I have to sit and scratch my head at people who say Dead Money was hard. It wasn't hard. It was tedious and boring. Bomb collars? More a nuisance than a challenge. The gas? The same thing. And the same with the holograms. I suppose they were hard if you were stupid and just rushed everywhere. I tend to be a cautious player by nature, though. Take your time, observe, maybe make a few exploratory runs in and out and it's cake. It's just annoying and tedious. And the ghost people, they weren't that difficult in a fight.

That's one of the reasons I didn't like it. I didn't feel challenged. And I didn't find the story all that interesting, either.

I'm also an old time gamer, beginning with an Atari 2600 back in 1983.

I loved Dead Money. The speakers were frustrating, but they forced me to slow down and look at my surroundings - something that I don't always do in the base game. The concepts of greed, obsession, and letting go aren't typical in video games, and it was kind of a refreshing experience.

All in all, I rate Dead Money #1, OWB #2, And HH #4 (no matter how bad LR might be, it will be better than HH!)

You know, I should give developers credit for the way they put the player in a dark, dreary, seemingly-hopeless situation where their freedom of movement was restricted and they were forced to do the bidding of an insane person or else suffer the dire consequences. It reminded me of my first marriage.

young blood i took ALL dem golds

What made me hate Dead Money was how pathetically contrived it was. Knocked unconscious by a gas attack? I'm wearing environmentally sealed powered armor, helmet and all. Explosive collar? I've got intelligence 10, repair 100 and explosives 100. Senile old coot thinks he can run me? I've singlehandedly crushed entire armies.

Nevermind, it's all magical, you silly player. And I wasn't "naked and vulnerable" either. Two doses of toughness, 100 unarmed, Ranger Takedown and Scribe Counter means I don't need armor or weapons to rip people limb from limb. All stripping Lyra of her gear did was make me scoff at the graceless, hamhanded railroading done by the writers.

Dead Money was a contrived pile of BS. I wasn't interested in the gold to begin with, all I wanted was to blast Elijah in half and hang entrails on the front gate as a one-time object lesson on why one doesn't screw with their betters. The gold bars were just gravy. And I got all of them anyway. Screw the supposed moral lesson, what I say goes.

The even bigger disappointment was Lyra not being able to plant a bloody combat boot up Elijah's ass and informing him that he didn't get to **** with her as she was way the hell above his pay grade, then shoot him in the ****ing skull.

I hated Dead Money, but not for any of the reasons you stated. I think you're being a little unfair to those who didn't like it. Not all the criticisms of it are based on difficulty or the impossibility of leaving with all the gold ...

My problem with it is that it's a piece of Fallout DLC which is completely linear ... if I'm playing an open-world RPG, I don't want to be led around on a leash and told "Go there, then there, collect this thing, flick that switch, ........"

Also, it is possible to make a game challenging without being downright infuriating .... exploding collars and poison gas.... every 30 f***** seconds .... that's not genuine difficulty, it's a cheap substitute called "completely unfair".

If you want a truly thought-provoking game, look no further than Bioshock 1. It's on-the-rails, but that's OK because you know going in that it's a FPS at heart.

Fallout's not supposed to be a corridor shooter. That's why DM svcks. Not because I "don't get it".

Lord Coake = God

I can understand if Dead Money doesn't resonate for some...its a challange and dark and dreary.

Personally I thought it was great. If you are playing hardcoe/very hard you have to go slow and think...you have to use your wits...and even stoping and taking a breather in a corner will slowely erode your health. But it was a challange and it gave some very nice toys in the end. I took 5 gold bars (not that I need the money but my BOS bunker needed another conversation piece beside the gigantic deathclaw hands I accumulated) got the SM armour and have been using the holorifle since then.

There will always be people that appreciate a game with challange and makes you think. There will always be horror style fans as well.

i lol'd *hard* :biggrin:

H-uh. I didn't have too much difficulty with it - I got stumped with radios/speakers a couple of times but then found them a-okay. But it's a thinking man's DLC - and in the days of Call of Duty, Halo, and the like, people are used to "action all-day every-day". I personally welcomed the change. I just wish console users could go back.

That was the thing for me...it's easy to dismiss people that didn't respond well to it (you're too stupid, you rush through, etc.). But none of that applies. i painfully take my time exploring new environments and scenery. i spent a week and a half on OWB playing most of the day each day. But i felt constantly rushed and panicked with DM, between the collars, the cloud, the required melee kills, the gas bombs and traps...and i felt perpetually lost. Maybe i shouldn't have done it in hardcoe mode.

Well-written, rich atmosphere....i was just the wrong player for it. And i never play shooters, so that pidgeonholing doesn't apply, either.

People keep saying that and I so disagree.

What about the Pitt and Mothership Zeta, even with all the best weaponry and armory you got captured by silly Raiders/Aliens




Not everyone is Pro at gaming, someone will find it challenging and other will found it easy

You can say the same thing about traps and creatures, though. All of them are obstacles that just have to be clicked on or shot. The difference, of course, is that the bomb collars are instant death rather than portional damage like other Fallout challenges. Which makes Dead Money much harder than the other Fallout 3 and new Vegas DLC's.



I didn't mean to imply that those were the only objections. I didn't mention the bugs or repetitive combat, for example, because they are a legitimate criticism. But almost every review I read mentioned the fact that you can't go back, can't bring your guns, meds and ammo into the DLC, etc. as a failing.



Which Fallout 3 or New Vegas DLC do you think is tougher than Dead Money? I think I died twice in all of the Fallout 3 DLC's combined (even the Super Mutant Overlords were easy to kill once you learned to shoot their tri-beams out of their hands), but on hardcoe mode I probably died at least twelve times in Dead Money. In fact it's probably more like twenty.

I do say the same about the Pitt and Mothership Zeta.

I disagree. The bomb collars give you plenty of warning to react to them. And as long as you're ware of your surroundings, you can pretty much zip through everything with very little concern for them. In OWB, I got into some serious gunfights that were difficult. I frequently found myself fighting from cover to avoid getting perforated.

I just finished DM last night and I thought it was difficult and challenging. I never looked at the Wiki for it or read anything here. I had no idea I'd be able to take things back with me. I got frustrated twice near the end and looked at YouTube videos for the answers but I tried to only look at what I needed. Since Arcade and Raul were with me, I was lucky I didn't have to worry about ammo since they had their default weapons.

At some points, I felt like it feels when I get lost in a vault....going around in circles but I eventually find my way. I don't enjoy it when that happens but I enjoyed DM. I was at Level 31 when I started and came out at Level 35. I wish I'd made a few different decisions but that gives DM replayability now that I know more about it. I thought it was fun and it was great to play something new. MOST of all, I think the devs should throw curve balls. I don't want every DLC to be the same and if I can't hit the curve ball, I'll just have to try harder...that's gaming.

I'll forever think of that damn collar when I hear beeping...even in my sleep. What an evil _______ that guy was!

And there's the Enclave at Vault 87...

The only thing "challenging" about Dead Money was killing Ghost People and killing that bastard Elijah. Old World Blues was WAY harder than Dead Money or Honest Hearts, since the enemies were ammo sponges and the weapons did hardly any damage against them. Hell, I went through more than 100 stimpacks in Old World Blues! Although I liked Old World Blues for its challenge, Dead Money is still the superior DLC!

It's really surprising to me that people could have found Old World Blues that difficult. I didn't bring power armor or a powerful weapon and I was fine. Even on hardcoe mode I was able find and manufacture (reloading or using fusion batteries to create energy cells, then converting them into microfusion cells) enough ammo to take out my opponents. I suppose it might be a problem, though, if you are used to using rare gun ammo types and get your ammo from stores and don't do any reloading.

The only hard part for me was getting a couple of crippled legs from robo-scorpions before I learned to move away from nearly dead ones. The robo-scorpions soak up a lot of damage but don't do that much damage in return, and the lobotomites and harness things are pretty easy.

The original post is talking about common complaints about Dead Money from players. My post was meant to just toss another common complaint in there, and yes, I'm ridiculing it.
A lot of people often said "Dead Money is trial-and-error, no one likes trial-and-error," and I'd heard this for ages before I even bought it myself. I went in and was so scared about everything (I like to play dead-is-dead), and then I was sort of in shock when I realized that half the radios can be found just by THINKING and the other half have graffiti pointing directly to them as warnings. I was struggling to see how people referred to it as trial-and-error. To me, trial-and-error are those old games where the layout makes a good player want to jump across a gap or something, but then when they actually jump they find out an enemy will shoot at their exact height or an invisible wall blocks them. There's no way they could've known beforehand and that's what annoys them. Dead Money though, just use your ears, your mind and a process of elimination and you're fine. I can only name like one speaker in the entire DLC (at the beginning of the vault) that demands quick reaction time that may tick some people off. The final FINAL vault puzzle with the holograms is also the only challenging one I encountered, requiring you to be fairly quick and take incredible leaps of faith.

i don't know what someone like you wants from someone like me. It was great work, and well-written, but i did not enjoy it. It's like you're going to hammer on it until i pretend i liked it, or i pretend your counter-points apply to me as a player in any way. And neither one is going to happen. :shrug:

I ended up walking out with all 37 gold bars, 2 sets of reinforced Madre armor, 1 set of regular Madre armor, 4 Automatic Rifles, 7 or 8 Police Pistols, Ass-ass-ins armor, 3 what-you-call-it knifes, 2 12-packs of beer, 2 graqefruits, 4 boxes of ready to cook fried rice, 2 packets of ready to cook Fettuccine Alfredo, 1 bottle of orange juice, 12 pack of banana flavord condo- [censored], I'm thinking of my shopping list.....

I pretty much walked out with everything Dead Money had to offer so I'm not complaining.

For a second there, i thought you were serious while i was reading, and i was overcome with panicked dread at the idea of being forced to play it again to get items i missed.

Well done. Evil, but well done.

I loved it. The thing about the speakers isn't that big of a deal really, just go slow. That's all you need to do. Slow down your pace a bit, breath in that fresh, toxic cloud smell and the DLC is alot better.