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Dead Money is an average Fallout New Vegas DLC. It is not abysmal as Old World Blues is, but it is not amazing like Honest Hearts are. It has many great ideas, gathering your crew, surviving in a hostile environment without your gear. Sadly, it is held back by poor implementation of those ideas.

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Dead Money could best be described as a very mixed experience. All the new mechanics which game introduces fall short and are either pointless, annoying or just plain bad. However, writing of characters are top of the line for Obsidian studios. Gameplay of this DLC is terrible, environments are boring, but characters are great.

Writing in this game is a mixed bag. At one hand, characters are well written, their interaction and story in general is interesting. On another hand, it is full of plot holes and inconsistencies where you can change character's pre-disposition with a skill check. In the end, I came satisfied with the story as it has many interesting things going on.

Story
• While story is interesting, breaking into long abandoned casino, I could not help, but notice plothole after plothole. Here is a nice little list of what to expect:
  
  1. God without a bomb collar threatens to break you and avoid dying himself.
     
     
  2. Christine being continuously operated upon does not go insane. She has extensive brain damage and can't even write. Her brain lost ability to form sentences during surgery, but she can be fixed right up by next auto doc. Not only that, just by replacing her vocal cords (they had Veronika's local cords in stock even after 200 years), our character can immediately talk with damaged brain which prevents her from forming any sentences...
     
     
  3. Villa automatically transferred inhabitants, but Don had a plan for Christine. They also had set up their own plans in motion which does goes directly with unexplained statement that Casino itself had scattered the crew upon entrance.
     
     
  4. Father Elijah counters your arguments and has no reason to enter the chamber himself, but does it anyways in most dialogue options. He also is not shown as obsessed nor thinks his plans through which stands in direct contradiction to what game was telling about him for most of the DLC.
     
     
  5. Don casually threatens to kill you with bunch of explosives when he is sitting right next to you and then later cries how you are "mean to him" in later dialogue.
     
     
  6. Don and Veronika have a massive plot hole. Veronika was shown in an audio log to be intimidated by Don to do this robbery. However, Veronika is a mistress of owner of a casino. He had built this whole place for her, but she did not loved him for some reason. However, Don threatens to send her back to her home village with nothing. This is pure nonsense, because she virtually owns the whole casino and the town nearby and does not depend on Don in any way. Her motivations are not developed at all and do not make any sense.
     
     
  7. You are constantly blamed for your non-existent greed in this game. Elajah talks like you came here to rob, to bask in wealth beyond measure. Game tries to portray that your greed had killed you. However, radio signal never talks about any wealth. It talks about a possibility to retire in an expensive villa.

The cast for this game was genuinely interesting and unique. I only wish there was more interactions with them as I did not that there was sufficient payoff with them. They all are destined to play out what was created for them regardless.

Don Domino
• In my play-through, I managed to make an enemy of him. However, characters have a nasty habit of threatening you for no good reason. I did not found him too interesting, because he was acting irrationally. He knows about bomb collars, however he sets a chair full of explosives right next to him. He starts our initial dialogue by threatening me and right after that we are best pals again. It is bi-polar writing which does not make much sense. Game says how he is behind original events here and he got stuck pursuing his obsession in breaking into vault. However, war had happened over 200 years ago. He is now supposed to be over 250 years old. Fallout in general seems to be unable to make its mind about timelines as characters casually talk about their life before the war, but world is set few generations after nuclear exchange.
  
  Christine
  
• She was very annoying character. As a Mute you could barely follow her. Realistically you could understand her only from Courier interactions which you needed considerable stats for.
  
  When she regained her voice, she was incredibly generic and did not had much to say either. Her whole revenge arc is unfinished. If you let her to have her revenge, she simply dies searching for Elajah. The very same she planned to ambush via the only route to the vault and Elajah came to me through that route. It is one massive plot hole which is never explained. Developers really should had allowed for her to deal with Elajah, allowing you to take all the gold. However, then whole concept falls apart. This is a prime example how game story falls apart when you start thinking about it.
  
  Dog/God
  
• Clearly the best character out of them all and community favourite for a good reason. He his a bi-polar disorder, however instead of personalities, his personalities are split by brain activity. When Dog is around, his frontal lobe shuts down. When God is around, he struggles with muscular control, empathy. However, none of this is explained in game, but character shifts are extreme like that. These are not only different personalities, but different people as one is good at fighting while another is good at thinking.
  
  He gives you interesting glimpses into the story. That this was done before and from Dog you get to know what Father Elijah was up to. I find it interesting that you can get most out of most looked down upon character. Character which is so incompetent that he does not need collar to be controlled. I did not had much time with God. However, I did liked where his character arc was going. It was a struggle between these two. Throughout whole DLC Dog is defined by God. He etches his name to enforce his identity. He harms himself to keep God away. Dog is a primal, base instincts of an individual. He is honest, kindhearted. It takes little to be nice to the Dog.
  
  However, as story progresses God is a lot easier to use for finishing quests. His story culminates with him trying to convince Dog that he is here to help, to guide him, to keep him safe. Dog on the other hand is sick of it all. He tries to kill himself and voice inside of him, because he lost will to live. You can confront them and help them out. This character and how it developed made the most interesting character in this DLC and I liked him probably more than any other character in New Vegas.

This is where it all starts falling apart. While story is better than it might appear from my review, combat is one giant, failed experiment.

Speakers
• The one thing they tried to do which is original and it is the one thing which everyone hates about this game. Speaker mechanic is absolutely horrible. It does nothing, but frustrate the player and slow down game's progress. Usually you have to destroy the speaker which you do not see. Later into this DLC, speakers are actually hidden. So, you have to go in and hope to god that you will see it, because you can't go back. You can hope to run through the zone, but next invisible speaker will blow you up. It is just an extremely frustrating mechanic which was not thought out or even worked out properly. It is more of a gimmick than something which enriches gameplay experience. It has no purpose of being here. It does not lock certain areas. It does not prevent from exploring. It does very little outside of being an annoying obstacle.
  
  Ghost people bullet sponges who never raise up
  
• Game made a big deal how dangerous Ghost people are. How they are impossible to deal with. How they will rise up. How there is a horde waiting just around the corner. So you better preserve your ammunition and sneak around.
  
  All of this is an absolute nonsense. Not once I saw Ghost to raise from the dead. They are supposed to be invincible to your attacks and you can only keep them down for short. Well, except if Dog eats them. Also, except if you blow them up. Also, you can use melee. Oh, you can shoot them with lasers. Don't forget bullets! If you shoot them anywhere, but torso. Developers had an interesting idea, but they had no balls to implement it.
  
  As you can see, whole point of Ghost People is made pointless. Developers were so afraid that players will struggle that they made them pointless. Or they did not had any vision for them in a first place and made them giant, resurrecting bullet sponges as they are. Except, they added every way you can attack them as a counter to their resurrecting ability.

There are few more issues with this game. The issue is that it set itself up as some sort of survival gameplay, but forgets about it the moment you are set on your first mission.

Wanna Be Survival Game
• Game makes a huge deal about surviving, preserving your resources and avoiding conflict. Game strips you of any items which makes game more interesting as you have to slowly acquire your resources. That however does not last more than half an hour in total. You will soon be overflowing with resources and from mid-game you will have end game weapons and more ammunition than you know what to do with it. Whole survival aspect in this game is non-existent, however game makes a big deal about it.
  
  Monotonic and boring Villa
  
• The whole Villa area is just bad. It is made up from identical streets with partly ruined buildings. It has brown, reddish filter on everything. Everything looks just as horrible and nothing is distinct. Even Mojave desert is more full of colour and variety than this city and I speak about plain desert, wasteland and nothing more. That is truly an achievement in making most boring and painful levels through whole series. The cherry on cake is that level design prevents any real sneaking. You are often face to face in a tight corridor with ghost people. You can't sneak past them and are forced to fight them. So much from keeping low profile, eh?

I had managed to complete the last encounter with luck and run straight to the exit. I never managed to do it again. I imagine it could be frustrating experience, but for me it ended on a sweet note. The whole experience is rather mixed experience. It is certainly not the worse thing you could play, Old World Blues is even worse, but it might be slightly worse than Lonesome Road and significantly inferior to Honest Hearts.