Fallout: New Vegas is one of my favourite games of all time and I truly believe - one of the best games ever made. I say this whilst being acutely aware of its very obvious flaws. It's not a nice looking game at all, even for 2010. It's riddled with glitches and bugs that can cause extremely unnecessary deaths or even set you back an hour or so of progress, and the game has about 6 voice actors.

And yet...None of that matters at all in the face of storytelling and core gameplay as good as this. New Vegas's main story is one of the most unique and engaging I've ever experienced in a videogame. A breadcrumb trail of clues alluding to the game's central mystery is laid out to you from the very start and information is slowly dripfed to you with such masterful pacing that you're always satisfied with what you've learnt, but never entirely out of questions. You'll have questions right up until the end of the game, but fear not - they'll all be explained and they'll all make perfect, beautiful sense.

The characters and dialogue in this game are fascinating, and as an adolescent growing up and playing for the first time they genuinely taught me a lot. Mr. House educated me about the concept of autocracy, Caesar makes an earnestly compelling case for dictatorship as the ruling form of government in a post-nuclear war wasteland. I would quite literally rather listen to these characters talk than many of my real life family members! I would pay good money just to have new voice lines for characters such as these added to this game.

That's the thing about New Vegas, it has a culture in its writing that other Fallout games don't. Where games like Fallout 3 and 4 largely tread the same ground talking about survival and patriotism with the occasional interesting little nugget thrown in here and there, New Vegas dives into politics, history, psychology and so many other topics and almost always surfaces with something interesting to say, or even teach. Even the most insignificant of NPCs in this game might just say something that sticks with you for a long time, and while the game never forces you to - it encourages you to talk to everyone with writing of this calibre.

And as far as gameplay is concerned, New Vegas may seem like just an average-at-best shooter on the surface, but as a role-playing game? It nails everything. Think of so many recurring mechanics throughout the Fallout games and by extension - most Western RPGs, I promise you, Fallout: New Vegas quietly has some of the absolute best iterations of any of them. New Vegas ditches Fallout 3's awful % based skill checks and "good/bad" karma system for far more clean-cut "do you have this stat at this number" skill checks and a "reputation" system with each of the game's many fascinating factions that makes you far less limited in your role-playing than "am I a bad guy or am I a good guy?"

Because of this far more nuanced way of handling morality, you can role-play as - get this, a complex character with complex motivations! New Vegas gives you so many tools to be so many different kinds of character - you'd be surprised at how much the game is willing to let you commit to being a cannibal! Maybe you're a fucking idiot? New Vegas has got you covered! By giving you exceptionally stupid dialogue options specifically for when you catastrophically fail an Intelligence check, New Vegas not only lets you lean into role-playing, but it also makes failure fun! Something else that Fallout 3 and 4 practically never achieve.

On top of all of this New Vegas is a great open-world game. None of this half-hour intro nonsense that Bethesda RPGs put you through. Within 10 minutes of starting a new file you can have been given the setup, built your character and BAM, you're out in the world ready to do what you want. Pursue the main quest if you wish, but the world isn't at stake! It's not engineered to feel super urgent like so many other open-world games of its kind and so you can feel very valid to just be having fun out in the badlands. One of New Vegas's most important locations is a tall, glowing tower, shining a light that can be seen from almost anywhere in the game world and - particularly when you're out in the desert at night, beckons to you like a siren calling for a sailor. When playing this game, this and so many of the game's other monolithic landmarks filled me with a sense of wonder that I wouldn't feel for another 7 years, when Breath of the Wild came out.

Fallout: New Vegas was developed over the course of 18 months. This explains the repeating character models, often unsightly textures and litany of bugs. It doesn't explain how it's such a fucking masterpiece. Obsidian made this one Fallout game in 18 months and it absolutely blows anything Bethesda have ever done out of the water. New Vegas is funny, dramatic, tragic and insightful. I'm sorry, but if you truly think 3 or 4 are superior experiences to this, I have to seriously question your taste. After over 10 years of playing this game for the first time, nothing has yet topped it for me.

If you've never played it before, you owe it to yourself to do so. Let yourself experience it all for the first time spoiler-free. Just, do yourself a favour and pick "Wild Wasteland" as one of your starting perks. You'll thank me later.

FromSoft's first open world game and they absolutely nailed it. I was initially worried that the move meant they would have to compromise on level design, but that wasn’t really the case here. Despite its vast and seamless world, the majority of it still has the same level of varied intricacy as the rest of their games. Like sprawling castles with detailed interiors and immense verticality, random caves you may stumble across that lead to massive underground systems, and of course plenty of unique bosses to fight.

That’s its biggest strength for me, the exploration. What sets it apart from many others is the complete lack of endless map markers or quests to focus on, rather just letting you get lost in a world with so much to see on the horizon that you can’t help but want to explore. And it rewards this curiosity by always having something worthwhile to find, whether it be useful items, boss encounters, or even paths to entire new areas. This also makes approaching difficult bosses a bit more manageable, as you can always just go somewhere else if you’re stuck and try again when you’re stronger.

And as a setting I loved The Lands Between. I’m not sure how much influence GRRM had over the world-building, but its mysterious lore is ever present all over and it’s wonderfully realized. It’s still as somber as From games have always been, but it also felt more grand given how open it is in comparison.

The only real gripe I had was the smaller catacombs you can find felt a bit too repetitive. Most of them look the same and some bosses are reused for them, basically serving as ER’s version of chalice dungeons which is eh. But I still enjoyed going through them so didn’t mind too much. Performance also seems… not great on most platforms, but I played the BC version on PS5 so was pretty much locked 60 for me. Hopefully they can iron its issues out for everything else.

But overall it’s yet another masterful game by From and now among my favorites. I’m excited to see where they go from here, cause it really did feel like a culmination of all their work up to now.