Fallout 4 (you're all wankers)

[FrustratedAssassin]

Fallout 1 is pretty easy too. Fallout 2 however is pretty fucking hard at the beginning at least, unless you build your character for melee or unarmed combat. The RNG is brutal, especially when you can barely land one hit in a turn and the enemies shoot you three times and then circle you a bit.

The first-person RPG thing was what hooked me on Fallout though, and the only reason New Vegas' story was simplified is that they were given just a year to finish the game. And they still did a great job with it.

[STM]

Fallout 2 didn't take into account that there are more than two archetypal characters to play as in the tutorial level which makes actually passing the tutorial quite difficult. Either you have to be quite charismatic or quite strong, if you are middling at both of these traits and haven't invested in agility then you're quite fucked if you're inexperienced.

That being said F2 is a more well-rounded game. In terms of story, you ought to start with F1 though I think.

[Varrok]

I wouldn't call any of the original Fallout games a hard game, unless you activate a hard mode.

Whenever you find yourself in a difficult situation, just save often (on different slots [there are only around 10] for even more safety)

[Manco]

But it's not a casual-friendly FPS. This is turn based RPG.

About half the reason I dislike RPGs is because they’re usually obtuse games that are hard to get into. The other half is because of the hardcore RPG snobs who act like not liking hard games makes you a worse person.

I wouldn’t want to go near Fallout 1 or 2 because I don’t like turn-based RPGs. I like 3, NV and 4 because they aren’t turn-based RPGs, but still have enough RPG elements to make them satisfying to play.

[Havoc]

I've tried playing Fallout 1 on many occasions but I simply can't get past the aged gameplay. For some reason Fallout was not part of my childhood even though it apparently was a popular game at the time. Somehow I just missed it and getting into it 20 years after the release is just impossible I'm sorry to say.

Fallout 4 compared to 3 and NV is still great and still the better game. But having advanced in the story a little more, I do agree that Bethesda's writing is once again mediocre. The actual story arc itself is fairly well put together as long as you don't pay attention to details. But it's those details that fuck it up. Certain responses to major plot devices that any sane person would want to make are completely absent. There's little emotion involved when major things happen and when you finally arrive at the bad guy's doorstep you get zero explanation about why they do what they do or what their role is in the overall story arc. And you get the illusion of free will. Characters will ask you if you want to help and you can say no, but in truth you will be forced to help because if you don't the story won't progress...

Does all that make it a bad game? No, it just makes it poorly narrated. The experience of exploring the wastes, making a story for yourself, building your base, collecting your equipment and gradually becoming more badass is still extremely satisfying. Much more so than in 3 or NV because thanks to the voiced protagonist, I can relate to my own character a LOT more. I do agree though, Fallout has lost a great deal of it's 'role playing' aspect. That's fine, it still plays great. But it plays like an open world shooter, not a role playing game. If perks and stats make a game an RPG then we might as well call CoD an RPG...

[moxco]

About half the reason I dislike RPGs is because they’re usually obtuse games that are hard to get into. The other half is because of the hardcore RPG snobs who act like not liking hard games makes you a worse person.

I wouldn’t want to go near Fallout 1 or 2 because I don’t like turn-based RPGs. I like 3, NV and 4 because they aren’t turn-based RPGs, but still have enough RPG elements to make them satisfying to play.

Being different to what you are used to doesn't make something obtuse. The RPG genre has degenerated into action-adventure + leveling. I feel like too many people try out old RPGs expecting something similar and then encounter a traditional element (like turn-based combat) and write the game off as a defective action-adventure game.

For the record, I don't think for a modern AAA game turn-based combat is appropriate. I can enjoy both.

[Manco]

Being different to what you are used to doesn't make something obtuse.

No, traditional RPGs are obtuse because they are built around more complex interconnected mechanics that I personally find too difficult or tedious to spend time learning. Multitudes of stats to track, multiple characters in the roster who must be managed, skills/weapons/equipment/inventory to be juggled, and most of these different elements are presented in a dizzying system of menus and submenus and screens full of numbers and percentage values.

Gimme a game where I can point a gun and shoot in real time over a game where pointing and shooting takes a turn and does 15 Phys damage any day.

Pokemon is probably the closest to a traditional RPG that I’ll play, and that’s because it’s easy and simplified for kids to get to grips with.

[Manco]

Reviving this thread since I’ve now had a chance to play it and I wanted to post up my first impressions.

I’ve only played for maybe a few hours so far (from the start up to rescuing Nick Valentine and starting the investigation quest), and what’s stood out to me most is how much they need to seriously re-evaluate the gameplay UI. The Pipboy, the crafting, the basebuilding, it all feels clunky to use. As one of the rare people who really liked Skyrim’s UI, F4’s interfaces feel like a major step back, and it gets in the way a lot of the gameplay.

Besides that I’ve no real major complaints. The world feels like an interesting place to explore which is helped by the characters actually looking like people now and having some stronger personalities, the new armor and weapon crafting adds a really nice level of depth and gives me something to tinker with and invest my caps in. The basebuilding stuff is probably something I won’t spend a lot of time with but it feels like there’s enough depth there to have some fun with.

I’m not sure how I feel about the voice-acted player character. It’s a good vocal performance and it makes them feel like a proper character in the plot rather than a faceless voiceless shell, but I can’t help but feel like being a total blank was part of the charm. I don’t know, it feels somehow like I have less freedom in defining who my character is.

My list of minor issues include: please give me more than 4 dialogue options, please add back in the various nice additions from New Vegas which got ditched (perks, hardcore mode etc)

[FrustratedAssassin]

Since you revived the thread, I have to say I stopped playing the game because it's kinda boring and lifeless. At first I thought it was a good game, but the disappointments just piled up until it became a huge disappointing mess and stopped.

I'll just wait for the mods and hopefully the Obsidian Fallout 4-based game.

[Varrok]

Obsidian are currently in making the new South Park game

[FrustratedAssassin]

Obsidian are currently in making the new South Park game

Nope. Ubisoft is making South Park.

Obsidian Entertainment is currently working on three projects; the westernization of Skyforge, the free-to-play multiplayer military shooter Armored Warfare, and Pillars of Eternity: The White March — Part II, which is set to be released in January 2016

So yeah they're not working on Fallout - yet.

[Varrok]

Nope. Ubisoft is making South Park.

My bad.

Anyways,

here's my long-delayed review I promised to make. I wrote the half of it weeks ago and forgot to finish it. Wrote the rest today.

Fallout 4 (You're All Wankers)

I was going to play the game to completion or at least to half of it, but even after fighting with myself through all these days weeks months, I just couldn't get myself into playing this game any longer. It's a bad game, and in comparison to original Fallout games, or any RPGs, it feels abysmal...

So I think I'll just post whatever I noted through first hours of playing, both good and bad stuff. Don't get me wrong, it's hard to find much good stuff in this uninspired, unloved child of Bethesda Softworks.

==Pre-start==
The perfect place to start reviewing is the beginning. After you launch the game you're being welcomed with trailer S.P.E.C.I.A.L. '60s style animated movies. I like them, they do a good job at recreating the feel of original Fallout pipboy movies and are longer and better animated. That was the main reason I kinda hoped the game wouldn't be that bad, or even be good.

After starting a new game you get to make your character via character editor. It's an idea basically copied from Sims4, based on 'sculpting' your character. The problem is it feels really limited, I felt like it could've had more freedom in editing than it has. It's not horrible, I managed to make a cool looking guy (by trying to make a stupid goofy character and failing at that) even despite the limitations.



He's got a long, sharp nose, hence I thought it was a good idea to name him Eagle, and so I did.

==Welcome to year 2003==
The very first thing you can see after getting the control of the camera and the movement of your hero is to see your wife/husband looking at a matte piece of glass that's supposed to be a mirror. That's the part when you realise the game looks really poor even on ultra settings, and yet the hardware requirements does not reflect the video quality at all (my PC was unable to play the game at higher settings than Low, but managed to play games like Crysis 2 or other games that look much much better than this one. Also it ran Fallout 3 perfectly). It's not only a downside of Bethesda's choice to upgrade their own 1997 engine over and over again instead of making something good from scratch, it also shows their laziness, as even 1997 games had reflectable mirrors. Want an example? Duke Nukem 3D was from 1996. Yes, it was 19 years before F4. Oh, and if you're not that bothered with the mirror, the character in front of it is animated in a way that their hands phase through their face. Way to have a great first impression, Bethesda.
The story is that you're a generic person, with a generic wife, and a generic kid. The kid is so generic that the character calls him by "an infant son". Remember real life fathers who call his babies like that? Me neither. You can also admire the developers' effort in naming the baby's bear "Mr. Bear" and other stuff like this. Points for originality.



The most original character in your house is your personal robot, Coddsworth, and by "most original" I mean "exactly like in Fallout 3". To my surprise, however, as I talked to him, he called me by the name I made up! At first I thought it was some sort of text-to-speech, then I discovered he's got a bank of something around 1000 voice clips for more or less popular names. I researched the subject and found out that most of the NPCs would refer to the hero by his name if Bethesda didn't scratch the idea for reasons unknown. He's currently the only NPC who does that.

Even at this point you can realise how glitchy this game is.

After a short while someone's ringing the doorbell and you're supposed to open the door. You can't really walk to it because you're being blocked by an invisible wall a meter away, but you can open it using Force by pressing a button, then it magically opens itself. You might argue that those things I complain about are minor issues, but keep in mind that an abundance of minor issues can impact your experience greatly, and it surely does in case of that game.

Turns out the person at the door was a happy looking salesman-type-of-guy who announced that our family got selected in trying the new Vault. Wait... happy looking? Yes, that's right, in F4 characters have visible face expressions and that's really a step up from stiff Fallout 3 faces. It's not a step up from F1 and F2 which had things like that, but let's not be picky, at least Beth improved one aspect of the game over F3.

That's also when you're introduced to dialogue system, which has been reduced to four dialogue choices at the time. That's not very good itself, but the responses are streamlined (oh, how I abhor that term) dumbed down and always follow the same darn scheme of Question/Good/Bad/Neutral response. I don't like to be treated as an idiot while playing a video game for adults. I also don't think highly of people who defend the system, for those reasons.

Not like these 4 choices matter anyway, from what I've played your choices never matter in the game. You get to go to the Vault anyway, regardless of what you say. In later games, you can deny doing some quests that result in having to do these quests later and that's all the real dialogue freedom you have in that game. Really. Wikipedia says it's a role-playing game and I'm not going to judge this game as not a role playing game. It's shameful and detestable that they did it that way and they had no excuse (apart from getting dumb, careless people to play buy the game) for doing that.

After the guy leaves you get to go to the vault entrace by a very strict path, and if you try going elsewhere, I kid you not, the game drops a nuke on you. That's totally what happens. How bold. And irrational.

While wading through the streets minutes before the nukes come down, looking at the families losing their homes and everything, I think the developers were supposed to make me feel anything. I mean: the idea of the scene is pretty frightening, isn't it? I'd say they must've fucked up it badly if I don't feel anything except boredom and upset about it.

But hey, here's a picture of me standing at the middle of the fence near the invisible wall. Yeah, they're everywhere

==Vault Infinite==

Long story short, you get to the Vault, the nukes come down, but you’re being cryofrozen for years, because that’s a thing now. there’s also a semi-interactive cutscene with your child being stolen but you can do nothing about it. Just like in Bioshock infinite. Or other games. What I mean is, it’s cliché and boring. Also, your generic wife dies. Hope you didn’t spend too much time creating her in the character face editor.

After being unfrozen, your main mission objective is to find your infant son.
And what a clever twist on F3’s amazingly complex and original story that is, oh boy.
You go few steps into the wasteland and see a dog. If you approach it, it will never leave you. Even if you don’t want it. You can’t tell it to leave. You can say mean things to the dog from the very start and it will annoy you until the end of the game. You lose. This awful piece of shit that’s one of the main new features of this game, while being in the previous games so it’s not really any new. BUT IT’S CUTE NOW, SO YOU NEED IT. Also, it can’t die.

No good NPC ever dies in this game. Nearly all good NPCs are completely invincible (they only get knocked out for a short while) and you can do nothing about it. And you know why?

Because this game hates you. It hates your choices, it hates your desire of freedom. The developers hate you and the game hates you.

I left the dog. At least now some part of the game knows I hate it back.

After that you visit a small city, and the locals ask you to do something trivial for them. You can either agree or wait and then agree. The game uses a special type of blackmail. “You don’t want to play by our rules? Okay. We can wait. Eventually you’ll change your mind”. You don’t really DENY a quest. You just… choose to do it later.

In exchange for the job you get access to a Power Armor, that’s just LYING ON THE TOP OF THE BUILDING. IT’S JUST THERE. SOMEBODY PUT IT THERE, and FORGOT, actually. You know, Power Armors are known as a common thing that’s just lying anywhere. That’s totally not a cheap plot device to get armor early, because Beth doesn’t give a darn shit about lores, continuity, Fallout series, whatever.

Once you get to the power armor (and fight the first Deathclaw [in fight as buggy as they always are in Bethesda games]) you quickly realise the fusion cores in PA don’t last 100 years as stated in the first fallout games but, like, 10 minutes.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m such a nitpicker. 10 minutes and 100 years ( 52.6 mln minutes) are almost the same deal, and the developers clearly care about the franchise. I’m sorry, it’s totally on me.
Some time after that I got fed up with the game (and it lagged as fuck, unoptimized turd of a game).

==Final Thoughts==

I abhor this game. It’s everything wrong with the industry in one game (maybe minus microtransactions and F2P). I can understand somebody likes a game I don’t, as in some games I can see there’s more than meets the idea, some creative ideas or effort. There’s no such thing in Fallout 4. It’s the most basic, shameless moneygrab of a game I can think of. It has NO redeeming values. It costs A LOT. It runs like SHIT. If you like Fallout 4, fuck you.

Bethesda ruined the series/10

==Extras==

-The in-game computers now have playable minigames. They’re ripoffs of classic arcade titles, so they’re technically better than the game they’re in.
-Regarding (lack of) decision in dialogues: some dialogues despite having 4 options have only one valid dialogue option, using others just makes the dialogue loop forever, until you choose the one the game wants you to choose.
-One of the NPC characters becomes a companion after you talked to her (Piper). Before you talk to her, if you try touching any of her stuff, she will kill you. If she’s your buddy she stops caring about her house and belongings completely.
-The village building turns out to be completely unnecessary. Nobody would ever attack your village anyway, or so I heard (also, it's not really a unique system anyway. It works the same as in e.g. Unturned free steam game)
-If you want to be a bad guy, there's one binary choice at the end of the game (or so I heard). Not much of an evil path besides that
Here’s the small collection of screenshots I made while playing this joke, if anyone cares. It’s all of them, no editing.

[FrustratedAssassin]

I think you did something wrong there with the link at the end

[Varrok]

Oops. Sorry. I confused BBtags with HTMLtags. Thanks.

[Crashpunk]

Okay. You bring up some good points Varrok. Which I freely admit I agree with.

It's a pretty dumbed down Fallout game. It's a very dumbed down RPG. I cannot stress enough how bad the side quests are in this game. They're literally just either Kill [Raiders, Ghouls, Super Mutants], or Defend a Settlement. It gets old fast. Even the main quest has some of that.

And yeah the dialog doesn't make a difference towards the quest. Only choosing a Faction does. (And most of them are boring as fuck).

The glitches. Some of them are inexcusable. It's like Bethesda are fully aware that their engine has problems, yet do nothing to really tackle it because it's become almost an in-game or a meme that Bethesda games are buggy.

However.

I've spend over 150 hours in the game. So I guess. Fuck me for liking it...?

I've had; and still having a blast with Fallout 4. In terms of gameplay, gunplay, graphics, animation and character models. To me. They're a great improvement over 3 and NV.

The world is whilst small, is well imagined and fun to explore. I've got lost just exploring. Just like Skyrim and the other Fallout games. Some of the characters and companions have nice backstories and quests. Cait comes to mind. I loved her mini-quest. And the building mechanic, whilst not perfect. Is a lot of fun.

And that's the key thing about Fallout 4. It's fun. It has it's problems yeah. BIG problems. And isn't my favorite Fallout game. (Which is still Fallout: New Vegas). But i'm enjoying it. And thanks to the modding scene being fully underway, I can enjoy it for a lot longer. I already have 40+ mods installed and they really improve the game.

I'm waiting with baited breath the DLC, Season Pass will add a lot more to the game. It seems that way. Not like I like that by the way. I frigging despise Season Passes and long for the days of buying a game and having everything already.

Honestly Varrok. I'd consider replaying it. You didn't really get that far into to it before you made up your mind about it. I know you won't because you seem very adamant about it.

BUT if decide to. Just ignore the god awful questing and just explore the Commonwealth. It's honestly what's kept me coming back to the game. Hell. Even install some mods which fixes some of the mess as well as making it more entertaining.

oh and I hope you don't literally hate me for liking the game. Because, well y'know. That'd be stupid as hell.

[Varrok]

I got more emotional writing the latter half of the review. My guts twist when I try to remember this game.

I don't hate you, you silly bastard. You're a nice, kind fellow. And it's not that I forbid you liking the game. It's just...

...it's just

...it's just fuck you, how can anyone like this garbage, this game is awful I hope you understand. I do not want any more games like that. I want games that are born with artistic effort and clever ideas behind them. I want something new, something original and fun. I don't want cold calculations, I don't want just reused concepts. F4 feels just like those. There's more "This is currently trending, let's add it to the game / This would sell" in this game than "It's fun, let's add it for the heck of it!". It doesn't feel like any writers of this game actually *wanted* to write it, of pure passion, not because of paychecks. It's completely generic. I don't think any amount of time spent with this game are going to change my mind, because, so far, everything I experienced points this exact way I described.

Sure, I can give it another try later, (when I had a better PC to run this badly-optimized game), as life is all about giving multiple chances but, unlike people, works of art don't really change. And I don't really think my judgement is at fault here.

[Phylum]

Varrok you tried too hard to hate Fallout 4 and your above post is garbage. If you put more time and effort into exploring the game and being unbiased you could have written a much more effective summary of why it's bad. Your frustration with the games industry ruined a post I was really looking forward to

Anyway the game's ok. It's passable in most areas, and there are a lot of those area. It's a jack of all trades, and that's why everyone loves it. If you go in with an open mind and heart you'll find something fun in there. This game isn't art, and it won't be remembered in 100 years like the original Fallouts will be, but games that are fun have their place. It's a pity the mainstream media weren't harder on it, but that's just the climate at the moment.

I've said it before and I'll say it again though - this game shouldn't have been a Fallout title. If it was made by another developer with a different name there would have been a very different response to it, but it would still be popular and fun for most people. I don't know if I've said this here, but Fallout 3 should have been a new IP and this should have been its sequel.

[Varrok]

Varrok you tried too hard to hate Fallout 4 and your above post is garbage. If you put more time and effort into exploring the game and being unbiased you could have written a much more effective summary of why it's bad. Your frustration with the games industry ruined a post I was really looking forward to

I'd have probably explored it more if not for terrible memory management in this game. I have whole 6 gigabytes of RAM and it's never enough for F4. After an hour of continously playing this optimizabomination the framerate drops to 0,5 FPS and it's hard to even close the game. This is just shameful. That's bad coding at its finest.

I admit the review's a bit biased. The second half, at least. I wrote it today, on impulse. But I can honestly say, it's not that hard to find other reasons, all perfectly unbiased and logical, to why this game is really, really bad. I just might not be the one for the task.

Anyway the game's ok. It's passable in most areas, and there are a lot of those area. It's a jack of all trades, and that's why everyone loves it. If you go in with an open mind and heart you'll find something fun in there. This game isn't art, and it won't be remembered in 100 years like the original Fallouts will be, but games that are fun have their place. It's a pity the mainstream media weren't harder on it, but that's just the climate at the moment.

You know, if you said the same about Fallout 3 some time after its release I might have even agreed with you, as I can understand Fallout 3 has some... moderately... fun... aspects. But this game feels infinitely worse.

And I did complete Fallout 3, even the DLCs, despite the fact I wouldn't recommend it to any Fallout fan. I initially thought I was able to complete F4 as well, because, why not, but each new step, new dialogue feels like a deep insult to my intelligence, and that's something that's apparently too much for me. I was unable to get any fun of the game. Even hating it hadn't given me any bitter-sweet pleasure, like it did with Fallout 3. It's just sorrow.

Honestly. It's weird. I don't remember any other game that made me feel this bad after playing it.

Oh wait.

Deus Ex Invisible War. Avoid like fire.

...even DE:IW I completed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again though - this game shouldn't have been a Fallout title. If it was made by another developer with a different name there would have been a very different response to it, but it would still be popular and fun for most people. I don't know if I've said this here, but Fallout 3 should have been a new IP and this should have been its sequel.

Fair enough.

[Alf Shall Rise]

I've been playing Fallout 4 a bit here and there over the past week and I really enjoy shooting the monsters and bad raider folks with my shotgun and other guns and seeing gore and stuff with the bloody mess perk

It's ok so far, although I've really only been wandering around aimlessly while killing random enemies and doing really simple sidequests I randomly come across. Exploring is fun but I'm sure I'll get bored of it soon enough. Maybe I'll actually do the main quest next time I play.