Editor’s note: This review was written by Patrick Keegan, a student at Full Sail University. After being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, Patrick was unsure what to do with himself and his career. He spent a semester at the University of Missouri, but he felt as though he wanted something more. After much soul-searching and deliberation, Patrick followed his dreams to be a member of the game development industry and enrolled at Full Sail University.

Fallout: New Vegas is the fourth Fallout installment for the PC. As with the other three Fallout games, Fallout: New Vegas is set approximately 250 years in the future in a post-apocalyptic nuclear fallout setting. The entirety of the United States is a wasteland, scorched from the nuclear war that occurred Oct. 22, 2077, (perhaps the shortest war in history, lasting less than two hours).

As you probably gleaned from the title, the game is set in the wastelands of Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert area. The New Vegas area wasn’t hit as hard as the majority of Mojave, so there are many recognizable landmarks you can visit in the game, including the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, McCarran Airport and the Las Vegas Strip.

The story of Fallout: New Vegas begins with you, the Courier, being sent to an early grave by an unnamed man in a circa 1950s checkered suit. You can do nothing but helplessly look up to this man holding a gun to your head and listen to him tell you how it wasn’t fate or bad luck that brought you two together.

“The game was rigged from the start,” he says mildly apologetically as he shoots you in the head.

The two henchmen that stood beside the would-be assassin start to shovel dirt on top of you as your vision blurs and the world goes dark.

After a few moments, you are blinded by bright, white light. When your eyes finally focus, you see that you are lying down and a kindly looking old man is hovering over you. He identifies himself as Doctor Mitchell and exclaims how he nursed you back to health. He then asks you your name (Courier by default, but of course you can choose any name you like). After getting out of bed, he conducts a battery of medical tests that allow you to modify your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) and distribute your skill points. The good doctor then gives you a clean bill of health and sends you back out into the wasteland to begin your quest to find the man who shot you.

The game does an excellent job of ensuring the Courier always feels a sense of purpose and direction. As you travel down I-15 (and later Highway 95) following the trail of your gunman, you will encounter several towns, each with their own set of unique problems that you can choose to alleviate, provoke or ignore. Occasionally you will find someone who will offer to travel with you and accompany you while you adventure. These companions are a great way to even the odds since combat usually involves large groups of raiders or mutated creatures.

Fallout: New Vegas is what many would consider to be a “sandbox role-playing game” because of its extensive use of side quests and tasks that have nothing to do with the plot progression of the game. The game has hundreds of hours of content should the player desire to explore and find all there is to be found in the New Vegas wasteland. For those seeking a more streamlined experience, the main story progression will likely take you about 20 hours to complete. However, you would be doing yourself a great disservice by not exploring at least some of what Fallout: New Vegas has to offer outside of its main story.

The game plays very similarly to a first-person shooter. You can choose to play in the first-person (my preferred) perspective or over-the-shoulder third person. Character progression is tracked by experience gained from completing missions, killing enemies and doing various tasks, such as picking locks and hacking computers. Once the player has acquired enough experience, they will gain a level (there are a maximum of 20 levels). Starting at level two, the player will also be able to choose one “perk” every other level. Perks are mostly minor bonuses that will affect gameplay minimally; however, there are some perks that will greatly affect and alter your experience. The perk Wild Wasteland unlocks scripted events and locations that are more unusual than what would normally be available without the perk. Although I don’t recommend taking that perk on the first play-through, I highly recommend it for subsequent play-throughs.

Combat presents a few choices to the player. First, you can wield both melee (axes, golf clubs, machetes, etc.) and ranged (an assortment of various caliber guns and pistols as well as energy-based guns and pistols) weapons. There are also assorted explosives available to you, including C4, fragmentation mines, frag grenades, missile launchers, and a mini-nuke launcher. If you aren’t keen on fast-paced combat, Fallout: New Vegas has retained the V.A.T.S. (Visual Acuity Targeting System) system from Fallout 3. V.A.T.S. allows you to pause combat and select specific limbs and body parts of your target. The number of actions allowed during a V.A.T.S. sequence is limited but can be boosted through perks and raising your Agility stat.

Every nonplayer character interaction is professionally voiced. Obsidian Entertainment (the game’s developer) even hired a few big names to voice some of the main characters. Exploring the wasteland, you might recognize the voices of such notables as Wayne Newton, Felicia Day, Kris Kristofferson and Mathew Perry to name a few. The voiceovers really help to immerse you in the world of New Vegas.

Although Fallout: New Vegas is an original game, it borrows very heavily from Fallout 3 and feels more like a standalone expansion to Fallout 3 than an original title. That being said, Fallout: New Vegas is a massive game that offers countless hours of entertainment. I have clocked well over 100 hours in the wasteland, and there are still two dozen locations I have yet to explore. If you enjoy role-playing games, I strongly recommend you buy Fallout: New Vegas. One would be hard-pressed to squeeze more value out of their gaming dollar than what Fallout: New Vegas has to offer.