[SWTOR] A Face you’d surely like to punch. But does Kotick have a point?

Such a small person...

When Bobby ‘Actiblizzardzebub’ Kotick, the man presiding over WoW’s decline, questions the profitability of SWTOR, surely your first reaction is to scoff and chortle over this blatant piece of self-promoting trash talk. But has he inadvertently made a point?

Lets face it, SWTOR is, in all respects, a World of Warcraft clone with a Star Wars skin. This does not make it a bad game. 10 million people play WoW and I was one of the 12 million a year ago. Copying something fun, even if it’s declining, doesn’t make it unfun. SWTOR is a very polished and slick game. It’s mechanics appear solid and the classes varied. It is a good game.

Sonic Generations is a good game, but I played it for a few weeks and haven’t touched it since. Same will most of the games on my shelf. A good game can still have terrible longevity.

World of Warcraft had, at peak, 12 million subscriptions, and, as of this month, it’s dropped by 2 million. That’s a 16% subscriber drop in the space of a year. With World of Warcraft’s subscribers declining you have to ask yourself: “Where are they going?”

They’re certainly not going to The Old Republic, it’s not out yet. People have been leaving in droves since the release of Cataclysm last December. Are they playing any number of other MMOs? Have the stopped playing MMOs altogether? Are they just floating in the ether, waiting for SWTOR’s release next month?

silverpine forest never looked so good

In the first instance, if they’re playing other MMOs, they’re likely playing a free to play, since the vast majority of MMOs today have some form of free to play model, would these players consider forking out for a subscription when SWTOR comes out? Is the shiny prospect of a comfortable, yet new, game enough to lure them away from whichever MMO they’ve taken up? Perhaps the lure of something graphically superior to LOTRO, or a deeper end-game to Champions, or something with simpler mechanics than Fallen Earth.

There’s no doubt in my mind that alot of these Free-to-play games will suffer in the opening month of SWTOR. People will leave in droves to play the free month that  comes with the game. The question remains is will SWTOR retain these players?

In the intervening months lifestyles that focused on WoW’s addictive nature have changed to that of the free-to-play model. A pay-when-you-play model that doesn’t put pressure on the user to ‘get their moneys worth’ means radically different patterns of play for many people. Playing when they have time, rather than making time to play. Would they give up that? It won’t change much during the free month, but when it comes to fork over that subscription fee then the realisation that they’re committing to play for another month may put them off. Part and parcel of free-to-play is the free part. Free as in cost, and free as in time. That kind of freedom is hard to give up.

Then there are those people who are waiting for SWTOR to come out. What ever they are doing at the moment, playing another MMO or floating in the ether, those are a given that they’ll pony up the cash for atleast one months sub. From the Beta Weekend I can assume that the vast majority of people on that will be playing launch, and have pre-ordered. In which case they’ve already made a truckload of cash back off the pre-order sales. Profit? Doubtful. But the investors are probably smiling inside when they look at the numbers. How many will subscribe in January?  Well, that depends on the game doesn’t it.

The Stealthiest Agent in Intelligence

In order to figure out if SWTOR will retain it’s players you have to figure out: Why is WoW is in decline? Is it because it’s gotten easier to play? Is it because the content is trite and predictable? If people have become so bored of it that, even in the face of brand new content (IE cataclysm) they began leaving in droves? (1.1 million users gone in the first 6 months of that expansion)

If that’s the case, why would any of them stay with SWTOR? Once the shiny veneer of the storyline is brushed away, and they see the WoWishness underneath, will it be too much of a leap to say that fatigue will seep in here just as quickly as a new WoW expansion?

Kotick may have the wrong reasons for believing SWTOR won’t be profitable (I honestly believe he doesn’t think a game like WoW can fail because it’s like WoW, only because their money men are dumber than his), but he may well prove right if they can’t retain their subscribers after the first month. Or the second. Or if they can stave off the same lethargy that hits WoW Players. Remember: There are still 10 million WoW players who don’t seem to have this problem of fatigue. The prime candidates for eating up SWTORs subscriptions won’t leave WoW because they don’t see anything wrong with it.

We know those playing free-to-play probably won’t pony up for SWTOR. We know WoWthralls won’t leave WoW. We know that the Star Wars fans and the Bioware fans will subscribe, but them alone will  likely not turn a profit.

Ofcourse, I’ve missed out on one type of player. The player that’s waiting for SWTOR, but hasn’t move to a new MMO. And this is where the unknown lies in the equation.

How many of WoWs subscribers are just as fatigued as those who have left. Who are just there through sheer inertia, and how much of that will SWTORs flywheel steal when it bumps up against it’s main rival?

We’ll find out at the end of January, won’t we?

A Plethora of Skyrim Content

Since it’s release I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim.

Frankly, the game is far too big to do one of my normal video reviews on, so I’m releasing lots of little bits of content for it.

Now, it’s not going to be one of those Let’s Plays of the whole game that everyone and their uncles are doing, although I will do Lets-play style things (I’m going to do a playthrough of the thieves guild chain for example), it won’t be of the whole game (I just don’t have the energy or bandwidth to edit and upload 100+ hours of video)

So, first off is showcasing a small bug with companions. When you get into combat with a sparring partner (ie, one who will submit after x hits) and if they accidently hit your companion, said companion will. not. stop. attacking.

Ever.

It’s especially annoying on invulnerable NPCs. like this guy:

Here’s a guide on how to marry anyone in Skyrim (almost)  using console commands (addtofaction)

And here’s Part 1 of my Thieves Guild Playthrough

Sonic Generations – A Review of Questionable Quality

Sonic Generations is a game that attempts to please all types of Sonic fans, Past and Present, with not one, but TWO playable Sonic characters. Both the classic Megadrive sonic and the modern 3D sonic, travelling through time, revisiting past glories and revising old failures.

I like this game, both Modern and Classic Sonics play really well, the remixed levels are a joy for the most part and while the whole cast of characters are back, they get very little screen time and they’ve actually hired some decent voice actors this time!

One problem rears itself right at the start. They’ve introduced a Skill shop to give both sonics some extra bonuses. However, this contains atleast two powers that are required to make Classic Sonic behave as I remember him.

It’s a strange decision, honestly, not giving you them at the start, since you can buy them the first time you enter the hub world. I understand why these things are skills, since you can swap them out for other abilities if you feel you don’t need them, and because you can’t have them and activate the Super Sonic skill, meaning you have to gimp normal Sonic in order to be able to transform in normal levels.

Otherwise, Classic Sonic plays quite well. It’s not quite as seamless as the old Megadrive games, but it’s close.

Modern Sonic plays like he does in Sonic Colours, with the boost and homing attacks working really well in the 2D side-scrolling segments and the normal 3D segments alike, and is overall a very enjoyable, if easy, experience.

The boss fights in particular are very easy. Perfect Chaos, for one, was really just a series of linear platforms, and a quick-time event. Press X to Win. Once I’d gotten past him I began to feel that the game was lacking any real difficulty. Indeed, some of the special trial missions felt a bit patronising. There’s a Green Hill race against Knuckles that, even if royally screw up (like I did the first time) Knuckles waits at the end for you to catch up, and when I say wait, I mean, glide through the air with all the horizontal speed of a snail with a Zimmerframe, all the while doing barrel rolls.

Then I hit Crisis City, the level from the buggy, ham fisted mess of a game, Sonic the Hedgehog from 2006. Not that it was buggy, the modern Sonic version was as slick, streamlined and fun, even if it did have a load more instant-death pits than the rest of the levels. The Classic version however was boring, it’s layout uninspired, it’s obstacles frustrating, unforgiving and, like the modern version, arbitrary in it’s bottomless pit placement. A random difficulty spike and exercise in futility. Otherwise the game is relatively easy to complete. Crisis City was my only real stumbling block, and very little else required me to do it more than twice.

To say Sonic Generations is too easy is a bit harsh. Yes it’s easy, but there are hard mode bosses and challenges for those who want them. For me though, Sonic has never been about difficulty. It came from an era that would define the term “Nintendo Hard” as something utterly unforgiving (I’m looking at you, Battletoads), yet sonic bucked the trend by making something enjoyable that was hard because it was new, not through some punishing combination of sadistic programmers and poor level design. Sonic stood out for it’s speed, it’s music and it’s wonderfully themed environments.

While the first two of these are present in Sonic Generations, they have a real thing for city-themed zones. Crisis City, Speed Highway, City Escape and Rooftop Run, leaving only 5 non-city themed zones, three of which are ‘green’ zones, Seaside Hill, Planet Wisp and the quintessential Green Hill, with Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary being the only two without a shared theme, and even then, parts of Planet Wisp can be considered to share Chemical Plants “Factory” setting.

Maybe I’m being picky, each zone does stand out as unique despite similar theming, and there’s more than one environment in some of the zones, as I mentioned with Planet Wisp.

Most levels are well designed, having multiple paths and hidden secrets. The branching paths, even in the 2D sections, have a tendency to tease you with what you missed by either showing it in the background of shot, or by bringing you tantalisingly close to that Red Star Unlockable but ultimately denying it. Each zone has it’s own gimmick, normally relating to the game it was released for. Planet Wisp has two kinds of Wisps (Spikes and Rocket), City Escape has the skateboard/snowboard, and even Seaside Hill from Sonic Heroes has everything in groups of three, like rails, booster rings and springs, an allusion to the fact the course was intended to be done with three characters.

It’s not only the art and level design that sets these zones apart though, there’s all that lovely remixed music too.

Sonic’s had a lot of really bad music, starting, really, with Sonic Adventure 2. Which insisted that everything have lyrics. Leading to such crimes as Knuckles’ faux Gangsta rap, Shadows Angsty Emo Punk nonsense and the ultra-soft cheery sub-J-pop sweet-fest that was the City Escape theme. God did that make me cringe when I first heard it. I was embarrassed to be playing the game with that song on.

Surprisingly, both remixes of City Escape are a marked improvement, and I can actually say the Classic City Escape theme is really starting to grow on me. Who’d have thought that Endless Mine – an also-ran in Sonic 3’s time attack stages – could combine with that monstrosity to become something fun and energetic. Sure, the lyrics haven’t changed, but the melody has infused it with a bizzare power. It’s still generic, coma-inducing bubblegum pop, but damn it’s catchy now.

There’s also the Hub level’s various remixes. Most of which are string and flute renditions. They’ve really outdone themselves with the music in this game.

Overall It’s a solid game. It’s a fun game. It’s by no means perfect, but what is? It’s a celebration of Sonic’s ups and downs over the last two decades and it’s done a fantastic job of it. It even made me hate Sonic 2006, despite never having played it. And what better reflection on Sonics history is there than that?

This is a very good game. Easy? yes, stylish? definitely, fun? Absolutely.

Oh, and don’t play it with a keyboard. Use a Gamepad.

You can buy it now for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and on PC through Steam. It’s honestly worth it.

One final note. I remember when I first saw Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a preview of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on Bad Influence. I remember being blown away by the 3D special stage they revealed over the closing credits. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRQ_Y_gYW8#t=8m35) God I feel old.

Sonic and the Generation Divide

Gamers of a certain age are about to feel really old.
Sonic the Hedgehog came out 20 years ago.
And now, 20 years later, Sonic Generations attempts to rekindle the magic of those early days, and celebrate the evolution of Sonic since his inception.
Where two Sonics, Classic and Modern, battle through the best of the past 20 years of Sonic games.

To those who are not Sonic fans, you may be wondering why they felt the need to have two Sonics at all.

While there is the obvious divide of 2D sonic and 3D sonic and their differing abilities, there’s a deeper divide in the Sonic Community which has led to this rather intriguing gameplay decision. Indulge me for a bit while I explain my view on it.

I was but a wee babby when I got a Megadrive for my Christmas, and witnessed the awesomeness of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Okay, I was a little late to the party, and back in 1991 I was 6, and playing Super Mario Bros 3 on my NES. Even so, Sonic 2 kindled a life long love of that furry little ball of spinning… fur.

I got the rest of the games, I watched the Cartoons, I bought the comics. I covered my guitar case in Sonic the Hedgehog stickers. I ran around beating people up pretending I was Super Sonic. Honestly though, charging head first at people screaming ‘POWWARR’ wasn’t a good fighting style, I should have done what the rest of my peers did and copied Power Rangers since I kept getting my arse handed to me by wannabe ninjas.
Having played Sonic 3 & Knuckles to death, you can safely say that I am a classic Sonic lover.

I also adore the Advance series that continued the 2D trend.
And, predictably, I wasn’t terribly blown away by Sonic Adventure.

I never owned a Dreamcast, so I only got Sonic Adventure DX on the PC in 2003. By this time I was 18, and at University. It had been a fun game for the most part. Some of the hub stages were rather frustratingly badly designed, some of the game modes were rather lacklustre (the less said about Amy or Big the Cat’s stages the better), somewhere along the line Sega found out about Rock and Roll, and rather than hire Michael Jackson (like they wanted to do for Sonic 3) they went and discovered Busted, about 5 years before they formed, and got them to make terrible soft rock melodies. On top of that, the voice acting was horrible.

It was mostly Tails and Amy that grated the most, speaking in frequencies that only dogs should be able to hear, but I persevered through these, and had great fun playing what was, for the most part, a competent and rewarding game.

Sonic Adventure 2, however, was the last Modern Sonic game I played. And no, it wasn’t the introduction of Shadow and all his angsty glory that put me off. I thought he was a rather well done antagonist. Gameplay wise, Sega actually listened to their fans and stripped out all the terrible gameplay modes and left us with a core set of 3. Sonic’s speed, Tails’ walker machine and Knuckles diggy diggy Echidna levels. Okay, Knuckles’ diggy-diggy Echidna levels were boring as sin, and Tails’ levels were linear and frustrating, but atleast it wasn’t Frog Fishing with Big the Cat, or Run-the-fuck-away-from-the-robot with Amy.

But what really put me off was the music.
They took the soft rock stylings of Sonic Adventure and Let. The. Band. Sing.
“Rolling around, at the speed of sound,
Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow.“

Can you feel the sickly sweet coma-inducing saccharine?
Follow that up with some faux gangsta rap for Knuckles and you’ve got a game that’s trying very hard to be ‘hip’ and falling flat on it’s face. Like your dad dancing to Beyoncé, it’s creepy, it’s weird and it just doesn’t feel right.

This is where the Sonic Divide was created. In the crucible of the treble cleft. It set the feel of the game far beyond the story, the characters and controls ever did.
By then however, a new generation of players were beginning to play Sonic. Who had no idea of the old games, or if they did, dismissed them as relics of a bygone era, like black and white film, Disco music, or communism.

They enjoyed what I enjoyed in Sonic Adventure, and either loved Sonic Adventure 2, or manged to ignore its flaws. They had good fun with Heroes (from what I understand, a mediocre but competent game that introduced a few cool new things, but which I never played), glossed over the chronic bugs in Sonic 2006 and by the time Unleashed came out were moulded into a separate breed of entitled fanboy from Classic era’s entitled fanboys, so much so that really the only thing both generations could agree on was that the Werehog levels in Unleashed were terrible, and that the Daytime stages were excellent.
Again, having never played Unleashed I can’t comment on it first hand, but the consensus from fans lead directly to Sonic Colours, the first 3D Sonic game in a decade that tempted me to buy it, but for one problem. I didn’t own a Wii.

Sonic Colours. A Sonic game with one playable character, with multiple powerups giving Sonic various special moves, balancing speed, platforming and puzzle solving. It stripped out the fat that plagued the earlier 3D outings and streamlined what we all wanted from a Sonic game: Sonic.

It sounded so good it actually tempted me into buying a Wii just to play it. But guess what. They announced Sonic Generations was coming, and it was coming on PC. They announced it would have both kinds of Sonic, and that gameplay from every main series sonic game would be present.

And here, in the present day, we come full circle. I’ve played Generations from start to finish, and can say that I undoubtedly had fun. A full review of that will be forthcoming, but let me say this:
Sonic Generations manages to make “Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow.” sound cool.

Or maybe it’s just a sign that I’m at that age where I shouldn’t be dancing to Beyoncé.

Portal 2 Co-op, Time Attack and Minimum Portals

Canazza and Winston play Portal 2 Art Therapy DLC (Part 3 of 3)

Canazza and Winston play Portal 2 Art Therapy DLC (Part 2 of 3)

I will say about this video, we didn’t get much done. Part 3’s got alot more in it.

Canazza and Winston Play Portal 2 DLC – Part 1

[APB] Controvertial Release and Talentless Hacks

Well, it’s been a while since I did a commentary on the state of APB, that’s mainly because I stopped playing it some months ago (Instead focusing on playing a variety of games from Indie to AAA, and almost giving up on MMOs altogether).

While the game is solid, fun, balanced and genuinely friendly (barring the rare smack talking troll), it did have problems. The vast majority were being dealt with steadily by the developers, but only one thing was really wrong that didn’t appear to be being addressed. One of the biggest. Namely the abundance of hackers.

Sure, there were waves of small numbers of bans, but hackers were still very much present after each, and there was frustration abound when a team of 4 got taken down by a single person, at range, with a Machine Gun. An extreme example, but not that rare. Also, the number of times an opponent would be playing terrible and then all of a sudden become godlike when the timer began to run down was too much to be co-incidence.

Now, it seems, they’ve nailed it. Apparently. The bit about cheater amnesty piqued my interest. I know alot of people started cheating because of other people (a spectacular piece of flawed logic akin to the broken window fallacy) and giving them a chance to give up is nice. Provided they can actually tear themselves away from their godlike steroids.

This implies that they’ve got some kind of hardware identificiation going on, since how would they know who is who on new accounts. Also, alot of people are utterly screwed with some of their hacks, which actually write to the MBR, like a virus, and are really hard to clear without wiping the system. If APB and PunkBuster have found a way to detect installed cheats, even when not running, then even those willing to give them up may not be able to do so for technical reasons (insofar as they probably don’t want to explain to their parents why they’re wiping their PC)

The fact that cheaters can come back at all, without penalty, is one of the reasons why hacking is so rampant in APB, and alot of vitriol has been spilled on the forums about the subject and how G1 can work around it. Hardware bans were one (which may well be what they’ve actually done), and Pay-for-account may be another, indeed they have stated that they intend to go into retail in December and that would be a perfect time to change the payment scheme (if they intend to charge for boxed copies).

This also means that it’s leaving beta at a very inopportune time. (although some would say it’s been out of beta since the beginning of Summer). Firstly, there’s that juggernaut of a game called The Old Republic coming out, that I will, certainly, be playing for the first 30 days. Not to mention Guild Wars 2 still has a release date set as this year that I’m also rather tempted to try out.

On the single player side is Skyrim, which, while I’m not super excited about, I’m almost definitely going to buy it at some point (I enjoyed Oblivion, and I enjoyed Fallout 3, so I should get a kick out of Skyrim)

People only have so much time to play games, not everyone plays 18 hours a day, some are lucky to get that in a week, so in a toss up between APB and GW2, I fear the Guild Wars may win out on this one.

[Review] Fallout:New Vegas – Lonesome Road and DLC Round Up

Return of the Colonel

So it comes again, Fallout New Vegas has it’s final DLC expansion. The culmination of the plot threads going through the whole DLC content, and even parts of the original game. The final showdown with the man who turned down the delivery that got you shot in the head. Ulysses.

Now, before we start on Lonesome Road, I feel I have to do a quick roundup of Fallout up to this point, and in particular what parts of the Fallout series I most enjoy. I’ve had heated discussions about the nature of Fallout and I understand that alot of people don’t share my point of view (and that’s fine), but I’ll try and keep my reviews balanced between the two viewpoints.

The game seems to be split down the middle. One half contains the kind of person who enjoys the post-apocalyptic aspects, the guns, the atmosphere, the ‘realism’ as it were. The other  has the kind of person who enjoys the wacky humour that runs through the series, who love the pop-culture references and the random nutcase weapons. The kind of people who take the Wild Wasteland trait. It normally manifests itself in whether NV is better than Fallout 3, with the post-apocalypse boys favouring 3 while the lighter elements prefer New Vegas.

I find myself squarely in the second camp. I found Fallout 3 to be dull, although entertaining in other ways, it’s locations were far to samey and grey. Constant, relentless, grey. Leading to a form of snowblindness. It may have been huge but I felt the landscape did not invite exploration since everywhere was the same. I left that game without buying any of the DLC.

Conversely, I loved New Vegas. It was still post-apocalyptic but varied enough in locales to stave off eye strain and keep my interest. I enjoyed the story, the exploration, the characters and most of all, the faction mechanics.

I love my stories, I love my sprawling landscapes, but most of all I like to feel that I’ve had an impact. Fallout: New Vegas delivered that in spades. It’s DLC, less so.

Dead Money saw you in a Casino/Hotel/Resort gone to hell, you had a total of five characters, each one had a very deep and complex character that could be dived into through their conversation trees and four were companions with unique perks that aided you through the game. It was a great system and it worked really well. The combat was satisfying, utilising a unique mechanic in the decapitating of enemies (else they’ll rise again), and destroying hologram projectors later in the game. You felt like your actions had a real effect on the characters and, importantly on the ending. Your actions through most of the game affected your options at the end, so it wasn’t so much a matter of quicksave/quickload just to see all the endings (although you could get a fair chunk by doing that)

Where Dead Money fell down was it’s lack of exploration. It was decidedly linear, although it never felt like it was a bad thing at the time, you were focused on the mission at hand at all times and exploring consisted of finding hidden rooms or cubby holes with items in it. Pretty much every area was used in the story, and they used the Metroid style of area unlocking, where instead of upgrades it was companions (and their subsequent perks) that allowed you to traverse certain hazards.

Dead Money struck a balance between the funny and the serious, with few overt pop culture references, and a total lack of batshit insane weapons against a dark, oppressive mirror of Vegas. Overall, this is my personal favourite out of all the DLCs.

The next DLC, Honest Hearts, was the exact opposite of Dead Money. You had a huge new area to play about in, a bright vibrant forest canyon untouched by the apocalypse (barring the tribalisation of the locals). However, its story was even shorter than Dead Money and appeared half-finished. It used almost no new mechanics and you had a choice of two endings that had nothing to do with your  actions up to that point. The story quests consisted off “Visit one guy, do 3 missions, visit another guy, do three missions, choose whether to do what the first guy wants or the second guy wants, do the final mission, then end.”

The real tragedy about Honest Hearts is that there was so much potential to develop  these characters, to utilise the faction system. Both Joshua and Daniel, opposing poles of the same ideal were reduced to talking heads with no depth. Not only that, but just to be contrary, I wanted to try and work with the bad guys (Legion loving tribal hunters) but it wouldn’t let me. For all its exploratory prowess, the story was, once again, rigid and linear.

For me, Honest Hearts is, unless you absolutely crave more room to explore, ultimately skippable.

Old World Blues, as I said in my lengthy review, was a decent mix of the previous two. There was plenty of space to explore, lots of options, a plethora of endings, but, and I think this is a first for games, suffered from intro fatigue. The half-an-hour I spent exhausting the dialogue trees meant that by the time I went out to shoot my first mindless shambling horror I was thoroughly convinced that, this time, I definitely wanted to side with the ‘bad guy’ from the start. Mainly because we currently shared the same goal. Killing the goddamn Think Tank that sucked out the first 30 minutes of gameplay. (although it speaks volumes about the quality of the writing that I did sit and exhaust the dialogue tree)

Sadly, the story is just as linear as the other two DLCs. You have no choice at the end, everyone has to die. You’re really turning into an omnicidal maniac by this point. They remove the companion mechanics and your only conversation partners are the various sentient gadgets in your hub room that you can activate by scavenging. Even a talking toaster, who, sadly doesn’t go “Howdy doodly do” when you switch him on, although he is definitely an omnicidal maniac.

Old World Blues definitely appealed  to the crazier side of me. It’s full of insane AI’s, guns with a targeting system that’s a dogs brain in a jar, a talking stealth suit that makes you addicted to med-x and a whole load of other stuff. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s entertaining.

And now we get to the final DLC: Lonesome Road. As the tag-line states, you’re there to bring an ending to things.

It shares alot in common with the previous three DLCs. Some good, some bad. It also brings in something that was missing from the other DLCs. Combat. Lonesome Road is incredibly combat heavy. I mean there’s very little time you’re not fighting. You get health-restoring stim-packs up the wazoo and you even get to make automatically activating stim-packs. Really, before you play this DLC stock up on your best weapons. You will need them. I took a silenced pistol, a LAER (From Old World Blues), a Minigun and an Anti-Materiel Rifle. Right from the off I swapped the mini-gun for the new Red Glare Rocketlauncher, although I found it next to useless despite having the most plentiful ammo in the DLC, it has pretty much no splash damage so you need to hit on target to get any damage done. That got swapped out for the shoulder-mounted machine gun that became my go-to weapon when I wasn’t sniping. I did alot of sniping.

Your only companion is an ED-E clone (the eye bot that everyone loves) who gives you the regular spotter perk that highlights anyone within range on your compass, which means sniping becomes the norm, since the layout of the Divide is mainly long canyons or large caves. He also keeps his sort of R2D2 esque personality which is greatly expanded on. He even quivvers in fear when enemies are near by.

There are a couple of unique mechanics inserted in this DLC. Using ED-E to unlock things like vendors, doors and… silos for one, and using a laser detonator to blow up mini-warheads that unlock other areas for another. While the ED-E mechanic makes sense it’s ultimately pointless since you always have ED-E with you, and apart from proceeding forward, the detonator doesn’t seem to open any entirely new areas, just little hidey holes that hide duffle bags full of goodies. This, ofcourse, means that Lonesome road is just as linear as Dead Money, probably more so since all you’re doing is pushing forward, there’s no hub area and no real backtracking (although you can return to the Mojave to resupply whenever you want) and no choice of companion to liven things up.

The locale, the Divide itself, is pretty spectacular. It’s the first part of Fallout: New Vegas that has actually been hit by nuclear weapons, and by ‘hit’ I mean they exploded in their silos, leaving the landscape a series of collapsed, broken irradiated canyons with a blood red sky and unrelenting storms.

Plotwise it’s as satisfying an ending as I could have hoped for given the previous DLC. It wraps up some loose plot lines, and gives us a bit more insight into Ulysses and ED-E – and the Courier. I do have issue with this thought. For me, giving your character an, admitably ambiguous, backstory takes away the self-insertion factor and kind of cracks the immersion. I mean, it’s obvious that your character has a backstory, but I always felt that (for games in general), unless alluded to through most of the game, your past was unimportant. The inclusion of this in Lonesome Road just doesn’t sit right with me.

Lonesome Road is decent, but again it’s too short, too linear and certainly feels like it was rushed to completion.

You have failed me for the last time!

With regards to the entirity of the DLC, I do have a couple of gripes.

The first is that none of them addressed any of the core problems with the original game. Namely the rather stupid AI enemies, the graphical glitches, clunky player movement and the weird shiny unreal quality all the characters seem to have.

The second is that it took away alot of what made New Vegas fun for me. The faction mechanics for one, and, in the last two DLCs, taking away companion choice (indeed, Old World Blues had no companions). Hell, taking away choice as a core mechanic. You really had very little say in the conclusion of these plots, until Lonesome Road, and even then it used the old “You have four buttons, press one for bacon ending” mechanic that betrays lazy design, as opposed to playing through as a character. New Vegas let you play through it’s plot as either a Legion agent, a hero of the NCR, House’s lacky or as a free spirit. Mission Failed didn’t mean a quick-load, it meant you’d made a decision and had to live with it. Something sorely missing from all of the DLC.

My recommendation? Well, there’s a DLC for the many types of Fallout player. Dead Money for the Story and Characters, Honest Hearts for the explorer, Old World Blues for the mental weapons and off-the-wall humour and Lonesome Road for the old-school post-apocalyptic player. But the original game is still leagues above them all put together.