Been playing Fallout New Vegas a ton lately.

And by that, I mean I spend most of my waking hours playing it. The series is just that good. I can play for hours and hours and not get bored with it or tired of playing.

It’s exactly my kind of game – open world full of quests and plot and things to discover, with great writing, voice acting, game play, and graphics.

Plus a pretty huge modding community. Not as big as Skyrim, of course, but still more than enough to keep me busy looking for things to make playing the game more fun.

Like I have said before, a long time ago, the best games for me are the ones you can both play and play with via modding.

Technically, I am on my second character. I first started the game with a melee combat based character instead of my usual deadly sharpshooter because :

a. slicing up mutants and bandits with a sword like a post-apocalyptic Conan the Barbarian is fun, and
b. I have been trying to break old patterns and start new ones lately.

That second bit is real hard. But worth doing.

And I made it all the way to New Vegas with that character, but the game just doesn’t have very many melee weapons and the melee combat is ultimately not as fun as blasting people’s heads off in various fun and entertaining ways, so I started over with my usual sniper type character and have gone a long way with him.

And wow, is there a lot of content. I have done so many quests! I’ve killed my way through hordes of bandits who call themselves The Fiends to kill their leader and thus eliminate them as an active threat to civilization, fought flocks of extremely dangerous poisonous mutant butterflies the size of pup tents, talked various colorful characters into becoming specialist sex workers for one of the casinos, rescued a scientist from an underground lab where the plants had gone crazy, and helped a group of missionary types set up a reliable supply line for medicine and food in return for helping a casino lord make his own booze.

And all with the help of my trusty companions, Veronica the nerd girl with the deadly pneumatic fist, and Rex, the cyborg dog.

Is it any wonder that I prefer to spend time in that world instead of the real one?

I have also had some fun with the sexytimes kind of mods. Ultimately, as fun as they are, once the novelty wears off I get tired of them pretty quickly, but even then, it’s still fun to be able to get humpy with a sexy character now and then.

It’s more about possibilities than activities. Mostly I just play the actual game, but knowing I can get my sexy on when I feel like it really adds to the overall enjoyment.

Plus, unlike the real world, I can have whatever kind of sex I want with no consequences and no limitations.

It’s the world as it should be, in my honest opinion. No more mindless taboos and persecution of sexual minorities.

We will get there some day. Hopefully when I am still alive.

More after the break.

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The problem being a sharpshooter…

…is that you are kind of helpless without a gun.

So in the game (Fallout New Vegas, for those with very short memories), I am on a mission to stop a bunch of elitist murderous cannibals from…. well, being elitist murdering cannibals, more or less.

There’s this ultra swank casino called the Ultra Luxe and they are very much a “all the best things for only the best people” kind of place. Really plutocratic and “exclusive”.

I hate that word in that context. It basically means “the main draw of this thing is that we exclude almost everybody, thereby making you feel extra special if you actually get in. ”

The place is very nice, though, especially compared to how crappy and run down and shitty looking everything else in the game is. Very tasteful, stylish, and restrained.

If only the people in charge weren’t awful. I have nothing against wanting to be in refined and tasteful surroundings where everything is pleasing to the senses, including one’s sense of aesthetics.

In fact, I aspire to that lifestyle myself.

But my senses include a very strong dose of empathy, so even if I was rich I would not be able to tolerate being around people with such ugly and repulsive attitudes.

Anyhow, like all the casinos on the Strip, they take your guns at the door. And that was fine until I reached a point in the plot where the informant gets shot (poor guy…. tried to save him but his death was, alas, scripted) and then the assassin turns his gun on me.

Getting rid of the witness, I assume.

And the thing is, while I am pretty helpless without my guns (and deadly AF with them), I still have my very good armor on. So the assassin’s gun does very little damage to him and I can do very little damage back.

So there I am, flailing away with my puny fists while he very slowly shoots me to death.

This was intolerable. I mean sure, I would have won eventually. seeing as I can use items to heal myself and he can’t, but it would have taken forever

So I tried a bunch of things, like using some of my store of drugs to pump myself up (nope, damage still pathetic) and trying to lure him outside, where I would have my guns and could blow his fucking brains out in a number of highly satisfying ways. Nope.

Then it finally occurred to me to wonder where my companions, who are both deadly hand to hand combatants, had gone.

I found them, brought them back to the Ultra Luxe with me, triggered the confrontation, and they made short work of the assassin who had bedelived me for much, much longer than I would like to admit.

Made me wish I had stuck with my original melee based character. Even naked, he would have taken that mofo down in seconds.

The perils of specialization, I suppose.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.