The Best Gaming Moments of 2010

James – Fallout: New Vegas

My chosen highlight of the gaming year is Fallout: New Vegas, which has the rare distinction of genuinely toying with my emotions. As somebody who has played through all the PC-based Fallout games (I’m in denial over the existence of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel on the Xbox), I really enjoyed the effort the developer, Obsidian, put into integrating New Vegas into the Fallout world.

The clues left around Black Mountain which [spoiler alert] hint that one of your possible party members from Fallout 2 may still be alive and well in New Vegas, were an especially pleasant touch. As one of my favourite characters from Fallout 2, it’s a real joy to meet up with Marcus and to hear his version of events, even if he’s mellowed in his old age and no longer carries a minigun in one hand. Unlike Dogmeat, who felt clumsily shoehorned into Fallout 3, it makes sense for Marcus to be in New Vegas, as Super Mutants have a much greater life expectancy than humans.


There are a couple of other, less obvious references, which help to tie New Vegas into the Fallout franchise too. I spotted the first when I wandered into the NCR camp near Primm for the first time, only to hear the haunting melodies of some of Fallout 1 and 2’s soundtrack wafting across the wasteland. Now, a cynic (usually my role in the bit-tech office) may argue that Obsidian simply re-used parts of the original soundtrack to save money, but for me it’s a stroke of genius. It’s certainly a far better implemented link than any of the clumsy attempts to tie in the original Star Wars films with their woeful prequels.

Another example of the brilliance of New Vegas was discovering the remains of a wrecked Highwayman car in the middle of the desert, which made me squeal with excitement . To the casual gamer, there’s little (bar the map marker) to differentiate this Highwayman from the other wrecked vehicles dotted across the Mohave, but for Fallout-vets such as myself it brought back memories of driving across northern California in Fallout 2 in a suspiciously similar car. You even get a little tinkle of Fallout 2 music when you first discover the Highwayman.


As well as this, there’s also an even more cryptic reference to the result of an illicit bedroom affair you may have performed in Fallout 2, but I’ll let you dig out that one for yourselves.

New Vegas is also good at pulling at your heart strings when you have to choose whether to help, hinder, ignore or perhaps eradicate factions. Having clocked up more than 60 hours in the game, for example, I discovered that I was being forced towards wiping out the Brotherhood of Steel. It sounds a bit ridiculous now, but deciding what to do caused me several agonising hours of indecision.

In the end, having slept on the problem, I decided to revert back to an older game save (essentially throwing away 30+ hours of gameplay) in order to find a way to keep the Brotherhood of Steel alive.

Having the ability to impose such choices, while also making them meaningful, is what separates a truly great game from a merely mediocre one. As somebody who’s been playing computer games for over 30 years, I demand choice and freedom of action. Fallout: New Vegas provides freedom and doesn’t coddle or steer you down rails in the same way as many other games.