

Sitting through an XP installation, and subsequent updates isn't worth getting that Miley Cyrus jam on your Razr.

[The Final Dakar]

I wish. I could get stuff onto my RAZR through OS X.

[Kevin Bogues]

Originally Posted by sek929 

How can I resist being asked to talk about one of my favorite videogames?

Plus, you might have started this thread but I predict I will own it.

I have honestly contemplated starting a fresh character in F3 in preparation for Vegas. That game consumed my life, i'm hoping for more of the same from Vegas

[sek929]

I actually did. Got about lvl 17 too.

Then one day I brought my box over to my friend's house that has the projector. Like a damn idiot, I moved the 360 with my F3 disc in and the unit on. The disc is now scratched and unreadable.

Not a massive blow since all I need is a cheap working eBay disc if I ever want to play again.

[The Final Dakar]

That freaking' sucks.

[sek929]

Yeah, I know. Couldn't have been GoW2 or Rainbow Six: Vegas, or any of the other games I own that I don't love.

[subego]

Awesome breakdown!

Originally Posted by sek929 

I did good / evil / neutral , with neutral being the most difficult by far. The last character I beat the game with I did so on Very Hard difficulty, which was only marginally more difficult and you get loads more XP.

Was neutral even really that fun (comparatively)?

Originally Posted by sek929 

My first character was kind of all over the place but, as with all my characters, I would put a heavy interest into small guns, lockpick, and science. I avoid stuff like Medicine, Big Guns, and even eventually Stealth since it isn't implemented very well in this game. I bounced around with Energy Weapons, but finally decided they weren't all that useful. Barter is worthless since you should end the game with more money than you can use. Charisma became a focus of mine during my final run since it can triple your pay out in some cases and open up entirely new dialog options. Really it wasn't much use besides maybe ending a few quests early. Steal was fun for my first character, but again not much use besides exploding pants. Explosives are very important for me, as two of the most powerful weapons in my arsenal are the Nuka Grenade and BottleCap Mine. The latter is able to deal over 1100dmg with a high explosives skill, couple that with the drug Psycho (25%dmg) and you can kill most any enemy in the game with a single mine.

How do you even effectively use a mine? Of course, it makes sense that they're useful, otherwise they wouldn't be in there.

I ended up getting a lot of barter because I used it a lot. One of my deals with all the Fallouts is I only improve the skills I use. I never liked that you could dump everything into, say, energy weapons, without having even seen an energy weapon yet.

I can see why they didn't change it, but I would have preferred something closer to Oblivion when it comes to skills.

Originally Posted by sek929 

My perks usually focus on maximizing critical hit damage, carrying lots of stuff, and bonuses to my big three I mentioned first. Any new perk that ups your Action Points is a must as well.

Interesting. If you can't tell, I'm intentionally avoiding things which make the game go more quickly. I boosted my strength, but that was purely to do more melée damage. If I have to make more runs back to home base because I'm maxed on loot, then so be it. I actually played through the first quarter of the game without using any fast travel. I would have kept doing it if traveling at night didn't suck so much.

Originally Posted by sek929 

I guess I am a little boring in that I didn't really vary my weapons used or overall builds, but I guess you could say I refined my approach with each player. Also, with each new player I would try to hit up special weapons and schematics as soon as possible so I could get through the game quickly and have really good weapons right off the bat. Point Lookout is great for a couple weapons (Repeater, Backwater Rifle) and the Gauss Gun from Anchorage is awesome. The Pitt has some sweet weapons, but they are tied to the tedious find 100 steel thingies quest which I cant be bothered with after doing it once for the achievement . I'm also very fond of the Tri-Beam Laser Rifle from the Broken Steel DLC.

I love the Tri-Beam so much I carry two.

Not really boring though. What works is what works.

Originally Posted by sek929 

Besides that my multiple playthroughs explored new areas, some so massive I wonder how I missed them to begin with, and found interesting ways of completing quests. Like protecting an individual for his weapon only to tun him in seconds later for a character upgrade. The game really lets you go about in any number of ways, I only wish that being Evil would at least make other evil characters no longer hostile towards you, but that is not the case.

I'm being sickeningly good. I do want to blow up Megaton and pants at some point.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by subego 

Was neutral even really that fun (comparatively)?

Eh, it's not like it makes the game any easier in any respect, at least evil / good nets you some different quest options and different followers. Neutral is more like be mostly evil and donate money to the church to bring you back. Funny thing is, in my first character I hit lvl 20 as neutral, even through I was doing a 'good' character. I think it was because I decided to help Ghouls take over Tenpenny Tower, which nets you a sweet mask that makes Ghouls not attack you anymore, even the terrifying Reaver.

Originally Posted by subego 

How do you even effectively use a mine? Of course, it makes sense that they're useful, otherwise they wouldn't be in there.

Regular mines are a waste of time, as are pulse mines and plasma mines. They don't do enough damage to warrant being in such a vulnerable position. My use of Bottlecap Mines are against powerful enemies: Mirelurk Hunter, Mirelurk King, Giant Radscorpion, Deathclaw, etc. Any enemy that has no ranged attacks and will chase after you in a straight line is perfect. Just place mine, alert enemy and run backwards so you can enjoy the fireworks. For enemies with ranged attacks I use the Nuka Grenade from medium range, two of them can bring down a Super Mutant Overlord with a decent Explosives skill.

Originally Posted by subego 

Interesting. If you can't tell, I'm intentionally avoiding things which make the game go more quickly. I boosted my strength, but that was purely to do more melée damage. If I have to make more runs back to home base because I'm maxed on loot, then so be it. I actually played through the first quarter of the game without using any fast travel. I would have kept doing it if traveling at night didn't suck so much.

I'll avoid fast-travel if I think it would be cooler to do so. Like after rescuing your father you are supposed to meet him all the way across the map in Rivet City, but instead of fast-traveling I decided to hoof it with pops and get into whatever fights I could find along the way. Besides that I use FT heavily, and thank god for it because I logged 300 hours in this game with FT.

Originally Posted by subego 

I'm being sickeningly good. I do want to blow up Megaton and pants at some point.

Being good is more enjoyable IMO. Every other game is kill everything you see so I took a different approach in F3. It's fun to be at the slaver camp, armed to the gills and have one of the NPCs ask what the hell you are looking at. I'm looking at an area of dead men, that's what

Being evil and blowing up Megaton means your only safehouse is now Tenpenny Tower, way in the corner of the map with nothing useful around it. That said, I did end up killing those guys begging for water. I walked 10 miles fighting off mutants for this water, hows about you get up off your ass and do the same?

[subego]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Eh, it's not like it makes the game any easier in any respect, at least evil / good nets you some different quest options and different followers. Neutral is more like be mostly evil and donate money to the church to bring you back. Funny thing is, in my first character I hit lvl 20 as neutral, even through I was doing a 'good' character. I think it was because I decided to help Ghouls take over Tenpenny Tower, which nets you a sweet mask that makes Ghouls not attack you anymore, even the terrifying Reaver.

Ahhhh! Spoiler!

Well, not too much. I already know the ghouls have a problem with Tenpenny, so it makes sense that's how it would go down.

That's a net evil quest, though?

Originally Posted by sek929 

Regular mines are a waste of time, as are pulse mines and plasma mines. They don't do enough damage to warrant being in such a vulnerable position. My use of Bottlecap Mines are against powerful enemies: Mirelurk Hunter, Mirelurk King, Giant Radscorpion, Deathclaw, etc. Any enemy that has no ranged attacks and will chase after you in a straight line is perfect. Just place mine, alert enemy and run backwards so you can enjoy the fireworks. For enemies with ranged attacks I use the Nuka Grenade from medium range, two of them can bring down a Super Mutant Overlord with a decent Explosives skill.

Okay. That makes sense. I was trying to imagine getting a super mutant to consistently chase you.

[sek929]

Oops, sorry, I tried not to give away too much as the actual details of how you go about that mission are still TBD. I guess I did spoil the reward though, but now don'tcha want it?

One bobblehead goes from hellish fight to cakewalk with it.

[The Final Dakar]

Fallout: New Vegas Achievements for your consideration | Joystiq

[Kevin Bogues]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Fallout: New Vegas Achievements for your consideration | Joystiq

umm yes please


Dakar you picking this up? or still on the fence?

[The Final Dakar]

To be honest I really don't care since there's no co-op, but I think if I hit a dry stretch down the line this'll be on my shortlist.

[Kevin Bogues]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

To be honest I really don't care since there's no co-op, but I think if I hit a dry stretch down the line this'll be on my shortlist.

Did you ever sit down and put some laps in Fallout 3? IMO for $20 there's not really a better dollar to game ratio available...

I'm sure Mr. Fatty can attest to that

[subego]

Even if I was playing at a more normal pace, the game is still almost unimaginably huge. $20 is a steal.