During your treacherous stay in the Sierra Madre, you will come across a slew of new weapons including a new Holorifle with an excellent scope, the versatile kitchen companion known as the Cosmic Knife, and a punching glove affixed to a bear trap for maximum punishment. Scrounging for weapons and ammo can sometimes be a chore in
Dead Money because you are stripped of all your personal belongings at the start including your caps! Don't worry, the casino has it's own form of currency in the gambling chips, so you can collect hundreds of chips and cash them in for better gear and more ammo.
Once you have recruited everyone in your team, it becomes very apparent what one fatal flaw Dead Money suffers from: repetition. Developer Obsidian seems to face the same criticism at every turn with the games they make, which is that they are better storytellers than game designers. The setting, characters, and dialogue in Dead Money are simply top-notch and go well with the rest that New Vegas offers. Unfortunately, the repetitive backtracking, artificial padding to add length, and inability to leave whenever you want (once you are done, you can never go back), really drag down the experience of Dead Money. As much as I loved the banter between Dog and his malicious alter-ego, I couldn't help but feel a sense of slogging during each of the quests as I backtracked my way the town multiple times.
While the overall experience is a positive one, the limiting scope of the environment and the poor mission structure hamper an otherwise colorful and memorable story. If you make a quick adjustment to your expectations, Dead Money is a good, solid add-on to one of the deepest games to release in 2010.
