Since the airing of the Fallout TV Series, Fallout has become a mainstream trendsetter once again, for better and for worse. Long time F:NV fan I am, this made me want to try out New Vegas again alongside the 4 DLCs, for the first time in over 5 years. Dead Money was the first DLC to be released for F:NV, and the first I'll be reviewing. I played this on PC, embracing the jank and going fully vanilla (or at least, vanilla as possible. In the end I needed to install NVSE and NVAC just so the game wouldn't crash and ruin my save files every 5 minutes).
Dead Money throws you headfirst into the deep end of its oppressive atmosphere. From the start you find yourself in the secluded villa of the Sierra Madre Casino, having fainted and lost everything in your possession. The air outside is poison, slowly draining your HP, there's a bomb collar strapped around your neck, which will explode should you try to leave the casino or stay too long around radio traps which transmit a frequency to the collar. You'll need to scrounge around for whatever you can get in terms of clothing, weapons, ammo, food and water (as a side note, if there's any part of NV that feels elevated on hardcore mode, it's definitely Dead Money). The dead streets - literred with all kinds of deathtraps are patrolled by ghost people who are as hard hitting as they are hard to kill, and all you know is that you must find three mysterious people stuck in the same situation as you to carry out a heist into the depths of the casino's vault.
Many complain about all the hazards in Dead Money making it a slog to play through. Although I agree it might be overwhelming at first, if you look at this as less of an action RPG and more of an attempt at survival horror in the Fallout universe, it's genuinely gripping stuff, with the most unique challenges to get through in the game. Although it maybe feels more Bioshock than Fallout, both in terms of the setting and game mechanics, it's done pretty much as well as can be in Bethesda's crappy gamebryo engine.
The aforementioned three people become temporary companions once you find them. These aren't your usual Fallout buddies though, who'll do just about anything for you once you've recruited them. The companions - a super mutant suffering from schizophrenia, a ghoul with a stick up his ass and past connections to the casino that he refuses to let go of, and a woman who's vocal chords have been removed due to a botched surgery, all have their own agendas, and its inevitable that you'll need to do a lot to get them to cooperate during the "gala event" which will open the way into the casino itself. Once inside the casino, these same companions will confront you as the situation breaks them mentally or they decide that they don't need you anymore, in circumstances that can quickly become deadly. I was taken aback from how well this was all executed in terms of writing. I genuinely didn't know that companion writing could be handled this well in a WRPG like this. I especially liked the use of pip-boy audio logs as a game mechanic to switch Dog/God's personalities. Some moments I'd rather not spoil and are best experienced for yourself.
The DLC sadly falls off a bit near the end. The later parts of the casino are filled with soo much hologram/radio trap spam that it starts to feel more like a platformer than a survival horror game with how much you'll need to run away and around everything (which lemme tell you, in this game engine is NOT a good thing), and the ending feels anticlimatic. Additionally, I feel like the game gives you too many resources later on. I missed the scrounging around the streets for literally anything I could find in the first hour of the DLC.
Still, Dead Money is a great, albeit not perfect attempt at survival horror in the Fallout universe, and it definitely left a big impression on me. Dead Money is a strong start to Fallout New Vega's 4 DLC expansions. A shame that it goes hugely downhill from here. Dead Money is the only DLC that comes even close to the brilliance of the main game.
Dead Money throws you headfirst into the deep end of its oppressive atmosphere. From the start you find yourself in the secluded villa of the Sierra Madre Casino, having fainted and lost everything in your possession. The air outside is poison, slowly draining your HP, there's a bomb collar strapped around your neck, which will explode should you try to leave the casino or stay too long around radio traps which transmit a frequency to the collar. You'll need to scrounge around for whatever you can get in terms of clothing, weapons, ammo, food and water (as a side note, if there's any part of NV that feels elevated on hardcore mode, it's definitely Dead Money). The dead streets - literred with all kinds of deathtraps are patrolled by ghost people who are as hard hitting as they are hard to kill, and all you know is that you must find three mysterious people stuck in the same situation as you to carry out a heist into the depths of the casino's vault.
Many complain about all the hazards in Dead Money making it a slog to play through. Although I agree it might be overwhelming at first, if you look at this as less of an action RPG and more of an attempt at survival horror in the Fallout universe, it's genuinely gripping stuff, with the most unique challenges to get through in the game. Although it maybe feels more Bioshock than Fallout, both in terms of the setting and game mechanics, it's done pretty much as well as can be in Bethesda's crappy gamebryo engine.
The aforementioned three people become temporary companions once you find them. These aren't your usual Fallout buddies though, who'll do just about anything for you once you've recruited them. The companions - a super mutant suffering from schizophrenia, a ghoul with a stick up his ass and past connections to the casino that he refuses to let go of, and a woman who's vocal chords have been removed due to a botched surgery, all have their own agendas, and its inevitable that you'll need to do a lot to get them to cooperate during the "gala event" which will open the way into the casino itself. Once inside the casino, these same companions will confront you as the situation breaks them mentally or they decide that they don't need you anymore, in circumstances that can quickly become deadly. I was taken aback from how well this was all executed in terms of writing. I genuinely didn't know that companion writing could be handled this well in a WRPG like this. I especially liked the use of pip-boy audio logs as a game mechanic to switch Dog/God's personalities. Some moments I'd rather not spoil and are best experienced for yourself.
The DLC sadly falls off a bit near the end. The later parts of the casino are filled with soo much hologram/radio trap spam that it starts to feel more like a platformer than a survival horror game with how much you'll need to run away and around everything (which lemme tell you, in this game engine is NOT a good thing), and the ending feels anticlimatic. Additionally, I feel like the game gives you too many resources later on. I missed the scrounging around the streets for literally anything I could find in the first hour of the DLC.
Still, Dead Money is a great, albeit not perfect attempt at survival horror in the Fallout universe, and it definitely left a big impression on me. Dead Money is a strong start to Fallout New Vega's 4 DLC expansions. A shame that it goes hugely downhill from here. Dead Money is the only DLC that comes even close to the brilliance of the main game.