The very first time I played Dead Money, I loved it. The second time I played it, I hated it.

And the 3rd...and the 4th....and...

I go back even farther than that, but I have to admit that I don't really miss some of what made the 'old-school' games so hard. DM reminded me of some of it, but wasn't done to nearly that extreme; I wouldn't have minded if it had been a bit harder, however like you, I'm used to that.


As do I, although as I play on hardcoe mode it took having a better understanding of how to properly ration my healing supplies before I could take my time and actually enjoy said environment.

Ha, I have been playing video games since there was a video game! I remember Defender and even played some Pong. Atari, Colleco, NES, SNES - played em all.

I liked Dead Money, I think the worst was Honest Hearts because it was average except for Joshua Graham's awesomeness.

I liked Honest Hearts - a believable story and environment. Lots to explore - plus it was beautiful - deadly though. Plus Joshua was a cool character. So was Daniel. Plus the first companion you get reminded me of Sulik from F2.

Same here, which is why I don't mind that games are no longer staggeringly difficult until you get the hang of things. That, and if I want such an experience I can fire up Diablo II.

I do see why you dislike certain portions of Dead Money, as I felt similarly the first time I ran the Vault section, however I actually welcomed having to plan my route out and decide when to move and when to wait, since I like puzzles of that sort.

I actually did an article on this that agrees with a lot of the points you made.

http://thewestlondoner.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/fallout-3-vs-fallout-new-vegas-dlc-face-off/

Scroll down to dead-money (unless you want to read the whole thing!).

I'd like to think I've been fair, but basically it was just poorly designed and not very interesting, outside of talking to characters.

I don't mind hard games. If anything I have always felt the Bethesda/Obsidian games were way too easy. I almost always use mods to make the game harder. I dislike puzzle games - especially puzzle games in a middle of an RPG that result in insta death. Even though I don't mind them for a bit, but after multiple hours it just gets tedious. Especially when it is the same puzzle over and over again.

It was a truly unique experience that isn't at all frustrating. At least with my playstyle. I'm very meticulous and this DLC benefits from it greatly. I can see how being used to running around with reckless abandon would make this DLC difficult to adjust to, but one of the best parts for me was a change in the way the game is played with such simple measures.

I disagree with that assesment. The feeling of isolation, hostile and unique envrionment and the "faceless", mysterious enemies (until playing OWB, atleast :hehe:) all contribute to an unique experience in the game. It really reminded me of the old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games that i love. Really, i consider Dead Money an integral part of every playtrough.

Personal tastes vary, of course. And i personally love it :wub:

Dead Money accomplished exactly what it set out to do quite well, this has polarized the Fallout community; however I'd argue that it's the most polished and most interesting of the Fallout DLCs thus far. I know that I certainly appreciated the new challenges DM added to New Vegas.

Eh, it was like a poor aproximation compared to what it could have been. Hell, Lonesome road felt more like a survival horror because of the sheer number of marked men throughout, and the killer abominations. Dead money just bored me, it didn't achieve at all what it implied.
"lets have a survival horror, but have vending machines that can supply all your needs!" so where's the survival part?
If they'd stripped you down in lonesome road, you would have had a perfect marriage, scavenging for equipment against impossible numbers of enemies. Good stuff.

I didn't feel the supplies were that plentiful, though i certainly was not struggling either. Still, the main reason why i like it is the feel of the Sierra Madre.

In lonesome road the Tunnelers were just annoying. Fast, though and numerous is not a good combination :stare:

I'm used to insane-difficulty starts like what you're suggesting for LR, and I actually tend to start DLCs that way anyway to make things interesting, however the current system doesn't really handle it well and as a result you often have a :banghead: -ingly hard time as a result. Of course, the opposite problem occurs if you don't start out like that; I went into LR for the first time on a L45 character who was completely 'tricked out' and stomped everything in sight, save for a fight with three Deathclaws at once which was actually dangerous.

Unfortunately, there's no real way to have a middle ground here, since even though it can technically be set up that way you'd either go in under-, or massively over-, equipped for the intended difficulty level due to lack of proper encounter scaling mechanics.

Dead Money is all work and no play. That not good. Sux [censored]!

20,000+ pre-war money that I can sell for 9 caps per unit, 30 bars of gold I can buy the GRA stuff with...and the holorifle of doom.

The DLC may be a drag, but it does put the rest of the game on easy mode once finished.

Well, they had to give you some reason to keep returning to it with each playthrough, otherwise a lot of people would just skip it every time.

I don't think it's poorly designed and I found it reasonably interesting.

It might be a wild departure from the main game, but I think they hit the marks they wanted without going with overboard difficulty.

The section in bold is an important point. It's easy to say "make it more difficult!", but it's not so easy to actually do so without overdoing it in the process. It needs to be kept in mind that the developers have to consider a wide range of possible build configurations, and as such are limited in what they can do to broadly increase difficulty. There are ways they can do so more narrowly, however these are the sorts of things you don't change lightly as doing so can have drastic effects (as anyone who modded the Magic systems in Morrowind or Oblivion can attest to).

Every element of Dead Money's Design conflicted with every other element.

They wanted to make it a sort of survivalist challenge? But then they have a universal health/ammo/food/water dispenser on every street corner and huge amounts of currency for them.

Give you a core group of useful characters with abilities to help you out through the various hazards? Make you have to go back to the center of town to swap them, and not have them available for huge sections of the DLC, including the end.

Ghost people and holograms to invoke a "survival horror" element? Ghost people just had obnoxiously high health, not really a challenge to kill, and the "come back to life" trick only worked once. Plus, they just weren't creepy. The Troggs from the Pitt grunting "thank you" when you put them out of their misery were more disturbing. As for Holograms, I couldn't tell whether they were meant to be a puzzle hazard or an "impossible enemy", and they essentially incorporated elements of both BADLY until the final stage. either way, glowy people aren't scary.

Cloud and Radios to disuade you from going to certain places? Really, they were just padding. The cloud forced you to inject an extra stimpack but didn't *really* stop your progress, and while the idea that you'd have to stop, look around, defeat the radio and continue is a good idea, it largely failed because the rest of the DLC didn't invoke a survival-horror feeling. Both just felt like padding.

Lots of hidden loot, schematics for the vending machines, sierra madre cards etc? DON'T ALLOW YOU TO RETURN TO THE SIERRA MADRE AT THE END OF THE DLC. It'd be like if the Pitt expected you to find all the ingots in one sitting, and then carry back all the loot you earn from it. I don't mind the vault being sealed at the end, I liked the idea you could only grab a handful of gold (though I did do the stealth-boy exploit) but as for everywhere else? No adequately explored reason for why you couldn't find your way back.

The best part of Dead Money was the characters, and everything else was so weak it felt like poor padding around the outside.

But they gave you 2 weapons that would cause them all to fear. They worked mechanically better than any of the enemies in Dead money because they were DIFFICULT to kill, but you had to adopt a certain tactic to get rid of them. Killing them wasn't the point, SURVIVING them was.
And god knows you'd be getting scared if you started to run out of flamer fuel or flash bangs...

Video games, a truly interactive medium, where you can have dynamic narrative that moves beyond mere words. The story can be told in the scenary, in the music, by characters comments as you walk through, but scrawled markings on the wall.

And you want us to sit down and read text on a screen.

:clap:

True, they were diffcult at first, but using the Flare Gun made it almost too easy. The elevator ride was a pretty interesting experience :hehe:



There is a damn lot of dialogue in the DLCs. It doesn't help that majority of it is concentrated in the beginning, though it is a good thing that the rest of the DLC play is pretty much uninterrupted. Lonesome Road being a exception, with Ulysses' and ED-E's speeches at the start of every new area. Could i get a "TL;DR" option to skip to the decision part of the dialogue? :teehee:

Oh well, Skyrim gets released in 13 hours, knowing Bethesda there won't be a dialogue overload problem in that game :lmao:

Actually I was taking more issue that someone would complain against people not reading in a video game.
I love books, books are GREAT. Hell, some of my favourite things in the world are books, I carry a kindle with me everywhere! But games? Games are an interactive experience. Sure, exposition can be a part of that, but having a text dump over taking advantage of your nice impressive INTERACTIVE experience is a bit derp.
So don't complain about people not reading, complain about game designers expecting you to read, rather than them designing a game that gives the information properly.