Long Load Times and Bugs, But Still Enjoyable. 6 / 10
And the story, wow! The ultimate story of the game is fantastic, no matter which route the player pursues. The characters feel real, and though the plot is bizarre, its bizarre in a way that makes perfect sense considering the circumstances of the Fallout-verse. The "evil" route is accompanied by "evil" characters, whose motives somehow seem to make more sense than their "good" counterparts...though, as players will find, there's no real "good" character that exists, which adds to the realism. Whether aiding Mr. House in his quests, or attempting to restructure New Vegas in an independent way, you'll find several concepts scattered about that indicate you're merely choosing the lesser of evils, which may in fact be considered "evil" in their own right.
As players begin to explore the full map outside of the main plot quests, they might be surprised to find that map exploration is subtly controlled - if you go to an area and you aren't at a high-ish level, you will most likely be killed by a wandering creature. This makes it easier to focus on the fuller story arc, but at the same time I'd have to wonder if the developers couldn't have been smarter at this. For instance, there are very deadly creatures wandering around on the outskirts of the town that the player starts the game from. Personally, I had trouble grasping when I should start exploring - was I strong enough at level 5 to venture off? Maybe level 10? 15?
Another criticism towards the game is it's unfortunate questing scheme. Sometimes I'd wander into a town, walk around a bit, and discover that there's absolutely nothing to do. There are no supplies, enemies, or people. After looking it up online, I'd realize, oh, I needed to talk to this person a few towns away. This happened fairly frequently to me, and I'd imagine it would also happen to many new players.
Regardless, the map is impressive if only due to the size of it. Very similar to Fallout 3, exploration of the full world won't leave many players bored.
Around the middle of the game, bugs start occurring pretty frequently, and load times become nearly unbearable - I can't install this game due to my small hard drive size, but I can't imagine it decreases the load times to the point where the game feels smooth. The city of Freeside in particular has brought on my full hatred, as it's split into three separate areas, and each area has buildings in them. Several missions require hitting another area of the city (loading), walking all the way to the other side of the area, going into a building (loading), and being told to go to a different area (loading), and to a new building (loading). There were days when I had an hour to play, and at the end of the hour I had managed to do perhaps two aspects of a mission.
The ending of the game is unsatisfying at best. Developers claimed a few times that the player couldn't continue past the ending because the player had done such an important task, and to move forward would demean it. To that, I'd question why the developers made the ending such a non-event. I'm not upset at the story progression, but a tad irritated that the end of 60+ hours features a slide show. It just feels incredibly lazy. One might argue that the developers were too busy making the game perfect - but this game wasn't perfect by any means, and because the strongest aspect of Fallout New Vegas is it's story, most players were unhappy with the end sequence.
Overall, I'd give this game a 6 out of 10. A fun, unique game that's only offset by sloppy development.