Fallout: New Vegas

We go back to King and he doesn't seem concerned about our methods, although as it turns out he should be, because with 10 minutes of our allotted hour remaining we go a bit Natural Born Killer and try to wax King and his entourage, then perhaps make off with his beleagured mutt Rex as a companion, as one of our neighbours in the Bethesda press area appears to have done.

Alas, it is not to be, because King really does have a private army, and between them and Rex - who seems violently upset that we've decided to switch on VATS and target his daddy's face with explosive charges - even a dozen Stimpacks can't keep us alive for long.

Time's up then and we haven't even made it to the Strip, which we saw a little of during presentations earlier in the year. The game's producer Tess Treadwell tells us that Obsidian opted against letting the sand reclaim Vegas the way it did in the film Resident Evil: Apocalypse - now there's an unexpected reference - because the team wanted to retain the city's personality, which seems to be everyone hustling one another and fighting to take more than their share.

That's not a fair characterisation of New Vegas though, says Treadwell - the bombs may have fallen elsewhere, and morals may never have descended on Sin City, but there's still a sense of fledgling community among those in town. The major differences between New Vegas and Fallout 3 are the different factions at work, your reputation relative to them, and the fact that more of the local infrastructure is operable than in the Capital Wasteland.

There are some changes, of course - character customisation now has the double-edged Traits, like Four-eyes, which increases your acuity when you have your specs on but reduces it significantly when you don't - but even some of these are cosmetic. Character creation is less of a labour than in Fallout 3's Vault 101 - a product of a few barked questions and a Rorschach test - but the results are familiar, and it turns out the ability to adjust your character's age with a slider has no tangible ramifications beyond appearance.

It turns out, then, that one hour roaming New Vegas is less than enough time to form some conclusions about Obsidian's Fallout extension, although that won't stop us sneaking behind Bethesda's QuakeCon curtain again today to have another crack.

What's telling though is that we're not really looking forward to playing the same hour again, but are far more interested the five, ten, or perhaps one hundred that everyone expects to follow, and which on this evidence New Vegas will happily claim from Fallout fans without all that much difficulty. Never mind rebuilding society, Obsidian seems to be rebuilding Fallout 3 in a different place and the results are just as effective.