Just finished the game... I have to say that it's a LOT better than Fallout 3 story-wise. Obsidian is obviously okay with making the player feel uncomfortable. But the bugs!! Jeez, I don't think I ever sat down to play it without experiencing some kind of bug. Most of them weren't serious, but I have had several crash-to-desktops as well as bugs that prevented me from completing a few quests. Ahhhhhh!

Light spoilers...
Near the end I couldn't choose what path to take. There's no clear *good* solution. None of the factions are completely likable, but most of them aren't exactly evil either. I loved this actually. I'm so used to the clear-cut good guy, bad guy paradigm that it was refreshing to have to spend 10 minutes just thinking about what the best outcome would be for me, given the circumstances, which is all the more difficult considering your actions have so much weight to them at that point that it's so hard to try to do something 'good' without having nasty repercussions. It was a really good experience.

I wish they'd fix that bug that affects the Legate, at one point he just gave up fighting me completely and just stood there as I plinked away at him.

Yes the moral choices are not very clear cut and that's what I like about the game most of all. Even consider Legate Lanaius. All through the game you are told he's a mindless butcher but when you finally confront him you find he is very dedicated to the Legion and has a strong sense of honor. You can even fight him one on one with the right dialogue.

The only real good ending is a good Karma Courier supporting Mr House (as long as you don't persuade the Kings to make peace with the NCR) but even then there are awkward decisions to make.

Aw, I wish Seanbaby wrote this.

I loved the game until it fried my video card....

I can probably come up with a decent gaming PC build for around a grand if you want

That would be awesome! I don't have a lot of experience with building PCs. The most I can do is put the GPU and RAM in, not really glue on a motherboard, but yeh that'd be great!

Start here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Hardcon09_1.html

Okay, I've done a preliminary design, comes to a bit over $1000 and does depend on a bit of recycling

http://aliasalpha.customer.netspace.net.au/prakaaPC.txt

wow thanks a lot that really helps

Unfortunately, because of certain reason, I can't quite build from scratch, but now I have a bigger budget

I have this: Intel Core i5, a bit less than what you suggested but still powerful
Windows 7 Home Premium
1 year warranty
6GB DDR3 RAM
750GB Drive
1GB ATI Radeon HD 5670
Intergrated high def 7.1 hannel audio (integrated sound...)
Liquid cooling heatsink

It comes to a bit more, but unfortunately my family doesn't want to get a modded PC.....

What do you think? I'd be willing to maybe mod up the graphics....

[on hardware]

New Vegas works fine with low end PCs & even shared memory graphics (Laptops etc) - I tested it with a NVidia 6100 chip. If you have 1 GB memory & 2GHz single core CPU, everyone can play this game - prefered on 32bit OS.

(I am not defending the technical bugs & problems - far from it!)

[on 'bugs']

======== minor early SPOILER =============

speaking of bugs (or rather game design related flaws): early in the game, if you decide to go to Primm, the first soldier you stumble upon will engage you in a dialog. If you choose anything but the first answer, the Primm Quest is as good as lost!

The conversation ends before you get to hear anything about the situation that unfolded in Primm. It is easy NOT to find the tent with the NCR leader. Having to shoot your way through Primm while still Level 1. (Good luck)

===========SPOILER END=============

This is none of the more severe technical bugs or game related problems. Mind you, coding such an RPG is a Herculean task for sure - as you all here seem to know to appreciate.

[on mods]

... one at a time. It's like hardware testing. You cannot assume, that the mod makers really know what they are doing in the first place (unless you follow the specific mod-scene). Even less, mods running smoothly with other mods - it's like wanting Firefox plugins to be 'aware' of each other.

... carry on, please. Don't mind me. I just enjoy reading the forums ... ;)

How much is it? I'd definitely upgrade your GPU as much as you can afford to since its the bit that will show its age earliest.

Quite expensive $2000ish, though I can't really do much since it's prebuilt and I can only really get prebuilt

Here is a mode for people who want to play a Gunslinger http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37526.

Now all I have to do is pick between the Lucky or the Ranger Sequoia as my main revolver :P