Rating: 7/10
As the sole survivor of Vault 111, you enter a world destroyed by nuclear war. Every second is a fight for survival, and every choice is yours. Only you can rebuild and determine the fate of the Wasteland. Welcome home.
Overview:
My Views
For me this game should be renamed to fallout settlement builder because I honestly don't care about anything else, not the story, not the combat and no not the fate of the world. All I want is to collect random junk from around the world and repurpose them in my settlement.
Lets talk about power armour.
So this game has a problem for me that I don't see spoken about very often and that is its beginning, I don't mind the world before the bombs drop, or the actual vault its self or even running into your robot helper Codsworth, no no for me the problem is when you get your first real taste of action and you run into Preston "I have a job for you" Garvey.
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Let's get it out of the way, yes Preston is annoying but my issue here is not him, it is the fact that your are sent up to the roof and instantly given a suit of power armour... ???. What?, why? In all other previous Fallout games the power armour felt like a reward, it's the moment in the game where you stop feeling like a wimp that could be knocked over by a stiff breeze and start feeling like a wasteland badass. The first fallout I ever played was fallout 3 and the first time the brotherhood of steel show up and start fighting that super mutant behemoth I remember thinking, "oh sh*t, it's about to go off." quickly followed by "I gotta get me one of these." and after that fight ended I went around sweeping up all the pieces of power armour I could carry because I knew that I wanted to wear the wasteland Ironman armour. But in fallout 4 its like here you are you are already a badass, and yes I know the male character is a ex-military man so he would know how to use the armour so I except he wouldn't need training to use it but just don't put it at the beginning of the game.
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It gets worse though they then hand you a minigun and bring a deathclaw onto the scene and the game says remember that bit in Predator where they go nuts and destroy half of the jungle well get ready to live it.
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So now we have a situation where you are in a badass suit of armour verses what was always the scariest enemy in the previous games, I mean okay its like the game is saying "look how great I am", but what do I have left to play for, it's to late I am already in my head at the end game status, within the first 2 hours.
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Improved gunplay
Right now some good parts, fighting with guns is now legitimately the best it has ever been in the series, its not a massive slog to even hit an enemy which means that you don't have to rely so heavily on the games VATS just to hit anything, although you are still going to need it to hit any flying creature in the game but apart from that it feels more like a FPS (first person shooter) game with role playing, rather than a role play game with FPS elements. And on top of this playing in 3rd person is now actually doable. you will not become seasick just trying to find the enemy on screen.
Every time a bullet hits an enemy now it feels satisfying, and most of all fair, and most importantly sniper rifles now feel like a viable way to play the game although you are limited to the games draw distance which always feels a little too short, especially when your built settlements faze into screen before your eyes when you know you should have been able to see them for miles before hand.
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The upgrading system is also excellent, with a multitude of different customisation options available for each weapon, ranging from small changes to things like melee weapons blades to changing a pipe hand gun into a fully automatic machine gun. Every upgrade feels like it has a purpose but most importantly they feel like you can customise them to your use, rather than with most games where you are trying to reach the end of the upgrade tree to have the best mods . These upgrades are crafted by collecting junk from around the world and breaking them down into materials which can also be used for creating armour upgrades and settlements.
Settlement building
This is for me at least the meat and potatoes of the game, although it can feel a little frustrating sometimes when you can't get items to snap together, when they really should be able to, and for someone like me who wants clean lines and perfect symmetry the broken down aesthetic can really play havoc with my OCD's but I still love it. The system is based around keeping the population happy with crops, water, beds and defences, and you can put as much or as little effort into each of the 30 settelments around the map you want.
After talking about its problems I would love to talk about what makes it great but it is really hard to pin down what makes it my favourite part of the game, I think that really its a personal preference because I love base building in any game and this allows me build a great personal storage area for my gear and power armour but also gives me reason to actual role play in the game making bars, homes and hospitals for my new wasteland residents, adding pointless accessories like plants and patio chairs for no other reason than to make the place look better. But never gets so much like so that you feel like you can't explore the dense map that fallout has layed out before you.
The company you keep
There are so many companions that can join you on your quest from the series staple of the ever loving dog to your own super mutant tank but no of them ever reach the game breaking level of Falks from fallout 4, but maybe that's a good thing. The companion progression system continues on from Fallout New Vegas so the longer you spend with each the more they open up leading to eventual perks being unlocked to help you with your adventure.
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Here your companions don't die, instead after taking enough damage they hit the floor until the battle ends or you hit the with a stim pack. Talking about fighting this is where the companions fall short, as characters with motivation and dialogue they all feel different but within battle they all feel like pee shooters doing very minimal damage to your enemies even giving them better weapons is unpredictable because nine times out of ten they will revert to there default weapon for no reason.
My last thoughts
So why is it 7/10, well the game suffers from massive frame rate drops still after all this time in the Boston down town ruins, and the game has a few more little niggles but mostly the game is to distracting for its own good. I have played the game on both the Xbox and the PlayStation racking up over 72 hours on each and have never finished the main story or all of the DLC on either of them, where as in pervious instalments I always felt thrust through the story by each plot point, here however I always felt a little bored by. On top of that Preston never leaves you alone, and all of the settlement quests he gives you basically loop after about the first 10.
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Until next time... Toby