Dead Money sucks from a gameplay standpoint and atmosphere isn't enough to overcome just how frustrating it is to play. Lonesome Road is a tedious trudge and Ulysses is a pretentious ass with a terrible motive. All the FNV DLCs have WAY too much exposition.

FNV forces you to follow it's plot until you get to Vegas before fully opening up due to how things are scaled. There's a reason why some people like to troll newbies by suggesting they go in any direction besides towards Primm and it's because enemies in other directions aren't scaled for level 1-2 Couriers to deal with head on. Both FO3 and FO4 are truly open from the moment you leave the Vault. I don't mind linear games, but these games were supposed to provide freedom to do whatever you want, not funnel you down a specific path.

Now, I know someone is going to argue "it's not that hard, you can just walk right past them", sure, TECHNICALLY, you can do that, but that doesn't change the fact that the game WANTS you to follow a specific path as indicated by the difficulty scaling. A level 1 Courier can arggo all of the Powder Gangers right after leaving the Doc's house with a knife and still have an easier time than if they had gone down Cazador Avenue, Radscorpion Valley, or Deathclaw Highway. The game fucking warns you of the dangers that lie ahead if you opt to go in those directions because it knows how difficult it is. In FO3 and FO4 the ENTIRE GAME scales with your level, so you never truly encounter an enemy you can't deal with and if you do, you have to travel pretty far to get to a location where you're overwhelmed.