Goombd! Played - Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road DLC

Unlike the title might suggest, in Fallout New Vegas' newest piece of downloadable content, you're hardly ever alone. Lonesome Road picks up right after Old World Blues, where you discovered that you are not the only Courier in the Mojave desert. Courier Six, the first person approached with the task of delivering the Platinum Chip and who refused to do so, is hot on your trail for mysterious reasons.

It all begins after you get transmission from Six and are sent to the depths of the Divide through a conveniently placed entranced in the middle of the wasteland. Much like previous DLC, you're not allowed to take any of your party members along. The trip is hardly solitary though, since as soon as you get to the first area of the Divide, you meet an eyebot named ED-E, that much to your surprise, acts a lot like another ED-E you might have met during your journey through the Mojave.


Much of Lonesome Road revolves around discovering the reason why you've been brought there. You come in contact with Courier Six rather early on and he hardly gives any clue about why you're there, let alone how to find him. You do, however, run into a crap ton of active nuclear warheads, Deathclaws and irradiated mutants who must all perish in the name of Six.

This DLC goes so far as to give you a special gun that activates those warheads in order to clear the path through all the rubble in the Divide, along with a few new pieces of gear to don and fashion on your way back to the Wasteland. Red Glare is a new type of rocket launcher that has the added bonus of being upgradeable. ED-E can also receive updates if you're thorough in your exploration and can manage to find his fallen eyebot friends scattered around. The best part about upgrading the little flying hunk of metal is that it all transfers to your original ED-E party member once you travel back to the main game.


The best part of Lonesome Road that I found to be extremely rewarding, besides the smartly written story and dialogue, that are not as heavy in delivery as Old World Blues, is how your actions in Divide play a pivotal role in the main New Vegas campaign. None of the previous downloadable packs provoked consequences in the Mojave, aside from giving you exclusive pieces of gear, but depending on your choices in particular parts of your visit to the Divide, your main Mojave quest might be deeply influenced.

I'm talking extermination here - things that can create ripples in your New Vegas experience. This is an awesome part of Lonesome Road that makes it worth playing through and to put an end to a four part story that began way back in Dead Money, where I for one hardly thought they would reconnect story-wise in any way. I will go so far to suggest that you give this a go right in the middle of your main New Vegas experience in order to see how the hell these consequences play out in the story. You also run into recordings made by Six as he explored the areas covered in the previous DLCs that tie into and help carve out a personality for this enigma of a character.


If you enjoyed New Vegas, there's no reason not to give any of the four DLC packs a try. As a combined experience, New Vegas' pieces of downloadable content managed to deliver a much more solid overall story than say Fallout 3's, and that's saying a lot, considering how much I liked those back then. |8

Goombd! Played - Spelunker HD

It was weird playing Spelunker as a kid. The little guy I controlled felt like a super weak version of Super Mario. Geez, he could hardly take a fall! Thanks to that, my 6 year old patience level just gave up on the guy and I moved on to bigger and better games. 20-some odd years later, Tozai Games brought back Spelunker in somewhat glorious HD and I decided to give the explorer another chance.

I find it extremely easy to fault Spelunker HD with not trying to break out of the original game's mold, but that would be too easy and boring to do in a write-up. Instead, I gave the game a chance to challenge me and heck, it sure did. Not exactly in the traditional challenging way most games do nowadays but with how weak the main character is. There's a steep level of challenge with just keeping the poor guy alive. The smallest misstep kills him instantly as well as microscopic pebbles falling from the ceiling or... ok, let's just cut it out. He dies thanks to just about anything.

Even so, Spelunker HD still manages to bring a certain level of nostalgic charm. That's not thanks to the high definition makeover given to the original's blocky 8-bit graphics. The new looks work well in stills but they just feel weird in motion. The character animation throws me off during jumps and just frustrates me to no end.

But let's just talk about how the game actually plays. Spelunker is all about how far you can make underground at a time. Air is limited and the little spelunker is constantly harassed by ghosts, bats and even fellow explorers who want to get to the treasures before you. Thankfully, I was able to discover a way to somewhat save my progress the further I made down the levels through the nifty save state feature but that only took me so far. Lives ran out and I kept dying. That's how difficult and demanding Spelunker is. It's a fun but very punishing game if you're not careful.

Bringing friends along might improve your odds. Sadly, I was unable to try that out for long since there's practically no one playing online and none of my friends actually own the game. If you do manage to drag a few friends along, you can have up to four simultaneous spelunkers running on screen at once and I'm sure that can be very fun and chaotic. I did find myself enjoying the sole time I was able to find a soul to play with randomly online.

Spelunker HD is a tough, challenging and extremely frustrating game that can be rewarding if you give it the patience and dedication it demands. It's extremely rewarding every time you make it to a new area further down along the earth. If you're the sort of guy who enjoys this feeling, Spelunker HD might just be your cup of tea. |7