I have to admit, I was a little nervous about stepping into the irradiated wasteland of the Fallout universe when I heard that New Vegas was being developed by a different team. Let’s be fair, Obsidian’s recent offering, Alpha Protocol, was lacking; it had potential, but it just didn’t deliver. I’m glad to say that Obsidian has done a great job carrying on the new Fallout torch, complete with all of the good and bad things that comes with it.

The differences become obvious as soon as you start a new game, going from the happy, new birth of Fallout 3 to a gritty near-death opening where your character gets shot while delivering a mysterious platinum poker chip. Luckily for your half-dead self however, a friendly robot happens upon you in your shallow grave and delivers you to the nearby town’s doctor. And after a rather amusing character creator (such as saying you see a mushroom cloud in an ink blot), the doc hands you an old Vault 21 jumpsuit, a gun and some supplies and sets you loose in the wasteland.

As soon as you step out of the kind doctor’s house, you may be hit by a huge wave of deja vu, especially if you’ve played Fallout 3. If the wasteland looks familiar to you, you’re not wrong; I’ve even spotted textures and housing interiors straight from Fallout 3. I can’t say the game looks ugly, but I can definitely say there isn’t any improvement. Add in some cacti, some big horned mutant sheep, and rampant geckos, and you’ve got the Mojave Wasteland of New Vegas.

In fact, a lot of New Vegas mirrors Fallout 3, which isn’t a bad thing. The instant familiarity helped me jump right into the fray, and made the improvements stand out quite well. Let’s talk about those improvements, starting with my personal favorites: the combat and weaponry.

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m a huge shooter fan: which is why one of my biggest gripes with Fallout 3 was the iffy combat. It was a little too RPG (roleplaying game) and not enough FPS (first person shooter). Fellow shooter fanatics will be pleased to know that Obsidian has fixed this particular problem: combat now feels responsive and the only thing getting in your way is you. The developer even added the ability to look down your weapon’s ironsights, allowing you to take aim at distant, or not so distant, targets. Oh, and about those weapons? There are dozens, and I mean dozens, of weapons available in New Vegas, enough to tickle the inner gun-nut inside all of us.

Further augmenting the combat is another new feature: weapon mods! That’s right, now players can add different features to their ranged weapons. Each gun can support up to three separate mods, and these can’t be undone so make sure you want it before you attach it. A mod can do anything from helping you aim (such as adding a scope), increasing your clip capacity (adding a bigger clip) or increasing the weapon’s firing rate (custom actions for quicker bolt action). Don’t worry, melee fans, the melee combat has been adjusted as well: every melee weapon can use a special attack in VATS as long as you have the skill for it.

Speaking of skills, they’ve been made more important than ever. Now they feature prominently in conversations: having a high enough expertise in a certain skill usually opens up new dialogue options with people. These can do anything from making your reward bigger or instantly winning the person over, and best of all: they always work provided you have the required skill level. The game also does a great job of telling you that you aren’t skilled enough to woo someone over with that particular skill.

You’ll be flexing your speech skills, or your muscles/guns, quite often as well; there are a lot of people in New Vegas who you can work with. A vast improvement over Fallout 3, where you were pretty much on your own for the entire game, now you can work together, or against, the many different factions in the Mojave Wasteland. Becoming allies with the various groups earns you bonuses like discounts or free rooms in their bases, and you may be glad for your allies in the endgame.

Don’t expect to wander this wasteland alone either, unless you’re totally into being the lone drifter. Companions aren’t the hassles they used to be, now that they can be easily given commands through a nifty little “Companion Wheel.” You can also have two companions now: one humanoid and one non-humanoid (such as a robot or animal… or robot animal, in Rex’s case), and each companion you have with you grants you a perk. I’ve also never had a companion die on me, though I don’t know if this is a glitch or not.

Unfortunately, since this is a Bethesda-published game, you should beware of the many, many bugs that plague New Vegas. Being the dedicated team that they are, they’re working to patch the annoyances away, but don’t expect to have a bug-free Vegas anytime soon. Don’t let that discourage you from buying the game, however — Oblivion and Fallout 3 both had the same issues and those were both amazing games.

So in the end, there are a lot of little improvements that I could waste space by describing, such as the addition of crafting items like ammo and healing items. And equally, there are a bunch of annoyances I could talk about, such as the wooden animations in conversations (Do more than stare at me while talking!). The bottom line is: if you can look past all of the annoying bugs and realize that you’re being presented with an amazingly immersive experience, you’ll no doubt love this game. It’s definitely a buy if you were a fan of Fallout 3, you could probably even get away with calling this “Fallout 3.5”. I’ll give Fallout: New Vegas an A; and remember folks, don’t forget to hit The Strip to gamble your hard-earned caps away!

Cody Webb lives in Live Oak.