Don't.

I've managed about 35 hours of play on the PS3 and the game is so riddled with crippling bugs and console freezing crashes that it is completely unplayable.

I really enjoyed Fallout 3 despite the occasional crash and bought this despite the rumours that had surfaced. The differences in game-play are minuscule to the point that this is effectively a very poor and unstable expansion pack. The engine is the obviously the same, as are most of the items, textures, interfaces etc and the developers have been so lazy that they have even copied and pasted entire buildings from Fallout 3 into this game. (I found the Republic of Dave main building, renamed, after a few hours play. Hardly any of the original's gameplay has been improved. Additions are so poorly explained in-game that they smack of last minute, poorly thought out additions

In the time I have been playing I have had about one console freezing crash for every hour's play. I have had to put up with glitches that randomly lock me out of certain areas, lost or disappeared companions and the developers have been so bone-idle in their testing that entire quest sequences can be followed without becoming "official" i.e. courier style missions within camp McCarren, (no-spoiler there, you are "the Courier"). These are chock full of glitches and a plethora of other issues. Worse than any beta I have seen.

I have watched NPCs sat in thin air typing imaginary keyboards, floating or clipped AI enemies, been stuck in an eternal "fall" with no recourse other than to reload and to top it all have had an autosave file corrupt following one of many game-induced system crashes. For the sake of my Console, to reduce the chance of it failing due to continual hard rebooting, I cannot afford the risk of using this ridiculous excuse for a complete game any longer.

Fallout: New Vegas should never have been released in the condition it is in. Personally, I think everyone who has purchased it should return it to the retailer. I certainly will even if it costs me some of the original money. Unless this is done, shoddy muck like this will continue to be thrust at us with the promise of "jam tomorrow". Game players, regardless of platform should not be subjected to this tripe.

Do not buy this game. If you own it, I seriously recommend returning it immediately in protest at this pitiful excuse for a game.

I haven't encountered gamebreaking bugs

You played a "completely unplayable" game for 35 hours?

No offense intended, I just couldn't help myself .

-HD

I've put in, pfft, 70 hours most and i haven't had that many problems. Sure the game freezes alot (mostly when i play 3 hours or mor straight but nothing that can't be fixed by turning off and on again) and sure there are bugs but none that can't be ignored. It's honestly an amazing game and these bugs can be easily fixed (wich is what the dev team is trying to do )

You must be one of the lucky few. The state of this game is absolutely inexcusable considering it was made by a professional team.

I disagree, you are probably one of the unlucky few that is also very vocal about it. There have been plenty of "I love this game" threads too. I'm sorry that you are having bad bugs, but I don't think you are in the majority.

Touche.

The story is good and it could even be the Water Torture effect with the bugs but they seem to be a lot worse in late game. Regardless, surely you can see the point. The bulk of my gameplay has been endured rather than enjoyed and isn't linear because of these ridiculous flaws.

PS3 has a general tendency with Fallout games to be relatively buggier. Just saying. I remember playing the GotY Edition of FO3 on PS3 and it was just as bad as NV.

But regardless of console, there exist much shorter games that come for the same price as this. Given the circumstances, this game is an excellent option. Bugs can be fixed with patches, it may take time, but they can be fixed.

Buying it is absolutely worth it.

I'm over 100 hours and still flawless.

Given that the Boards haven't exploded, I think that it's the 'few' who are experiencing the major bugs and not the majority. Plus another thing to bear in mind that it is an open world game where you have the ability to go and do what you like within the games limits, so it has to keep track of everything and everyone. This adds to the complexity of the game which expotentially increases the chances of bugs/glitches appearing.

What I'm trying to say is that a game with the complexity, scope and size of Fallout New Vegas has a greater chance of having bugs and glitches than a game like Far Cry which again has a greater chance of bugs and glitches than something like Halo all due to the size, complexity of the game in question. Far Cry while being an open world shooter style game doesn't have to worry about the added RPG elements that New Vegas does which reduces the chances of problems. With Halo you have a 'typical' linear mission FPS game where each mission is basically a self contained module and that again reduces the chances of problems.

Personally while Fallout New Vegas does have it's problems, I think that with the style of game that it is having at least some problems is inevitable and the few that I've so far encountered have not been overly major and one incident which I encountered could have been avoided if I'd actually considered the potential before I did what I did.

I don't agree with your ass-esment of the game. Yes, it was rushed to production, but you know what? If I had been given a choice between paying $100 for the beta version, and getting it two, maybe three months earlier.... I'd still do it.

I've only seen one major bug - when Veronica freezes up after the encounter with the Paladins outside the 'concealed' bunker. Another minor one was when I got frozen talking to the King; his henchman couldn't find a seat to talk to him with, so he kept running into Rex. The rest, are just minor ones. Nothing that's going to justify complaining about it.

True, the boards haven't exploded but I never usually post about these things and I imagine there are a significant number of people who would just write off the game as a dud and leave it at that. I very rarely join a forum to discuss games. I generally chat with friends and all who have played this have suffered problems from frustration to broken games. A Friend of mine started the game in hardcoe mode and before even starting the tutorial mission, a Giant Radscorpion appeared outside the bar and killed Sunny Smiles - Mission Failed; no save other than auto so back to square one. Yes - should have saved, but doesn't make it ok.

New Vegas and its predecessor are huge games and I can see they would be hard to test all eventualities but that should not be an excuse for shipping a game that is not ready for release. Developers are banking on the facility in current generation consoles to patch that was not available before. while this does allow for more ambitious games, my main point is that there may not be many game-breaking problems but they are there and a series of minor bugs/glitches in a row can destroy what should be a good and immersive game. I can see lots of people have had to adjust the way they play to account for the problems and that speaks volumes more than any rant can about how poorly executed Fallout: New Vegas is.

Edit for grammar.

I haven't had any major problems when playing the game. Sure I've had it freeze but it doesn't happen often.

I agree with a point about GOTY being bugged , the main problem was point lookout . That is where I got the most slow down times and freezes. After a while it went away. If NV is this bugged I want Black Ops more than NV then.

I wouldn't say "completely unplayable" but its almost not enjoyable with having to worry about your game crashing or whether or not your quest is going to actually work, if you can exit a building without getting a black screen etc. everybody seems to say "oh you are over exaggerating" but, when people paid for something that isn't working properly or incomplete they tend to get pissed off and rant about it, yes there may be some people that over exaggerate but c'mon you can't tell me there isn't major problems with this game at least for some people. Yes I understand that the game is massive and will have some bugs but not being able to play it without bugs often crippling your game play is ridiculous. I plan on keeping NV not returning like others because they got Oblivion to work pretty good sure there was still bugs ( notably the vampire quest on GOTY Edition) and they got FO3 to work with some minor bugs (except the GOTY edition )so I'd assume since they run on the same engine and what not that eventually they will fix NV. So I'll just sit tight for a month waiting for a patch or something I guess.

Aside from an occasional freeze, I haven't had any problems with the game. I too play on PS3. The freezes shouldn't be acceptable in any game, but when the content is this good I've learned to ignore the freezes. If it weren't for the freezes (Which usually happens once per session) and the framerate issues, this game would be damn near perfect in my eyes.

Or perhaps you're one of the unlucky few?

I get a freeze per hour, had a bunch of frame rate issues, companions have disappeared and never come back...AND had to go back to several other game save files, losing hours of playtime, due to bad saves. And yet, i can still enjoy this game better than many other games that dont have constant glitches and crashing.

Why cant you? How come i can enjoy something when i have just as much to be frustrated about as you?

It crossed my mind but It's not like I'm playing on a custom built PC in somewhere like Kazakhstan. A Playstation 3 has the same capabilities and requirements, give or take a few GB of hard drive space, wherever you are. I'm assuming that the game discs are the same so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that people are just keeping quiet, not bothering, or just putting up with .... the game as it is.

I feel for you guys on consoles. You seem to be stuck with nasty clumps of software gremlins.

On my PC at least, it's got a few weird glitches (Ed-E gets attacked on sight at Camp Mcwhatsisface, energy ammo disappears and reappears at random, Veronica teleports even though I told her to "wait here" (but not always . . . fun!), traders don't upgrade equipment (i.e. they will only ever sell whatever they had when I first encountered them) and other minor annoyances.)

But compared with FALLOUT3, phew! That thing was slow, stuttering, crashing and all manners of unstable.

Best wishes to the afflicted, I hope you get it righted soon . . .

30 hours in and just now finding my first game breaking bug.
I enter a cave full of night stalkers save and quit and when I came back all sound besides ambient music is gone.. Im hoping it returns when I leave the cave but Its hard to even trudge through the cave itself knowing I won't be hearing anything.

correction people - if you're thinking of buying this game - do. buy it twice. one copy to live in your machine and another to tuck under your pillow at night. these, ahem, "game-crippling" bugs are completely blown out of proportion and affect a staggering minority. avoid at your peril.

Up til now I've only had a few minor issues.

Performance:

Had to add the dll file to maximize graphics and raise FPS. (Same fix for Oblivion/Fallout 3.)
Had to apply another community fix to stop the micro-stutter/hitching. (Beats iFPSclamp buy a long shot.)
Had to install Rivatuner and apply Refresh rate override to remove the "slo-mo" effect. (Worked very well.)

Bugs/Issues:

I crashed once.
I freeze from time to time, but if I leave it be it comes back and I can play on.
ED-E deconstructed himself and I had to rebuild him. It was though I had never done it. He was sitting on his counter like before, broken.
Creatures half underground. (Mostly scorpions.)

I've avoided the save game corruptions and have yet to find a broken quest line. (Though admittedly I'm only 25 hrs into this character. I just entered Vault 22 last night before going to bed. It's a known "hot spot". We'll see.)

I may very well run across a major issue but at this point, I would suggest people try it for themselves and not to rely on others bad experiences. For all the bad posts you see, there are many not posting the good experience they are having. If I'd seen this post first, and decided to head it's warning, I'd be missing out on all the fun I've had so far. :shrug:

I am almost to at the point of saying this. there a blood svcking dog that biting me and i cant even kill him. he underneath the ground im walking on. i too have put in almost 40 hrs on this game and there are far more glitches then that's posted here. the frame rates take multiple hits when walking throughout towns and personally if i hear anything about obsidian touching a game I will not buy from a single game from them. Obsidian is a developer that needs to go out of business for messing a couple of titles aka alpha protocol and now fallout new vegas

I've had 2 freezes, a few frame-rate drops, a couple enemies stuck under the map and a weird glitch in some train station where I just fall through the ground while trying to go through a doorway... after owning this game for what will soon be 2 weeks, I think that's more than reasonable for a game of this size. The game is Friggin' amazing and there would be no way I would return my copy of NV... EVER!!! :fallout: