Fallout New Vegas - Honest Hearts (3 out of 10)

Okay well...I stood there looking up the reviews for this game and found them all seemingly written by those who were in league with those who MADE IT.  This DLC is the most deceptively annoying expansion that has ever existed for a game. 

First thing is that you walk in and the caravan you were escorting is shot up by a tribe called the 'White legs'.  You fend them off and are the sole survivor.  This is a good way to start.  Looking out you see the magnificent landscape stretched out before you.  Perfect.  You are thinking 'I have barely started this and I'm REALLY liking it'.  Your first follower ambushes one of the last 'White legs' to get a shot on you.  His name is 'Follows-Chalk'.   He becomes your follower and takes you to see the 'Burned man': Joshua Graham.  'Holy Shit!' you exclaim 'I get to see the man himself!'.   You meet Joshua and find that he is an exceptional man, very religious, knows his guns, and leads the Dead Horse tribe.   Yeah.  Oh...he's also a vendor.   I can't help but think that the opportunity for a marvelous story got flushed straight down the shitter.  What would have been better?  Well okay... how about this.  Cut scene...Caesar throwing a burning Joshua down a cliff.  You get to play one of the people who rescued Joshua...or maybe Joshua himself.  You play a tribal with say 100 in Survival as you scramble to find ingredients that will make various Holistic medication in order to stablize his condition.  This would be player controlled (obviously) but with a different skin and skills.  Eventually Joshua is saved and returned.  But we get to experience what he went through.  That is right off the top of my head. 

The missions are firstly:  Go here...go there... get stuff...take it to this other guy up North.   

About 10 minutes into the game, you have heard everything FC says at least twice.  He doesn't just say sentences...but whole paragraphs...about 3 of them that he says every 15-30 seconds or so.   About 15 minutes into the story you just want to turn around and tell him to 'Shut the fuck up!'.  After 20 minutes this guy is the verbal version of Chinese water torture...his words burrowing a hole in my brain.   The 'Grand Vista!' is suddenly not so special as you realize getting around it is consuming a lot of time with not the proportionate amount of entertainment value...in other words; shit gets old fast.  The white legs pop literally out of the woodwork to ambush you.  I had 100 sneak and 10 perception and the only way you aren't jumped is when you sneak around everywhere ... slowing the game down to a crawl...and you will rarely find them first.  Eventually you say 'Let them attack first ... I don't care; as FC tells you about his opinion on gambling for the 50th time.    Fortunately you can dismiss your companions.  Do it!  You can stand on a mountain top overlooking one of the very few enjoyable qualities of the game much better without some idiot babbling on and on and on with the New Vegas version of that idiot from Fallout 3 with the party hat.  What blows me away is they put that in the game without actually catching it as a self pop-cultural satire - what the Fallout series is actually known for.  Wow...someone was sleeping.  I guess 'Beta-testers' weren't in the budget. 

  This game just loves traps.  You will find bear traps and trip wires EVERYWHERE;   mostly in a series of caves sprinkled all over the place where an actual GOOD STORY exist in the logs of VARIOUS COMPUTERS.   Finding those caves sucks out an even greater proportion of enthusiasm for playing the game...but there is a good story there.  The traps in these caves are often well hidden.  You will most likely trip a dozen or so during your travels.  You could probably find them all if you SLOW DOWN EVEN MORE!  (Ooo...feel that boredom seeping into your pores!).  The Story (a simple written series of log entries - not even audible) is like a reward system for putting up with the pain of monotony.  To reflect this, one needs to take out a really good book and a hammer.  At the beginning of every chapter, take the hammer and hit yourself in the thumb then say the words 'I reward myself for putting up with this pain by reading a chapter'.  There is only two types of games that use reward systems.  MMORPG's and MFRBG's (the 'RB' stands for 'Really Bad'; I'll let you figure the rest out on your own).  As a higher level character, your less than 'kick ass' weapons suddenly shoot 'Jello Shots' on the 'white legs' who eventually get wobbly and fall down if you give them enough.  Actually, scratch that, if you did use 'Jello Shots' you actually might get a reaction from them.  Apparently just getting shot in the head isn't enough to have thes guys even look at you sometimes or even reach toward the affected area and say 'Ow...my head hurts'.  That's right!  It's the 'Rhino Hide' version of gaming we come to know and love from Bioshock.  And you can shoot 19 rounds of 10mm pistol rounds into their heads and the 20th one causes their heads to explode like they were hit in the eye with a .50 cal. Rifle round.  This and many more annoyingly unrealistic qualities make immersion impossible.

I just don't fucking get this.  If you are going to spend 10 000 man hours coding a game...why not spend 10 hours on a decent story for it??? 

If you like the views in this game?  Get the fuck out of your home and go to Zion National Park in Utah (Yes it is a real place).  You will fucking love it.