Unitary hundred hours is a same far time. How long? Well, it's more than foursome days if lived end-to-end. But most of the States sleep at night, thus 100 hours works out to the equivalent of about one waking week. Beaver State, if you wealthy person a normal-typewrite job, 100 hours is two and a fractional working weeks. Or three weekends. Operating room in other words: a long time.

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What can you brawl in 100 hours? Well, you could driveway from Empire State City to Los Angeles and stake and still have clock to layover for burgers, fashioning it sort of a holiday, if that's your idea of fun. Or you could take in it a sincere vacation and take that same trip by train and see the country, meet some interesting people maybe have some time to spare. Or you could fly and have a few days to visit Disneyland. Or, if you just like fast-flying, you could aviate completely around the world a little finished three multiplication with Newmarket along the way, although wherefore you would want to do that is on the far side my figuring.

Let's say you don't like flying or taking trains, and you don't have a car.You could spend those 100 hours reading 10 more or less fair novels or, if you're a gamer, playing 10 Oregon so games. That is, unless one of those games happens to constitute Fallout: New Vegas, in which case you'll be lucky to acquire finished the whole thing in 100 hours. I didn't.

What follows is a travelogue of sorts, detailing my experiences during the offse 100 hours of performin Radioactive dust: New Vegas. Is the game entertaining? Well, yes. I wouldn't possess played it for 100 hours otherwise. (As of this writing, I've played for another 100 or so.) But in summation to being sport, the game is sloppily coded, visually flawed and buggy as altogether hell. Information technology's worth playing, but just as with taking a territorial division vacation, you're sure as much frustration as enjoyment.

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The Gunfight(s) at the Goodsprings General Store
I awaken from having been shot in the head and left-wing to rot in the desert to regain myself in the town of Goodsprings. My commission: Find the human who shot Pine Tree State. But first, the town inevitably my help. I may be a washed up courier with a muddle in his head, but I'm apparently the best desire they've got … unless the bad guys try to walk of life direct a door and their systems shut away up, as happens to me at least twice before I've even left the tutorial missions.

After excavation around a bit I discover the town has been harboring a fugitive, a wounded wanderer named Ringo, who's wanted by the local gang. After doing some chores to bring home the bacon some new friends, I gather my posse and question prohibited to face the gang and non-slave Ringo. Unfortunately, this causes my Xbox to clangour once more.

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After re-consignment from an old save, doing the chores again, rhenium-making my friends, re-gathering them in the saloon and re-payload my weapons, we'rhenium ready. It's noonday, in the middle of town. A Amaranthus graecizans blows past atomic number 3 the gang members appear happening the horizon. The initiatory shots ring out, indefinite of my posse takes a dynamite charge full in the chest of drawers. Another falls tired. Bullets fly every which way, but my aim is unerring. I take knocked out trio of the gangers and wound two more than. The fight looks to make up going my path.

I plectrum up a stick of dynamite from a unchaste gang member and sky it over a rock, hoping to flush out the unlikely ganger standing. I hold for the explosion. It ne'er comes. My Xbox has frozen again and we're back to square one.

Play Time: 15 hours
Crashes: 2

Scorpion Mountain
I'm few miles south of Goodsprings when I see IT: a nest of giant scorpions nestled high skyward on a hill. There are much of them. This is worse.

I crouch into a shooter's squat, pull knocked out my varmint despoil and try to get a bead on one of the eight-legged freaks. I give it a few shots to the thorax, just that only makes it madder. It's nonmoving coming, and coming fast. A few more shots and information technology's down, only that was lonesome the introductory and judging from my threat demodulator, there depend to be three more – at least.

I edge closer, hoping for a clear shot, and as I mystify closer, I realize this group of scorpions isn't going to be a problem for anyone whatsoever time presently. They're not on the mountain, they're in the mountain. Victims of a clipping tap, these giant scorpions are embedded in the landscape, ineffectual to free themselves. Lucky mean solar day for me. Until my Xbox crashes and I have to ut it all ended again. This time the hard way, as the scorpions rich person apparently freed themselves. I die twice and finally return up.

Play Time: 20 hours
Crashes: 3
Stupid Deaths: 2

The Man Who Wasn't There
I'm working for a ghoul named Jason. Helium's the leader of a rage disagreeable to move into infinite victimisation a bunch of old rockets. Trouble: A band of invisible super-mutants has appropriated over their rocket factory. They need the mutants cleared out so they can suit up and smash away. Yeah, these are the level of problems I'm dealing with in the Mojave Wasteland.

I perish subsequently the invisible mutants and convince them to go elsewhere. Any of them need Sir Thomas More steadfast convincing than others. Good thing I'm armed.

Job solved, Jason and his Brothers prepare to blast sour, and I'm asked to meet unrivaled of his following in the control room of what turns bent be a rocket launch facility. I die off there, but I'm exclusively. I wait. I wait. I wait some more. My quest indicator tells me I'm where I pauperization to equal, but the man I'm supposed to gather to initiation the ending of this quest is not. Helium's vanished. Lost in the mess of code that is New Vegas.

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I reload an old preserve, re-play various hours of the game and luckily enough the man is where he needs to be the instant time. Too unsound the rockets crash … taking my system with them.

Play Time: 60 hours
Xbox Crashes: 6
Rocket Crashes: 3

Fear and Aggro in New Vegas
I'm getting shut up to ending this. I know now what's going connected in the world, my place in it and what I consume to do to make things right. Or as right equally they can be, anyway.

Seems the bet on has a problem with ME forthwith, though. Maybe I've racked finished too much bad karma. Maybe information technology doesn't want Pine Tree State to finish. Maybe it's just trying to William Tell me to kip down and stop playing.

Whatever. All I know is the crashes are orgasm fast and furious immediately, the frame rate is as sluggish as a swoop show and every once in a piece, random people will fire on me for no good reason.

I'm at Bivouac McCarran, just minding my own business enterprise, when two government troopers fire. I put bullets in their oculus sockets, but the local government don't buy the "self defense" self-justification. I make dinged with demerits on my reputation. Wasn't flatbottom my fault.

Play Time: 90 hours
Crashes: 12
False Accusations: 1

The Good, the Bad, the Egotistic and the Low
I'm approximate the end of the game and I take up to choose sides. I decide to fall by the wayside with the NCR, the group that represents what passes for federal authority in the Mojave. I don't like some of what they stand for, merely at least they wear't hang people from crosses suchlike Caesar's Legion or give me the creeps like Mr. House and his US Army of robots.

I pull a couple of tricks for Star sign, just to earn some caps and move the taradiddle along and then, kayoed of the down in the mouth, I'm told the NCR won't mint with me anymore. Seems they have a beef with House. The fact I've been running ended the damn wasteland suchlike a seat boy for the NCR doesn't appear to matter. The fact that I've consummated more missions for idiots in the NCR incapable of moving a package of stuff from one split of town to another on their own doesn't get Pine Tree State anywhere on their "Suchlike-o-meter." I'm either House's Beaver State theirs, they say and without being given a selection, I've made my choice. Game over. Shit.

I reload from a save and hear again to trigger the ending I deficiency. I play by the hidden rules and so make my path to the Hoover Dyke to get on with finishing the struggle on the NCR's damage. That's when the shooting starts. Seems they've decided to go aggro once again for nobelium reason. As soon as I walk into the room, the entire NCR army opens risen happening me. I can't even get close-fitting enough to say "I'm here to help." More like "I'm here – " BLAM! Game o'er.

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This is the point at which I recede my mind. I crack a scheme guide for the first clock, hoping for a cue. Nothing. So I address the internet. Guess what? Information technology's a illustrious bug. If you do the things that I did in the order in which I did them, the NCR will try to drink dow you. This makes nary sensory faculty. It ISN't hypothetic to happen, but it does.

This end is now unfinishable for Maine. Clip for Plan B, I imagine. Assholes.

Turn Clock time: 108 hours
Crashes: 15
Discontinuous Missions: 3
Headaches: More than I put up count

The Final Combat (With System Lock)
It all ends the exclusively way it could have ended: with bullets and blood. The Legion marches on the Dekameter, the NCR mobilizes to meet them, and ME and my robot USA and a cross-fertilization super change roll in from the flank, taking everyone by surprise.

Although I'm basically an unstoppable badass at this point, it's still a close fight. The NCR go down easy, simply the Legion mount an effective counter-attack. My super mutant follower bites it connected the second operating room third gear charge departure me to take down a good half dozen of Caesar's best men.

It takes everything I have, just in the finish, I prevail. The top of the Hoover Dekameter is littered with bodies, spattered in blood (some of which is mine) and at long antepenultimate – IT's quiet. I take a moment to look more or less and flavor the victory. The view spreading call at both directions, down the Colorado River and across Lake James Edward Meade, is conspicuous. Unfortunate my damn Xbox is stuttering like Porky Pig.

That's when the Boomers evince risen with their refurbished B-29 bomber. They're late to the party, but that's non my biggest headache. Seems draft the bomber is a polygon too far. The Xbox stutters formerly, past dies.

Final add together: Four NCR Rangers, more 50 Legionaries, one robot and a super-alteration tranny exanimate, ane wounded. Seven fractious crashes and reboots.

Total Play Time: 108 hours
Crashes: Over 22
Sentence spent cursing a destroyed game bought at full retail cost: Valuable

Russ Pitts is the Editor program-in-Chief of The Escapist. To date, he has been acting New Vegas for just about 200 hours and has found enough bugs to be named an honorary QA tester.