So I am trying to wrap up everything in the game with one character - just for fun before retiring the game. But man of man, Dead Money is just horrible! Sure the writing and characters are interesting - but the gameplay - it blows! Really blows. It gets so tiring. Not enjoyable at all. I may just reload a save before going in there and pass on the thing. The beeping collar would have been fun for a bit, but it blows after three or four hour. Not fun.

hehe, checking the mods I see someone has made one that disables the collar and fog of doom. I may try that out.

Overal, it is a real shame because the writing seems to be excellent. Just someone seemed to think really annoying gameplay would be fun. Traps, Death Clouds, exploding insta death, no healing items, no ammo - svcks. If the base game was anything like this I would have uninstalled it.

Overall, I have to say Dead Money has the worst gameplay. So, does anyone else feel the same way?

There's a difference between "i don't like it" and "it's bad". I'm sorry to hear that DM's gameplay doesn't appeal to you, but that's no reason to downright bash it.

it is different....have to adjust gameplay but i liked dead money.........ok i know,,,,someone is going to beat me.... :teehee:

I couldn't stand it either.I got to the vault and (without giving too much away) I couldn't make it back so I finally gave up.It wasn't worth the frustration.

When I play it, I get this "ok, I have to go through this absolute hell hole so I can get that butt-load of gold bars and endless weapon repair kits and stimpacks when its all done."

I have to agree with the OP though, if the entire game was designed just like Dead Money, I would have uninstalled it on day one. I think Dead Money is designed to be a horrible experience because you feel so relieved when its finally over and you reap the rewards from your hard work.

I would probably enjoy the experience A LOT more if I could be able to bring with me one weapon of my choice with me (whatever I am equipped with when I get knocked out) and whatever armor I was wearing when I got knocked out.

Give me Lucky and a decent amount of .357 rounds with Joshua Graham's Armor / Desert Ranger Armor and I will have a blast.

It's annoying that you need a science skill of 75 (and you can't use lockpick) to get the .357 schematic from the police station.

The combat is so damn redundant, because once you finish all the .357 ammo you got without the schematic you have to resort to punching everything with a bear trap or using a couple rounds on the ridiculously inaccurate automatic rifle that couldn't hit a fat man on a tricycle if you tried.

wow..from some of these posts..mm rather not say anything, but dead money was friggin awesome, perfect for the build i was and usually play.dead money was a breath of fresh air and alot of fun, although tense moments..what the hell ill say it..if u had trouble with it..lvl some more and try again.cause it aint that hard even on hardcoe..just have to have patience

DM is a pain for the first time you play it, mainly because you don't yet know where all the transmitters are. Second time if you remember where they all are, it's rather fun as you can easily take out the number one annoyance of the DLC. The gold comes in handy too.

HH is a casual DLC, built around Joshua Graham. I didn't think it was exceptionally good, but it isn't bad either. It's a fun place, just an expansion to the original game already full of fetch quests.

OWB is like all others have said arguably the best DLC. It's fun, lots of good loot, plenty of area to cover and sans Nightstalkers the enemies aren't that bad. Roboscorpions are bullet sponges but thankfully they are very weak.

Lonesome Road is, alas, a road so I don't take those people seriously who complain about LR's linearity. Roads tend to be that way (same goes for people who whined about metro tunnels in Fallout 3). Ulysses' ranting gets old quick, all the hype was about him having some really important thing to tell you, and about an epic battle. This wasn't the case. LR's better graces are good loot, reasonable enemies (except Tunnelers, which are absurdly annoying).

I would say HH is a lot better than you give it credit for. Excellent story telling and very immersive.

Lonesome Road is pretty good, better than OWB in my opinion.

OWB is alright. I totally hated it at first because I had huge expectations and the sub-tron themes urk me, the tron lights in the interiors and the dreaded tron suit :flame:

I've just accepted Dead Money as a prison experience. Not meant to be enjoyed, just done for the reward.

remove the poison gas and collars? wow. you might as well not play at all.

Removing just about all of what makes the game challenging would completely ruin the gameplay. Dead Money is Fallout New Vegas' horror DLC, it's a survival game. You obviously don't know how to survive without being spoonfed giant weapons throughout a DLC, so I would suggest you play something a bit easier, like Honest Hearts.

I absolutely agree with the OP. I like to play as though I'm playing DID, but seriously, my sincerest congratulations to anybody who got through DM alive. It has the one gameplay feature that I find unacceptable in a FO game, learn by dying. There may be some of you out there who didn't but I found that there were occassions where I had to die to work out what I had to do. Still, great atmosphere, great enemies, great rewards for planning for all eventualities in character design and two of my favourite companions.

It's certainly the worst to me. I loathe the entire hackneyed, arbitrary survival horror genre, and DM only reinforced that dislike. I don't give a damn what the writers thought was a good idea, my endurance 10, intelligence 10, explosives and repair 100 Courier is not going to get dragged around by some senile old coot, end of goddamed story. If a Ranger in the main game knows how to get collars off people without tools, a PC with the aforementioned stats should be capable of doing the same thing.

Oh, wait. Railroading is good storytelling, I forgot.

Completely agree with this! My character is close to level 40 with high skill levels. I have no trouble with the combat and skill checks at all. But there are just too many insta death areas.

For instance (pretty spoiler free here) I have assembled the team and I am positioning the big brute. However, he wants some food to stay put. However, I have already killed everyone in that zone. It does spawn two new enemies - but one is hiding somewhere in a radio zone - that also has death cloud cover. I decided to leave the level and look for "food" in other areas. However, the Ghost people there do not drop food. So I have to run into the zone - look for either the Ghost Seeker or the dumb radio and then run back out before the collar blows. I have done this repeatedly and I can not find either. Finally I just saved ran in and looked until the collar blows then reload. Fustrating!

I like the surival/horror genre - but this is neither. There is no suspense or scarry moments. Just annoying as all death clouds, twisty maze layouts, traps, killer holograms and death radio.

Definitly the worst gameplay of all the Fallout games.

My favourite DLC, that one.

Dead money's pretty bad but has decent items. In terms of the other DLC's it's certainly the worst.

Without a doubt, I didn't say it was bad in any way. All I'm saying is that HH is an innocent fetch quest DLC, little different from the core game. That's why I like it.

People seem so sensitive about trial and error. God forbid a game requires the player to pay attention to what he's doing.

Anyways, no I don't think it was the worst even though the constant rusty red darkness and corridors got to my nerves in the long run.

Its sounds like people just don't pay attention anymore and expect the game to hold your hand.

besides after Mothership Zeta I can't say any New Vegas DLC is bad.

I have to admit, DM is the toughest DLC in the series and it's not just because of bullet sponges or "kill you in one hit" opponents (like in LR), you have to manage your inventory, ammo and healing items, worry about standard traps, the poison red cloud, radio speakers that can set off your bomb collar, security holograms and a potential race against clock at the end.

I've died in that DLC more times than I care to admit, but in the all my playthroughs I've probably only skipped this DLC once and in each subsequent play-though I've gotten better and better at not dying.

Haven't quite perfected it yet, but I can probably get a low level character, maybe level 5-10 to make it through to the end if I toned down the difficulty. In the beginning it's about having enough ammo to survive the ghosts. Still, even with my experience, I probably wouldn't go near this DLC with a "dead-is-dead" character unless I had the Implant GRX perk.

In retrospect, Bethsidian should have probably released this DLC as the 3rd installment instead of the first and market it as the "super challenging" FONV DLC.

As for the rewards and gear the main advantage is the Sierra Madre vending machine and the regular supply of SM chips that you can get in the bunker and of course the glitched Holorifle that does not need regular repair, or barely needs repair if you use Max Charge cells and hits about as hard as Gauss and does not eat as much ammo but has a small clip, is slow to reload and not nearly as accurate despite the unneeded scope.

The police pistol is easily outclassed by a fully modded .357 Magnum and of course Lucky.

The Automatic Rifle makes a good companion weapon for any of the .308 Sniper Rifles but the weight of the .308 ammo may make it prohibitive in HC mode to use as your primary automatic compared to the lighter .556 ammo for the LMG and the 5mm ammo for the Chaingun/Avenger. Plus, the .308 hand load ammo got nerfed so that it's not as godly as it used to be, but the weapon kits from SM vending machine can help offset the increased damage to CND of the hand loads.

The Reinforced SM Armor is the best Light armor in the game in terms of DT and with the Light Touch Perk light armor is basically THE choice for high critical build characters.

The Assassin Suit is probably the best Sneak Bonus armor in the game, easily edging out the Chinese Stealth Armor. The Recon Armor and the Stealth Suit Mk II suffer for the Medium Armor penalty.

The Melee weapons although not spectacular, deserve an honorable mention. The Knife Spear (and the Clean version) has a "Mauler" special attack that sends your opponents flying. The Super Heated Cosmic Knife has a huge critical multiplier so it almost always criticals, the only negatives are that it's unaffected by the cowboy and pyromaniac perks, which keep it from being godly but it's basically the "choice" standard (Sneak < 50) holdout weapon for Melee characters.

Not sure how your post relates to anything I posted. The gameplay in Dead Money is boring and fustrating - to me. Not really sure how anyone finds dying repeatedly to exploding collars, unkillable holograms, death clouds while exploring a repitive dull maze to be fun. Combat is not challenging or interesting. The only redeeming value for the whole DLC is the characters. As for the loot - ehh nothing interesting here.

As for Mothership Zeta - it was silly - but still fun. A campy 50s-Sci Fi theme. Don't take it serious and just have fun.

Now that I downloaded the mod that gets rid of the death cloud and collars the DLC is more - tolerable. Still not really fun, but at least it is not extremely annoying.

I agree with alot of whats said but I am still a fan of DM. Big Iron put it best "When I play it, I get this "ok, I have to go through this absolute hell hole so I can get that butt-load of gold bars and endless weapon repair kits and stimpacks when its all done." ". The loot factor and the Sierra Madre vending machine and replenishable Cloud residue's you get from the bunker after make for easier time in the Mojave. The gameplay mechanics I can live with but the sad thing for me on the console is no ability to return.

I did enjoy exploring the Sierra Madre, even with the cloud, once I disabled all the speakers. Traps aren't a bother as I always take light step.I also used the companion exploit to bring in gear and Red Glare proved invaluable in disabling speakers and such; even through walls. Gotta say I think DM's story was one of the strongest in the game imho. I still get chills when I trick Elijah into trapping himself in the vault and making off with all the Madre loot in just a 30 sec walk around. Stepping on the other side of that force-field is tops.

The game takes several opportunities to tell you how to deal with exploding collars and unkillable holograms, if you keep dying you are doing it wrong.
Also I've got a mod that severely reduces my health (nothing on level up and a little less at the start) and that cloud is no more than a nuisance, something to take into account like food, hunger and sleep.

That said I can understand if the gameplay of this DLC isn't your cup of tea. So I guess to you it would be the worst.

I don't think I would have hated DM so much if the collars weren't in it.I like to take my time and explore and you can't do that with your head exploding.I'm also directionally impaired so trying to remember certain routes and where all the speakers are is impossible for me.

I can deal with the collars, it is just boring to do that. Run in - try to spot it then run out. Then run in and shot it. Or find a route around it. Boring. Easier to save - go in and find the speaker or the route through and let the collar blow. Then just reload.