Short Version - 8/10 snowglobes.

War. War never changes.

These words once again begin a long and entertaining story that will take around a nuclear wasteland. This time, the landscape is set in Nevada around the town of New Vegas.

The feel of the game is similar to Fallout 3. Nuclear Wasteland, roving bands of bandits and thugs, armies about to clash. There are some much needed improvements in the game.

For starters, the color palate is larger. It is not the dull and various greys of D.C. The landscape is sprinkled with greens and yellows of cacti and small plants. The sky is actually blue (most of the time.) And then there are all the pretty neon lights in Vegas itself.

You still can get companions, albeit much quicker than in 3. A welcome improvements is the companion wheel, which allows you to set the play style of the companion, the weapons, the tactics, and the inventory.

You can now create several things with an appropriate skill of sufficient level and ingredients. Weapons, stims, chems, and ammo (which you can recycle). You can also mod weapons with scopes, barrels, magazines, etc.

Perks have been redesigned and give abilities or augments instead of adding to existing skills.

All in all, these slight changes vastly improve the gameplay...so why the 8 of 10?

Glitches. They are everywhere. People getting stuck in walls (literally), game save corruption, and quest-blocking. Let me explain the last. A certain quest line has you doing missions of the Brotherhood of Steel. After receiving the first of the quests, you are approached by someone and given an optional quest. What this person wants you to do is notify him of your quest and help find a way to depose the leader. You MUST notify him BEFORE actually turning in the quest items. If you tell him afterwards, the two characters go into some kind of loop where neither one will talk to you other than to say "come back later" and won't give you the follow-up quests. I mention this because the BoS are the ones to give you the ability to where Power Armor and you have to complete all the quests for them.

Another problem I have found are invisible walls. There are some locations in the mountains that you have to get to in certain ways because you can only go up so high on the side of the mountain. There are places where you SHOULD be able to go up, but you are blocked by an invisible wall. It's kind of annoying and generally makes me feel like I can't explore. In FO3, I used to go on top of a mountain and look for cool things, then head to them. It's harder to do that here.

Also, the world seems a little smaller (but there is TONS to do, so it doesn't seem like it) and the story does seem kind of linear in the beginning. Heading north from the first town, you will encounter DeathClaws (WAY above your level) or Cazadors (Giant Dragonfly things) that kill you quickly. So you have to travel in the direction of the story. Thankfully, It does not stay that way and you can get your exploration on fairly quickly.

To sum up, improved gameplay but glitchy. 8/10