Entry 21: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

After reaching the age of 20, I feel like I’ve passed a certain threshold. Your slavish teenage years are behind you, you have flown the nest (for a while, at least), and you now feel like you are your own man, standing proudly upon your own two feet. And it is with this newfound emancipation that I think I can finally admit that actually, I don’t really like nightclubs. I never really did, it’s just now I feel it unnecessary to try and feel otherwise. It’s not like I became a pagan or anything, it’s just they don’t really do it for me like they once did. If you have something to celebrate; a birthday, a holiday, the end of the year, the beginning of the year, or, even payday, then a night on the town is certainly in order. But, if it is a rainy Tuesday evening, maybe you could just, not. And it doesn’t matter if you go to your average prole hole, an indie place, a gay place. Drink gets drunk, and dubious connections are made. These are universal truths.

Regardless of where you go, and who with, a night out will ultimately boil down to several key elements.  You drink at home to save a little money, you go to a club, maybe a few, where any money saving scheme you may have hatched is irreparably dashed, and then finally you stagger home, kebab in hand, to sleep it off. That is the essential formula, which is replicated every time you decide to get your dancing shoes on. It doesn’t matter if you go to the palace or the grottiest sweat pit in the western hemisphere; although should you frequent the former, you will probably be trading in kebabs for quiche and scotch eggs. Your choice of venue may well differ though. No two clubs are the same, but few are startlingly different either. You will either go in straight away (if it’s a real dive) or more likely queue outside. You will either chat with your raiding party and stonily ignore any of the other tittering pissheads around you, or, depending on how much drink you have already consumed, you may well delve into unnecessarily personal conversations with the medley of unknown revellers in front and behind of you. You never really know. One time I wound up talking to a bearded bloke called Ralph, who smoked a pipe and told me he worked with robots. Then one time I nearly had my head kicked in by a bunch of indie types, who thought my trousers were ‘well gay’ (in defence of ignorance, they were sunshine yellow in colour). Like I said, you never really know. I owe it to my good friend for keeping my head intact on that one.

After this, you will dutifully hold some form of identification aloft, and try to look as respectable as physically possible, as it is inspected by a bouncer with an impressively shiny head. He looks at it, and then at you, before saying something depreciative of your character and letting you in.  Sometimes they might call you by your name, after reading it off your ID, which is always nice, like you’re Angelina Jolie or something. But that is rare. And most people probably don’t enjoy it that much anyway. So the doorman lets you in and you walk into whatever classy spot you’ve picked to go revel. Somewhere like Oceana has all the atmosphere of a flip-flop soaked in urine, and the much touted 02 Academy isn’t much better, despite all the aloof, polo-neck wearing Alex Turner-ites, who insist it is the best.   Regardless of clientele, the place you enter is a reverberating dungeon that reeks of ball-sweat and hair gel; the acrid stench drops on you as you enter, like a warm, soggy blanket. a familiar stink that hangs over proceedings like a greasy phantom.  You jig in the near-darkness with a few friends and lots of people you don’t know at all. Everyone smells, makeup runs, sweat patches develop and sobriety ebbs away moment by moment.  The music is terrible; mostly  chart stuff, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, some really bad RnB like professional  on- going-joke Jason Derulo, and some 90s music to boot, because hey everybody loves music from the 90s as it is ‘nostalgic’ as opposed to ‘bad’. The music blares constantly, making conversation and coherent thought impossible. The resident DJ seems to split his time between making vaguely rape-y one-liners and some idiotic shout-outs to douches out for their twentieth birthday.  Musical choices tend to be better advised in indie places or rock clubs (to the O2’s credit, at one point they played Shoot to Thrill, then Knights of Cydonia, and finally Black Betty; now that was a playlist). Go to popular skank buckets like Halo or Shooters and the music will be utterly terrible; such insipid sugary crap that you wonder if the DJ could save time by just throwing some grenadine on the turntable.

Regardless of where you go, you see the same sorts of people. You get muscle jocks in vests with fake tans and shaved sides, girls in skirts so short they seem to fold into themselves to reveal as much loin as possible, a couple arguing in the corner, the creepy guy with the piercing who stays standing at the bar all night, the two girls in the smoking area who have decided to be newly found BFFs. You get those boys looking for their mates, darting about the place with that fleeting look so charismatic of a party-goer who’s lost his group. You see someone you vaguely know, and are amused when you see they are quite overtly and desperately chasing some tail. As your sobriety leaves you, you wind up talking to people you really like but inevitably never see ever again.  Then more than anything you see those people sat by themselves on seats or in cubicles round the edge of the dance floor, looking about sheepishly and tapping at a smart phone to try and dispel the illusion that they look sad as hell. I swear you could walk into a bar or a club anywhere in the country (except, maybe, Lincolnshire, land of the potato) and you would see this same class of stereotypes. 

The consensus seems to be that gay clubs are somehow preferable to straight ones, because the music will be better or the atmosphere rosier, or maybe because the people there are better looking. However, as anyone who has actually been to one of these places can tell you, gay clubs are just as rancorous as straight ones. For a start the music is by no means better, indeed often it stoops to new levels of debasement; it would not be unusual to hear One Direction’s That’s What Makes You Beautfiul  get played in excess of three times. The atmosphere is certainly different, but I don’t know whether you could call it preferable; you get douchebags on both sides of the fence after all. But there is less in the way of conversation in a place like Mission on a Monday night. There is a definite mandate for this occasion, and that mandate is generally that no one has gone there to make friends. Not like a night at Tiger Tiger is a place for balanced and intelligent debate. But the object of the night is at least somewhat concealed in places like that. Not so on a Monday at Mission, the subtly titled Homo. If you do not appeal to a person’s libido, or otherwise, are clearly not going to play ball, it is not anything special if someone were to stop talking to you mid-sentence and go talk to someone else. People go there to hook up, just like any other night out, but, unlike any other night out, many people consider this the sole objective of their exertion, with any other result equating to failure. Not like this is really a problem, I suppose. People can do what they like. It just isn’t quite to everybody’s tastes.

Getting totally trolleyed is so integral to life in this country, it’s practically a British institution. But I am getting a little sick of it now. It’s funny to think if someone told you that you were going to go into a sweaty, poorly lit room, filled with strangers, and listen to music you hated, you would presume the owner would be paying you to enter. Clubs are essentially the same, you will see drama, tears, and at least one thing that disgusts you. The music will be bad, but, then again, if you go to places like Halo or Fruity of your own free will, you’ll probably love the music that is on (and, also, probably be an utter tool, not worthy even of contempt). Nightclubs, at their core, are just playgrounds for the careless lust of young men, and that’s true whether you are in Viaduct Show Bar or Shooters Sports Bar. Everybody loves a night of excess every once in a while, and without them society might just teeter the other way to the point where looking at a ladies ankles would get you banged up. But there are better ways to spend an evening you know. Preferably ways where you don’t have to hear Pound the Alarm, even once.

Entry 20: How To Fail A Shop Floor Induction

I got turned away from a job today. It was one of the more interesting encounters in my recent memory.  To avoid any suits for libel (on account of the overwhelming popularity of this publication, obviously) I will alter some of the names and such. So, I went to an open interview with something approaching sixty other people. I was applying to cosmetics and smelly things shop, let’s call it, Delicious! As I vaguely knew, Delicious! was one of those preppy environmentally friendly places, crammed with nice smelling tut; essentially an overpriced-pinko retelling of The Body Shop.

 

So, an open interview, at Delicious!. What an ‘open interview’ comprised was beyond me though. I figured most interviews were open (apart from that time I said I enjoyed fencing in my spare time; that was a lie), but maybe this job just required a particularly high level of moral accountability. Whatever, I turned up anyway. I was at the back of the sixty-strong line, and as the throng was herded into the centre of the room, the door was closed firmly behind me. What happened next was a hazy blur. I can only really describe it by making reference to some sort of terrible marriage between Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and Deliverance. The staff were all stood on tables, laughing and clapping and cheering like the Sunshine Bus had broken down on the M28 and the fleeing occupants were attempting to hail passing traffic. One girl who was staring at us, her massive crazy eyes roving over us face to face,  was pouring some pinkish bubble bath from a jug, into another jug, and repeating all the while, something I think similar to “Oh a’ love these bubbles a’ do too”.  This salutation was met by further chuntering and cheering from the other members of staff, dotted around the room in formation, effectively kettleing us in the centre of the room.

 

Christmas music blared, and in recognition of this, a portly woman waving some loofahs to and fro called out “It’s just like Christmasssssssss!”. Although it definitely was not just like Christmas, unless Christmas is a celebration of psychosis and fear, in which case the semblance was uncanny. For a while nothing was said as this nonsensical crescendo of insanity washed over the rabble of, by now petrified, applicants. And then a woman who must have been manager, on account of her pointy-face (isn’t that like the law of something?) got our attention and laid down some home truths. Just your average schlock, these values you need, these hours you need to work, this attitude you need to have. Some people left, mumbling how they didn’t fit criteria for whatever reason, and to this the staff clapped in unison and actually cheered a bit again too, which was so utterly nonsensical and frightening that it was sufficient to root every other person, including me, to the spot. It became clear what you had to do, you had to find an item in the shop, and sell it to a member of staff. If they were satisfied, they would then send you on to the manageress, if you were crap then they gave you ‘positive feedback’ (i.e ‘That was awful, now please leave’). Fair enough. This was difficult for me since I would never buy any of the crap anyway, not when a sodding bar of soap shaped like a foot cost you four quid. Anyway, after getting into character as someone willing to spend money on this flowery exercise in the superfluous, namely my mum, I picked something that looked nice. You had to gear something that your best friend would like, but this failed to help narrow it down, since anything that could make her smell better would be fine, and pretty much everything in the shop would do that. I picked a sort of face scrub thing with salt and lime in it, like a tequila shot but in a pot and three times the price. I pitched it to a nice looking brunette. I remembered an episode of Friends where Ross moisturises with a sort of paste thing, so I used the word ‘T-Zone’ which seemed to go down well with ole’ Creepy McGee. She sent me to the manageress, and I was booked in for a shop-floor induction the following week. So far, so good. Also, soap-based hysteria. But still, I wanted a job.

 

Anyway, I didn’t think about it much, but sure enough the day blew round. The induction was relatively early in the day, and I got there about ten minutes early, like a real eager beaver. I spoke to an Asian lady who was at the till. She was quiet and fairly inanimate, and for these reasons I presumed she didn’t work at this place, but it turned out she did. “We weren’t expecting you till later” she said, as the inductions occur at one o’clock.  I assured her that they definitely were expecting me since that was when I was pencilled into the calendar. With a slight smile till lady slipped away and told me to wait there while she checked to see whether I was actually there for an induction or whether I was some crazy man who walks into shops and pretends to have inductions in ten minutes. She found, on inspection, that I was the former.  I shan't name this till lady, mostly, because I can’t remember it, but also because of what I said earlier. Let’s call her, ‘Meredith’, as that is undoubtedly the name of a real ball-buster.  ‘Meredith’ led me upstairs, and told me to pop my stuff on some clothes pegs. After I had put my bag and umbrella away I turned to face her and smiled. But she was not smiling back. And it was at this moment I knew, that something had not gone to plan. After licking her lips in a quick nervous action, like the movement of some small bird, Meredith said to me quietly;

“Do you want to step in the other room?”

Oh. This was not good. I hastily complied with Meredith’s demand. After closing the door, she turned to me and said, after some thought;

“Those are grey trousers”.

I paused at this. She was right, they were grey, a dark grey, the colour of dark pencil graphite. I know at the first meeting I was told to wear black and white. But I didn’t have black trousers, and jeans weren’t allowed. This stage would have been only a second out of maybe three of four. Was I to buy a uniform for a job that I was not even half way to having a chance of getting? For a job interview, definitely, but for something at least two steps before an interview, probably not. And so I wore grey pants instead. Lordy lordy.

“Oh, is that a problem?” I asked.

“I can’t let you on the shop floor like that” replied Meredith.

 

This took me aback. They were, after all, just grey trousers. “Can’t let” was pretty strong wording. Did she think I would just go and rape all the customers on the shop floor or something;  had I turned up smeared in the blood and sinew of a sacrificial yew, or was I just wearing grey trousers? I assured her that I could pop out and buy some new black trousers, since they were clearly somehow strongly linked to selling bath bombs. Meredith did not commit to this one bit. Instead she told me that, with regret, I was not going to progress any further, and that should I want to work at Delicious!, I would have to re-apply from the beginning, presumably, next year.  This surprised me, I didn’t think they would flat out throw me out the joint over the trousers. But Meredith was clearly not messing around here. I enquired as to whether I could merely be rescheduled for another time, and to this I received back only a quick shake of the head. Soon hereafter I was being trotted delicately out of the shop.

And so, that, was that. Delicious! had taught me a quick but memorable lesson on the values of wearing trousers of material darker than dark grey. I was not too upset; the weird soap-cult that comprised the rationale of the place seemed somewhat at odds with, well, basic humanity or reasonableness. And no one likes a man in an apron. Of course, there is perhaps, the tiniest trace of, you know, bitterness, here. After all, I was told to wear black pants (not dark grey, goddamit), and it was probably just Delicious! customer policy to not let me try again. Meredith was just doing her job, and you can forgive her the satisfaction of being able to cross off one from a long list of job applicants, whose inductions are probably making her work longer hours and generally be a bit of a pain. Still, it’s a hard pill to swallow when the colour grey totally screws up your day. So learn from this cautionary tale, the 21st Century equivalent of a Hans Christian Anderson yarn. If they say wear black, wear black. Or else you might find yourself dealing with someone who has a name as frightening as 'Meredith'.

Entry 19: The Boys Of Summer

There is surely one question on the mind of every student in the Western Hemisphere; where, exactly, did the summer go? I had it better than most, and in fact it is only now that I realise I have had around three and a half months in summer holidays. And yet now, time is up, and a new term, and a new, final year at university, beckons. Why is it that holidays seem to disappear like that? I actually wish I could have had breaks this long when I was a kid; I would have had a lot more use for it back then.  Most people my age are entering a very exciting month. For some, it is a new year at university. Some are only just entering university, ready to kick off their first year. Others are starting jobs, leaving home, or otherwise, feeling the heat of summer ebbing away, and the chill of the autumn, slowly taking its place. While it is a very exciting time, it is also a sad time, a time for me, at least, to reflect.

The past few months have gone by so quickly it has left me feeling a little uneasy on my feet. Like standing in one place, and feeling the earth move beneath you. The summer has seen some drastic changes, some funny, some anything but.  One of the most important things I have come to understand, something that is important for anyone I suppose, is that life isn’t long. Okay, I know, at the ripe age of 20 I probably sound a bit whiney saying that, since it is essentially the premise of every Panic! At The Disco song ever written.  But when three and a half months vanishes into a scattershot of memories, in the blink of an eye, what else can you deduce? That, perhaps when you are retired and grey  (after taking out your dentures and emptying the commode) that you may feel the same way about your entire life?

 

Frightening stuff indeed.  No one wants to think it is true what your gram-gram says, that life will ‘just fly by’, because who wants that? And, truthfully, I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Rather than some dark harbinger of the fleeting nature of life (For further reference, listen to anything the band Evanescence has ever written), the habit of time ‘flying by’, is more just a good reason to grab every single day by the scruff of the neck. And so, you change one clichéd phrase, with an even more clichéd phrase. But overwrought or not, the time-tested sentiment that every day is sacred, certainly holds water. How many times have you gotten up at noon, only to doss around all day watching endless retreads of Two And A Half Men? It is virtually a pandemic. This thought dawned on me on a sunny Thursday morning in July. I woke up at 1:00PM. My bed was festooned in a medley of random shit, some music magazines, Tesco bags, a table tennis paddle and, bizarrely, a small frying pan. This varied selection of junk had sort of moulded around the shape of my body as I slept. My room was a tip, and it hummed of the unsavoury smells my body permeates during REM sleep. It was at this point, as I came to, rubbing away that vile gritty-griminess you get when you oversleep, that I realised; I needed to stop doing this. One image came into my head, in that moment of dank sweaty semi-consciousness. I recalled a music video by little-known electro pioneers, UNKLE. 

The song was called Burn My Shadow, and the video depicts a man who, awakening in an analogous state (I.E  Bathed in sweat, and still in bed in the late afternoon) discovers he has an LED display on his heart, displaying how long he has to live, down to the very second.  It was probably one of the more provoking things I had ever seen, and it really struck a chord in me as I sat there, in semi-darkness, in a puddle of my own sweat juices.  How different would you live your life, if you were perpetually aware of how long you had left to live? Would you ever waste time again? Probably not; certainly no more late afternoon rises, and, to boot, the viewing figures for Bargain Hunt would drop considerably. It is an interesting idea, since, effectively, you do have a little clock ticking away, only it is invisible, so you never know what it says. Of course, this would certainly not be an improvement on being blissfully unaware of your doom. If you had a similar Death-Alarm on your chest, your life would be perpetually hilarious to everyone else. You would probably forego washing and shaving; apparently obsolete in the face of approaching death, resulting in a quasi-Tom Hanks from Castaway-rapist physique. You would sit through dates glancing at you watch, and irritably asking ‘Are we going to develop an intimate and memorable relationship or should I just go?’ as your date fiddled awkwardly with their fork and asked what you did for a living and how many pets you have. Whenever you needed to poop you would grumble and sit on the loo, drumming your fingers on your knee as you watched valuable seconds shaved off your lifetime as you waited for the deed to be done. And you would probably make a right hash of wiping to boot. Still, even if it is not a preferable way to live, it is an interesting metaphor. And it lead me to strive to try and do more, or, at least to try to do the same things, but more often. 

And so I made an effort. I reeled in friendships I had allowed through my own inaction to begin to trail into obscurity. I read everything I could get my hands on, from Murakami to Steinbeck. I watched a bunch of films I had meant to watch for ages. I wrote on this blog, regularly (Developing a committed fan base of, approximately, 0 people). I remembered how much I loved cycling. I developed a new-found love of roller coasters, even after spending my early adolescence being perpetually terrified of them. Indeed, before my two trips to Thorpe Park, my only experience had been at Euro Disney, where I tried Pirates of The Caribbean, got scared shitless, and retreated to the revolving teacups for the rest of the day. I turned 20. I had a bit to drink with some friends, I swam in the sea, and enjoyed the sun. And then, almost all at once, September was here, and the summer had gone.

Of course, despite its crippling overuse, the phrase ‘live every day like it is your last’, is a daft thing to say, and does not lend itself to the realities of day-to-day life. You need ‘off’ days, I.E, days spent in your pyjamas watching re-runs of Will and Grace on Sky Living, to properly enjoy the days you spend actually doing things like larking at the beach with mates or riding Nemesis Inferno. You need a balance between advancing and staying put in your life.  You need action, and then reaction, and through this, you learn. And it is this, more than anything I think, that a young person should do over a summer holiday. And, as a new, final year at university draws into view, and a sense of nostalgia becomes almost overbearing, I feel, that I have learned. That memories good and bad, will bring a tear, that pictures can never be the same as being there, that words are poor substitute for feelings, that the only true happiness you can claim in life comes from other people. And that some people, left unchecked, will destroy anything to hide a truth.

Entry 18: Game Review: Fallout: New Vegas

One thing is for sure, Fallout New Vegas is not going to win any beauty contests. It’s aging game engine is  the game coding equivalent of Susan Boyle smeared in Bisto. But this game is perfect for showcasing what video games are really about. While the current trend in the games biz is to make everything look as brown and life-like as humanly possible (Yes, Gears of War, we look to you) New Vegas is a master class in atmosphere, storytelling, level design, and humour. Also, Fisto, the sexbot. More on him later.

Fallout: New Vegas is a melting pot of American counter-culture.  A role-playing, open world game, blending together bat-shit sci-fi, with swing dance; Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, the Beat generation, and drug fiends right out of Naked Lunch melded irrevocably with pew-pew laser guns and robots with names like Mister Gutsy. You are ‘The Courier’, a nobody who becomes a somebody when a routine delivery job goes a bit off-rails, after a  smooth talking gangster in a white check suit named Benny (voiced by Matthew Perry) shoots you in the head and puts you in a shallow grave. I hate it when that happens! Luckily, a robot named Victor, who resembles a toaster with the sentimentalities of something out The Guns Of Navarro, sees the whole thing and delivers you to Doc Mitchell. Soon enough you are right as rain (somehow), and after entering some inevitable character orientation menus, you emerge into the fledgling backwater of Goodsprings. But as you soon learn, this is just a speck of the huge, richly populated world of New Vegas.  

The latest in Obsidian’s Fallout series, the same developer behind the legendary Elder Scrolls games, New Vegas is a series highlight. Fallout 3’s setting of Washington DC eventually left you feeling rather exasperated, with the miles and miles of endless grey.  A silly comment to make, considering the game is set in the aftermath of a huge atomic war, with your character emerging into the wastes of the capital to find your dad (then again, when your dad is Liam Neeson, who wouldn’t face an atomic wasteland to find pops?). And while that first step out of your underground home, Vault 101, into the blowing wind and bright, soapy light of the DC wastes, is probably one of the most arresting spectacles in gaming history, it has to be said, the endless shades of grey got a bit trying by the end.  No such problem here. Though the chronology of the two games is a little muddled, New Vegas takes place sometime after Fallout 3, and New Vegas trades the Capital for the sun scorched dystopia that is the Mojave Wasteland.  But this Wasteland is downright beautiful; the desert landscape stretching before you is awash with dark red canyons, snowy mountain peaks and even patches of green where plants and flowers grow, as the earth recovers from the war that ended the Old World. This greenery can be picked and collected, a la Red Dead Redemption, and makes up a large part of the huge new crafting options on offer. You can set up a campfire and cook different foodstuffs to make up those spent health points, some of which are much sought after, like the Wasteland Omelette.  But this new feature is just the teeniest tiniest peak of the iceberg.

The Mojave is massive, and what New Vegas does best is let you wander it as you please; go exploring for loot, chat with the locals, anything you like. Just be ready for a fight or two. You are never alone long in New Vegas. The baddies range from gangsters and ranchers, to raiders and drug fiends. But beyond them the world is teeming with beasties trying to take a chunk out of you. These start off with the likes of stray dogs and bloatflys. But this cushy start doesn’t last long, and the creatures in New Vegas are utterly ferocious. Many a time you will find yourself backed in a corner, desperately pumping your shotgun at a huge Radscorpion as it scuttles towards you, its massive stinger ready to punch a hole in your face (Those beady eyes, oh god, those beady eyes). There are newcomers too. Cazadores, red-winged insects the size of wheelie bins, regularly descend in packs from their mountain nests to mess up your day. Also making a new start are the Nightstalkers, coyotes with the face and tail of a rattlesnake that are just as terrifying as they sound.

Luckily you are well equipped to defend yourself. The sheer level of armaments in New Vegas is staggering. It really serves to highlight the weird marriage of The Wild West, B-Movie science fiction and Clockwork Orange. Winchester’s and repeaters pop up amongst laser guns and plasma grenades, along with a slew of melee weapons, as well as some insanely powerful options, like the grenade machinegun. While the combat in F3 was fidgety, and guns had all the accuracy of a sling-shot made of toffee, the gunplay in New Vegas is much more intuitive. A welcome inclusion is the ability to aim along iron sights, making accuracy a possibility. Furthermore, new bullet variants spice things up a little; some working better on armour, other others on soft targets, and some just set the poor buggers on fire. The hot key system is still a pain on console, without a keyboard to work with, but this is a minor issue.  And the ability to pause time and highlight particular areas of your targets, in the beautifully over the top gore of V.A.T.S, is still as glorious as ever. There is nothing like watching a low-level scamp brandishing a Dress Cane jog laboriously up to you, only to nonchalantly target a buckshot at their face and blast their cranium off to mercury.

You will spend most of your time in the Mojave doing quests, many of which are ancillary to the story. This is where the game really shines. While you start off with simple fetch-quests and introductory skirmishes, things soon get a lot more interesting. One early example of just how expertly crafted the quests in New Vegas are, is Come Fly With Me. Things start off simple enough. Some townsfolk moan to you that they suspect some Ghouls have holed up at an old rocket launch site up the road. You agree to go have a shufty. Ghouls, making a reappearance from Fallout 3, are those unlucky souls who let the gamma radiation get the better of them during the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust; essentially zombies. Sure enough you find them around and about; skeletal Gollum-like creatures who try and eat you the second they see you. You blast your way through them and get into the building. You reach the top floor, and are greeted by more ghouls, except these ones are still civilised, and have hatched some plot to launch the remaining rockets at the site into space, in keeping with some far-out religion they’ve cooked up. They tell you they need you to clear out some bothersome mutants in the basement.

These turn out to be Nightkin; hulking buggers with big hammers and cloaking devices who lurk in the tight hallways and mash you to a pulp at first sight. You get to their leader, who, after talking to a cow skull for an extended period, reveals that they are there to get more Stealth Boys, the devices they use to remain hidden. Another Ghoul is in the other room, preventing anyone from getting to the goods. So you walk in and you soon discover this Ghoul, civil like the ones upstairs, is actually looking for his girlfriend, who the Nightkin have imprisoned. What was once a simple task has become a quest, within a quest, within a quest; multi quest-ception. And you can choose to help or hinder any of these three as you please. But say you get the Nightkin to leave, after discovering there are in fact no Stealth Boys, developers at Obsidian leave in one detail that is just utterly devious. As you go to the viewing platform to see the religious Ghouls blast into space, you can choose, after all that goodwill, to press a button on a nearby console altering the flight plan, causing the rockets and their happy cultist cargo to sputter and crash into the desert.  This is just one of the many memorable adventures you embark on during your time in New Vegas, and it is the freedom and sadistic wit imbedded in these tasks that make them so utterly addictive.

Beyond these side quests, the main storyline sees you follow your would-be killer, Benny, to the New Vegas Strip, where the pre-war Las Vegas has been rebuilt. Here we meet the enigmatic Mr House, the shady de facto ruler of New Vegas, who has big plans for the Mojave. He commands an army of Securiton robots (obviously) who keep order on the strip.  Or do they? Certainly, everything is not as it seems. The main plot thread trails through the first half of the story, but as we pass the halfway mark, things get very interesting, very quickly, and the plot builds up real traction as the plot unfurls before you. Again, this is a marked improvement over F3, where the main story meandered along until the very end, where you could either be killed (The good ending, believe it or not), or let some poor sucker die for you. And that was more or less it. There are various factions vying for control of Hoover Dam, the only intact source of power in the region, and the key to controlling the Mojave. Do you help the well-meaning, but overly bureaucratic New California Republic, a contingent of conscript and volunteer soldiers, attempting to rebuild the region to Old World specifications? Or do you help The Legion, a tribal army of slavers, based on the Old Roman Empire, with, who else, Caesar, at the helm (a theme perhaps stemming from Caesar’s Palace casino). Then, there is Mr House, your effective employer, with his robot army. And then, on top of that, there is Yes Man, one of Mr House’s robots, who can help you take the whole lot for yourself.

You can trek the Mojave alone, but half of the fun is having some companions to back you up. The AI in New Vegas is pretty terrible, but the characterisation is excellent.  There are somewhere around 8 different companions you meet who are willing to help you. There are stoic solider types, cowgirls, doctors, to name a few, though one standout is ED-E, a plucky little Eyebot, who bobs at your side,  blasting recorded trumpet fanfare whenever you get yourself in a scrape. Then there is Rex, a part robotic German Sheppard, with a glowing brain jar between his ears.  Rex isn’t without his quirks; he hates hats, and rats, for no discernible reason, which led to several reloaded saves after Rex went bananas and mauled some poor sod guilty only of wearing a moth-eaten trilby. The wide range of counterparts available makes traversing the Mojave that bit more unpredictable; thankfully, in a good way. There are of course endless bugs and glitches, some of them funny,  some of them anything but; on more than one occasion my game simply crashed and I had to reload. Other times quests didn’t work properly, or, upon entering a building, the AIs just glitch in a ball in the centre of the foyer, looking like the QWOP man trying to fetch a digestive from the bottom of the biscuit jar. The aging game engine must surely have enjoyed its final outing with this one, and often you see it labouring to catch up, with pop-in backgrounds, and rather punishing loading screens that occur much too often. But it is hard to let these issues get in the way of what is a solid game.

Obsidian’s 2010 effort is one of their very best. The world of New Vegas teams with life, diversity, opportunity, and sheer inventive zest.  There are shortcomings, and areas for improvement; most centrally, some form of getting about, like maybe a little sci-fi motorbike or something. But New Vegas is the best Fallout yet. It is so jam-packed of memorable moments. Take the afore mentioned Fisto, a squat little robot, who on calibration into a sexbot, makes you his first customer (to which you can reply ‘I can’t feel my legs!’. Totally necessary). Or when a clan made up of 50s housewives right out of People magazine and names like ‘Irate Ida’ and ‘Rancorous Ruth’ besiege you with rolling pins.  This is one of those rare games where it is not the ending that really matters, but the long, illustrious journey that gets you there. I made the mistake of getting hooked on this during exam season. This games design teases out the obsessive-compulsive side of you, leading you to dig deeper and deeper into this rich world. And yet often you will hardly skim the surface.