Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

After about 60-80 hours of gametime to complete, I'm thinking about immediately creating a new character and starting over. How's THAT for addictive?

Here's what's awesome about New Vegas:

1. Extremely open-ended. Besides having multiple paths through almost every quest, the design is much more "simulation" than "scripted," so it's a blast even if you ignore the story and go off adventuring from the get-go.

2. Very well-written and well-acted. Characters are three-dimensional, quest outcomes make sense, and there's sophisticated moral and political factors that go into your choices.

3. Very well-balanced in terms of skills and approaches. Pretty much every problem can be succesfully attacked in multiple ways - combat, stealth, speech, technical aptitude...

4. Great for gun-nuts. Realistic firearms, with performance that makes sense. How many games let you use lead, casings, powder and primer to reload .38 Special rounds, which can then be fired through a .357 Magnum revolver, doing less damage to enemies AND putting less stress on the revolver than a .357 Magnum round? That's good stuff right there.

5. Great combat. The VATS pause-targeting feature works well without overpowering the action. The real-time shooting fits in well with the "post-apocalyptic simulation" theme. You don't want to waste rounds spraying, instead you should line up your shots carefully - and if you're attacked by giant flying insects, you'll have a very hard time if you try to shoot them with a handgun, which makes sense. Shotgun? Now you're thinking.

6. "Hardcore" mode. Call me crazy, but I LIKE having to eat, drink, and sleep in this game. The consideration of ammo weight is nice too; carrying around 50 pounds of microfusion cells can be a real issue. The downside is that the promised "reward" for completing this mode is not really a reward... Google that if you're curious.

All in all, a great piece of work. Also, I should note that I played a fully patched (as of July) version with no DLC. There are some bugs, but nothing that caused me any serious headaches.