Fallout: New Vegas is the latest offering in the Fallout series of games, and, like Fallout 3, combines elements of a first-person and third-person shooter (depending on which perspective the player chooses) with a more traditional role-playing game structure of skill development and quests. New Vegas returns the series to its roots, focusing on the wasteland of the American southwest. The New California Republic makes its return after skipping Fallout 3, and the Brotherhood Of Steel makes an appearance, as the organization has in every game to date. In this iteration, the player assumes the role of a courier who was shot and left for dead, only to be rescued by a mysterious robot with unknown motives. As the courier recovers and begins to explore this world, various groups maneuver to secure the courier’s help in their rise to power.

However, New Vegas is an abject failure of a game due to poor programming and testing. Since Bethesda released New Vegas on October 19, identifying and documenting bugs in the game has been a form of blood sport for the Internet. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of videos on YouTube detailing spawning problems, graphics errors, programming concerns and the like. The Fallout wiki, The Vault, provides separate pages for each quest and most of those pages have a section documenting and describing a variety of bugs which can occur. Not just one bug – these pages often feature bullet point lists identifying all the different ways a quest can break.

Some of these bugs are innocuous, like speech challenges which can be repeated for infinite experience and rapid leveling. Others break quests, such as the wide variety of issues listed for the quest “Oh My Papa,” ranging from dialogue options which can create bugs to characters being completely inaccessible in the game, not because a player killed them, but due to completing a different and unrelated quest first.

These bugs are significant enough that The Vault often lists command codes for the PC version of the game to respawn quest-critical NPCs. Unfortunately, that option does not exist for the Xbox 360 version.

Simply put, when a player has to access a command console in a game to restore game elements that despawned simply to finish quests, that game is fundamentally broken. If a game essentially requires players to use what amount to cheat codes just to make the game work, that game should not have been released without being fixed. Using the example of “Oh My Papa,” a crucial NPC in that quest despawns if the player completes another quest involving that NPC first. It’s not a matter of the player killing that NPC or making a game choice that chases that NPC away, the NPC simply isn’t there, even though “Oh My Papa” requires the player to speak to that NPC.

There is quite literally no end to problems like that in Fallout: New Vegas. Some quests can’t be completed, some quests count as completed without the player actually resolving them, and players will occasionally see quest failure notices, even without doing anything.

Having played the game through to completion, I am specifically excluding quest failures resulting from choosing allies or a player selecting a path through the game. Players, by design, cannot ally with every faction in the game and must make choices which prohibit any further progress with a faction and can actively turn a faction hostile to the player. Those choices are necessarily part of the game. However, that does not excuse Obsidian, Bethesda and ZeniMax from releasing what seems to be a pre-beta testing version of the game to the public.

In addition to the countless problems with quests and spawns, fundamental parts of the game break quite easily. I stopped counting how many times I had to restart my console because trying to buy an item from a traveling or stationary trader crashed the game and caused my console to lock up. Zone changes (i.e. moving from one game area to another) would often cause my console to lock up and, on numerous occasions, corrupted my autosave file. Trying to play mini-games, shockingly enough, often caused my console to lock up. Even random dialogue caused my console to lock up. If that list suggests that doing virtually anything in the game can cause a player’s console to lock up, then I’ve done my job as a reviewer because that was my experience with the game.

But there are still more problems. Certain items are considered quest items, regardless of where or how they were obtained or whether they actually are quest items, and cannot be removed from inventory by any means. The inventory system will often show an item or two in a player’s inventory, only to suddenly reveal more of the same item if a player sells that weapon or armor or trades it to an NPC companion. At one point, I had several revolvers in my character’s inventory and sold them, only to suddenly see a dozen more of the same item appear and encumber my character. The same glitch can occur in a trader’s inventory. NPC companions can permanently disappear for no reason, as I experienced during the last part of the game when one of my two companions vanished.

And then there are the larger lessons that could have been learned from Fallout 3 which were either ignored or intentionally left out. Like Fallout 3 prior to the Broken Steel DLC, Fallout: New Vegas has a hard ending which does not allow the player to continue exploring the wasteland with that character. Considering that two major selling points of Broken Steel were adding 10 more levels and allowing the player to continue, that’s a lesson that should have been applied to Fallout: New Vegas. However, it’s equally likely that a DLC may address that for Fallout: New Vegas … provided anyone actually has interest in throwing good money after bad.

When Fallout: New Vegas was released, I read comments on forums complaining that it was nothing more than a $60 Fallout 3 expansion pack, that it didn’t do anything new, that it didn’t change anything. At the time, I asked people why developers should bother trying to see if they could make a wheel into a square. Fallout 3 was, and still is, a fantastic game, especially the Game Of The Year edition.

Now, I’m able to see the frustration. Entirely apart from the bugs and glitches that make New Vegas such a maddening experience, the latest addition to the Fallout series is little more than a skin, an overlay, using the framework of a superior game that actually worked. The quests are substantially similar. The references to previous games don’t seem to expand the history of the world, but rather seem intended to beat players over the head with the notion that this is a Fallout game – not because of the world, not because of how the game plays, but because these references are in it.

Ultimately, my task as a reviewer for this site is assessing whether a game is accessible for the disabled. However, I also hold the opinion that it doesn’t matter whether a game is accessible if the game isn’t worth playing in the first place.

In this case, I would suggest that players save their money and skip this game entirely, regardless of patches or DLCs or Game Of The Year editions (and if such a thing ever exists for this title, it will provide all the proof necessary that GOTY editions are utterly meaningless). The patches to fix critical bugs are too few and far between and the DLCs, if they’re made by Obsidian, aren’t likely to make this game world any more compelling or even functional.

While this may be a Fallout game in name, it also seems that the only fallout relevant to this game will result from the atrocious programming, lack of testing and countless other mistakes that were made along the way, both before and after release.

Accessibility Issues / Concerns

While Fallout: New Vegas is an exceptionally frustrating game due to the vast number of game-breaking bugs and technical issues, the most frustrating part is that the game is exceptionally accessible and includes most, if not all, of the accommodations that disabled gamers commonly require and want.

Game controls on the Xbox 360 are completely remappable. Not partially, not selecting from a handful of default controller schemes, but completely. Players can place any command on any button, bumper or trigger, and the game will automatically reassign the other command to an unused button.

Instead of real-time combat (which is also available in New Vegas), the game provides VATS, a mechanism for turn-based combat which is usually sufficient to finish a fight, particularly if the player has obtained companions. There are also in-game items available from merchants and as loot drops which temporarily boost a player’s abilities, including extending turn-based combat. Furthermore, in VATS, targeting is automatic – the player does not have to aim. The player simply selects a body part from a range of options, each of which displays the chance to hit as a percentage of success (i.e. 95% chance to hit, etc.).

Players with a form of color blindness shouldn’t experience any issues. There are no mini-games which use color, nor does the game use a mechanic which requires the player to distinguish between colors. New Vegas allows players to customize the interface by selecting from a range of colors including white. The targeting reticle also matches the interface color unless the player targets a hostile; then, the reticle turns red.

There are no time-based puzzles, nor do puzzles require a significant amount of dexterity. Even puzzles like lockpicking, which do require a bit of dexterity, only require a player to move the stick slightly in one direction or another. Furthermore, players don’t have to hold the sticks to keep the lockpick in place – moving the stick moves the lockpick and it stays in that position indefinitely.

Players can manually save anywhere, at any time, and resume the game later, even if enemies are near. The game’s default autosave feature is set to save whenever a player changes zones, waits or sleeps.

New Vegas is extensively subtitled, and even though it does provide audio logs in the PipBoy which are not subtitled, exiting from the PipBoy interface displays subtitles for those logs on screen. The subtitles are in a sans serif font and the player can choose from a variety of display colors for ease of reading.

In other words, gamers with use of only one hand, or who have precision or motor function concerns, can play New Vegas using VATS and by customizing the controller layout. The game is significantly subtitled and shouldn’t present any concerns for deaf gamers, nor should it present problems for gamers with a form of color blindness.

In short, Fallout: New Vegas, despite being riddled with game-breaking bugs which almost make the game unplayable, is one of the single most accessible titles for disabled gamers currently available on the Xbox 360 platform.

My original purchase price: $59.99
Recommended purchase price: If you must buy this game, wait until it is collected with all DLCs and the price has been reduced to no more than $39.99. In theory, Obsidian will have fixed the bugs by that point. In the meantime, try the Fallout 3 Game Of The Year collection, currently available from Amazon for $36.99. It’s a far better game with far fewer problems.

At A Glance

Precision: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.
Players can choose to engage in real-time combat or turn-based combat. Turn-based combat includes automatic targeting with the player’s chance to hit displayed as a percentage. Players can extend turn-based combat using in-game items that are readily available as loot drops. Mini-games allow unlimited time to pick locks and hack computers.

Deaf Gamers: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.
New Vegas is extensively subtitled in a sans serif font for maximum legibility. Players can choose one of several colors to display text. Audio logs stored in the PipBoy are also titled, but the player must close the PipBoy interface to see the subtitles.

One-handed: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.
A fully remappable controller and turn-based combat should address all major and most minor concerns for gamers with use of only one hand.

Subtitled: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.
Subtitles are displayed in a sans serif font. Players can choose one of several colors to display text.

Color Blind: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.
Mini-games and puzzles do not use colors for meaning. The targeting reticle turns red when the player moves the reticle onto an enemy, but the player can select the interface color from one of several choices, ensuring that players do not have to distinguish between red and green.

Checkpoint / Save System: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.
Although the save system can be buggy at times, the game autosaves when a player changes zones, waits or rests. Furthermore, the player can manually save at any time.