I was really close to the end of Lonesome Road, needing only to work through a few rooms and then meet up with the other courier. I think perhaps fighting him was on the cards, but I talked him round and now we’re friends. Or something. There was a big fight with a load of Marked Men instead, though, and then it was over.

Of course, I still have a few warheads to find and explode, but not as many as I was expecting to have left due to the huge number just lying around the “temple” at the end. And I’ve all the Gun Runners achievements (bar one) to mop up as well, so it’s not like I’m “done” yet.

Having said that, I’ve still the Gun Runner’s achievements to do, and I’ve got to do a Hardcore Mode runthrough for a further achievement (I’ll be following gospvg’s guide for that one, I suspect), so maybe I’ve a while yet.

Anyhoo. Back to Lonesome Road.

The story follows your trip into the Divide, a massive crack in the world created by nuclear explosions. Explosions it would appear I had something to do with. The original Courier Six – the guy who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip that forms the plot point of the main game story – knows about my past, and I’m there to find him.

I’m almost there, too, having just reached his temple. Why he has a temple, I don’t yet know.

The route was pretty hard, considering my high level. Mainly due to an abundance of Deathclaws, and loads of a new foe – Tunnellers, which the other courier says can take down a Deathclaw. And they hunt in packs. And literally come out of the walls. Nice.

I think I’m going to need to do a fair bit of back-tracking though soon – I’ve missed loads of warheads I can explode, and there’s an achievement for them all!

But guess what? Everyone is wrong except me. It was excellent. Sure, it’s shorter than some other DLC (about 6 hours or so), but I can’t really fault it. The story was good, the return of some enemies I’d not seen for aaaages in the game (Yao Guai, giant mantises, giant venus flytraps), and there was a link to the fate of the inhabitants of Vault 22 which was nice.

If I had to find fault, it would be only that navigating the map, with the big canyons and hard to reach high places was a bit of a pain, and The Burned Man wasn’t really the psycho I was expecting him to be, but really – nothing important.

I had a hankering for some more Fallout, perhaps spurred by news about the next DLC which is out soon, combined with the hype of the impending Skyrim release. I decided on this add-on rather than Honest Hearts as reviews have been more favourable for Old World Blues, and it also seemed less dreary and downbeat.

And it was AWESOME.

It’s hilarious, for a start. Dr Klein commenting on your anatomy. Other “scientists” with bizarre fetishes and neuroses. The silly feud between the two “factions”. The psychopathic toaster, jealous light switches, and other incredible inanimate objects. The dog-gun that barks. Everything is silly, humourous, and excellent. Loved it!

And today I completed it.

First, a comparison with the DLC for Fallout 3. Like Fallout 3 expansions “Into The Pitt”, “Operation Anchorage” and “Mothership Zeta”, Dead Money is essentially stand-alone – as in, once you started them you were taken out of the main game until you completed it, and all your items were confiscated for the duration. Also, each of those expansions were around 4-5 hours long, but somehow (I may have been slow) Dead Money took a good 10 hours for me to finish.

Somehow, Dead Money manages to very much change the way Fallout works. You still have VATS and weapons that degrade and stuff, but several game mechanics are essentially removed. All your caps? Gone. It’s scrounged Sierra Madre (the casino in the story) chips that you buy things from vending machines with. Hoarding everything to sell? Pretty much pointless, although some previously useless items (and some new ones) can be crafted into new items and weapons. An even bigger change is with the main enemies – the Ghost People. When they die, they ain’t dead, and reanimate in a short time to hound you again. Unless you hack them to bits when they’re down, or manage to decapitate them in combat, of course.

There are environmental complications too. The whole of the area is bathed in a strange red mist, which has two major effects: firstly, you can’t sleep anywhere even vaguely exposed to the cloud (meaning healing up is either a long trip to a safe zone, or done with the scarce rations and stimpaks), and secondly there are dense pockets of the fog around Sierra Madre that you can enter, but they’ll poison you on contact, draining your health. And no protective suits, rebreathers and goggles – ze do nothing!

Then there’s the bomb collar you wear. To ensure compliance with the guy running the show in Sierra Madre, you and your companions wear Running Man style exploding neckwear. Kill your “friends”, and it explodes. Don’t do as you’re told? It explodes. And, worst of all, stand near a still active pre-war radio or PA system for too long? Bang! As a result of the latter of these, some of the game becomes an almost Doctor Who level of running down corridors, looking for the source of the radio signal or noise, and then either destroy it or turn it off before you and your head part company. Frantic!

But then, another new game mechanic does the opposite to you! The casino and environs are protected in part by an old hologram security system. Hologram guards patrol areas, and if they see you, you’re toast – they can’t be killed. You can, sometimes, use terminals to turn them off (or on – which may be useful) or destroy their signal emitter (if you can find it – many are very well hidden). These parts of the game become stealth sneak-em-ups, which it has to be said, aren’t my favourite sort of thing.

At some points in the game, the chaos of running blind and the order of hide and seek collide, and that’s when things get tricky. The final area of the episode in particular was privy to some choice language, as my previous 100+ hours on New Vegas without a single death gave way to hundreds in a short section.

I’ve purposefully avoided mentioning the plot to prevent spoilers, but the basic premise is that you and three others have been lured to the mysterious Sierra Madre casino by a man who appears in dialogue in the main New Vegas game. He orders you to work together to pull off a grand heist of the riches of the casino. Naturally, he’s not telling the whole truth, and you can be sure of backstabbiness (either by or on you) along the way.

Overall, aside from the nasty final Hour of Countless Deaths, I really enjoyed Dead Money. It didn’t really play like New Vegas proper, but that isn’t a complaint. I’m always one for story, and the backstories of your co-workers, the man in charge, and the history of the casino and why it was built were interesting and enjoyable. I was pleased when I figured out who the Ghost People are, and it’s also interesting how some of the conversations, and the ending in particular, revealed what the next DLC is going to be. And possibly the DLC after that! Exciting!

So, after almost 100 hours total play, I finally completed New Vegas the way I intended to in the first place. Hurrah!

Now, about those other two achievements…

Managed to finally get 50 Star Caps today, then went and traded them in with Festus, failing the quest. Seems you need to fail the quest though, as there’s another (very short) quest afterwards that nets you the achievement. Just 5 achievements left now: two for playing Caravan, two for completing the NCR “win”, and one for a Hardcore run of the game.

What have I done since my last Fallout post then?

Lots of things, actually. I’ve been and mopped up all the damage and health related achievements, for one (or 6) – 10,000 points of damage for each of melee, energy weapons, explosives and unarmed. Most of it was done “off save”, as in, I made a save then wandered round Camp McCarren (and Jacobstown) at night critical sneak attacking everyone, then after the achievement popped, reloaded.

For the melee one, however, I stuck to my main save proper and cleaned out Cottonwood Cove and The Fort using only a machete. Ace!

After all those, I continued on my main save looking for Star Caps. I’m up to 36 now, although I did deposit 8. I don’t know if these are now “used” or if they’re still technically in my inventory though. My exploration for new areas led me to Vault 34, which gave me a quest that I completed.

There’s new DLC for New Vegas next week. I don’t think I need it yet! My main save is 62 hours in, but I’ve spent well over 20 hours on alternate saves, and there’s still LOADS left to explore!

Then, after that, I spent a merry half an hour from an even earlier save sneaking round Gomorrah with my stealth boy, pickpocketing punters and strippers (taking money from the former to slip into the pants of the latter – strangely, both gave negative karma) for the Pickpocket 50 People achievement.

Finally, I returned to my “main” save, just before starting the NCR point-of-no-return quest, to wander the Mojave Wasteland some more and explore. I took Arcade with me, because he’s hilarious, but I think I lost him somewhere near Novac. Pressed on anyway, and found a load of new locations in the bottom right of the map, including a radscorpion-infested airfield and a billion Lakelurks. Hurrah for This Machine and its One Shot Kill(TM).

Best. Game. Evar.

You see, there are four main endings, one of which I disabled a fair few hours ago when I bumped off Mr. House. A second, siding with Caesar’s Legion was thrown away when I decided to get chummy with the NCR. I’d intended to carry the NCR route to the end, but I chose the wrong option somewhere and couldn’t be bothered to make reparations – so an Independent victory it was!

And what a lovely, deep, varied, huge, clever, open game it turned out to be. It was like Fallout 3, only with a massive web of crossthreading quests and world altering choices. And I loved it from start to finish. Of course, I’m not finished. I have loads of places left to explore and three other endings to sort out yet!

As for bugs – I didn’t get any. Well, a few graphical quirks such as levitating animals, but nothing to break, freeze or otherwise affect the actual game. So I’m very happy indeed.

This game just gets better and better. I expected it to be good, sure, but little did I know it’d actually be better than Fallout 3 was. There’s more variety, in both the quests and the way in which you complete them. There are fewer “shoot people” quests and more “do interesting things” quests. There are more memorable characters, even those who are incidental – Yes Man, Betsy, Keely, Old Ben, The King – all ace. There are more quests – for every one I complete I seem to open three more!

The world works better too. More of your actions have a direct effect on a wider area, and I don’t just mean your standing with various factions – what you do in small communities, in each casino, everywhere.

It’s just a fantastic game in seemingly every way. Oh, and no bugs yet, aside from a few levitating people and animals. They’re hardly game-breaking, though.

But was it worth it?  By hell, yes it was.

At first glance, it seems to just been like an expansion pack for Fallout 3. It’s not, but even if it was, I’d have been more than happy with that. As it turns out, it’s much more than just a new setting with new quests – it has a new, different feel. Vegas was less affected by the war that tore apart Washington D.C., so although places are still in ruin, they’re not as badly destroyed. Vegas itself still has several fully working, pretty well furnished, casinos, complete with neon lights, shows and gambling halls. Even the wasteland is different, and not just in the orange sand compared to Fallout 3′s grey, well, everything – the sky is blue and there are plants and greenery. Not a lot of greenery, but enough so that it appears life is returning to some sort of normality in the Mojave.

It isn’t just that which makes it different, though. New game mechanics, such as the ammo, food and weapon “recipes” make New Vegas play more like Oblivion. The “karma” meter from Fallout 3 returns, but is mostly replaced by the way you are now seen as friend or foe by each of the factions across the wasteland. It’s not just the Enclave vs the Brotherhood here – many more groups are involved and at odds.

There also seems to be so much more to do this time around. Certainly, I have many more quests open to me currently than I ever had in the previous game. Many of them have multiple methods of completing them too – some obvious, some dangerous, some rewarding, some unexpected, and some just plain bizarre. In Fallout 3 you’d be lucky if there were two possible resolutions; in Primm, here, the sheriff quest has at least 4 that I can make out!

So far, I’ve played 11 hours, reached the Vegas Strip, completed mainly only story quests (but did complete a couple of side quests, and have certainly opened many more), and have done very little off-road exploring. And I’m loving it, despite my initial apprehension that I wasn’t going to come out of a vault at the start. Coming out of a grave is much more dramatic!

It’s a shame I’m so powered up now, as nothing – not even the fighters in The Pitt itself – came close to even scratching me. I don’t think I used more than a couple of stimpacks for the entire quest. The trogs and wildmen all took a single hit each from my rusty old Chinese assault rifle, and even the turrets only required a handful of shots on target to destroy.

The real difficulty, and it was optional if I didn’t want the final achievement, was finding the 100 Steel Ingots dotted around three locations on the map. Took a good two or three hours just to do that, as four of them just didn’t want to be found at all!

And that’s it. No more Fallout 3. Well, unless I want to visit the handful of unexplored locations on the main Wasteland map, or fancy starting again. Tempting, but New Vegas is here in a few weeks!

I’d actually bought the downloads a while back, when they were on offer, but decided not to play them so that I could eke out the Fallout 3 “experience” over the course of the huge wait before New Vegas. A wait that is about to end before I’ve had a chance to play them. But anyway.

So I started playing on Friday night, and completed it tonight. I think maybe 4 or 5 hours were plugged into it, but I was very thorough with my map exploration (mainly to obtain all the audio recordings in order to get the achievement) so less intensively OCD players could probably clear it in 2 or 3.

Many people have complained that Mothership Zeta is pretty poor. They moan at the linearity, the un-Fallout-ness of it all, and say it’s just not fun. To them I say: Tosh! You missed the best bits!

Highlights included the cargo hold, filled with “Earth memorabilia”, including a lander module from a Moon mission and a vast factory building nothing but robotic “Buttercup” horses. A robot horse army! Then there’s the audio logs of those people captured, including an ex-US senator and the CEO of Vault-Tec. These recordings range from hilarious to harrowing, but they’re an excellent find. I also enjoyed all the references to Sci Fi, and when the samurai appeared on the bridge and (perhaps coincidentally) stood where Sulu would on the Enterprise, I giggled.

And chasing Alien Workers down never gets tiring. Onto The Pitt, now then…

And excellent it was too. I won’t be getting into any of the other DLC for a little while yet, though, for two reasons: 1) there’s a rumour it’ll be getting a 50% price drop just after Christmas, and 2) I will almost certainly be getting other games for Christmas I’ll be wanting to play. So for now, it’s goodbye (again) to The Wasteland.

I’m now on Level 24, I think, and have already lapsed back into the whole OCDness of The Wasteland. Every item, bar the very useless, but be picked up. As many weapons as possible – even those I’ll never use – must be carried at all times. And now I have a use for the cameras and sensor modules my inventory management has never been such a mammoth task. But yes, I love it.

Part of the reason was that I wanted a game to fill the gap before Christmas, and a Fallout expansion fits the bill. Another reason was that I’ve really got into music from the 40s and Fallout is full of it. No, really – I have.

I bought and downloaded Broken Steel, and have so far completed the mission with the satellite linkup thing. Of course, I dragged things out a bit by doing some hunting, walking not warping, and detouring to a few places I’d not visited on the way. I’ve gained a level already too. It’s great to be back!

Having said that, I enjoyed it despite it not really feeling like Fallout 3 much. It was very linear, heavy on the shooting, and completely different in terms of ammo and health management.

Looking forward to the other two planned extra content releases now!

Once in the game, you get a message saying there’s a radio signal from the Brotherhood Outcasts, and a new marker on the map. Once there, you help them out for a bit, then you’re put in a computer simulator (like the Tranquillity Lane ones), and take part in a recreation of the liberation of Anchorage from the Chinese. Which only happened in the Fallout universe, of course.

I’m not very far in yet – only about 45 minutes – but so far it’s clear the expansion plays somewhat differently from the rest of the game. You’ve still got VATS and stuff, but you’ve none of your weapons (only some provided ones), no stimpacks (you need to up your health at machines in the game), and you can’t ransack boxes and crates. It’s also very shooty-based, which, if you’ve been a melee character would make it a bit of a change.

It’s good to be back in Fallout though, even if it isn’t quite how I remember it!

And what an amazing 100 hours it was. I loved every minute, was totally engrossed in the world, and so long as there’s things left to do, I can’t see myself ever becoming tired of playing it.

Certainly the best game of the year for me, and not far off the best game of all time.