Hi guys (and girls),
I've been playing F:NV for at least 20 hours on hardcoe mode and I absolutely love it. Had only a few crashes on the PS3 so I think some of the hysteria is misplaced.

One thing I have noticed though is how few and far between terminals appear to be when comparing it to FO3. Have you guys had a similar experience? I have not entered the strip yet (want to explore the whole wasteland first) but even so I expected there to be many more terminals in buildings. I really enjoyed the challenge of hacking terminals in DC and feel like my Science skill is wasted a bit this time around.

What do you guys think? Do they become more prevalent once you enter the strip?

Cheers,
Eugene.

Well there's also the 'minor' fact that science has other uses in Fallout New Vegas such as fiddling with energy/micro fusion/electron charge ammo types, it's also used in at least some other crafting recipes ingame and at least a few missions have a science based completion option as well.
So all told I'd have to say that depending on your character build, the Science skill can be quite usefull.

Yep, all valid points. I certainly benefited from having a high Science skill on some missions and it helps me craft a number of items that are useful in the Wasteland. Still, it feels like there are too few terminals and safes when compared with FO3. Maybe it's just me.

hmmm i suppose you're right. i have seen less of them, and i'm quite glad really, i could never figure out how the damn things work properly i just had to use an exploit to get past them.

I thought there were kind of a lot in FO3, possibly even too many. I do enjoy the hacking though, so to have *way* less in F:NV is a bit disappointing. It would have been nice if there were more.

Yeah, there probably were too many in FO3, but there are definitely too few in FNV. I think I've come across less than a dozen in twice as many hours of playing.

I, for one, hated hacking. I don't know if it was my screen or not, but ti was ungodly hard to see each of the symbols/ letters and just got old fast. I like the lack of terminals, but yah, definitely less in this one.

Science is not wasted, theres an awful lot of dialogue options that uses it.

Lockpicking also seems to be quite a waste, while we're on the subject of breaching security.

Good riddance.
Hacking minigame is really really boring and confusing.
I'm glad there are less in the game.
Might be hard for the achievement but still.
Better off with less of them.

The hacking game wasn't so hard when you understood what to do. It required a lot of sitting and staring at numbers on the screen, so it got kind of monotonous after a while. I remember playing fallout 3 saying that the mini-game wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't forced to play it every five minutes.

This time science has other applications besides hacking terminals. It offers extra conversion options, mission options, crafting options and gives you some unique opportunities for experience that you wouldn't otherwise get. In NV, science is more than just a hacking skill. I think its fairly well executed, and more valuable than lockpick, but thats just me.