Dead Money DLC. I just want it to be over.

[Sectator Pragmaticam Lex]

The Dead Money DLC sucks. And that's saying little.
Fixed the line breaks! Apparently Steam doesn't like a bracket without another to close it.

Downright awful, I hate every second I play it, but I'm too deep in this pile of crap to just load an old save from 2 days ago.
And this isn't without reason. Want reasons? I have a LIST of reasons:
- By default, it doesn't allow bringing ANY of your gear into it. I remind you this is an RPG game with tons of loot
- BS artificial difficulty (see: bomb collar susceptible to speakers/radios, and you can't even destroy many of these speakers, they're made of .50 MG Explosive-proof ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥tanium)
- The cloud barely serves further purpose than a gimmick that gets in your way. Never been so thankful I picked the Rad Child perk.
- Every single npc capable of speech borderline insults you nonstop. As far as I can tell, they're rampant hypocrites, too. Won't shut up about calling the player a greedy piece of crap, yet they're desperate for whatever is inside the Sierra Madre casino.
- Ghost people are the ONE (killable) hostile npc I've faced so far
- Supposedly they're "tough" (simply just shoot a limb off after defeating them. oh noes, what will I ever do /s)
- _Invulnerable_ security holograms that deal absurdly high damage. Because that's what this DLC was lacking. Denial-of-area features D:<
- Navigating Dead Money's maps is an unholy mess, and this is coming from someone with fairly good sense of direction, and memorized almost all of the main game's map.
- Even "merchants" are needlessly annoying. They take unusually long to respond, and you must juggle with buying pre-war money from them, because they have no caps.
- Needlessly cryptic "puzzles" all over the place, with no way (for someone playing it for the first time) to solve them but with trial and error, or look up gameplay on youtube
- I found myself looking forward to the terminal hacking "minigame". Yes, the rest of the DLC is *that* unpleasant to play for me.
Pretty sure there's more, but that's all I remember atm.

At this point I'm playing just to get to the end and fire up my flamer into Elijah's ♥♥♥♥, and NEVER come back to this frustration fest of a DLC.
Even smuggling my gear through my companions' inventory, which can enter DLCs thanks to a mod (so I have a big advantage the DLC does not account for, most notably a helmet with Project Nevada's EM vision), it's horrible.
Can't wait to finish it, get out and never come back.

[Datguyoverthere]

heres an idea, write the review about it, not doing any good here

[Sectator Pragmaticam Lex]

Originally posted by Datguyoverthere:

heres an idea, write the review about it, not doing any good here

You know what? You're right. I usually don't bother making reviews but this is easily the worst I've experienced in New Vegas.

[Steppewalker]

Interesting how people can have such different opinions from the same game.
I played through Dead Money and I remember loving the change of pace, the survival aspects, the good writing, the eerie atmosphere, and I thought Father Elijah was an excellent villain.
I really loved this DLC, but I can definitely see how it could be annoying at some points.

[Vassago Rain]

I feel you, bro. Dead money's so bad, I went in with a bottle of vodka and benzos, but halfway through it, I was so frustrated that I'd actually gotten sober.

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by jmcone:

Interesting how people can have such different opinions from the same game.
I played through Dead Money and I remember loving the change of pace, the survival aspects, the good writing, the eerie atmosphere, and I thought Father Elijah was an excellent villain.
I really loved this DLC, but I can definitely see how it could be annoying at some points.

There's no survival aspects.
The writing and storytelling's not as good as actual good videogame writing, and no matter how good it is (or is portrayed to be), there are no branching paths, no choices, and not a lot of information you can squeeze out of characters. It's good for a single playthrough. A lot of the totally awesome super mega ultra radical best writing ever ends up garbage because it's locked behind stat checks. Without PER and INT 7, you CANNOT get anything of worth out of Christine, and talking to her becomes pointless.

Dead money is a lot like fallout 3. It funnels you into stupid kill boxes against HP sponge enemies, sticks you with trash basic gear that you'd rather discard forever, and artificially limits your ability to interact with the game world. Forcing a broken stealth system on the player, in an attempt to be 'eerie and spooky' like silent hill, further dooms it.

I could go on, but I've written about this a billion times before.

[Squishy boi thighs]

I agree with you on every thing you said. Except I still enjoy this DLC.

[Squishy boi thighs]

Originally posted by Bread is delicious:

- Every single npc capable of speech borderline insults you nonstop. As far as I can tell, they're rampant hypocrites, too. Won't shut up about calling the player a greedy piece of crap, yet they're desperate for whatever is inside the Sierra Madre casino.

This was probably the worst thing I've seen in a Fallout game in total, it's that bad. I hated these characters an how they moaned on about how greedy I am. It's a life or death world, and you need to hunt for resources to survive, it'd make sense that you'd scavange an old casino for valuables. If you're an exploror hobo, that's how you survive. That ghoul ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in particular really pisses me off. He goes on and on about how greedy and horrible you are, but then he reveals that he did all of these horrible tings and went through massive obsticals just because he felt someone else thought he was better than him. Like, what?! Are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ serious? Yo ♥♥♥♥♥ at me for being a street trash theif, yet you act like a coward the entire DLC, and than tell me about how you ruined some guys life over a petty ego trip? ♥♥♥♥, right, off.

[red255]

OK, First off I will say Dead money is completely different than the regular game. Its makers felt that if you liked the regular game you got that playing the regular game. Dead money is something else.

first point is this. its not the same. its different though the same. you either love it because its different or don't. You can probably have a better time if you are better at looting the random garbage I mean theres a caravan shotgun in the first area. did you find it? you also have to re-align your definition of loot. you get infinite stimpacks and weapon repair kits in there and a holo rifle.

Fallout ISN'T a loot based game. least it wasn't supposed to be. thats something Beth did to it. Obsidian wanted it to be something else.

Second point. Yeah pretty much all of the radio speakers can be turned off or destroyed. some have to be touched, others have to be shot, some need to be turned off from a computer. mainly this adds the factor of wrong answers and taking too long to accomplish a task, and elements of failure. Not present in other parts of the game. Again I can understand both why you don't like it and why its there.

The cloud. Uh once you go to the medical place and get the stimpack code you should be fine. hell theres plenty of food and stuff lying around the place. I think you are supposed to make caravan lunches those heal you up good. but with all the chips and stimpack recipes I'm 99% sure you are fine just with that, 2000 chips for the snowglobe. thats 100 stimpacks. what you doing that you need more than that?

NPC point. I'd gripe with the NPCs except .... you meet them then they go away then you have the option to save or kill them. my gripe is ... Oh hi, we just met, I'm apparently deciding whether you get to live or die now.

Look if they aren't handlebar twirling tie you to a train track while kicking your dog villians I'm going to need more than that before I decide to kill them. Borderline insults you? Christine can't even talk. wait... what does tap tap tap mean? Oh damn son you hear what she said about your mother? Dean's been sitting there literally drinking poison for 200 years after the bombs fell, of course he's a little irked at you taking your sweet time showing up. and well the mutant is crazy. Cut them some slack, its called having character.

Uh.... you can kill your companions. you can kill the holograms you can kill the cochroaches. if your complaint that 99% of the enemies are ghost people? no variety? cuz the main enemy of the area as mentioned is the radios. its a maze. with traps and radios. and ghost people.

The Holograms that exist and shoot at you all have transmitters you can shoot to turn them off. If you want to talk about a specific hologram I can tell you where its transmitter is, but you should find it yourself. again this is a maze DLC. Holograms are maze enemies.

Next point, again, Maze. you are supposed to feel like a rat trapped in a maze. which makes the cheese at the end all the more rewarding and hard to let go of, but its also about letting go.

Merchants. Aside from having pre-war money to buy....why even deal with them? they got maybe a few energy cells and some stimpacks and a ton of pre war money? toss them some bigger items and just ignore them otherwise. if you want an easy merchant the commissaries in LOnesome road have 6000 caps that restock every time it drops below 100 or so.

Puzzles. aside from being a maze not sure what you mean? I mean I guess some of the time trials were fail, load fail load succeed. but yeah you can fail in this, its supposed to be like that. failure is part of the process.

Not sure your hatred for the hacking minigame. do you not understand how to play? its a simple game. or do you just select answers till you randomly get one right? cuz then yeah...I guess I wouldn't enjoy that either.

[Enderminion]

my only gripe is, ghost people are so effing hard to kill, they get back up after I kill two (blow a limb off while there down) and they tank bullet after bullet

[Steppewalker]

By survival aspects I was referring to the way the game requires you to actually manage your ammunition and use your healing items wisely. By the end of most RPGs I feel too overpowered and I personally enjoyed having my character brought back down to actually give me a challenge.
The writing and storytelling I think is used expertly to develop the backstory of the characters and most importantly the location of the Sierra Madre.
My only problem with Dead Money was some of the ending section. It was the only section during which I disliked the radios, as the timing in that location was rather ludicrous.

[Dart]

I liked this DLC. Throwing you in a new place with no gear, having to loot to survive. Yeah some of the bomb collar stuff can be frustrating but its not too bad.

The characters are good for the theme actually. The whole premise is a rich casino/hotel full of treasure. So the other characters kinda dont like you but you have to work together if you want to survive.

I can understand the frustration, its definitely not my favorite but I like the theme and I like looting the gold bars at the end.

[Frostmeister]

I thought the DLC was a decent challenge but by far my least favorite out of all of them. The Divide and Old World Blues were a blast, the one in Utah or whatever is great but pretty short and then there is just kinda Dead Money. An average at best DLC surrounded by gold lol

[talgaby]

It's still the second best DLC in the last decade after Lair of the Shadow Broker. If Obsidian could maintain this level of writing in all their games, titles like KotOR2 and PoE wouldn't have had companions whose quests were pretty much summed up as "listen to me whining for 45-90 minutes and magically transform me to a happy character".

[Mooselamb]

I actually love seeing people expressing opinions like this about Dead Money. It just shows how polarising this DLC was... you either love it or hate it. The first time I played it I was basically in the same wavelength as OP... gameplay wise. I always sensed there was something special about the story and I still do... still love the writing and the characters. I've since also softened up on the slow-paced gameplay probably since I know my way around pretty well.

Maybe this DLC was geared towards people who might have gotten a little bored in the base game since you can become pretty OP once you figure out where the good stuff is located and what perks to take. This DLC strips you down and starts you over (Begin again!).

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by jmcone:

By survival aspects I was referring to the way the game requires you to actually manage your ammunition and use your healing items wisely. By the end of most RPGs I feel too overpowered and I personally enjoyed having my character brought back down to actually give me a challenge.
The writing and storytelling I think is used expertly to develop the backstory of the characters and most importantly the location of the Sierra Madre.
My only problem with Dead Money was some of the ending section. It was the only section during which I disliked the radios, as the timing in that location was rather ludicrous.

It doesn't, though, and there's plenty of all kinds of resources, not to mention infinite life regain can be attained by drinking from all the broken toilets. It's nice that they put the vending machines in, so there was absolutely no way you'd ever run out of anything.