Fallout 4

95

Bethesda has outdone themselves yet again

Bethesda clearly made a game worthy of the Fallout name. Scrounging for tin cans has never been so worthwhile thanks to the settlement and equipment improvement systems, the companions are deep and nuanced, and the story is better told than ever thanks to the voiced protagonists, which doesn't hurt the roleplaying in the least. Of note is the grey that the story and world has, no faction is MUHAHAHA evil nor entirely good except for perhaps the Minutemen faction, and that's because you the player have to go out of your way to make it that way. The shooting is significantly more dynamic and effective, the enemies are much smarter, stealth isn't such a gamebreaker anymore, and the settlements and equipment customization offer endless potential for roleplaying. Along with the patches and DLC coming up, Bethesda has and continues to go far out of their way to give the fans exactly what they want and address complaints with this game. Honestly the only thing bad I can say about it is the perk advancement system. It doesn't give the incremental improvement quite as well as the skill point system once did, but it works more than well enough for it's purposes.

85

Immersive fun and freedom. Perhaps too much freedom.

Fans of Bethesda will find much to love, since it's easily the greatest example of their brand of massive, open-world RPG they've yet to bless us with. The world is enormous, varied, detailed and beautiful, with little of the wonkiness that plagued games of the past, combined with incredibly solid shooting mechanics, thanks to input from id Software. Every square yard, it seems, contains something new to see and do, and that's both a blessing and a curse. If any game could benefit from a touch more linearity, it's this. To explain: there are so many different activities to pursue, from main and side quests to exploration to resource gathering to crafting and upgrading equipment to constructing, improving and managing a network of settlements that it quickly becomes overwhelming, especially since the game lets you off the leash pretty much as soon as you enter the world proper. Combine this with a wealth of complex systems that are never adequately explained in-game, and you have an experience that I feel would have been greatly improved with a bit more hand-holding. Not too much more, mind you, just for a little bit beyond where the game sets you loose, enough to walk you through all the mechanics and options for play that you will encounter in the ruins of Boston. It would have taken a great game and made it an excellent one.

38

Glitchy and boring

I loved Fallout 3, and even New Vegas. I was really excited about Fallout 4, and was eager to get back out in the wastelands...but then once I started playing it, I got bored quickly. It's obviously glitch heavy, because everything Bethesda releases is full of glitches, because...I guess because they hate their customers and don't want to do them the courtesy of beta testing. The game also introduces Base building, which sounded like a good idea, but ultimately seemed to fall flat on it's face. Many people enjoy that aspect though. To me, it was just too frustrating to figure out(Although to be fair, I later learned one reason I was having trouble, was due to a glitch that was making it impossible to place items inside a user made building, because it was lifting the item a few inches above the floor...supposedly they have that fixed now, but I have uninstalled and have no plans on reinstalling in the near future)

50

Gardbage Man 4: The Base Building!

Alright; I owned the game, played it for a while and have become both enthralled AND disappointed with the game. So disappointed that I'm happy I bought the game on discount when Gmg had it up for sale around Christmas. This is just my 2 cents, if you love the game, great, this is just my opinion. The MAIN story is TERRIBLE. I had more fun going out and doing the side quests than doing the main story. Even the factions had better stories, the Railroad helping the synths, the minutemen, who I think is an awesome addition to the fallout franchise, reclaiming the wasteland for the people so that the people can live normal lives and move forward and the Brotherhood who just want to kill all things for technology, these factions had more meat and added so much more to the game than the main story would ever do for you! You come for the side quests to this game, not the story itself. The Mechanics and redesign are a little more improved. Your perks being based off of your Special stats is a little tedious, though it becomes acceptable and removing the level cap allows players to aim for every perk in the game to it's max rank was an improvement. The power armor was also a HUGE improvement, from the changing of the HUD to tricking it out with mods left and right; you feel bad ass walking around with a suit of it on. Crafting your own base is another big step forward, being able to setup your own wasteland town to collect profits from, run and so on is incredibly impressive in my book. The things I have to nit-pick with though; the base building, there are several things in the build-ables that would benefit from snapping that weren't included like the fences, some of the wood prefab buildings with the hallways and such. Even then, they limit to how much you can build and how high you can build it, though that's understandable to keep the game running smoothly frame-rate and spec wise. Another issue is being unable to MAKE your own guns; you can make mods 8 ways from Sunday and there are PC game mods for mods, but you can't forge a single gun or sword?! It's kind of ridiculous to go out of your way to make an elaborate mod system and not include the feature to make your own weapons instead of modding existing ones! Two Worlds 2 knew this the second they worked on their own weapon and spell mod system and allowed players to make their own weapons! RealityPump is beating Bethesda at this! Lastly, your power-armor needs Fuel Cells?!... Alright, the Fuel Cores are understandable, since the suits can be modified until your some form of wasteland-god, thus it's a balance to have something like this. Though being unable to CRAFT or even RECHARGE the Fuel Cells is just straight up ridiculous! Giving up 500 caps for one cell from a vendor is more tedious than the leveling system in the game itself, since it's hard to come by caps in the game! Even if you setup a shop in your base or settlements, cap flow is still incredibly hard to come by! What you will be doing most of the time; if your not doing the main story line or a side quest, you'll be spending most of your time picking up worthless items and scrapping them for parts for your base building, weapon, armor and power armor modding. Quite literally. To at least make this enjoyable, play the game without using fast travel and the radio off. The ambient music designed for the game, along with the random encounters your bound to make will make the game feel more complete and out of this world as you gallivant around the wasteland with gun in one hand and a sword in the other. I had more fun exploring on foot than fast traveling to tell you the truth and more fun killing raiders thinking they could take me; BOOM, HEADSHOT! The game suffers from its poor main story among other items, but it still holds up well as something worth playing after it drops from its $59.99 ($60+) price tag. Until then, I will patiently wait for Obsidian to take the Fallout 4 engine and outshine Bethesda in every. way. possible. They blew Fallout 3 out of the water with New Vegas, so I would want to see what they do next.

78

Solid Game, but not a true Fallout game.

The first thing you notice when starting up Fallout 4 is the distinct lack of Ron Perlman's voice. The gravely narrator has been a staple of the past Fallout games but is nowhere to be found (He does have a brief cameo however). This just one of the ways Bethesda has irrecoverably changed the Fallout franchise. The second thing you will notice when playing Fallout is the inclusion of voiced protagonists, another divergence from previous Fallout games. While the vocal acting was very well done, it only helps to further shoe-horn the player into predefined roles, the opposite of what an RPG should do. That is the primary complaint against Fallout 4, the only role in RPG that you can play is one of the few that are set up by Bethesda. You will find no minor factions to mix and match alliances. Instead there are a few different branches and some quests with binary choices, but they are isolated from the main quest. Fallout 4 feels like a real step backwards from Skyrim and Fallout:New Vegas in terms of Role Playing. On the bright side, the gun play of Fallout 4 far outshines previous entries. No longer are you bound to VATS for combat, the combat feels more akin to a First Person Shooter now. The biggest new element introduced is crafting. Previous entries were fairly lack-luster and there was no reason to delve into crafting. Fallout 4 completely revamped the system. Now every item can be broken down into one or more base parts, which are used to build the myriad of weapon and armor modifications. From the moment you step into the Wasteland, you will be dazzled by the graphical improvements, exciting locations, and new elements. But slowly you will come to the realization that you are walking a predefined road set by Bethesda, and while fun it is not what Fallout is about.

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