Fallout 4

I didn't care for Fallout 3, and I don't care for Fallout 4. My brother bought it for PS4 which tends to lag a lot. The frame rate drop isn't even funny. My biggest problem being that this game feels like a Dead Island game; the typical "go do this shit mission because you're the only one that can do it. No backup, bitch" redundant game play. I'll stick to ESO.

 

I am 20 hours into this game and have only done two main story quests. I can feel my life slipping away And the perk system is honestly amazing in my opinion. It it definitely different from past Fallout games but is a fun way to really customize your player. I'm sure there will be mods for skills eventually if you don't feel the same way I do. Game is a 10/10 for me though.

 

Loving the story so far, 20 hours in, easily tops the main quests of Fallout 3.
With future DLC this game is going to be massive.
The companions add so much more to my investment in the game as well, I actually give a shit about them.
I do think the old level system was slightly better, especially since a lot of the new settlement perks are so damn cryptic and ambiguous, so you have a hard time actually feeling like you progressed when you level up those perks.
Also the talking options are a bit dumped down in favor of the voiced protagonist(which helps the storytelling but kind of declines diversity a bit).
Also, framrate drops suck. Bugs suck.
Gunplay is better but not perfect.
Inventory management is better but still not great.
Settlement management isn't THAT fun.

I am feeling a 8,5/10 so far. Can't stop playing, and I am loving it.

 

I actually really really like the settlement building/management. I've figured out how to use most of the features and such. Yesterday I spent about 1 hour building a wall all the way around Sanctuary! So now it's walled in except for the bridge which I have 3 guard posts and 2 heavy MG turrets on. Life is good. I can only imagine this game with future patches, DLC, and mods.

 

I don't know how much you've played or seen of Fallout 3/4, but I think you may not fully understand the main purpose and mechanics of the games. In games like Fallout, you are alone until you meet up with the various factions and start building trust with certain NPCs. These NPCs will follow you wherever you go, in both main and side quests. Fallout is really all about exploration and discovery in a world without laws and plenty of moral ambiguity. Being by yourself is meant to be part of the experience, as you discover/loot weapons, armor, and other useful items as you struggle to survive throughout your journey. Alliances can be broken depending on your decisions throughout the game, having permanent consequences that carry over. It seems that you prefer games in which you're accompanied by someone or have allies who constantly fight with you in battle. Fallout gives you the option to travel/roam the land with allies but doesn't force you to, with the exception of certain scripted events in main story quests.

I have not played Dead Island, so I can't really comment on your comparing it to Fallout. I hope this helps you better understand the kind of game that Fallout is designed to be. You being alone a good part of the time is meant to make the world feel more desolate and hopeless, which really adds to the bleak atmosphere of the environment.

 

New Vegas is still the best Fallout. Obsidian need to make another one. Whenever I think of a good Fallout memory, it's from New Vegas and it's DLC.

Fallout 4 is good though, main story is really cool. The Institute is intriguing.

 

While New Vegas was a fantastic experience overall, it was not without its issues. On the PS3 version, massive framerate drops were common. They could be so massive that the game would literally be running at 1 FPS, no joke. This would happen when the save file was around 11 MB or so, so it could be an indication of the PS3's power limitations.

Luckily, I didn't experience any game-breaking bugs but had plenty of framerate drops and outright crashes, forcing me to hard reset multiple times. Of course, playing a game as massive as Fallout will push consoles to their limits, just with sheer content alone. It's too bad that Obsidian couldn't have released more stability patches for the PS3, as this version desperately needed more.

As for Fallout 4, I still haven't started playing it, though I will shortly. I've currently been playing Star Wars: Battlefront and getting used to the interface/functions of the PS4.

 

Alright, well, it's been a couple of months – what do you guys think?

SPOILERS, obviously.

Seriously, spoilers.

Personally, I was extremely underwhelmed with the game. The environment's gorgeous and the amount of explorable area gets me all hot and bothered. But the quest volume's severely lacking outside of the main questline. The Minutemen quests are a fucking joke. I'm disappointed there aren't companion quests for each companion as opposed to only a couple of them. It's incredibly easy to max out their loyalties in order to unlock their respective perks. Hm.

Combat's largely the same as it's always been. I love the idea of being able to use power armor whenever the fuck you want, though, and I always did. But it's a shame that Bethesda wrecked the perk trees from Skyrim. I understand they wanted to incorporate the perks into the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, but it severely limited what you should've been able to do. Removing skills in favor of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. perk tree was a bad idea. Perks should've been tied to skills which would've been affected by S.P.E.C.I.A.L. And half the perks don't really change the game in dramatic ways, they just allow you to deal more damage, survive more damage, or pick harder locks. In Skyrim, there were perks that really affected how you'd play the game; not so much in Fallout 4.

The dialogue wheel was a joke. I'm not even going to bother with that one. That was such a colossal fuckup that I can't believe they thought it was a good idea.

Despite my criticisms I enjoyed the game and had over 120 hours on my first character before I beat it. Then I decided to start over with a new character to try new things, but I ended up doing a lot of the same things because you're really not given much of a choice. I like how they tried to make multifaction endings, but it didn't work out anywhere near as well as it did in New Vegas.

Also (and this one doesn't really count) having Ron Perlman voice the news reporter at the beginning, rather than giving him the opening narration, was ridiculous. His opening narration and hearing "war, war never changes" has been the staple of the series since the first game. Changing it made no sense.

I've seen lots of people say that if Bethesda built the world and Obsidian built the characters and quests, that particular Fallout game would be the best game ever made. Alas, I digress.

I'll probably play the game two or three times a year just like I do with Fallout 3 and New Vegas despite the things I don't like about it. It's still a great game, and I hope future DLC fixes a lot of the issues fans have been having. For now, I plan on going back to Skyrim.

 

Yeah, this still doesn't top Skyrim for me, but I enjoyed it enough for me to go back to it from time to time.

 

My biggest problem with the game is the role playing aspect.
The main story and side quests are so strictly constructed that you don't really feel like you are able to go a COMPLETELY different route.
I do however disagree with the notion that the combat hasn't improved a shit ton. The gun-play used to be laughable bad, at least now it's enjoyable and responsive.
The crafting system is amazing as well.
The main story was pretty emotional for me, and companions like Valentine and Piper are some of my new favorite characters in video games, period.
However, the lack of role-playing aspects/dialogue choices really do hurt the replay value of the game.

I'm still IN on future mods and dlc but as it stands now, the game is "just" an 8/10.

 

I never even bothered to play this game to its fullest extent. I just went with the main questline as the Brotherhood, then betrayed them for the Institute. Once I finished the main quest, I went up and sold the game. It's certainly not a bad game, but it left me not wanting to explore everything the game has to offer, despite how much I had left to do. It's sad that Bethesda can make a game I'm not 100% into. I've had such amazing experiences with Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim. I feel a bit bad for selling it, but when I did, I was literally not even playing it anymore.

 

I borrowed it from a friend. With all of the hype for the crafting and settlements prior to release I was really not excited. I've grown incredibly bored of this survival/crafting fad from the last couple of years but I digress. Borrowed it from a friend and I'm really happy I didn't pay for it. Between Fallout 3 and 4, and Oblivion and Skyrim, Bethesda has really been dropping the ball quest wise. They have been so focused on making a world that is expansive and feels alive that they seem to be forgetting why people play rpgs. Fallout 4 was big, but instead of being full of stuff, it was rather devoid of anything. That bored me to tears. I played it for probably about 10 hours and gave it back to my friend. A big empty space just isn't immersive to me, and unless they come out with some seriously good dlc, I doubt I'll ever touch this game again.

Edit: I did enjoy Skyrim, but compared to Oblivion it felt a lot more empty and nowhere near as epic in scale.

 

yeah... I was very underwhelmed at well by Fallout 4. The quest system felt so so so bland. The world wasn't as interesting to me as Skyrim. I'm not going to write a long, eloquent dissertation about why I didn't like it because it didn't move me enough to do so.

 

Nick and Piper are the only two companions that are worth any time. As with you, they're two of my favorite characters from any game I've ever played.

All the others are boring or one-dimensional. MacCready should've been a much better companion than he was, considering he came from the Capital Wasteland. He was such a waste. All the others are more or less carbon-copies of the companions from Fallout 3. There isn't anything special about any of them. The only interesting thing that happened with any of the companions insofar as "companion quests" are concerned is when you find out Danse is a synth. That was about the only twist the game provided.

(Speaking of twists, it was super-duper incredibly obvious that your son was going to turn out to be the "bad guy" following the opening cinematic. Let's face it, Bethesda wants you to view the Institute as the bad guys, so it made sense for them to install Shaun as the leader. It was a really lame way of creating emotional tension. I felt nothing when I got to that point in the game because I'd been expecting it the whole time.)

 

This game was a big, giant, COLOSSAL letdown for me.

Apart from the fact that it has outstanding shooting mechanics and an engaging world, there's really nothing redeeming about this game for me at all. The fact that it was advertised as the "next generation of role-playing" is laughable as well, as the game features the most stripped down, simplified, and un-engaging "role playing" elements I have ever experienced. Every conversation ends the same way; you either say yes or don't accept a quest at that time and have to comeback later. You literally CANNOT fail in this game no matter what. Not to mention you always play as a good natured, loving mother or father. No room for roleplay at all. If this is the future of role playing, well then the genre is dead as fuck (thankfully it isnt because masterpieces like The Witcher 3, Dark Souls and Deus Ex exist)


some spoilers in my next para


Nothing you do in the game matters. Nothing. You just wander from place to place, talk to whoever until they force you to say yes, kill things, level up, get more perks which barely change anything, go back to the quest giver, get money, repeat. Your decisions have no impact on the world, except til the end when, you guessed it, you go on a murderous fucking rampage. And none of it makes sense either; why was I able to join the Brotherhood of Steal, a faction that hates synths and such, and then go join the Railroad (the complete fucking opposite) a few hours later without any conflict whatsoever until the end, where you make a cookie cutter decision. Why can't I join the Raiders or the Gunners and be a complete piece of shit like you could in Fallout 2 (you could literally kill children in Fallout 2 if you were that sick), and why does ever single one of them shoot on sight? Why does every single thing you do in the game go back to killing; for example, during the confrontation with Kellogg, you get 4 dialogue choices at the end. No matter which one you pick, you end up murdering him. No talking your way out of it. No calming him down or making a deal. Nope. Fuck intelligence and charisma: KILL EVRYTHANG!!11!!! :eyeroll:. Why do I feel the same as I did at level 5 that I do at level 25 (read: botched and useless progression system)? Why can't I hack into turrets and use them against my enemies instead of disable them? I could go on, and on, and on....

Massive MASSIVE disappointment for me. Hopefully when the scripting mods start rolling out the game will actually be an RPG and not a generic post apocalyptic FPS (albiet with exceptional gunplay and an incredibly well made environment)

5/10