Reflecting on Fallout 4 after about thirty hours reveals a mix of progress and challenges.
Reflecting on Fallout 4 after about thirty hours reveals a mix of progress and challenges.
I wanted to share my opinion on Fallout 4 after putting a good amount of time into it. This might be a little long once I'm done, so for those who don't want to read: I think it's a great game. It's not revolutionary, but it is definitely worth investing in. The storytelling is great, far better than anything Bethesda's done in the past. The graphics are pretty good despite a few bad textures. The combat feels very good, and the base building and weapon crafting are amazing (although the controls in the base building sections can be very clunky and frustrating). And the world that they've created this time around is very immersive and full of fun things to explore, people to meet, and places to explore and loot. The bad things about the game are the sometimes VERY frustrating dialogue controls and the dumbass companion AI. Now for the nitty-gritty: Graphics: I think that the graphics in this game are pretty good. Not great, but not exceptionally bad. The lighting is very well done in this game, and I think that the implementation of Nvidia's Godrays look amazing. The textures is where the game loses points, however. Most textures in the game are okay. The textures for guns are great, and rusty metal also looks good in this game. However, there are also quite a few textures that are quite frankly embarrassing and look like they belong on a game for the original PlayStation. The animations are overall a lot better in my opinion in Fallout 4 compared to Fallout 3 or Skyrim. But that isn't to say that there aren't bad ones. The lips of characters that are talking make me cringe when I watch because they are so bad. Some of the 3rd Person animations are also kind of odd, such as sticking yourself with a stimpak. Gameplay: Fallout 4 feels much more like a shooter than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, which I greatly appreciate. Combat feels very fluid and gun play feels very nice here. Melee combat, however, does feel pretty disappointing and clunky. There is a gun bashing feature now that allows you to hit enemies that charge you with the stock of your weapon, which is pretty satisfying as you watch them fall on their ass and proceed to blow their heads off. Grenades also get their own button now so that you don't have to completely unequip your gun just so you can throw a grenade, which is very nice. Bethesda, however, in their infinite wisdom thought that it would be best to by default have the gun bash and the grenades share a button. It can be changed, thankfully, so that you can avoid accidentally throwing a grenade at your feet and losing your legs while you're trying to show a mole rat who's boss like me. Companion AI is pretty awful at times. I've had Dogmeat as my companion throughout my time with the game. While he does do some very useful things like bring you guns and show you containers that have ammo and meds (he even brought me a missile launcher once, which was awesome), other times he's a complete idiot that gets in your way, blocks your passages, and sprints into battle at the first sight of an enemy even if you're crouched and trying to sneak around. It isn't that big of a deal since it is optional to have a companion with you, but it should be pointed out. Another really nice feature is the new looting system, in which you can take items from containers and dead bodies by simply hovering over them. I love this feature and it makes me feel much more immersed in the great world that Bethesda has built in Fallout 4. There are a TON of locations to explore in this game. In the thirty hours that I've played, I've been mostly exploring/side questing, And I've only touched half of the map. I still haven't explored everything in that half of the map or done all of the sidequests in it, so there is plenty to do in this game if that's a concern of yours like it is mine. I also really like the new perk system. There is no levelcap in this game, so you can simply keep leveling up your special skills all the way to ten if your heart desires. There are also a great deal of perks that you can unlock and rank up among themselves, which keeps the game interesting and fun. Most probably won't have a problem with this aspect of the game, but I think that there is too much ammo and meds/Stimpaks lying about the various locations in this game. I know that sounds kind of dumb, but for me it takes away from the post-apocalyptic feel. I don't see the need to be smart with my supplies anymore since I've pretty much got an endless supply of ammo in all of the containers around the Commonwealth. The Base building feature is definitely unique and awesome. A good portion of my time spent so far has been building up my defenses and building a house for my settlement buddies and I to hang out and sleep. I like how you can bring in all of the junk that you find in the wastes and scrap it so that you can build things like walls, power generators and defenses with them. They do a good job of scattering all of these different items around the map that contain materials like copper, steel, wood and circuitry in places that make sense and add to immersion. The controls while putting things up like walls can be very, very frustrating at times, though. Walls will snap where you don't want them to or they won't go where you need them to and it can get really messy really fast. But overall I think it is implemented well. Storytelling: Bethesda gets more points from me on their delivery of story in Fallout 4. I've heard from many that the story in this game isn't very gripping and is very predictable. I haven't played enough of the main story to really tell if this is the case or not, so I won't comment on that aspect of it. But the delivery of dialogue and story aspects is great. Each encounter gets a little mini-cutscene (if you can call it that) similar to Witcher 3 in that it zooms in on the characters faces. I also really like that the character is voiced out in this game because it makes the story believable in my eyes. However, I do understand the criticism that since the character is voiced it kind of detracts from the character being you as it would be in their past role playing games like the previous Fallouts or Elder Scrolls games. The combination of good voice acting and the little cutscenes for dialogue make the story engaging and keeps things fresh as you meet the countless characters around the Commonwealth. The dialogue cutscenes can be buggy and awkward at times, though, as your character will sometimes face the wrong way for some reason or some strange anomaly happens in the background with the other characters. Faces also look pretty good in cutscenes and dialogue. I like that every person I meet, even all of the different raiders and various peoples of the waste, seem to have a different face and voice. It has always bugged me in past Bethesda games that faces were often reused as well as the voices of other people. That isn't the case this time around and is a definite plus for immersion. Technicality: This game does have some technical problems that it is important to address for people that are thinking about picking this up. There are a lot of complaints of the game crashing and a lot of random frame drops and fps issues. I can definitely attest to the fps issues. My system consists of an i5 4690k, 8gb of 1600mhz ram and 2 gtx 780s. The game doesn't have an SLI profile at the time of writing this, and if it is enabled the framerate worse than with just one card active. Some people have had success by forcing alternate frame rendering 2 in the Nvidia control panel, but I've had no such luck improving my framerate in this way, so I've just turned SLI off for now. And still, even on the game's lowest settings, there are spots on the map where I cannot keep 60 fps. I know that I don't have the most powerful system, and the 780 is no slouch and neither is the 4690k. The graphics are good, but nowhere near good enough to keep a system like mine from getting 60 fps. I get a lot of framedrops randomly in the woods and in big cities like Lexington and Diamon City. Hopefully Bethesda can iron out these issues and make everybody happy again. I did also have two crashes in my thirty hours, which isn't excusable at all, but the game does have a pretty decent autosave feature so I wasn't that upset about it. Overall: I think that this is a great game, and definitely better than the other installments in the franchise. If I had to rate this game out of 10, I'd give it a solid 8/10. Once the technical problems with this game are ironed out, I could see that number rising to an 8.5 or even a 9/10. It is an interesting game with a lot of new elements that make it great fun. I could confidently recommend this game to you if you're on the fence about getting it.
After 13 hours of thinking, it really stands out. It’s significantly better than the 3/NV approach and actually lets you build your own weapon? Wow, that’s impressive!
After ten hours of play, I realized it actually works well for a proper shooter once! New Vegas remains the more fun option, in my opinion.
We completely understood your opinion. Although I found the story quite enjoyable, it could have been improved. Still, I’d rate it an 8 out of 10.
SLI doesn't seem to function properly these days. Despite all the encouragement from gamers, the leading title on Steam doesn't support it. It feels like a joke—SLI/Xfire is just a temporary trick. It occasionally works, which is disappointing. If such a game lacks SLI/Xfire support, what else will be affected? It's almost like the biggest release ever was this big. Although it wasn't as polished as Bioshock Infinite, I suspect SLI did help make it shine.