Fallout: New Vegas

Well if you hadn't known, then you likely aren't much of a gamer, but Fallout: New Vegas has been out for a week or so.

It's basically the same engine from Fallout 3, but to my knowledge the original creators of Fallout learnt how to piece together more of the Fallout world using the Havok engine.

The story is obviously set in and around the Mojave desert and the remnants of Las Vegas (Now 'New Vegas') You start as a courier...

Spoiler

... that managed to make a full recovery after being shot point blank in the head with what was likely a .44 and buried in a shallow grave, to have a robot come along and pull you out to get fixed up for an initially unknown and extremely obscure reason

that's out for revenge and of course to learn about who you are (that's of course player orientated)

There are overall differences in regards to the game to it's predecessor:

Spoiler

• You no longer have blueprints to make custom weapons, instead the work bench has some recipes and weapons can be customised with mod's sold by vendors
• You have the capacity to use campfire to turn various fora and fauna into more digestible delicacies as well as having the potential to make your own stimpacks etc. Again the campfire has the recipes available when you use it.
• There is a new bench called the "Reloading Bench" you can make and recycle ammunition as well as build various explosives using this particular bench, again recipes exist when you use it.
• When you pickup a follower (or followers if you include robots or animals) they can actually boost you with a perk that is specific to them. Their perk boost or capacity can be greatly increased if their sub-plot stories through talking to them are carried out. (incidentally followers are "Knocked Unconscious" rather than "dieing", at least on the standard game mode) Followers also return to where you initially picked them up on releasing them from service.
• A faction system exists, where particular factions will either like or despise you depending on your overall actions. You can steal faction armour and use it to infiltrate as one of their own, however guards or dogs can detect the deception which is where it then drops back to a personal standing check rather than disguise.
• There is various Gambling minigames you can participate in.
• The gore actually seems less until you get the "Bloody mess" perk, which is the way it was suppose to be in the original, although I always found an eye popping, jaw wrenching explosion of guts and goo occured without it.
• A whole host of new weapons and perks which I'm not even going to try to list. You also get the chance to pick "two balanced perks" at the beginning, thats a perk that gives "a positive and negative trait" much like the original (fallout and fallout 2) games did.

If you go out and purchase this game, I can't suggest it will keep your kids quiet and amused for hours since technically it's labelled as not being for kids, but I can suggest that it will engross you to the point of not hearing the noises made by them when they complain it's their turn to use the console or computer.