It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred hours to go. They would be buggy hours. Very soon, I knew, my PS3 would be completely frozen. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. Machinations at the fabulous Lucky 38 were already underway, and we had to get there with the chip to claim the presidential suite. A fashionable casino in New Vegas had already taken care of the contract, along with the Securitron escort we got coming in from the Strip. And I was, after all, a professional courier, so I had an obligation to deliver the chip, for good or ill.

The pit boss had already given me 300 caps, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous chems. My inventory looked like a mobile Brotherhood narcotics lab. We had two bags of Psycho, seventy-five Mentats, five puffers of high-powered Jet, half a salt shaker full of Buffout, and a whole galaxy full of multi-colored RadAway, Rad-X, Super Stimpacks, and also a quart of whiskey, a quart of scotch, a case of Nuka-Cola, a pint of Sunset Sasparilla, and two dozen Stimpacks. Not that we needed it for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious chem collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

I’ve already talked about the bugginess and open-ended nature of Fallout: New Vegas, but I didn’t address the game itself. It’s time to review what essentially is Fallout 4. Obsidian Entertainment took a great, if buggy, take on Fallout and made it buggier and greater.

Fallout: New Vegas looks and plays almost identical to Fallout 3. There are a few changes, like more crafting options and a better companion interface, but otherwise the game is little more than a massive expansion to Bethsoft’s game. Of course, Fallout 2 was little more than a massive expansion to Fallout, purely based on the engine and artwork. Yes, Obsidian took all the pieces Bethsoft used in the previous game and recycled them in the Mojave Wasteland, but how they did it is what counts.

New Vegas feels more like the first two Fallout games than Fallout 3 did. The differences are subtle, but they’re definitely there. The pacing, the aesthetics, the characters, the quest structure, it all feels like you’re stomping through the western Wasteland once again. The Mojave Wasteland isn’t as dense as the Capitol Wasteland, but the hamlets and dungeons you do come across feel so much more like they belong in Fallout 2. The Western tinge of the architecture and culture, the presence of the New California Republic, the pleasant and repeated callbacks to the first two games (Marcus is in the area, and he’s still voiced by Michael Dorn!), they all contribute to a sense of nostalgia for Black Isle Studio’s works that Fallout 3 never quite produced.

The story is much more interesting. Instead of chasing your father around and choosing who gets water for the Capital Wasteland, your quest for the game’s MacGuffin (this time a platinum poker chip) leads to a massive struggle between several factions, all vying for control of electricity to the entire region. The concepts are similar, switching water for power and adding a few more groups to the mix, but Fallout: New Vegas manages to present the conflict with a much greater sense of scope, with the ability to look the leaders of each factions in the eye and decide whether you want to do their bidding or topple them.

The characters are much more colorful than in Fallout 3, too, and the voice cast is nothing short of nerdgasmic. Zach Levy (Chuck), Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica), Danny Trejo (Machete and Spy Kids. Seriously, he plays the same character in both. Look it up. Machete’s first appearance was in a kid’s movie.), Rene Auberjonois, Michael Dorn, Wil Wheaton (Star Trek), Felicia Day (The Guild, anything by Joss Whedon), Andrea Thompson (Babylon 5), and even Dave Foley from Kids In The Hall play characters in the game. And Wayne Newton is a ridiculously charismatic DJ for New Vegas Radio, which you’ll be listening to whenever you’re not in range of the insane rantings that are Black Mountain Radio (less for outcasts, more for weirdos).

Yes, it’s buggy. The game has frozen three times on me so far. If you try to take Boone into a casino, he’ll probably lose his rifle. Sometimes scripts don’t execute and you have to restart from a previous save to finish a quest. If you can bear with those problems, though, you’ll enjoy a great follow-up to both Fallout 2 and Fallout 3. This house might have been built on a rickety foundation, but there’s still some great stuff inside. And besides, even if it collapses you can still loot it for caps.

With apologies to Hunter S. Thompson.