Steam

Fortnite’s a global phenomenon, capturing the imaginations of gamers of all ages. With holiday seasons, birthdays, and all sorts of special occasions scattered around the year, it could be a difficult task to find the best Fortnite merch and gifts.Though Fortnite offers an unparalleled gaming experience with various game modes like LEGO Fortnite, the fun doesn’t have to stop when you log off. The world of Fortnite extends far beyond the screen as there are licensed merchandise and gifts that will delight any fan.Whether you’re looking for a way to rep your favorite game, level up your setup with themed gear, or find the perfect present for a fellow Fortnite superfan, there’s something for everyone in our compiled list of the best Fortnite merch to consider purchasing this year.Monopoly: Fortnite Collector’s EditionGet your Shields up. Screenshot by Dot EsportsA Monopoly experience like no other. Screenshot by Dot EsportsMost themed M...View the full article

A Fallout 4 player has recently discovered a heartbreaking scene: a cat looking at the skeleton of its possible former owner. The open world of Fallout 4 is filled with captivating moments, and this one evoked a heartbreaking feeling on the gamer who shared it on social media. View the full article

Instead of a traditional job system, each ******* comes with their own assortment of spells. View the full article

Gaming saw a rise in team-based hero shooters from 2016 through 2018, with games like Overwatch, Battleborn, and LawBreakers as notable standouts. Lawbreakers is long gone, but an unofficial fan project aims to revive it, making it playable for the first time in six years. LawBreakers, developed by Gears of War lead designer Cliff Bleszinski's studio Boss Key Productions, was a 5v5 hero-based first-person shooter set in a futuristic anti-gravity landscape. Despite its promise, LawBreakers’ servers were shut down a year after its launch in 2018. Somehow LawBreakers is coming back, see below!!! --- If you're interested in this weekend's public test or future tests, join the RELB discord server to learn how to get set up and keep up with the current news! [Hidden Content] — Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) April 13, 2024 At the time, Boss Key Productions' development team released a statement saying LawBreakers "******* to find enough of an audience to generate the funds necessary to keep it sustained in the manner we had originally planned for and anticipated." In May 2018, Bleszinski announced Boss Key was “effectively no more” following the release of its battle royale game, ******** Heights. Today, Bleszinski announced on his official X/Twitter account that LawBreakers is on the eve of a comeback thanks to an unofficial fan project called RELB. He went on to encourage players to join an upcoming public test by joining the RELB Discord server. According to a thread on ResetEra, the RELB launcher lets players boot up LawBreakers via Steam and play online multiplayer matches. Since April 13, RELB has hosted a couple of stress tests with working servers in the EU, US-EAST, and US-WEST regions with a ********* issues with matchmaking and hit registration. "Even with all the issues seen during the stress-test our primary goal was to see if our whole backend could handle a large amount of players and it's held up beautifully," RELB admin Red wrote in the Discord's news channel. "Massive thanks to everyone in the team who helped make this happen and of course to the people who hosted servers. We're really excited about the future of this project and we hope everyone else is as well!" In our review, we said, "LawBreakers is a fast-paced shooter with a sky high skill cap and an occasionally frustrating matchmaker." Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer at IGN. View the full article

The newest Genshin Impact 4.6 leaks about Sethos’ Vision may hint at an ancient rivalry in the region of Sumeru, as well as what may occur in the story quests in the update. Sethos is a new character confirmed to make his debut as an NPC in Version 4.6. He was initially cited in leaks as a playable character for Version 4.7, but before that allegedly occurs, he will appear in some of the new story quests in Genshin Impact 4.6, which were announced during the most recent livestream. This is the same patch in which Arlecchino will arrive. View the full article

A new sidequest in World of Warcraft gives fans a choice that actually influences the game world in a tangible way. Though it is a small detail, this Patch 10.2.7 sidequest allows World of Warcraft players to physically shape Azeroth by deciding where a grave marker will permanently appear in the game. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Pimax is going all in on a new high-end premium VR headset, the Crystal Super. It features the world's first changeable optical engine for both QLED and Micro-OLED. In simple terms, you'll be seeing far more, and in greater detail, compared to the already class-leading Pimax Crystal. Speaking of the Pimax Crystal, it features on our list of the best VR headsets for its incredible display and visual fidelity, but the Crystal Super is about to ***** it out of the water. Based on numbers alone, the Crystal Super will increase the total pixel count from 16.6 million to 29.6 million. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Pimax reveals Crystal Light VR headset, a true Valve Index competitor Gigabyte launches fastest ever Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super Check your Steam Deck OLED for cracks, gamers warn View the full article

To some players, Helldivers 2 isn’t just a great game, or even their favorite game, but a game that’s genuinely freed them from the bad habits and mental anguish sometimes associated with grinding battle royale titles. In a post shared on the one million subscriber Helldivers subreddit, one user wrote that the game and its “amazing community has changed the place gaming has in my life for the better.” This user says their partner even took notice that they are actually having fun playing games, instead of “cussing and complaining all night” after playing primarily battle royale titles for the past four years. View the full article

Finding the best World of Warcraft merch or gift for that WoW friend (or for yourself) can be tricky because there’s so much out there, both official and not-so-official. However, these items from Blizzard Entertainment, Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy are worth checking out. Our top picks for World of Warcraft Merch & Gifts1) World of Warcraft Faction Crewneck SweatshirtsSweatshirts are always a favorite. Images via Blizzard Entertainment. Remixed by Dot Esports.Factions are an integral part of your experience in WoW. And despite the hearty rivalry between the Alliance and Horde factions, they’re both immensely enjoyable to play and offer unique experiences. But if you want to show your love for your faction, you can get the bold, navy blue Alliance crewneck or represent the dark side with the ****** and maroon Horde crewneck. 2) World of Warcraft Sylvanas Windrunner BustEvery inch of this bust is perfectly detailed and hand-painted. Images via B...View the full article

In a new video showcasing the repair of yet another burned RTX 4090 power connector, repair shop Northridge Fix states that it restored around 200 GPUs in a month. The number indicates a concerning increase since last fall when the shop's YouTube channel reported around 100 per month. Read Entire Article View the full article

The creators of Fallout 4's ambitious Fallout: London mod have confirmed that the project won't be available on consoles once it's released, news that many fans may have already suspected. The intriguing Fallout 4 mod has recently run into a new set of issues due to a major update coming soon. View the full article

A new Memory of Chaos phase is now live in Honkai Star Rail’s Forgotten Hall, and Chronicle of the White Nights Dream Kingdom is one of the easiest and most straightforward challenges we’ve seen in some time.As long as you have a decent lineup of strong units, you should be able to clear all 12 stages of Chronicle of the White Nights Dream Kingdom without much hassle. The later stages won’t be easy, but thankfully, there aren’t many teambuilding restrictions this time around.Honkai Star Rail Chronicle of the White Nights Dream Kingdom GuideAs per usual, Chronicle of the White Nights Dream Kingdom will be live for 42 days. This Memory of Chaos phase begins on Monday, April 15, 2024, and will last until Monday, May 29, 2024. That’s well into Honkai Star Rail version 2.2, so you can even wait for the new 5-star units from that update to debut if you want to use them in this Memory of Chaos challenge.Here’s the Memory Turbulence effect fo...View the full article

Fallout is a world sold by sidequests. It can rock a main plot well enough, but the wasteland is best when it's weird. The series gets silliest once you step off the paved path and get embroiled in the lives of the freaks around you. Fallout has many genres of side characters: scientists of questionable credentials, beleaguered bureaucrats, and average *********, but my own favorite have to be the ****** dudes... Read more.View the full article

During its Frontier event, Pimax unveiled the Crystal Light VR headset, its price conscious device targeting a much broader audience than its premium Crystal offering. The headline is an MSRP less than half that of the Crystal, while standalone features are removed in favor of a focus on PCVR. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The Pimax Crystal Super is about to revolutionize VR gaming Gigabyte launches fastest ever Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super Check your Steam Deck OLED for cracks, gamers warn View the full article

There are lots of things to like about the "Weird West" setting for a shooter - it has such a distinctive look, and somehow the ghosts and Lovecraftian horrors feel right at home in the early 1900s. The main thing, though, is that the guns are cool. This is something that Soulslinger Envoy of ****** understands very well, and fans who've already jumped into early access have a big new update to check out today. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

I can't quite say I called it, because Keanu Reeves was only second on my list of likely Hollywood heavyweights to be cast as Shadow the Hedgehog. But boy was I close. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed today that Mr. Wick himself is playing the big bad in the third Sonic the Hedgehog film, according to "multiple sources.".. Read more.View the full article

Keanu Reeves as John Wick. | Image: Lionsgate The third Sonic movie already seemed like it was going to kick all kinds of **** by bringing Shadow the Hedgehog into the picture, but Paramount’s just upped the ante by adding one Keanu Reeves to its cast. According to both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, Keanu Reeves has been tapped to voice Shadow, the anthropomorphic hedgehog best known for his jet-powered sneakers and fondness for guns. While the studio’s yet to make an official announcement, news of Reeves’ casting comes after director Jeff Fowler teased that the next Sonic movie will be inspired by Sonic Adventure 2, the Dreamcast game that first introduced Shadow in 2001. Shadow’s cinematic arrival was also teased at the end of the last Sonic movie, where he appeared to be... Continue reading… View the full article

Johnny Silverhand is one of the most popular characters in Cyberpunk 2077 so players wishing they could hang out more with Keanu Reeves' rockstar are in luck because a new mod makes him far more social. In the vanilla version of CD Projekt Red's RPG, the projection of Johnny's consciousness, which is embedded in protagonist V's head, appears throughout the story to both offer advice to players and just offer his thoughts on the current state of Night City. Unfortunately, those wanting to relax with Silverhand can only do so in V's original apartment, even if they own other properties. View the full article

World of Warcraft quietly removed a part of the WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria announcement that said it was adding new character slots to each player’s account. While this likely won’t affect many fans, those who already have 60 characters on their World of Warcraft account might want to make room before Patch 10.2.7 launches. View the full article

Plunderstorm, the limited-time battle royale event in World of Warcraft, is wrapping up in just a few weeks. But before the game mode sails over the horizon, Blizzard is letting loose a double renown promotional event for all you Plunderstorm enthusiasts. The double renown event will begin with the weekly server resets this week, meaning players in North America will have access to it tomorrow, April 16, and ********* players will start getting their renown doubled on Wednesday, April 17. All renown gains made in Plunderstorm matches will be twice as effective until the game mode ends its initial run on April 30. View the full article

XCOM. Civilization. Half-Life. There are certain games we adore here at PCGamesN, certifiable PC classics that we consider part of our personal canon. Certainly, when it comes to collector's editions, reissues, or the occasional game of the year overhaul, we'd be tempted to buy a second copy of some of these beloved stalwarts. And maybe, just maybe, we'd go a little further - if it's a game we really, wildly adore, we might buy it twice, just in case one copy breaks, or so we can play it on PC and also another, second platform. But even with Baldur's Gate 3, *****, and Command and Conquer, it's hard to think of a game that we love so much we'd buy it 4,000 times. Alan Wake 2 was fantastic. Control, Max Payne, and even the overlooked Quantum Break more than prove that Remedy is one of the best mainstream game-makers today. But is that enough to justify owning 4,000 copies of the studio's original, 2010 horror shooter? For one Alan Wake fan, the answer is a resounding 'yes.' Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Alan Wake 2 is real, and Remedy's "first survival horror game" Alan Wake Remastered system requirements won't frighten Gaming PCs Alan Wake Remastered launches on the Epic Games Store next month View the full article

Ubisoft has recently launched a new For Honor co-op Arcade mode, accompanied by an action-packed trailer unveiling its features. This mode is now available for free to all For Honor players, offering an interesting PvE experience. View the full article

As Modern Warfare 3 lives on, Sledgehammer games have added more creative ways to take out your ******. From getting quickscoping ****** to double ******, there’s no shortage of innovative ways to down a foe. For Season 3 of MW3, a challenge requires eliminating your ****** after you’ve *****. Sounds confusing right? Well it’s called Posthumous ******, and we’ll show what they are and how you can get them in MW3.MW3: What are Posthumous ****** and how to get themDo you remember during Halo 3 multiplayer matches when you’d ***** an ****** Spartan after you’ve ***** and got the “***** From the Grave” badge? In MW3, the rules are the same. Not to be confused with Close Call ****** which are different. These ****** can be hard to pull off because being ***** can make them a bit of a challenge. But if you’ve played games like Halo 3, it might just come naturally. So that same awesome feeling you got in that game might be found in MW3.Image: Sledgehammer GamesHow ...View the full article

Keanu Reeves has joined the cast of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, according to reports. Per The Hollywood Reporter’s sources, the John Wick and Cyberpunk 2077 actor will voice Shadow the Hedgehog in the third film. The news follows Paramount’s debut showing of Sonic 3 footage during CinemaCon last week, which reportedly included the revelation that Dr. Robotnik, played by Jim Carrey, was depressed and out of shape after the events of Sonic 2, “but gets his groove back thanks to creating Shadow the Hedgehog”. Read More... View the full article

Of Fallout’s narrative high notes, the peak is arguably Fallout: New Vegas, the much-loved installment set in post-apocalyptic Vegas and crafted by Obsidian Entertainment, members of which have shepherded the Fallout aesthetic all the way from the Wasteland games to the Outer Worlds. And although Obsidian were fated never to helm another mainline Fallout game, they did get to revisit the universe four times before being ripped away by cruel reality. It’s those four twists on the formula, those four adventures into the unknown, that we’re here to celebrate today. At the height of their storytelling powers, Obsidian gave us some of the best sci-fi in games with the four Fallout: New Vegas add-ons: ***** Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road. Each veered sharply away from the standard Fallout formula in its own different direction, while simultaneously painting in the secret overstory of the New Vegas universe and the player character, the Courier. Everyone’s excited about the release of the new Fallout series. Well, that might be an overstatement, but most gamers we know are at least allowing themselves a spark of hope, and basically everyone agrees that Walton Goggins can do no wrong. Fallout, the long-running post-apocalyptic fifties-throwback multi-hyphenate franchise seems perfectly suited for a TV adaptation, focusing as it does on a collection of short, interconnected stories centered in a single location, usually culminating in some kind of climactic event at the end of a game (or season of television??). Of course, you’d need more throughline, more emotional core to sustain a season than a voiceless vault dweller wandering the wastes and continuously stumbling into every huge, region-shaping historical event like a post-apocalyptic Forrest Gump. By smartly relegating the deep lore and character stuff to the add-ons, the New Vegas writers were able to do just that - create a more intimate, linear story beat to cap off the experience as a whole, and incidentally write some genuinely amazing sci-fi. Whether tackling supermutant genocide, the enslavement of sentient robots, or all-out war between vying factions and their competing philosophies of survival, Fallout always centers a true moral quandary, to make the game’s focus on player choice and morality a dynamic one with plenty of grey area to play in. That Obsidian proved to be equally daring when experimenting with the Fallout formula is what makes the add-ons truly special. Spoilers for Fallout: New Vegas and all of its DLC below. ***** Money The Sierra Madre Casino, site of the ***** Money add-on, is named in reference to the 1948 John Huston western The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart in a tale of greed, duplicity and double-crosses. Anyone familiar with the themes of both stories will see the instant connection, but in case it wasn’t obvious, Father Elijah (Richard Herd Jr.), the story’s primary antagonist, describes the place as “a bright, shining monument luring treasure hunters to their *****…lying in the middle of a city of *****” in the opening narration. ***** Money answers the core DLC question - what do you get the player who has everything? - with a trap. Lured by a vague promise of wealth and strapped with a ***** collar, the Courier must recruit three NPCs and pull off a daring heist in a cross between Ocean’s 11 and ******** Squad. Instead of a demolitions expert or master of disguise, we get a ghoul crooner, a mute woman who’s been stuck in an autodoc on repeat against her will, and a supermutant with split personality - about as close as you can get to hanging out with the Hulk in the Fallout universe. That Obsidian proved to be equally daring when experimenting with the Fallout formula is what makes the add-ons truly special. And, like most good stories, the location is a character in its own right. The environs surrounding the Madre are choking with a mysterious red cloud, stalked by tough-to-***** creatures in hazmat suits, and ******-trapped to *****. Not to mention, that ***** collar of yours? It’s not a fancy Marvel number. The odd stray radio signal is liable to set it off, so some vigilance is required. While these elements made navigating the ***** Money map an arduous and sometimes painful experience full of quickloads, today we’re just talking story, and a *****-collar future heist with the Hulk and his weirdo pals sounds like bingeworthy streaming to us. What the first New Vegas add-on nailed, from a story standpoint, is ludonarrative - gameplay elements that support or illuminate the themes of the game. Elijah calls your support crew “tools,” often urges you to betray them, and coaches you to “use your team as I use you,” all while you slowly uncover each of your partners’ tragic backstories enough to feel torn about doing so. At the same time, each companion’s unique perk eliminates one of the hideous roadblocks in play. The supermutant Dog/**** devours corpses, hazmat suits and all, Dean the ghoul nerfs the effects of the red cloud, and what Christine lacks in chattiness she makes up for by suppressing the radio signals that constantly conspire to ***** up your face. Or, as Dean says, “blast your **** so hard through your head it’ll turn the moon cherry pie red.” The structure of the gameplay invites you to think of each companion as a simple means to an end, while the tidal pull of your constant conversations tugs in the opposite direction, creating a tension that should exist in any story about human greed versus doing the right thing. All the while, you’re roaming through blasted-out casinos, which Elijah calls “the illusion that you can begin again, change your fortunes.” As you make your way through spectral, broken holorecordings of pre-war characters still haunting the hotel, you’re confronted with ghosts both figurative and literal, those of the human victims snuffed out when the ****** fell, and the ghost of the world that once was writ large. And then, there’s the money. Without spoiling the endings overly, suffice to say ***** Money is a trap wrapped in a trap draped in a velvety trap coating. The whole island is a trap, the ***** collar is definitely a trap, and the legendary vault you worked all this time to open is, spoilers, trap-shaped as well. There’s gold, alright. In fact, there’s so much gold that it’s impossible to even make a dent in the pile before you’re overencumbered, and can’t walk away quickly enough to avoid being ******* in an auto-destruct. The little, but very real struggle between “I earned this” and survival that this forces on the player’s brain just at the climax of the plot perfectly echoes the theme of greed’s corrosive power. Naturally, you also have a hand in the outcomes of each of your partners’ storylines, and can totally just run up real close and ****** Elder Elijah in the head forty times in V.A.T.S. if that’s the way you like to solve problems. But we like the think the true ending is the one where it slowly dawns on you as you listen to the message that was meant for Dean, the one from the casino builder Frederick Sinclair, vowing his revenge and quoting from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado - as you stuff more gold into your pockets and the vault door starts to close - that this wasn’t a vault at all, really. It was a safehouse he made for her, Vera, the one whose voice was the key. It just didn’t work out that way. It’s like the lady sang - “Begin again, but know when to let go.” Honest Hearts The main storyline of Fallout: New Vegas climaxes in an epic three-way battle for the Hoover Dam between New California Republic troops, Mr. House’s army of robots, and Caesar’s Legion, a group of brutal survivalists who believe that a return to strict, fascistic order is what post-apocalyptic society needs to thrive. It’s quite a battle, and one that the Courier can tip in many different directions - but it wasn’t the first. At the First Battle of Hoover Dam, Caesar’s right-hand man, Malpais Legate Joshua Graham, led the Legion to an embarrassing defeat and Caesar felt forced to make an example of him. That example included covering the man in pitch, lighting him on *****, and throwing him into the Grand Canyon. Rumor has it he still lives, roaming the wastes as the infamous Burned Man. The legend of the Burned Man hides at the edges of New Vegas, but the character is never fully explored until the events of Honest Hearts. The mystique surrounding Joshua Graham makes actually meeting him and working with him feel a bit like the Vader cameo at the end of Jedi Survivor - here’s a man you’ve only ever encountered as oblique snatches of dialog tree or on a dusty terminal entry deep in the underground ruins of an office complex. There he sits, covered in bandages like Keifer Southerland at the beginning of Phantom Pain, eternally checking and reloading a pile of handguns as he lectures to you about the necessity of political *********. And that impossible question - whether the oppressed people of the world are justified in using ********* to defend themselves or slay their masters - forms the backbone of the Honest Hearts experience. If ***** Money was an exercise in keeping things chopped up into a collection of *****-size short stories written from various protagonists’ perspectives, Honest Hearts is one long, slow meditation on a single moral conundrum. Can’t we all just get along? In short, the plot follows two tribes living among the ruins of Zion National Park - the Sorrows and the ***** Horses - both in danger of being run off their land by the latest members of Caesar’s Legion, the White Legs. The Burned Man leads the ***** Horses, while the Sorrows are watched over by a New Canaanite missionary named Daniel. Daniel, believing the Sorrows to be “innocent, if there is such a thing,” would rather see them evacuate the valley than fall to the White Legs or, perhaps worse, ****** back and become a militarized society. Joshua has no such reservations, and urges both local tribes to rise up, massacre the White Legs, and secure their homeland. Rather than serving a particular gameplay function, your add-on companions Follows-Chalk and Waking-Cloud share their differing worldviews in ambient dialog as you traverse the park, inviting you to use most of your brain cells ********* geckos and pondering one of humanity’s great, unanswerable questions. Like Fallout 4’s plotline about the enslavement of sentient androids, Honest Hearts dares tackle a mature subject that still shapes the world today, from Ukraine to Gaza. Is it better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms and by opposing end them? When a bully pushes you down, do you get back up and dust yourself off, or kick them in the **********? It’s a nuanced, no-holds-barred, ****** story about a complicated topic Few games force that kind of decision on the player, and whether you side with Daniel’s pacifistic view or subscribe to Joshua’s stance that “when done righteously, ******** is just a chore like any other,” the outcome won’t be clean-cut. There is no “good” ending because evacuating means bowing in the face of barbarism, while fighting back means inviting blood and trauma into your life. This is all further complicated by Joshua’s past as the enforcer of Caesar’s repressive regime and his ****** as a devout New Canaan *******. At one point, in an attempt to reconcile his religion and his militancy, he quotes ‘O daughter of Babylon,’ a psalm about how happy **** will be when he “taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” It’s a nuanced, no-holds-barred, ****** story about a complicated topic, and outside of some white savior complex and Daniel’s insistence that “tribals are smart, but…they’re ignorant,” the game navigates that topic with care and thoughtfulness. Which is saying something, considering how many White Legs Storm Drummers you make melt with a laser rifle. Honest Hearts also features perhaps the best story hidden in any Fallout terminal, the survival diary of Randall Dean Clark, a kindhearted man and fierce warrior who oversaw the birth of the Sorrows tribe and inadvertently became their deity, the Father in the Caves. That piece of deep lore was enough to bring tears to our eyes on the first playthrough, and deciding whether to let the Burned Man ******** Salt-Upon-Wounds still feels like one of the most fraught clicks we’ve ever made. Old World Blues The Fallout universe’s own Manhattan Project, Big Mountain was initially a crater stuffed with mostly white male scientists doing unfettered research into any number of superscience technologies in order to aid the war effort. When the ****** finally fell, it was, as the opening narration puts it, “an answer that put all the scientists’ questions to rest.” The scientists themselves didn’t rest, however. Instead they put their brains in floating jars attached to display monitors and set up shop in the Big Empty’s research center, known only as the Dome. It’s into this chaos the Courier arrives, and they’ll have to ***** plenty of ****** scorpions before the drama between the Dome scientists and their nemesis Dr. Mobius can be put to rest. What’s truly incredible about the storytelling across all four New Vegas add-ons is that each serves a different purpose, and is structured to suit that purpose. In the case of Old World Blues, the purpose, beyond letting the writers inject more humor than usual into the proceedings, is to bombard the player with as many sci-fi concepts as humanly possible. The game plays like Philip K. ***** pitching story concepts to his editor, and we mean that in a good way. There’s the stealth suit with an internal monolog. There’s the **** made out of a dog’s brain. There’s the fact that your own heart, spine and brain have been surgically removed and replaced with Tesla coils, leading to a surreal scene in which you chat with your own brain and must convince it to hop back into your skull. With each research outpost the player plunders, they’re treated not only to gameplay upgrades, but to playful and engaging concepts that each add a layer to existing Fallout lore. It doesn’t end with the actual research, either; unique ****** types also imply a larger story. Take the trauma harness, a semi-sentient metal scaffold meant to hold injured or incapacitated people up and walk them to an autodoc. Now they’ve gone haywire and are forcing the putrefying corpses inside them to ******* anyone who wanders through, creating a whole new type of zombie. From a programmable sound **** to an upgradeable player base crammed with distinct robotic personalities, every minute of the game is designed to tickle your brain, if not elicit an audible chuckle. All the while, terminals and random snippets of Mobius dialog pumped over the loudspeakers fill in bonus lore, like the fact that many of the wasteland’s mutant animal hybrids were originally designed by and deployed from the Big Empty. The fact that the dialog is actually funny is something to celebrate, too. Mixing science fiction with humor can be a tricky proposition, and video games trying to be funny have a mixed track record. Anchored by the constant bickering between the floating scientist brains - the Think Tank - the script often hits on genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, like when they mistake your toes for a bunch of wriggling feet-********, and Dr. O says “I don’t remember ******** ever being that large.” It helps that they’re voiced by old hands like Jim Ward (The Fairly OddParents, Ratchet & Clank) and actual television comedian James Urbaniak, the voice behind Dr. Venture from The Venture Bros. Another highlight gag is the conscious biological research station that’s always ready to “receive your seed” and “clone the ***** out of it.” And let’s not forget Muggy, the Yes-Man-shaped Roomba obsessed with collecting every coffee cup it can get its grubby little pincers on. Throw in a scientist who talks like a sports announcer, one who speaks only in sound effects, and a ********* liberated lady-scientist who calls you a “lobotomite” and “skinvelope” and treats you like a teddy bear she’s physically attracted to, and there’s plenty of interplay to keep scenes fresh and, hopefully, make you want to ******* these “people” by the end of this thing. Speaking of the ending, Old World Blues features probably the most thorough closing narration in Fallout history, hilariously wrapping up the stories of each and every robo-personality in your base, the Sink. The fascist book chute chokes on a paperclip, the toaster with a thirst for world conquest goes on an appliance-wrecking rampage - everyone and everything gets an ending. As for the Courier, they watch over the place, and raid its supertech for tools to help those in the Mojave. In the midst of a scientific sepulcher where people “stare into the what-was, eyes like pilot lights, guttering and spent,” your role is to look to the future, and make of it what you can. As a final beat, it’s a grand reaffirmation of what Fallout is all about: exploration and survival. Lonesome Road “Walk into the sun. Keep walking until it *****. There, I’ll be waiting.” It’s with these portentous words that Ulysses welcomes you to the Divide, where Fallout: New Vegas’ true ending is about to play out. Yes, the Battle of Hoover Dam will provide more fireworks and dictate the fate of the Mojave as a whole, but Lonesome Road is where the Courier’s personal journey reaches its conclusion, and for a game you can play through in a couple hours it’s a ***** of a finisher. Coming right off of Old World Blues, players might well be on the verge of banter fatigue, or done with “the lighter side” of the Fallout universe. Good. Lonesome Road presents you with a grim, sorrowful tone and only one other living character, a shadow-version of yourself - the original Courier Six. The symbolism in Lonesome Road is so on-point it’s almost painful. There’s Ulysses himself, named after the Civil War general who fought to reunite a divided nation. There’s your only companion, ED-E the eyebot, separated from his home by hundreds of miles and programmed to return at all costs. There are the disparate factions of NCR and Legion troops, trapped together in the sandstorms of the Divide and melded into a single force, the Marked Men, whose flesh has literally been flayed from their bodies. There’s the Hoover Dam itself, described by Ulysses as “a wall that bridges two sides,” the epitome of the paradox of connection and separation. Finally, there’s the nukes scattered everywhere, devices designed to keep nations separate but which ultimately ******* the world in ruin. It feels like the final chapter in the saga, in a way that the main game can’t because it ultimately wants to dump you back into the sandbox to keep over-leveling. After all, the Divide is literally a giant ****** in the ground funneling you in one direction: toward your destiny. And, like a great ending to any epic, Lonesome Road finally reveals the player’s true identity and origins, in a way that weaves through and reflects upon the primary themes of the series - war, nuclear weapons, and those who carry on in the aftermath. Ulysses is a disillusioned Legionary and the lone survivor of a cataclysm you caused, however inadvertently, and he’s also the reason you ended up carrying the platinum chip to Vegas in the first place, and subsequently getting shot in the head and ******* alive. It’s a full-circle ending that wraps up not only the add-ons, but the entire New Vegas experience with a story that feels satisfying and meaningful. In his quest to “remind you why you wander,” Ulysses underscores one of the most striking things about stories, games, and life itself - “All roads lead back to one’s home. Not your birthplace maybe, but home.” “If war doesn’t change then men must, and so must their symbols. You can’t walk the Long 15 and not have a nation’s shadow fall on you.” His words are an exhortation on the power of choice, the need to pick something to believe in and ****** for it until you see things through to the ******* end. If that’s not Fallout, we don’t know what is. View the full article