Fallout 4 Review

Fallout 4

The game of our generation is here, Bethesda have brought us a new amazing game from the super popular franchise that is Fallout. With some amazing new features, awesome graphics and some new twists and turns along the way Bethesda have brought back the Dark comedy that we all love!

Fallout has always been a beautiful game but, Fallout 4 has taken beautiful to another level  and left me speechless with a new brighter feel to the Boston wasteland they have built. Blue skies and some amazing lighting gives you the idea that the nuclear war is over. When trekking through the disastrous ruins of the wasteland you can tell the developers have made such an effort to make everything perfect in a broken and blown up kind of way! From walking past half broken down houses to climbing up to higher grounds and looking down at the torn down cities that remain, you just can’t blink sometimes or you’ll miss something awesome that Bethesda have snuck into the game. It’s not just the graphics that are immense though, the sound has really made this game something else, from random explosions, gun fights and even just hearing a random conversation going on in a house you’re walking past gives the feel that it’s not just you left. Bethesda have now introduced a weather aspect to the game now as well so when you are walking through the wasteland you may randomly be hit with a radiation storm or, a massive rain cloud that can truly dampen your day.

“Because if my time in the army has taught me one

thing, it’s that war… war never changes”

The game itself starts with an amazing cutscene of the nuclear war and gives you a little backstory on your character’s time in being a soldier and starts us off with a heart touching quote right off the bat “Because if my time in the army has taught me one thing, it’s that war… war never changes”. Once it finishes you get taken into one of the many new things the Developers down at Bethesda have worked on, the Character customisation side of the game. This starts when you are looking back at yourself in a steamy mirror with your wife/husband next to you… You then get the option to choose to be a man or a woman and create your perfect wastelander in a cool new “Sims” like creation system, this will bring out the creative side of most people to create cool, creepy, funny and outrageous types of vault dwellers to roam the wasteland with. I have to admit this excited me and it took me a while… well around 2 hours to get my guy right with experimenting with nose sizes, haircuts and even just if i want him to be muscled or comically fat!

Upon completing your character customisation you get the chance to walk around your 1950’s house and see what bethesda have done to create this old time retro feel with little touches like, the radio playing old slow/swing type music. When walking up to the kitchen you also meet your Mr. Handy friend “Codsworth” (Big Spoilers) The companion you will see once the whole nuclear explosion happens. Stephen Russell is the Voice actor who plays Codsworth and I have to say, his “Posh” accent just adds to the characters helpful/butler type of personality! A cool feature that has been added is that, Codsworth can also call you by name once you have programmed it to… such as “Mr Matthew, Mr Jack, Ms Angela” Etc.

Not only have bethesda added in features like companions being able to call you by name, they have also added in the feature of your character finally having a voice!! Yes a voice, this has to be one of the nicest things they have added into the game including little remarks you will hear throughout the game, for example, when you walk up to your fridge in your house you will notice there is a bunch of Nuka-Cola. If you activate it by pressing “A” you will hear your character say “Nuka-Cola, Ice cold”. As little as that seems i definitely had a bit of a Nerdgasm when hearing it!

The actors voice acting the lead characters in this game are Brian T. Delaney as the male option (has a part as Roland in the new Halo 5 Guardians game) and Courtenay Taylor who plays the woman’s voice (has had past roles in New vegas as:Gloria Van Graff, Janet and Jas Wilkins and also has voiced Jack in the Mass Effect series)

Bethesda have introduced a new way of picking out your starting stats as well which starts when you get a salesman at your door who hands you a “registration form” which gives you eligibility to Vault 111. I like that they haven’t just gone back to Fallout 3 and made you play as a child again (as much as I liked that) but, have given a new way of picking your starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck). You get 21 starting points to add to whatever you like to make your character custom to how you will play your story. More on that later.

“You see the salesman who just registered you to

vault 111 is being turned away by a minigun and a

guy in power armour… poor sod”

The game starts on a bit of a disaster really as your character gets alerted by Codsworth who is watching the news on the TV … “confirmed reports of nuclear detonations in New York…” This is where the game starts to get real, you start to run to the vault with Nora (your wife) and Shaun (your son). As you are running through your little town you can see how Bethesda have captured the futuristic but, old feel to the 1950’s with the old cars and cute little houses. Once you get to the gate to go to the vault you see the salesman who just registered you to vault 111 is being turned away by a minigun and a guy in power armour… poor sod. You then reach the platform that will lower you to the vault, in the distance you see a nuclear explosion go off. A couple of seconds later the platform you are standing on starts to drop like an elevator that’s been cut from its wires…

After a short black screen you finally make it to the vault “your new home”. You get guided through to a “decontamination pod” which you later realise is a cryo pod. on the way you get handed a vault suit and after your vault suit miraculously appears on your persons and you step into a “decontamination pod” you start to freeze and the last thing you see is your wife and sons pod… SPOILER ALERT after a while of being in the pod it seems, a raider like guy turns up with one of the scientist and unlocks your wife’s pod and takes your son in all of the commotion you see the scientist struggle with your wife trying to take your son and… BANG! a shot is fired and unfortunately you wife dies. The raider looks back to you whilst he is taking your son and says “Atleast we still have a backup”.

You get out of your pod after it unfreezes and go to your wife, this is one of the instances where I think the character having a voice really works, at times of distress and when you see proper emotion come out as he panics to get his wife’s pod open.Once you have taken her wedding ring and said your goodbyes this is where the game really starts, before getting out of the vault you find yourself a Pip-boy on one of the scientists skeleton. Then with one press of a button you open Vault 111’s door and venture off into the wasteland to find the people who took your son!

“that shows it’s not just a lump on your arm”

Pip-Boy

The pip boy itself has a nice sleek new look, with some awesome new features added in as well. Starting off to get into and out of vaults you go into a small ingame cutscene where your character uses a plug like attachment on your pip boy to override and open the door which i have to admit is a pretty cool use that shows it’s not just a lump on your arm. The use of holotapes also shows a new cutscene which you open it up like a cassette recorder and slide it into play, speaking of holotapes… Do you like gameboys, handheld gaming devices? Well your pip boy now has an awesome new feature where you can play holotape games that you can find around the wasteland, so want to add  more hours to the 400+ hours of gameplay on fallout? Then get yourself the Red Menace, Pipfall, Zeta Invaders and Grognak the Barbarian and the Ruby Ruins Holotapes scattered across the wareland.

Combat VATS Sprinting Movement HUD

Making your way through the wasteland has been made both easier and harder with more smaller features that Bethesda have introduced, one of them being sprinting. You are now able to sprint from A to B but, with a cost to your AP points (Used for VATS). Speaking of VATS that is also another huge change to your combat within the wasteland, if you were like me in Fallout 3 and new vegas, that constantly used VATS to stop time, take a break, look at your options and kill when you wanted to kill well… you’re going to be in a tough position now, VATS has been nerfed a little which I believe makes the game a lot more enjoyable. Instead of being able to stop time, you now just slow it down so, when a pack of Feral Ghouls comes running towards you, you have got to be quick on your toes when using the new VATS system.

Something new that Bethesda have also introduced that helps you out whilst trekking through the wasteland is a new pop up HUD menu which comes up to help you go to loot from containers. This gives you the advantage of being able to grab things off of a dead body or out of a container without having to go into a separate pop up menu which can take up precious time. The only thing I can really say is annoying about this is when you are in battle and you accidently hover over something and it gets in the way (hardly happens but when it does…) and also, it can be a pain to get used to not having to press “B” to get out of it!

Power Armour

Your power armour is fully customisable from the time you find it in the wasteland, you power the  armour by putting in fusion cores. You can change all of the different pieces from your helmet, arms, legs and torso so that you have either a new fancy looking power armour with glistening silver or to some older rustier parts like from raiders customisation, these can all be accessed whilst you’re at a power armour station (you can create these in your settlements and find them in certain areas of the map)

As you step into your power armour your hud completely changes with different icons showing different statuses through gages like, AP% for your V.A.T.S, HP%, Radiation levels, core power and even a cool little icons on the left hand side which shows you the 6 parts of your armour and by traffic light colours which gives you an idea of the wear of the certain parts. Bethesda have done well to give the players a new way to use the armour so, instead of just wearing it like a normal outfit in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, you now step into it like a machine and can now use it to your advantage and take on a camp of raiders with ease!

“why not just let your companion do it and sit back

and relax!”

Companions

Now companions aren’t really per say a “new” feature in Fallout 4 seeing as you could have a number of companions following you and helping you in the past Fallout’s but, they have improved on the feature by allowing you to command them, given them a backstory for you to play through with them and finally introduced a Dog companion. Now with all companions you can command them to do certain things i.e, search that bin, attack that raider, stay, follow… you get the idea but, not only that, Bethesda have done well to give certain companions different skills to help you around the wasteland. To give you an example, you will meet a synth detective or just remove this needs a name who is awesome at hacking and picklocking, so if like me, you are lazy and cannot be bothered to figure out a 5 letter word password on a terminal, why not just let your companion do it and sit back and relax!

When it comes down to their backstories, the companions will react to certain things you do within the wasteland, If they are a good citizen and you start to steal things and pickpocket people around them it will pop up at the top left hand corner of your screen that they didn’t like that and after a while they will refuse to travel with you. On the other hand if you do good things that they like they will randomly ask you if you have a minute and tell you about themselves, this gives you the opportunity to get the backstory missions and help them in ways that they have helped you! Now for those who like a romantic tale whilst playing through RPG’s and like to know you can find love well, they have also allowed their to be romantic interests with the opposite sex so, i suppose… go have fun with that? haha.

Perk-Ception

something huge that Bethesda have brought to Fallout 4 is a new vast levelling system that allows you to play with up to 275 perk options… YES 275!! This will give you awesome chances to create the best character to your playing style during the game. The way it works is with a new perk “poster” that they have introduced which i have to say looks amazing with the quirky fun fallout spin to the bobblehead guy. The poster allows you to add more to your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats and also to the 10 perk trees below each of them, the 10 perk options below each stat (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) are all unlocked depending on your start off stat put on each of these at the start of the game. throughout the game you can add more to your S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats to unlock them all to 10 each but, you would only need to do that if you feel you need EVERY perk! I myself feel that this has its ups and downs, it does allow each player to create a truly unique character to their playing style but, i feel that when first starting up the game and not knowing any of the perk trees you find yourself getting annoyed that you didn’t put that 1 more point onto a certain stat to unlock a specific perk.

Weapon & Armour Customisation

Something that every Fallout player has wished for, for so many years is to be able to make the biggest, baddest and most deadliest of weapons, well… Bethesda has successfully combined picking up masses of random useless junk with an amazing new weapon customisation. Now we can all make a Fatboy with devastating damage and a combat rifle with a long night vision scope and a long barrel to kill from range or even just a small 10mm pistol with a suppressor and a glow sights for those splinter cells out there. there are untold amounts of options for you to play around with and make the perfect arsenal to take on the biggest of super mutant camps or silently take back an old school filled with raiders and take back the wasteland but, you have to do this safely right? make sure that it’s not just your guns that are primed and ready? Well they have also introduced the armour customisation, that helps you boost your damage resistance, grant you with more pockets to carry more loot and also radiation resistance. With certain outfits you can have extra armour on top for example with your Vault 111 suit you can have extra arms, legs and chest armour over the top so, if you customise your armour the way you like it you can be untouchable. An added extra to give you a little unique feel to your equipment, you can also rename all of your weapons once you are happy with them! (One tip, you will not be able to just go to a workbench and expect to put all of the mods onto weapons and upgrades to armour, you need the specific perks for some of the higher grade upgrades. So depending on how you want to play your game, perks do come into play!)

Settlements

One thing that your character is always talking about is rebuilding the wasteland, making something new of what was and helping people to get by through doing good. One way you contribute to doing this is building settlements another HUGE feature added for hours and hours more of fun (when i say hours i mean, I spent around 7 hours just making mine perfect and setting up a light system). Settlements are primarily found by the Minutemen a faction that you help and join to save the wasteland, they tell you of certain settlements of people who are just trying to get by that you go and help. You can also stumble across them and once cleared you can make them active by using the Workshop. The workshop is where you will find the numerous structure, defenses and resources you can make within your settlement. This takes you into a first person menu mode (that does take some getting used to) that will help you build and create awesome new “towns”.

Your settlements require certain resources such as food, water, beds, power and defenses to keep the settlers happy, you will need to gather materials to help accommodate so they are safe from attacks from all different types of enemies. When you have created a settlement, put out defences and made sure that the resources are up to count you will need to assign settlers to perform certain jobs weather it be, picking tomatoes or, standing on guard on a defence tower. Now most settlements start of with a few people here and there but you can put down a certain radio tower which will attract new people to come so you can expand and maybe just maybe you can create a huge community and take back the wasteland!

Enemies/Map

Enemies have been changed in Fallout 4 as well, ranging from difficulty in a new rubber banding type of area system that will put enemies of higher risk and skill in certain places on the map. They show up with a skull above their name which allows you to see if they are harder to kill or not. There has also been a new type of “Legendary” enemy that has been implemented that drops greater loot and can be a lot harder to kill. (Top Tip, If you think you are playing through the game easy, turn your difficulty up, this will increase the chance of a legendary enemy appearing and you will also get a lot more legendary weapon drops!)

The map itself has been said to be around 3 times as big as Bethesda’s skyrim and has plenty of places to explore and seek out, with some amazing references to real life locations in Boston such as Fenway Park, Paul Revere Statue/Old North Church, Masstatuessets State House, USS Constitution, Bunker Hill Monument and More!

Companion App

There are not many games if not any games that can say that have an awesome app that goes hand in hand with your game. Bethesda have not just created an outstanding addition to the Fallout Franchise but, improved it with technology with a phone app for Android and Apple which allows you to use your phone as your Pip-Boy… You can link your phone to your xbox and check your inventory to see if you have space for a certain item, play holotapes from your phone without having to take forever to search for them and even use stimpaks when in a tight spot. Now to make things better, if you were lucky enough to grab yourself a Pip-boy edition of the game they have also created an actual Pip-boy you can wear … Yes you can wear, be a dweller and rule the world we live in… bit far but, yes, so if you are a nerd like me… download the app from the links below and enjoy having an awesome app to go with an ever more awesome game!

 

 

Youtube Video:

[signoff predefined=”Follow Us” icon=”bookmark”][/signoff]