I honestly think there is something in this game for everyone, or something to cater for any mood. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed simply exploring, fighting my way through the combat-zone, crafting armour and weapons, constructing my settlement or running errands for an eccentric bunch of marauding robots marooned atop a building (that will make sense when you stumble across it). The combat is a prime example: you can play with real-time combat, fast-based and action-oriented, or switch to VATS for an almost turn-based, tactical RPG-style of combat. There is a style of play for everyone.
The Fallout concept has been developed nicely in the years it’s remained dormant. The gunplay – whilst not entering the upper-echelon of slickness quite yet – has vastly improved in its fluidity. The overall presentation is dramatically overhauled, whilst maintaining the trademark retro-future feel we all recognize as Fallout. I was tremendously pleased to see environmental story-telling play a greater role as well. Whether it be the main story, side-quests or the environment, there is a story to be found around every corner.
This game is best played with friends, not necessarily side by side, but through the sharing of stories and experience around the watercooler at work.
That’s where this game succeeds where so many fail. Whilst the adventure may not be the same quality narrative found in elsewhere, this feels like my story, my own personal experience where I am in control.
This is a fantastic experiential game that I would highly recommend to anyone, assuming you’re willing to invest some time in the Wasteland and not immediately get turned off by the technicalities of its world and systems.
I love the idea that in this game you are essentially creating your own story. Yes there is a base line story that you follow but more times than I can count, I find myself getting way off track investigating something off the beaten path that catches my attention. Chasing experience and shaping my own world how I see fit. I only have two regrets with this game. One is the wasted introduction chapter that I felt could have had so much more content to it. My second is that I have unjustifiably spent too much time with this addicting game looting and shooting without any intention of stopping soon. I just love making my own story.
The music is as enchantingly immersive as its world. Radio stations play a mixture of camp 1950s music and classical pieces, reflecting the game’s take on the cold war era and fear of a nuclear apocalypse; while the game’s original soundtrack effectively captures the scarce Boston landscape. It’s definitely entertaining exploring a raiders’ hideout to the sounds of Rocket 69.
Fallout 4’s gameplay is undoubtedly incredible. The VATS system is more responsive as activating doesn’t pause the game; rather, it slows down enemy movement so the player can fire at a specific part of an enemy at the precise moment. Switching between weapons is more fluid than in earlier games, as players can favourite a weapon or item and change on the fly. Weapons, armour and items all have a sense of weight to them – both in the change in player movement and their distinct actions, and each item’s literal carry weight.
Although the game’s main narrative isn’t particularly interesting, the variety of distinct side quests have kept me entertained. I have definitely spent most of my twenty-six hour journey so far, exploring the world and completing side quests than pursuing the main story in search of my kidnapped son, Sean. One of my most recently completed side quests, The Silver Shroud, saw my character take on the role of a famed comic book vigilante cleaning the streets of Goodneighbor, after helping to find a costume of the hero from an abandoned movie studio.
Fallout 4’s companions are some of the most fleshed out and dynamic characters in the game. The synthetic detective Nick Valentine is probably my favourite for his characterisation as a hard-boiled detective and moral compass alone. Despite most of Fallout’s characters feeling one-dimensional and poorly detailed, the companion system feels authentically fresh, as each character has their own likes and dislikes which affect your relationship with them. It is frustrating that there isn’t a way to examine your relationship statuses (as far as I know), but I have found that most of my companions have opened up to my character after exploring the world with them for a few hours.
No doubt other players have encountered similar problems, and while the effects of less serious glitches can often be quite humorous, this is Fallout 4, not Goat Simulator. Glitches aside, the game can be incredibly fun: exploring, looting, leveling, and crafting have provided for a nice gameplay loop that has kept me thoroughly entertained despite a main quest that is as boring and uneventful as Fallout 3’s was. Side quests have fared a lot a better in this regard, with one quest involving the USS Constitution and its robot crew being my absolute favorite thus far. And so while I’m far from having seen everything the game has to offer, I can’t help but think Fallout 4 isn’t more than a little uneven. Maybe I’ll really love the game after I kill another hundred raiders or so. I guess it’s back to the Wasteland for me.
Hype, hype never changes.
It’s quite astonishing the amount of hype Fallout 4 has managed to build over what can be seen as quite a small release window. Announced at E3 to be released in a matter of months that very year, it was a refreshing alternative to the countless amounts of delays and premature announcements (The Division is what…three years late?). Nevertheless, this is less a study of hype and more a review on my general impressions on the game after a solid amount of time within Boston.
Bethesda have always excelled in one thing: world building. Boston feels wonderful to explore. Locations have that wonderful apocalyptic feel to it despite the fact that nothing should theoretically be like this after 200 years of the bombs dropping (but that’s just nitpicking). Derelict buildings, hostile wastelands and in a almost poignant (poignant from Bethesda?) detour through your destroyed house and life after waking up in the wasteland, it’s hugely immersive but more importantly, it’s just fun.
The game also looks gorgeous: the world is beautiful and adds to the constant need to explore new areas. Just taking a walk through the wasteland is deeply immersive. Textures aren’t spectacular up close and there is a bit of repetition, but nothing enough to shake my immersion in the world. I’m being a bit forgiving in this particular instance for some strange reason, but I’ve just enjoyed exploring Boston so much I can look over various graphical hitches.
Buildings are varied and the colour palette this time around is gorgeous, 3 and NV feel like miles behind in terms of how they looked. And all this is down without ruining the general feel of Fallout.
Speaking of gamebreaking….my experience has been shockingly smooth and relatively glitch free. This is no excuse for the not so stellar track record of Bethesda, but in my personal opinion I cannot critique this part since I haven’t been affected too negatively by glitches and bugs. The biggest problems I encountered had to do with missed triggers for dialogue cues.
Ah yes, the dialogue system. For every step taken forward, the dialogue system takes one huge gigantic leap backwards for it’s easily the worst part of Fallout 4, and the worst this system has ever, ever been. What made Fallout so funny, memorable and engaging had mostly to do with the dialogue system that made 1, 2 and New Vegas so witty. A bevy of options to choose from, some locked behind certain stats, these previous games stood out spectacularly as examples of strong writing and quest direction. Here your options are locked behind four button prompts Mass Effect style, but it’s even worse. Each option only has a word or two to describe the response, and clicking one will yield a response you had no intention of saying. Hell, most options have a ‘sarcastic’ option. There are a million different ways to respond to a question in a sarcastic tone, and having that option is just one of the hundreds of examples of poor, poor writing in Fallout 4. It’s almost disgraceful how bad this new dialogue system is, especially considering how good it already had been. Sure, mods can fix the dialogue layout, but it can’t fix the bland voice acting or the bland responses. And ‘mod it’ is no excuse, and it should never be one.
It’s still a fun game; shooting, looting and exploring is the best it’s ever been in a Bethesda game. The crafting system is bounds of fun, and I haven’t even started on the fun if shallow settlement building. Scenes like stumbling upon a lake that contained a high level Mirelurk Hunter (me being relatively low level at the time) that popped out gave me a huge fright and a great story for fellow players and coworkers, and it’s these sort of moments that really make me remember why Fallout is so cherished and loved. But for every unscripted moment of brilliance there is just so much bringing it down.
Unfortunately there’s just not enough here, there has barely been any progress in the four years between Skyrim and now. The writing is bland, the side quests are forgettable and the dialogue system is a huge step backwards. While general improvements have been made to the gameplay, it just feels too little too long. In a world of huge breathless worlds like Metal Gear Solid V and Witcher 3, Bethesda’s faults are looking bigger than ever, and their strengths don’t look as prominent. Fallout 4 is generally, in it’s basic sense, just more Fallout, and for some that’s just fine.
View Comments
Personally I think its one of the best games of the year along side Witcher 3. To compare it to Metal Gear V is like comparing gold to feces, Metal gear was the most BLAND game of 2015. You need new writers.
Thanks for the feedback!