Hello everybody!
Have you ever played a game or game DLC that you thought went over the top in challenges?
Welcome to Fallout New Vegas' first piece of DLC!
Dead Money
Story
A story has been circling the Mojave Wasteland with the legend of the Sierra Madre Casino.
A casino lost within the wasteland that has never been opened to anyone except exclusive members of the casino such as celebrities.
The Courier(your character) discovers a radio broadcast about the grand opening of the casino and you search for the origins of the signal. Upon discovering the signal you are knocked out unconscious and are somehow brought to the hiding place of the Sierra Madre.
You are contacted by a man known as Father Elijah who has strapped an explosive collar around your neck and will detonate it if you act out of line. You are given the task of finding 3 other people who also have had collars placed on them by Elijah in order to break into the Sierra Madre to discover the treasure hiding inside the vault of the casino.
But this casino may not really be what it makes itself out to be.
Gameplay
Dead Money is a challenge of survival and your skills.
In terms of survival there are very few weapons in the campaign of Dead Money, with ammo being very scarce as well as other important items like stimpaks, doctor's bags and bobby pins being a rare sight.
The DLC adds to the challenge with the high level of skill challenges with skills such as Speech, Sneak, Lockpick, Medicine, Repair, Explosives, Perception and Intelligence needed for conversations and unlocking things such as cabinets, boxes, crates and first aid kits to survive.
If your amount of these skills do not match the requirements for many of these challenges. There will be a heavy chance of you being unable to progress through the DLC.
The collar, as previously mentioned, can be detonated at certain areas in the DLC. There will be speakers and radios located throughout the areas of the Sierra Madre that somehow begin to start the detonation process on your collar. Which adds even more challenge to the DLC.
Which raises my question I stated earlier, was this designed to be enjoyable or a hassle?
Although I had experienced enough of New Vegas to know things like Science, Speech, Repair, Medicine etc. Was a great assistance to making progress in the game. This DLC made those skills a necessity. If your Speech was low, Science was low, Repair sucked, Lockpick not up to par and Medicine not adequate. Your progress in the DLC would more than likely be stalled or you being forced to do things that you do not want to do such as maybe killing some of the characters you found in the Sierra Madre.
Aside from the challenges of skill there was also the main enemy of the DLC known as Ghosts.
These actually were pretty interesting enemies to fight as they needed to be dismembered after all their health was gone. If you didn't dismember them, they would come back. They were also very fast which made shooting them or hitting them with charged melee attacks harder.
What made the DLC a hassle though was that it was the same song and dance in every new area. Kill some Ghosts, lock pick a safe, complete a speech challenge and destroy/deactivate the radios.
Even nearing the end of the DLC I was doing something I had already done 5 minutes ago.
Another thing I also found very dissatisfying was the lack of music options. If you did not download the Old World Blues DLC you do not have access to the 'Mysterious Broadcast' signal which has some new songs and one familiar song. You do not have the option to listening to any music while playing the DLC. You'll simply hear the DLC's default music throughout the entire playthrough.
The Verdict
Overall this piece of DLC left me mostly dissatisfied.
The DLC's tedious tasks and limited amount of enemies, weapons and excessive amount of skill challenges left me desiring to want to return to the Mojave the more and more I played.
I will say this though, the DLC does have some interesting characters and story to the Sierra Madre but aside from that. I did not find it to be all that good.
Thankfully I got this with the Ultimate Edition of New Vegas so I didn't have to spend extra out of pocket.
Dead Money gets a 3 out of 5
Quick Announcement
Everyone. I am going to begin a youtube channel.
For now the plans for it is to be your basic gaming channel with gameplay and me commentating over it.
Right now I plan on doing a playthrough of Killzone Shadowfall on Hard. For the moment I can only record games from the PS4 so expect to see some exclusives aside from Shadowfall like Resogun, Outlast, Don't Starve and Infamous: Second Son.
I'll obviously get in some 3rd party titles like Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.
The channel will be called GazetteGamer.
I have no videos up for it yet but expect some videos soon.
I will also be doing videos with a high school friend of mine from time to time. You can check out his channel Here.
Thanks for reading you guys. Hope you support the channel. I promise to make it as entertaining as possible.
Have you ever played a game or game DLC that you thought went over the top in challenges?
Welcome to Fallout New Vegas' first piece of DLC!
Dead Money
Story
A story has been circling the Mojave Wasteland with the legend of the Sierra Madre Casino.
A casino lost within the wasteland that has never been opened to anyone except exclusive members of the casino such as celebrities.
The Courier(your character) discovers a radio broadcast about the grand opening of the casino and you search for the origins of the signal. Upon discovering the signal you are knocked out unconscious and are somehow brought to the hiding place of the Sierra Madre.
You are contacted by a man known as Father Elijah who has strapped an explosive collar around your neck and will detonate it if you act out of line. You are given the task of finding 3 other people who also have had collars placed on them by Elijah in order to break into the Sierra Madre to discover the treasure hiding inside the vault of the casino.
But this casino may not really be what it makes itself out to be.
Gameplay
Dead Money is a challenge of survival and your skills.
In terms of survival there are very few weapons in the campaign of Dead Money, with ammo being very scarce as well as other important items like stimpaks, doctor's bags and bobby pins being a rare sight.
The DLC adds to the challenge with the high level of skill challenges with skills such as Speech, Sneak, Lockpick, Medicine, Repair, Explosives, Perception and Intelligence needed for conversations and unlocking things such as cabinets, boxes, crates and first aid kits to survive.
If your amount of these skills do not match the requirements for many of these challenges. There will be a heavy chance of you being unable to progress through the DLC.
The collar, as previously mentioned, can be detonated at certain areas in the DLC. There will be speakers and radios located throughout the areas of the Sierra Madre that somehow begin to start the detonation process on your collar. Which adds even more challenge to the DLC.
Which raises my question I stated earlier, was this designed to be enjoyable or a hassle?
Although I had experienced enough of New Vegas to know things like Science, Speech, Repair, Medicine etc. Was a great assistance to making progress in the game. This DLC made those skills a necessity. If your Speech was low, Science was low, Repair sucked, Lockpick not up to par and Medicine not adequate. Your progress in the DLC would more than likely be stalled or you being forced to do things that you do not want to do such as maybe killing some of the characters you found in the Sierra Madre.
Aside from the challenges of skill there was also the main enemy of the DLC known as Ghosts.
These actually were pretty interesting enemies to fight as they needed to be dismembered after all their health was gone. If you didn't dismember them, they would come back. They were also very fast which made shooting them or hitting them with charged melee attacks harder.
What made the DLC a hassle though was that it was the same song and dance in every new area. Kill some Ghosts, lock pick a safe, complete a speech challenge and destroy/deactivate the radios.
Even nearing the end of the DLC I was doing something I had already done 5 minutes ago.
Another thing I also found very dissatisfying was the lack of music options. If you did not download the Old World Blues DLC you do not have access to the 'Mysterious Broadcast' signal which has some new songs and one familiar song. You do not have the option to listening to any music while playing the DLC. You'll simply hear the DLC's default music throughout the entire playthrough.
The Verdict
Overall this piece of DLC left me mostly dissatisfied.
The DLC's tedious tasks and limited amount of enemies, weapons and excessive amount of skill challenges left me desiring to want to return to the Mojave the more and more I played.
I will say this though, the DLC does have some interesting characters and story to the Sierra Madre but aside from that. I did not find it to be all that good.
Thankfully I got this with the Ultimate Edition of New Vegas so I didn't have to spend extra out of pocket.
Dead Money gets a 3 out of 5
Quick Announcement
Everyone. I am going to begin a youtube channel.
For now the plans for it is to be your basic gaming channel with gameplay and me commentating over it.
Right now I plan on doing a playthrough of Killzone Shadowfall on Hard. For the moment I can only record games from the PS4 so expect to see some exclusives aside from Shadowfall like Resogun, Outlast, Don't Starve and Infamous: Second Son.
I'll obviously get in some 3rd party titles like Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.
The channel will be called GazetteGamer.
I have no videos up for it yet but expect some videos soon.
I will also be doing videos with a high school friend of mine from time to time. You can check out his channel Here.
Thanks for reading you guys. Hope you support the channel. I promise to make it as entertaining as possible.
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