[REVIEW] A Simple Equation: Fallout: NV's 'Old World Blues'

The next instalment of DLC for the 'not-so-buggy-now' Fallout: New Vegas has arrived, and it's a formula for success!

Old World Blues kicks off with a cryptic message, inviting you to the Midnight Science Fiction Theatre at the Mojave Drive In, so after ditching as much unnecessary gear as possible, losing the companions, and a quick fast-travel, that's exactly where I headed. The interesting thing about a Midnight show is that it kicks off (you guessed it!) at Midnight! Once the clock ticked over, a crashed satellite projected an image onto the remains of the Drive-In screen, and a quick inspection launched an all-too familiar (and still frustratingly unskippable) Slideshow Intro.



To keep this as spoiler-free as possible, I'm going to have to leave out some information. Essentially, you wake up, feeling slightly 'heavier,' (Thanks, pop-up message. Now I'm regretting that extra Gecko Steak I had before the trip), and in a tastefully decorated, yet barely functional room, and it's not before long that you're instructed to go to The Think Tank, home of the greatest minds in Big MT (the operative word being 'minds').

The main questline in Old World Blues could probably be finished in about 2 hours, if you can refrain from exploring, and completing side quests (most of which are unfortunately quite repetitive), but there's around another 7 or so solid hours of gameplay in this expansion. That's not where it shines though, The humour is brilliant, and I found myself actually paying attention to conversations (Definitely recommend talking to each member of the Think Tank, and the final conversation with Dr Mobius is awesome) rather than just clicking through and waiting for the Quest messages to pop up.

It's also a lot trickier. I walked in with a lvl 36 Character, expecting it to be as much of a walk in the park as Honest Hearts was, with maxed out Sneak, Guns, Energy Weapons and Speech, but was still easily detected by almost every enemy. While I may have only died once or twice, OWB wiped out my surplus of over 50K Caps in repairs, as just about every set of amour I wore was reduced to zero rather quickly. In contrast to HH, which was full of Ammo based guns, OWB is much more Energy Weapon focused, with one or two guns thrown in for good measure.

Essentially, the items that you can bring back from Big MT, and the fact that you can return there anytime, made it a worthwhile purchase for me. While the weapons and items you gain during your travels seem par for the course inside the Big Empty, they're almost overpowered outside of it.

It's the characters that really make the difference, though. Everything from lightswitches that bitch about each other, to a Biological Processing machine (with quite a sexy voice, if I'm honest) asking you for your... uh... seed, and a Homicidal toaster hell-bent on world domination, every single one of them brings something to the experience. I may not have found the questline as moving as Honest Hearts, or as drawn out as Dead Money, but it's definitely an enjoyable experience.

Speaking of Dead Money, there's quite a lot of background information revealed inside Big MT, so much so that it almost seems like OWB should have come before it, especially since it's where Elijah perfected his bomb collars. There's slightly more revealed about the 'other' Courier, Ulysses, as well, and it seems like all the DLC released so far is building up to the next instalment, Lonesome Road. I suspect (given the name) that, like Old World Blues, you won't be able to take companions on the next part of the journey, but I would've liked to have them, or met new ones, inside Big MT. Might've made it a bit less annoying, being detected every time someone walked nearby.