Re-playing Fallout: New Vegas

I messed up last time I played Fallout New Vegas. I didn't finish it. I put 75 hours into it, and explored maybe just 50% of its world. It's huuuge! Looking at my finished games list over there on the right makes me ashamed that Fallout: New Vegas isn't there.

So I buckled up, re-installed, and decided to spice it up a little. I am a little bit into post-apocalypse, see. I found The Road to be calming, nice, and overly positive experience (while most of my friends got depressed, those sissies). Same regarding Le Dernier Combat (for those who aren't underground oldschool movie geeks, it's a French post-apocalyptic movie in black and white, and not a single word in it, because people apparently lose their voice during apocalypse).

I also love Lustmord (pioneering dark ambient music artist). Some of his tracks are like a true post-apocalyptic soundtrack: calm, dark, very bass-filled, but atmospherically neutral (music doesn't make you sad or happy), that puts you into a certain wasteland mood.

So how did I spice up Fallout New Vegas? MODS, POST-APOCALYPTIC BABY, MODS!

I failed at overwriting game's original music (apparently can't be done as easily as it was in Fallout 3), so I just opened up Windows Media Player and created a playlist of following Lustmord songs (in case anyone would want to do the same: Er Eb Es, Plateau, Trinity, Fallen, Atom, Ashen, Eon, Erie, Testament). I click play, adjust volume and go into the wasteland and its magnificent ruins.

Next step was to install all the mods. I used Nexus Mod Manager and after one full day of trying and failing (archive invalidation is a bitch!), I made it. I used following mods (you look em up yourself, lazy bum).

Project Nevada. It mostly adds lots of extra items to the game, changes the game-play, which you can tweak as you prefer, adds some extra fun you can do with implants. Another mod was Nevada skies, which adds more clouds and weather, including sand-storms and rain. It adds a lot to the atmosphere. Additionally, I used a few mods that improve textures of general background and various objects in the game (like pool tables). These were Poco Bueno Texture pack and Improved LOD Noise Texture. Another very important and nice one: Wasteland Flora Overhaul with Dead Wasteland choice: some extra cactus and dead trees to stare at.

Worthy of mention is the damn archive invalidation. I am not sure what it actually does, but if it doesn't work, Poco Bueno textures wouldn't work - in fact some of the original textures went missing, because I installed it manually. To be honest, I don't know how I made it work. I installed ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated mod, but it didn't help. I then found out I could turn this on in Nexus Mod Manager itself, but it was already ON there. A kind soul on some forum advised to turn it off there, and turn it on again, and voila! I tried and it worked. So I just put it here, with no credit whatsoever to the kind soul who pointed that out, because I can't remember kind soul's name.

 As you can see in screenshots the game is beautiful and atmospheric. I have now once again explored almost 50% of the world, this time skipping some of the quests and places I did when I played New Vegas on its launch. I made a post-apocalyptic truly stupid (Intelligence 1) girl with a mohawk, who likes to shoot. She is like female Clint Eastwood, except so much more silly, impulsive, and just straight out dumb. She runs around the wasteland with ED-E and a sniper rifle and does things on the spot.