» Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:02 am Answer the polls, list the DLCs from best to worst, tell us which one you like the most, which one you liked the least, what you liked about each, what you hated about each, yknow the drill.
For me? Well.....
My favorite DLC has, and apparently always will be, Dead Money.
Dead Money simply provided me, a dead-is-dead player with a challenge. Though it did make me nervous, I love a good challenge, and I love the feeling you get when you succeed where you thought you might fail. Dead Money, on my first Dead-is-dead playthrough, was just nonstop, adrenaline pumped action, and there's a particular point in the DLC that houses my most memorable moment in New Vegas to this day. I still remember taking cover behind a wall with my Hunting Shotgun in hand as wave after wave of Ghost People slowly approached me, with "Begin Again" playing in the backround, while all I could think is "I'm so close....I'm SOOOOO close" with all story questions answered and only one task left to complete as I just kept fighting on, downing stimpacks and watching my aim to conserve on ammo, pulling out my Bear Trap Fist and brawling for a time whenever too many ghost people got too close...
Aside from the challenge, it also came with a nice story. EVERYTHING and everyone had a backstory, all questions were answered. We learned about the casino, why it was made, about all of the companions, their backstories, and about the antagonist himself. Everything just felt complete for me with Dead Money's storyline, and I think it's perhaps the only DLC where I can say the story felt perfect and complete. For that reason, though it may not be as fun to replay as say, Honest Hearts, my $10 was definitely worth it just to have that first amazing playthrough.
My second favorite DLC has to be Lonesome Road.
Going back to what I said above. Lonesome Road provided a challenge. It was a different kind of challenge than Dead Money, but every challenge is a welcomed challenge. Every fight was tough and every enemy gave the impression they could tear me a new one with just one swipe, and many of them could. This was another DLC with back-to-the-wall style combat that really demanded that you be on top of your game or fall as another nameless victim to the Divide. As I have my memory of Dead Money, I have one with Lonesome Road. The "you and me against the world" fight it provided at a (without giving away spoilers) certain point in the DLC was definitely fun. What's more, Lonesome Road provided us with SWEET LOOT! You really felt rewarded for completing it.
Another strong point of Lonesome Road is we finally got to know the story of the Courier and of Ulysses. However, this is where Lonesome Road falls behind Dead Money for me. Yes, I got to learn about the Courier, and yes, I learned some things about Ulysses. And yet, more questions arose about Ulysses, and I doubt they'll ever be answered. I don't like that feeling of not understanding a story fully, and though I'm very capable of walking away with what I do understand and know, it is frustrating knowing that it just doesn't feel complete. What's Ulysses obsession with America, specifically? What exactly did the Think Tank say to him? What message did he INTEND to relay with his final message? I know the answers will never come, and so be it, but I wish they would. If I only had those, this could've been my favorite DLC.
My third favorite is Old World Blues.
Old World Blues provided a different kind of challenge. It wasn't a fight for your life non-stop, but rather, a "race" to complete it before you ran out of resources to fight with. And yet, you wanted to explore it. Old World Blues was the least linear, and offered the largest variety of rewards for those who did explore. It was definitely fun, and the humor was welcome. Simple as that really.
Why it doesn't rank higher? No story. And really, that's fine: Old World Blues never pretended to be strong in the story department. It seemed to say from the get-go that it was meant to be a playground more than a mission. As I said, that's fine, but personally? A good story is what sticks with me in the long run, so while it's definitely a good DLC, the other two simply outshine it.
And my least favorite is Honest Hearts.
The two points I've stressed above have been that I enjoy a challenge and I enjoy a good story. Sadly, Honest Hearts didn't really have either. The challenge of Honest Hearts wasn't so much a challenge where you felt like your back was against a wall and you better not screw up, but rather a frustrating one where you'd be walking down a path, then suddenly the game says "LOL FOUR GIANT YAO GUAI SPAWN DIRECTLY ON TOP OF YOU," and sure enough, a Yao Guai would have you down to 10% HP remaining before he's even fully spawned in the cell. It took away from my ability to just enjoy the scenery and it really ate away at my stims and chems reserves. I just found it frustrating that I was near death multiple times through no fault of my own, but rather due to a bad spawn mechanic. Other than this annoying possibility, the difficulty is the easiest of the four, which some may like, but for me, it made it less memorable.
As for the story, it felt....incomplete. The basic structure and points the story was trying to make were clear, but it lacked detail. The game fails to provide you with many arguments from characters for you to expand upon, and much rather, it just feels like the game is yelling "WOULD YOU JUST SIDE WITH JOSHUA GRAHAM ALREADY?" Even the endings feel incomplete, with arguments in game perhaps persuading a player to choose the ending they did, whereas the actual ending itself doesn't address those arguments OR provides completely unseen problems, leaving the player thinking "well wait wtf happened to point A, B, and C?" Hell, one ending simply DIDN'T TELL YOU what ended up happening to a very important character if you chose that ending path. The DLC DOES offer a good story, but for that one, a player must crawl into the caves. Being accustomed to the seemingly empty caves of the Mojave, I didn't bother doing this, so by the time I found out about this good storyline, I'd already heard about it on these forums from other people, not by discovering it myself. Kinda ruined it for me to hear it from others, rather than to happen upon it myself.
It's still a fun DLC though, and admittedly, for what it lacks in story, strengthens it by giving it better replay value. Old World Blues and Dead Money will leave the player clicking like mad to get through the story and dialog they already know, but Honest Hearts has a nice "oh hey you're back. You know the drill: serve the Burned man; get sweet loot" thing going on, and once you get used to where all the enemy spawn points are, the above mentioned frustration can be avoided.
Overall, there's not a single DLC here I would call bad. I thoroughly enjoyed them all, which is a lot more than I can say about Fallout 3. Good to see such a vast improvement in DLCs in such a short amount of time. Kudos to the developers. :celebration:
