T w e n t y S i d e d

So, normal hiding and stealth boys don’t conceal you, but crouching in front of a house does? The impassible wall of rock doesn’t provide cover from high explosives, but bombed-out house frames do? They can nail you with parabolic ordnance when you’re on the run and changing direction, but they can’t nail you when you hold still after crouching behind some planks?

It’s true that the game gives you instructions on how to pass through town, but those instructions really only make sense when you’ve scouted out the town. Once you’ve seen the town (and been blown up) the directions make sense, because then you know the boundaries and can make sense of stuff like “north-west corner of town”.

Easy or not, this is a pretty lame challenge. It’s doesn’t make sense in terms of the rules of the real world. It doesn’t make sense in terms of the game world. Suddenly the rules of cover, line of sight, stealth, and enemy targeting are all changed for this one “puzzle”.

Did you put 100 points into sneak? Can you steal a man’s underpants without him noticing? Are you crouched behind a wall of rock, where nobody on the planet can see you? Well guess what, kid? Boom. That’s right: BOOM. Screw you and your skill points. You’re going to do this puzzle the way the DM intended, or you’re not getting in here.

Dang kids. Always trying to use their creativity and reasoning to solve things. The sooner they realize the world is cheap, unfair, and arbitrary, they better off they are.

Hmm. We got a little bitter at the end, didn’t we? Oopsie.

Now you can see why we were dreading coming here.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Sorry about the whole, “What do you wanna do? I dunno, what do you wanna do? I dunno what do YOU want to do?” section. Usually we go in with a plan. Or at least, a clue. We usually go in with a plan (even if Josh doesn’t tell us the plan) but in this case we couldn’t come to any agreement. We argued about what to do next, then said, “Screw it, let’s just do the episode.” Sometimes this leads to interesting commentary. Sometimes it leads to… this.

And yeah, before you correct me, the Boomers came from a vault and not the base.

This is the slow part of the game. You’re presented with a handful of tribes, and you have to either ignore them, or do a quest to fix their internal troubles. (And maybe exterminate them? I’ve never figured out of extermination is formally recognized by the game.) Some of the tribes are fun, and a couple are annoying. There’s a little bit of something for everyone. The Boomers are the most time consuming of the bunch, although they also give the best benefits at the end of the game.

And yeah, I was just trolling Rutskarn about the Cowboy Repeater. I only used it once. I wasn’t particularly impressed with it, but it’s not like I did a detailed analysis of it against the other weapons so I don’t know that it’s a particularly weak weapon. I mean, who has time for that sort of study when you could be effortlessly punching dudes to death?

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Also: New credits. Yay.

I thought I was done with New Vegas. I really did. But I re-installed it this weekend and began yet another playthrough when I heard there was a vault that I’d completely missed.

One problem I’ve always had with these sandbox games is that I can’t take a break from them. If I take a week off, then when I come back I’m compelled to begin a new game instead of just piecing together what I was doing in the old one. As a result, I have many, many aborted play-throughs under my belt.

Yes, unarmed is still the most powerful weapon class (zuh?) in the game. With a strength of 8 and the bladed gauntlet (available in Primm) it’s impossible for me to hit a foe more than once without abusing a corpse. As a bonus, you don’t have to worry about ammo, which is a real boost to your income and your carry weight. With guns, you need your good gun, and its ammunition. Then you need a backup gun, and its ammunition. You might even carry a third. But if you’re a wasteland pugilist, you can walk away from every shopkeeper with minimal encumbrance. Also, I tend to use VATS with guns to save on ammo, but with fisticuffs I can just jump in and start swinging without bringing the game flow to a halt. It’s also less of a skill-point sponge in the early game. With unarmed, I’m one-shotting raiders with just 40 skill points. With guns, I usually need 60 skill points before I start to feel effective, and it’s not until the 70’s that you can one-shot mooks.

I tried playing as a gunslinger. Got myself the best sidearm I could find, spent a mess of skill points and perks, and wound up with a nice, reasonably competent gunfighter. As opposed to my unarmed game, where I can kill guys faster for half the skill points and without using any perks. I think it was an odd decision to give so much power to the melee skills in a game with such a heavy western theme.

Then again… Ballistic Fist!

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Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.