14 DAY TRIAL // Fallout: New Vegas is a post apocalyptic role playing game from developer Obsidian and publisher Bethesda, taking the player to a relatively intact Vegas area and in the middle of a fight for power between Caesar's Legion, the New California Republic and the Brotherhood of Steel.
I am playing this game using the Hardcore mode, which adds more realism oriented features, like heavy ammunition and healing which takes place over time, alongside a need for food and water.
It's all right to just play Fallout: New Vegas just to see just where the story is going, as the writers at Obsidian managed to craft something more satisfying and engaging than what we've seen in the Fallout 3, despite the rather slow start.
But the real beauty of the Mojave Wasteland is in just exploring, looking around for a cave or a shack or an overturned trailer with something interesting inside.
And the Explorer perk makes exploration a beautiful thing, allowing gamers to see where locations are and plot a course that will take them to see everything the game has to offer.
The highlights for me were the meetings with Super Mutants that hang out in small bands near the middle of the map, possibly moving from or to Black Mountain.
They are significantly tougher than in Fallout 3 and the battles with them are in some ways more challenging than the final showdown of the narrative, allowing for more freedom to try out tactics, stimulants and choice of companions.
Another encounter everyone should try out is the Crashed Vertibird one, where a host of extra powerful robots guard an Enclave flying contraption and one of the most powerful and weird weapons of the game.
Explorer is also the best way to get to some of the caves dug into the mountains of the Wasteland, who harbor some of the toughest enemies of the game, like the Legendary Deathclaw and a Nightstalker leader, fights that are made tougher by the limited maneuver space inside the caves.