I restarted the game rather than playing through all of Dead Money. The initial concept was a good one - a group of misfits forced to work together to rob a deadly casino - but the execution bordered on unplayable.
First, that damned gas. I wouldn't mind if there were pockets of it you had to avoid but it was everywhere, turning an environment coloured almost entirely in brown into a disorientating mess. I had to rely on the map far too often simply because I couldn't see anything.
This wouldn't be too bad if the map weren't utterly useless, it was far, far too cluttered to the point where it was impossible to tell if what you were looking at was a corridor, a wall, or something else. It would be confusing enough it was all on a single level, but since they decided to display a dilapidated set of buildings with multiple floors overlaid on top of one another, it became far too easy just to get lost in a relatively small villa. Why didn't they follow the Zelda example, which has had some really confusing dungeons over the years but has always been navigable because of a crisp, clear and uncluttered map layout.
Then there were the blasted radios. Again, a good concept ruined. It could have been fun and ominous if they were an occasional threat to make you cautious of running into a room. Every two freaking steps was just overkill.
Finally, those enemies. The ghost people should have been scary, instead the constant need to dismember them after killing them just became an exercise in frustration.
All in all a confusing, frustrating, bland and claustrophobic mess.