Fifty Hours With Fallout 4

An Adventure Through The Commonwealth

I am 50 hours into Fallout 4, I have beaten the main storyline not once, but twice and one

would think that after such a period that I've finally found enough of my time to come write

this review. This is absolutely not the case, I wish nothing more than to be playing Fallout 4

rather than sat here writing these words. Despite closing off the main story line (which is

much longer than I had expected) twice, I still find myself wanting to go

back and explore every inch of the world that Bethesda has hand-crafted. Let's delve into what

it's like during the first 50 hours and for those of you who haven't played - this is an

entirely spoiler free/honest review of my experience with Bethesda's new offering.

Let me begin by saying that Metacritic is not an informed place to make a decision on

purchasing a video game. I say this due to the abhorrent reviews that Fallout 4 has received

since it's launch with many players choosing to give Fallout a 0/10 which has completely bombed

the overall score; no game deserves a 0/10 - no matter how completely disgusting it may be.

Therefore take the following images with a grain of salt - the professional reviews have a much

higher score than the user reviews, as you can see with your special, special eyes.

At the beginning of Fallout 4, you glimpse into the world of 2077, the year the bombs dropped

and The Great War began - for reasons I'll leave out (spoilers!) you wake up 200 years later

after exiting Vault 111. The first thing you notice about Fallout 4 is that, unlike

predecessors, this game is vibrant and full of colour. The vibrance does not stop at the colour

scheme, immediately upon being thrust into this new wasteland you notice all of the nuances

that make it a Fallout game. The songs on the radio, the characters you meet, the places you

visit all feel familiar but they don't feel re-used which is a trap Bethesda games usually fall

victim to.

Speaking of traps that Bethesda games fall victim to, gun physics in previous iterations have

been clunky. This time around Todd Howard looked to other games for inspiration:

Bethesda's new acquisition proved to be a success as each gun in Fallout 4 has its own weight

and feel to it as you shoot; this, along with all of the modifications you can make to the guns

included in the game, will have you testing what works best for you long into the span of the

game.

Leaving out the Main Storyline, the side quests for the games 4 factions along with the all new Settlement Builder feature (think The Sims: Wasteland / Junk Scavenger 2015) will keep you busy until the DLC comes out starting in early 2016 and Mod support coming to Xbox One/PS4 in 2016 as well:

The Settlement Building is the dark horse in Fallout 4, initially it didn't appeal to me all that much - however once I began to build, the rest of the game became extremely unimportant to me. Needless to say I spent four hours building a castle and then realized I ran out of components to build with. Finally, all of the discarded coffee cups and wrenches you run into have use as you can scrap them down into materials to build a settlement for the settlers of The Commonwealth.

Allow me to finish with this: Fallout 4 is not Fallout 3. It is not New Vegas. And yet, it feels like an extension of those games - it takes the good parts of previous iterations and improves upon MOST (famous Bethesda bugs not withstanding) of the issues that plagued the series in the past. If you are a fan of Fallout, you may not like this game, simply for the fact that it is indeed, different. If you have never played Fallout in your life I encourage you to give it a chance - in fact even if you have played Fallout I encourage you to give this game the time to grow on you before you give it a 0/10 rating.

With that said and done Fallout 4 gets a 9/10 - do you agree?

Oh yeahs!

Oh bollocks!

What do you like/dislike about the game? Let us know below or on the forums!

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All images obtained from Fallout 4 Wiki