Leveling Down

Punch a Super Mutant in the face!

A lot of things have happened since I began Fallout: New Vegas. I got a dog. I turned 30. A new year began. I became a PS3 owner. I actually had put down New Vegas after the first 15 hours and my impressions – I got distracted by Starcraft and other things. When I picked it back up, my goal was to blow through the main storyline so I could get to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, which I’m dying to play. That was over two weeks ago (fifty hours of game time). Turns out Fallout: New Vegas, is a lot better than I thought.

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Our Awards & Holiday Shopping Guide are just about done, but today I get to talk about some of my favorite categories. Which stories really stuck with me this year? What new IPs are out there that might stand the test of time? And how do all the sequels this year stack up? Hit the jump to find out!

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Welcome to Leveling Down’s 3rd Annual Gaming Awards/Holiday Shopping Guide! For those of you that are first time readers of our awards/holiday shopping guide, cmfl3x and I have basically compiled a list of various games released this year into different categories. We choose a “winner” of each category, but at the same time, all games mentioned as nominees in each category are worth considering – hence, the shopping guide aspect of it. If you can only pick one game from the category, go with the winner. If you enjoy that category a lot, consider checking out all of the nominees on that list!

As cmfl3x and I discussed the various categories and selected winners for each one, some categories we did not always agree on the same winner. This year, instead of forcing one another to see agree on the same game, we have instead allowed for ties – so there is a potential of two winners for each category. Our gaming tastes are not exactly the same and I didn’t think any of you would gain much from us forcing only one winner.

Our 2010 Gaming/Awards/Holiday Shopping Guide will span across all gaming platforms, and will run over the next two weeks on our normal Monday, Wednesday, and Friday posting schedule. Next Friday’s entry will conclude this year’s feature with our 2010 Game of the Year.

Without further ado, hit the jump for today’s categories: Best Action/Adventure Game and Best Role Playing Game.

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Maybe I’ve leveled down after all. I had been planning to write impressions on Black Ops single player today, but I still haven’t gotten past the fifth mission. I’m stuck halfway through DJ Hero’s tracklist because I’ve been too lazy to switch the disc. I have a whopping 20 (or 30?) points in Fallout: New Vegas. What’s happened to me? It can’t just be cmr3x…can it?

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An alien spaceship and scary hillbillies await in the next Fallout 3 expansions.

Even though Broken Steel was the 3rd DLC pack that was released for Fallout 3 after Operation Anchorage and The Pitt, I decided to skip that expansion pack and jump straight to the last two. The most notable thing about Broken Steel is the expansion of the level cap to level 30, and I wanted to spend my time leveling with Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta before finishing Fallout 3 off for good with Broken Steel. I will write a final article in the future that reviews Broken Steel as well as the Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition as a whole. Hit the jump to see my reviews on Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

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Are these four games enough to hold against this holiday season’s sequels?

Going into this year’s holiday gaming season, I am lacking enthusiasm. I don’t know if it’s because I’m busier now or if the current games this holiday season are just not as exciting as in the last couple of years. To be honest, most of the games I am about to call out I haven’t played yet, but based on buzz I am reading and demos I’ve played today’s entry will sort of be my knee-jerk reaction as to why I am not excited about what’s in store for the 2010 holiday season.

The problem is, we have so many sequels that are worse than their predecessors or sequels that don’t exactly blow their predecessors out of the water. This leads me to find practically all of them lacking in the excitement category that I have had in past holiday seasons. How many sequels are being released this holiday season? Let’s see!

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Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt are the first two of five DLC expansion packs for Fallout 3.

Like cmfl3x, I also picked up Fallout: New Vegas last week. However, one of the games that was still in my backlog was Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, which consisted of the Fallout 3 game and the 5 DLC expansion packs that were released for Fallout 3. Before jumping into the “bright lights” of New Vegas, I decided I wanted to bring Fallout 3 to complete closure first. I booted up my final save game from the original Fallout 3 and jumped right into the expansions. So far, I’ve played through the first two DLC packs, and am ready to provide my review on them. I will continue making my way through the packs, and will try to provide my commentary on their value based on whether you are buying them separately or picking up the Game of the Year bundle.
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Here we go again…

War never changes. Nor does Fallout – or so it would seem. I’ve spent almost seven hours in the Mojave Wasteland without even knowing it. That may not seem like a lot of time since I’ve had the game for a week, but life has been pretty busy – for proof, I have barely even played Starcraft in the past week. So is it just nostalgia, or does Vegas bring something new to the Fallout table?

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Buying Fallout: New Vegas at K-Mart for $30 and getting these free coasters? Sold!

With my extensive gaming backlog (dozens of games, including pretty much the entire PS3 exclusive library), I made a subconscious decision to stop buying single player games at launch – just because I can wait to pick them up on the cheap much later. I honestly thought that the only game I would pick up between now and the rest of the year would be Call of Duty: Black Ops, since Starcraft 2, Halo: Reach, and Call of Duty: Black Ops would probably keep me busy for months. But then I recently discovered a K-Mart promotion for Fallout: New Vegas, and have now started actually considered buying games at my local K-Mart. Read on what I’ve discovered at K-Mart in terms of video game deal hunting – the good and the bad.

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My fond memories of Dragon Age: Origins have been dulled by the number of extra DLC that “expand” the game.

Last Friday I posted about how I felt that EA’s Project $10 initiative is working, and I’m a supporter of it. Hey, I’m all for supporting developers and publishers to make money off their own products and if it came down to it, I wouldn’t mind if the used market disappeared altogether. EA has been coming back into the spotlight in a positive way with gamers these days, while Activision has gone the other way. But there’s one thing that EA is now more guilty of than others at this point that I am annoyed with: DLC for single player games. Read on for my thoughts why.

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