Tag Archives: Fallout
Fallout TV show trademark registered
Remember Fallout 3 radio DJ Three Dog’s voice actor teasing we might see more of the character, bow-wow-wow, soon? It was tough to not start quivering in anticipation of impending Fallout 4 news, but a trademark registration sniffed out by Eurogamer points in a less expected, but still very exciting, direction.
This particular “Fallout” trademark applies to “entertainment services in the nature of an on-going television program set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world,” which speaks for itself in a way that precious few trademark and patent filings tend to do.
Erik Todd Dellums (Three Dog’s voice actor) has a lot of voice work in his portfolio, but he’s also seen some screen time, including a recurring role on acclaimed HBO drama The Wire.
We don’t know anything about the program beyond a potential Three Dog appearance, but a live-action series given proper love from HBO or AMC could be excellent. Just imagine telling all your friends you were into water chips and super mutants before they went prime time.
Xbox 360 | Fallout: New Vegas – Lonesome Road Review
Fallout: New Vegas – Lonesome Road is aptly named because the path you travel through this linear add-on is a solitary one. Your sole companion is a hovering robot that speaks in bloops and bleeps, though your adventure isn’t devoid of human connection. This robot–ED-E is its name–also serves as a conduit of both the present and the past. In the present, a fellow courier named Ulysses growls solemnly at you through ED-E, tantalizing and annoying you with piles of vague, oblique dialogue. Meanwhile, snippets from the past tell you of ED-E’s creation and creator. This narrative structure is thematically relevant: Lonesome Road is about the faded memories of the past and how they affect the choices you face in the here and now. It is an unusual adventure, more scripted and less open ended than you might have expected, but it’s dotted with the kind of signature moments that Fallout: New Vegas typically lacked. This is the last of the game’s downloadable adventures, and it’s entertaining on its own terms, if not an expansive and explosive conclusion to the New Vegas tale.
Ulysses is a former scout and a witness to the nuclear disaster that wiped the residents of a community called The Divide off of the map. He is the sole survivor, and intrigued by the influence one person can wield over individuals, communities, and continents. You are that person. In Lonesome Road, you piece together your unremembered past from Ulysses’ nebulous dialogue. “You carry death wherever you go–if the Mojave doesn’t know it yet, it will,” he grumbles. “I carry no hatred for duty…if that’s what this was. The Divide was more than that. Its people, more than that.” Such vagueness serves the tale well at first, spurring you on to learn more about the land and your connection to it. In time, however, Ulysses’ ramblings wear thin. What initially sounds like pearls of wisdom turns to chunks of gravel coughed up by a writer padding out a script with the same basic notions worded in 1,001 convoluted ways. And when the conclusion arrives, no matter which ending you experience, you won’t likely walk away feeling like you learned much from Ulysses’ winded monologues.
It’s telling that the eyebot ED-E, with his (or her?) wordless communication, is ultimately a more engaging character than the one who elaborates on nothing at all for countless minutes. You speak with ED-E from time to time, and like some other wordless robots in the wasteland, you can understand his gobbledygook. Exaggerated motions and electronic whines make ED-E’s emotions (or whatever emotion-like attributes robots have) immediately clear. This bot is actually a clone of the robot with the same name that appears in the main game and was built by one Doctor Whitley, who was as much of a mentor to ED-E as he was a creator. Through Whitley’s voice logs, you learn that ED-E longs to be like Ralphie, a bot that was a central figure in a prewar television show. ED-E is fiercely loyal and difficult to dislike, and a few different story moments focused on him might pull at your heartstrings.
With ED-E (usually) at your side, you journey through The Divide, seeking Ulysses–and answers. Lonesome Road is structured differently from most Fallout adventures. There aren’t wide-open areas to investigate, and there are few side quests to pursue. And what side missions do exist aren’t terribly compelling: detonate the warheads scattered about the land, collect audio logs, and so forth. Without the openness of typical Fallout regions, you get few chances to exercise the power of choice. You might pick locks and hack computers, but in these linear environments, you never feel as though you have solved a challenge by indirect means when you do so. That doesn’t mean there aren’t choices to make: The concluding sequence offers you a chance to exercise great power or to refuse the opportunity entirely. But the organic decision making for which New Vegas is known is mostly absent here.
Lonesome Road still makes a mark, if not for adhering to the franchise’s strengths, then for wisely using its linearity by making good use of a number of scripted events. An explosion in the sky and the resulting mushroom cloud is a fearsome sight to behold. An elevator ride turns into a battle for survival, featuring one of the add-on’s new enemies: bug-eyed underground dwellers called tunnelers. Earthquakes shake the ground as you trudge through a burning complex. Grabbing loot from within a rusted vehicle might cause a deathclaw to land on the roof with a thud. These predetermined occurrences may not seem very “Fallout,” but they prove effective nonetheless. This is in part due to the evocative environments in which they take place: a crumbling overpass illuminated by a glowing yellow sky, the slanted corridors of collapsing buildings, and so forth. But your travels are not without their frustrations, which usually come in the guise of all-but-invisible mines that you step on frequently. They’re a ridiculous irritation that make the journey less fun than necessary.
And what would the new Fallout be without the glitches and execution blunders that so frequently intrude on your travels? A tunneler might clip into the environment, following you around and attacking you from beneath the ground. (Contrary to what the creature’s name might imply, this is a bug, not a feature.) A rock hovers in the sky as if dangling from an unseen thread. Invisible walls prevent you from vaulting over obstacles you should be able to clear. These returning issues become less and less forgivable as time and technology march forward. Fortunately, this adventure’s key developments help overshadow them, as do some new weapons (a rocket launcher called Old Glare among them), a level cap increase, and other goodies. Nevertheless, Fallout: New Vegas – Lonesome Road doesn’t fully satisfy. The confined environments make for unexceptional exploration, and the long-winded dialogue never reaches a proper climax.
Xbox 360 | Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues Review
What would you do if your spine was ripped from your body? What would happen if you had a big gun with a dog’s brain? Do light switches get along with each other? These are questions you’ve likely never thought to ask, yet Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues answers them with more humor and irreverence than is contained in the entirety of the last two full Fallout games combined. In this downloadable add-on, you have a conversation with your own body parts and learn the meaning of the word “sonjaculate,” perhaps while dressed in an insecure suit of armor that asks, “Do you like me?” Expect to laugh and laugh often, even as you clobber murderous robot scorpions with a sonic weapon that you can program to sound like an opera singer. This kind of wit penetrates every aspect of Old World Blues, which turns ordinary fetch quests into surreal excursions that cleverly hark back to previous threads of dialogue without calling undue attention to the link. And there are so many bizarre touches tucked into the add-on’s nooks that you’ll want to turn over every stone and open every door, lest a shrewd secret go undiscovered.
Old World Blues announces its wit with a hysterical opening dialogue, and doesn’t let up until the final frame of the epilogue that concludes it. That dialogue occurs between you and Dr. Klein, a self-important scientist who is not human, but rather a brain attached to a trio of monitors that shiver, glare, and scrutinize with exaggerated motions that communicate more emotion than any of Fallout: New Vegas‘ wooden character models. Dr. Klein and his robot cronies–an egghead having an identity crisis and a vixen with a disturbing fixation on human reproduction among them–have removed your brain. Oh, and your heart and your spine too. This may seem a cruel experiment, yet here you are, lobotomized and trying to reason with a robot scientist with the voice of an old-timey radio announcer. As it happens, you want your brain back (go figure), yet your curious captors are no longer in possession of it. Their academic nemesis, the “evil” Dr. Mobius, has whisked it away to his lab. It seems that if you want to be whole again, you must confront Mobius–and do a few favors for Klein and company in the meanwhile.
As in most role-playing games, Old World Blues’ missions involve collecting objects for your quest-givers and returning to them to continue forward. But great context can turn a simple fetch quest into a phenomenon, and every action you take has a humorous edge that keeps you pushing forward with a grin. Much of this humor comes from the uproarious dialogue. On the subject of human emotions: “Glands. They come from glands.” On the subject of the tongue: “It’s like having a dexterous slug lolling and flopping about in one’s mouthal cavity.” On the subject of the DLC’s new explorable area: “The crater helps keep everyone inside. Because it’s bowl shaped!” The wit carries into almost every feature in one way or another. One weapon you might earn is the K9000 Cyberdog, a heavy machine gun that lets out a heartbreaking whine when you unequip it. Your new stealth armor applies stimpaks automatically when needed and provides occasional hints in a soothing female voice–but feels guilty for doing so.
Quests are similarly elevated by this endless whimsy. At one point you perform a series of tests in a structure guarded by cyberdogs and patrolling robots. The “testing arena” may seem a tired idea, but the way the quest ties in to one of the not-so-good doctor’s adolescent anxieties makes it special. For that matter, it’s also fun. Consistent robot movement patterns, smart enemy placement, and alternate routes for lockpickers and hackers make the sneaking portions more enjoyable than typical Fallout stealth. Elsewhere, you take on sturdy robot scorpions that act as Dr. Mobius’ eyes and ears, fellow lobotomites who didn’t take to their surgeries quite as well as you did, and a few other interesting enemies.
If you’d rather procrastinate questing and go off on your own, there’s plenty to discover out there in Big MT. (Some pronounce that as “Big Empty”; your electronic subjugators prefer “Big Mountain”–even though their hazardous experiments turned this former mountain into a giant hole in the ground.) There are all sorts of interesting things to find if you’re vigilant, including AI/voice routines that you can plug into the various appliances in your personal space, known as The Sink. One such device lets you feed it plant material for helpful consumables in return. (And boy, is this suave gigolo eager to have you feed him your seeds.) Another is a jukebox with the persona of a jocund jazz trumpeter. Searching out these routines and other secrets is a delight, thanks to the varied scenery, which makes the most of an aging graphics engine. The domed base called the Think Tank cuts a striking silhouette against the night sky. A botanical garden provides organic respite among the surrounding cliffs and canyons. And an enclosed village provides a taste of humanity in a territory manned by machines.
Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues’ primary flaws are those that carry over from the main game. Entering VATS (the Vault-Assisted Targeting System) could result in a minute’s worth of slow motion in which you never take a single shot or swipe at your target. Voice-overs might interrupt each other–a shame, when you want to savor the funny dialogue and fantastic acting. And the poor lighting and indistinct textures can make it difficult to spot mines or even quest items. But there’s a good amount of content in here for enthusiasts–along with some new perks, a five-level increase to the level cap, and various weapons and clothing to take back with you into the Nevada wastes. You even earn a device called the transportalponder, which allows you to freely teleport between the crater and the desert. But the best reason Old World Blues gives you to return to Fallout: New Vegas is its nonstop humor, which is so outlandish as to make you laugh out loud, yet restrained enough to never be tasteless. At one point, you are told, “I have very good raisins for everything I do.” And there is no better raisin to return to Fallout: New Vegas than this hilarious add-on.
PC | Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts Review
In the Fallout universe, nuclear war has ravaged the country, but religious faith abides. In Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts, men of God struggle to find peace in a land where strife is inescapable–a powerful theme for a downloadable add-on. The story in Honest Hearts doesn’t take advantage of this fertile premise, but that premise still enriches this formulaic yet enjoyable adventure into Utah’s Zion National Park. As its name would suggest, some see this region as a promised land, and it’s here that two religious leaders struggle to maintain control in the face of a warring tribe that would drive them out. Zion is a big and atmospheric setting for a new adventure, and there’s enough new content here to keep you busy for four or five hours as you shoot up charging geckos and get to know the local tribes. That said, Honest Hearts doesn’t make a lasting impression; none of its characters, places, or events stand up to those of the main game or even those of Fallout 3‘s better content packs. Yet, this enjoyable excursion gives you several welcome chances to exercise the power of choice, and it rewards you with new perks, new weapons, and an increased level cap.
The two men at the center of Honest Hearts are good, sincere blokes that nonetheless don’t see eye to eye on how to deal with the White Legs, a violent tribe of nomads eager to scalp anyone that dares oppose them. One of these men is Daniel, a Mormon missionary with close ties to a tribe called The Sorrows. The other is Joshua Graham, otherwise known as The Burned Man. Joshua favors an aggressive approach toward the White Legs, which is no surprise given his violent past with Caesar’s Legion. He is beloved by the Dead Horses tribe and preaches that mankind should shun the greed of the outside world. You stumble upon both men after the trading caravan you join falls victim to the White Legs, though neither makes a very strong impression. Joshua needs supplies like lunch boxes and walkie-talkies; Daniel sends you to find maps and disarm traps. These are nice men that nonetheless make you wonder how they managed to inspire the devotion of the locals. Joshua tells you that he was put on Earth to show people how to fight, yet he speaks in even tones, without an ounce of passion. For someone called The Burned Man, his personality lacks fire, and the tasks he needs performed are hardly extraordinary.
As mundane as the narrative is, you still get welcome opportunities to make decisions, though they would have more weight if you felt more invested in the consequences. Standard quests allow for a bit of flexibility. You might kill the gigantic Yao Guai creatures threatening the camp or collapse the cave in which they live. You could convince a tribesman to follow his heart and explore the “civilized” world or encourage him to stay with his people. The final series of decisions determine the future of several characters and their tribes, and these are outlined in an epilogue that closes the adventure in traditional Fallout fashion. Some of these characters include a few that join you as followers, and they, like Joshua and Daniel, are remarkably even tempered. It’s nice to have their company, however–particularly that of Waking Cloud, a pious Sorrow tribeswoman indebted to Daniel for her saving her life. It’s too bad that some of the quests these characters join you for are so routine. Find a key, open a cabinet, search for a compass: These are simple fetch quests that needed some dressing up with better context.
A few quests offer some variety, however, including one that pits you against a giant creature in Honest Hearts’ best battle. The reward is an excellent melee weapon that nicely complements an intimidating helmet you might also grab before you head back to the Mojave. Other tangible goodies in this content include weapons (such as tomahawks) and new perks (extra damage when limbs are crippled). In addition, the level cap has been increased by five. Zion also serves as its own reward; its prickly cacti and red-orange plateaus provide a great backdrop to your travels. This graphics engine is showing its age, what with the bland textures, inconsistent shadows, and awkward animations. Yet campsites dotted with empty beer bottles and abandoned communal grills are an effective reminder of the civilization from which Joshua wants to shield his followers.
This being a Fallout game, it’s no surprise that you could run into a number of bugs. These include some enemies you cannot damage or target in the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System because they are standing in water; enemies hovering in midair or clipping into rocks; and non-player characters running around in circles as if their loincloths are on fire. Don’t let such typical bugs dissuade you from considering Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts, however. The story and related quests don’t surprise, but this add-on gives you the opportunity to once again influence those you meet and accomplish your goals as you see fit. And, you do those things in a desert environment harboring enough creatures and caves to make it worth exploring.
Xbox 360 | Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts Review
In the Fallout universe, nuclear war has ravaged the country, but religious faith abides. In Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts, men of God struggle to find peace in a land where strife is inescapable–a powerful theme for a downloadable add-on. The story in Honest Hearts doesn’t take advantage of this fertile premise, but that premise still enriches this formulaic yet enjoyable adventure into Utah’s Zion National Park. As its name would suggest, some see this region as a promised land, and it’s here that two religious leaders struggle to maintain control in the face of a warring tribe that would drive them out. Zion is a big and atmospheric setting for a new adventure, and there’s enough new content here to keep you busy for four or five hours as you shoot up charging geckos and get to know the local tribes. That said, Honest Hearts doesn’t make a lasting impression; none of its characters, places, or events stand up to those of the main game or even those of Fallout 3‘s better content packs. Yet, this enjoyable excursion gives you several welcome chances to exercise the power of choice, and it rewards you with new perks, new weapons, and an increased level cap.
The two men at the center of Honest Hearts are good, sincere blokes that nonetheless don’t see eye to eye on how to deal with the White Legs, a violent tribe of nomads eager to scalp anyone that dares oppose them. One of these men is Daniel, a Mormon missionary with close ties to a tribe called The Sorrows. The other is Joshua Graham, otherwise known as The Burned Man. Joshua favors an aggressive approach toward the White Legs, which is no surprise given his violent past with Caesar’s Legion. He is beloved by the Dead Horses tribe and preaches that mankind should shun the greed of the outside world. You stumble upon both men after the trading caravan you join falls victim to the White Legs, though neither makes a very strong impression. Joshua needs supplies like lunch boxes and walkie-talkies; Daniel sends you to find maps and disarm traps. These are nice men that nonetheless make you wonder how they managed to inspire the devotion of the locals. Joshua tells you that he was put on Earth to show people how to fight, yet he speaks in even tones, without an ounce of passion. For someone called The Burned Man, his personality lacks fire, and the tasks he needs performed are hardly extraordinary.
As mundane as the narrative is, you still get welcome opportunities to make decisions, though they would have more weight if you felt more invested in the consequences. Standard quests allow for a bit of flexibility. You might kill the gigantic Yao Guai creatures threatening the camp or collapse the cave in which they live. You could convince a tribesman to follow his heart and explore the “civilized” world or encourage him to stay with his people. The final series of decisions determine the future of several characters and their tribes, and these are outlined in an epilogue that closes the adventure in traditional Fallout fashion. Some of these characters include a few that join you as followers, and they, like Joshua and Daniel, are remarkably even tempered. It’s nice to have their company, however–particularly that of Waking Cloud, a pious Sorrow tribeswoman indebted to Daniel for her saving her life. It’s too bad that some of the quests these characters join you for are so routine. Find a key, open a cabinet, search for a compass: These are simple fetch quests that needed some dressing up with better context.
A few quests offer some variety, however, including one that pits you against a giant creature in Honest Hearts’ best battle. The reward is an excellent melee weapon that nicely complements an intimidating helmet you might also grab before you head back to the Mojave. Other tangible goodies in this content include weapons (such as tomahawks) and new perks (extra damage when limbs are crippled). In addition, the level cap has been increased by five. Zion also serves as its own reward; its prickly cacti and red-orange plateaus provide a great backdrop to your travels. This graphics engine is showing its age, what with the bland textures, inconsistent shadows, and awkward animations. Yet campsites dotted with empty beer bottles and abandoned communal grills are an effective reminder of the civilization from which Joshua wants to shield his followers.
This being a Fallout game, it’s no surprise that you could run into a number of bugs. These include some enemies you cannot damage or target in the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System because they are standing in water; corpses hovering in midair; and non-player characters running from you in fear for absolutely no reason. Don’t let such typical bugs dissuade you from considering Fallout: New Vegas – Honest Hearts, however. The story and related quests don’t surprise, but this add-on gives you the opportunity to once again influence those you meet and accomplish your goals as you see fit. And, you do those things in a desert environment harboring enough creatures and caves to make it worth exploring.
