Genre: First/Third Person Action RPG Adventure

Platform: PS4

Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One

Release Date: November 10, 2015

Fallout 3 was my first ever RPG and it kind of changed me. I had seen some screenshots and that tagline…War. War never changes. I wasn’t interested in another war simulator, and ignored it. Then the reviews came out and the world was gushing over this game. It was around the time when I first bought the PS3 and hadn’t owned a console since original Nintendo, and was really just starting to dive back into the gaming world. So I rented it, and holy fuck, that moment when the vault door opened to the blinding sun and I stepped out into the world – to be almost immediately killed by a couple of fucking molerats…those fucking feels, as the kids say these days. I bought it immediately after my 5 day rental ended.

That game now sits up there on the podium of one of my favourite franchises in gaming. Wandering that wasteland broadened my horizons, expanded my scope of what games could be. My girlfriend hated me. She thought it was the most boring fucking thing ever to watch me wandering around, picking through drawers full of clipboards and coffee mugs, and occasional glorious treasure. She started to take pleasure in shaming me for liking video games more than her, and probably would have broken up with me had I not pounded her into a trembling wet mess on a regular basis.

Weirdly, and unlike many hardcore fans of the series’ roots, Fallout New Vegas just didn’t have the same impact on me. I fucking loved it, and the DLC was fucking hilarious and amazing, but it was very noticeably different. Aside from the fact that they obviously recycled an unfortunate amount of assets from the Fallout 3 interiors, which gave the game a giant expansion or alternate version feel rather than a true sequel. It didn’t have that same feeling of danger and isolation in a strange, unknown land of death and poisonous mutation that Fallout 3 so ruthlessly threw you blindly into – it was quirky and funny, with nuanced characters and an established political system. Amazing and brilliant but not the wasteland I had come to love so much.

So I have waited, with the rest of the world, all these years, for the true sequel to arrive – and here it is at last. Well, here it’s been for just over a year, at this point, but anyway…

Fallout 4.

Does it live up to the hype. Was it worth the long wait. I’ve played over 100 hours and have 77% on the trophies on PS4, and I’m ready to tell you what I think.

Let’s get into it.

Graphics/Presentation: 9/10

Fallout 4 looks beautiful. It doesn’t compare to the graphics of Battlefield 1, or the more recent open world games, Final Fantasy XV or Watch Dogs 2, but it still looks current gen and amazing, and it’s a huge leap forward from Fallout 3, and even Skyrim, as we can see from the newly overhauled Skyrim Special Edition – which also looks beautiful, but feels incredibly dated in comparison to Fallout 4 in terms of character animations, and more importantly, combat. Not many (any?) other games have as many moving pieces that need to be tracked and remembered in such an enormous open world.

As mentioned above, character animations are a huge improvement from their previous games, including Skyrim. NPC facial animation is still a bit wonky and weird, but the creature animations, like the molerat and deathclaw look awesome – and with the new power armor system, getting in and out of my suits never got old. It’s amazing how much the new and improved animations really help elevate that “evolved” sequel feeling to the entire production. The new lighting system also has a substantial impact on the visual enhancements, replacing the canned beams coming through the cracks in previous games with dynamic lighting, it really builds up the level of realism in the world you’re wandering through. New weather effects are also an awesome addition, especially the fucking crazy radstorms and the wildly irradiated southern section of the map.

The sound design of the world is generally really good, the voice acting is solid and entertaining, and the weapons sound amazing; but quite often while searching through a building, I would hear an enemy that sounded like they were right beside me, but couldn’t see them, and then I’d find them 3 floors away. It was really jarring and constantly fucked with me while exploring, and was one of the few major bugs I ran into during my time playing. Weirdly. I expected so many more. The game only crashed once, I think. Bethesda? Is this really your baby?

Again, found in the sound department, is one of my main complaints with the game. The controversial switch to a voiced protagonist. Did it work? Nope. Not really. The voice actors weren’t terrible, but it seriously changes the feel of the game and your personal connection to the character you’re “role playing” as. It pulls you away and removes you from the character.

The new dialogue system in general seems like a step back. It has that mass effect-y wheel structure that gives a somewhat vague summary of what the character might say with each choice, but it’s sometimes deceiving or unclear, and quite often I found myself uncertain about what choice I wanted to make because I didn’t know exactly what my character was going to say.

It’s unfortunate, since the dialogue of previous entries was a major highlight of the experience. This new, muddy system seems to have bowed to the current, emotionally tender generation and toned down any potentially offensive material, likely to appease the money hats so that the game would appeal to a wider audience. It lacks the boldness and courage in moral choice options from the old system, and could potentially be the singular reason why I felt the game was lacking something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Also, the voice actor speaks very calmly all the time (I only played with the male voice, so perhaps the female voice does a better job). I imagine my evil son-of-a-bitch character to be a little more rough around the edges. Fuck. Rough right down to their core. Sand in your throat as you beg for water and feel the threat of my voice in the cockles of your heart. You know what I mean.

Props for trying something new, though. They can’t all be winners. We can only hope to learn from our mistakes, and grow from them. We don’t learn when things go right. We learn when they go wrong. Yea. Sure. Smoke that in your pipe, if you want.

Gameplay: 9/10

I found this area to be the most impactful improvement and fundamentally changed the way I played the game. The shooting is finally good. I mean, it stands up to the average shooter on the market. If I want to, I can play comfortably in real time and the combat feels great. I spammed the fuck out of V.A.T.S. in Fallout 3 and NV, but found in Fallout 4 I was actually engaging in combat directly and it gave the action a more fast paced, visceral feel to it. I still used V.A.T.S. but I was equally inclined to just open fire in a moment of danger, and that shit barely happened in the previous games.

I heard rumours that the team who built the most recent Wolfenstein had a hand in helping refine the shooting, and being under the same publisher, it’s not beyond the scope of possibility, and a smart move by the company, if true – but regardless, it was a much needed, and a very welcome improvement.

Base building is another substantial addition, and is really it’s own game of micro-management in itself. Anyone into minecraft and that type of world building will be able to get lost for countless hours in the very complex, diverse and incredibly comprehensive set of tools you can use for building a fully functional settlement from the ground up, or even cleaning up and reinforcing one that already exists. It may seem intimidating at first, but it all comes together with time and gets easier the more familiar you become with it. If it’s not your bag, you can ignore it for the most part, only having a couple fairly easy missions that serve as introductions to the new system.

That brings me to another update that fundamentally changes the way you play the game. Every item in the world is useful in some way now. The days of finding endless drawers of crap has been transformed into endless drawers of scrap, that can be used to build just about anything in the game. It’s a brilliant mechanic for an open world exploration game, and fits really well with the theme of simulated survival in this apocalyptic landscape.

One of my favourite additions to gameplay is the new power suits. They’re just fucking awesome, and the game let’s you jump into one almost immediately. Picture an apocalyptic version of the iron man suit, without the flight, and you get the idea. Pop in a fusion core and the suit powers up and let’s you climb inside to become a motherfucking mech warrior and jump off a fucking building if you want – and you feel the weight when you land. I fucking love it. Just don’t jump off a boat into water. You’ll drop straight to the bottom, and walking in water in a power suit is fucking painfully slow.

I had a collection of suits lined up at my main settlement, some even with jet packs attached, which, by the way, are fucking awesome. I only needed to remember to remove the fusion cores so no one would steal them. I could also command my companions to get into one of my suits. It’s a big step up from the days of getting the brotherhood to train you to wear power armor, and feels more like jumping into a mech suit than ever before.

Some other new features include things like the ability to send up a flare and call in a Vertibird, or even ride one to a destination. I didn’t actually use this feature much, and honestly kept forgetting it was there for me to use, but nevertheless, pretty fucking cool.

The new leveling system is cool, and has an excellent visual presentation that makes it very easy to scroll through your options. Think a vertical slice of a doll house, with each perk being Fallout Boy in an animated icon displaying the new ability, and the levels of perks separated by “floors in the house”. Each perk, like previous entries, has multiple levels to upgrade, and the amount of different perks available is robust and offers great variety in gameplay.

The karma system is gone, but it honestly didn’t have much of an effect on my enjoyment of the game, and I really didn’t noticed its absence much – even though if someone asked my preference, I’d prefer to have the karma system in the game.

One particular update to the HUD that I really loved was the combining of the health bar with your radiation level. It’s just a little detail, but it works so well that it’s worth noting. Any radiation poisoning you’re exposed to will show on the right side of your health bar, a red bar slowly reducing the length of the green bar, and remains until you give yourself a dose of radaway or see a doctor to clear up the radiation poisoning.

Story: 8/10

As usual, I don’t like to say much about the story aspect of a game in reviews. I enjoyed the story of Fallout 4, though the main quest is a little too close to the structure of Fallout 3, and there didn’t seem to be as many side stories to find out in the wasteland as previous entries. The companions and their story arch quests were all pretty great, the moment to moment dialogue is awesome and hilarious, and there was a bunch of weird and crazy tales to stumble upon, but I couldn’t help but feel something was lacking by the end of my journey.

The world is huge, and there’s lots of interesting characters to stumble upon, crazy vaults to explore, weird secrets to uncover, seriously fucked up stories to be found through terminals, vaults and other random locations; and stacked up against any other action RPG, it’s an amazing game full of rich and entertaining content.

For anyone who has loved and explored previous Fallout games, Fallout 4 may almost feel like an incredibly refined Fallout lite action game. There’s just something missing from the heart of it. I don’t mean this ruins the game, or makes it a bad Fallout game, even – it’s an amazing experience and a wonderful achievement and step forward. I get the feeling, though, that some of the more demanding hardcore fans will be left wanting, and yet, through all their complaining, will still put over 100 enjoyable hours into it. Take that as a testament to the quality of the game’s ability to draw you into its ravaged world, and inspire and encourage you to dig deeper, to explore every dark, twisted corner you can find.

In conclusion:

Fallout 4 isn’t perfect, but what the fuck is? Well. GTA V. But other than that. Well. A triangle. Ok. The point is, I thoroughly enjoyed every second of my time with Fallout 4. I can’t say that about many games. If you loved Fallout 3, you’re likely going to love Fallout 4. Jump into some power armor and delve bravely into the harsh landscape and uncover the depraved nature of humanity in a wonderfully realized post apocalyptic wasteland. It’s worth every bottlecap.

Pros: Power armor, seriously improved shooting/combat, looks great, runs smooth for Bethesda Games, companions, awesome weapons, cool story, feels like a true sequel to Fallout 3, every single item is useful in some way

Cons: Main character having a voice, new mass effect-y dialog system, not as many crazy, complex side stories as previous entries, Fallout lite

9/10