Paladin Skylark

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: "In a new story by Game Informer, “The Making of Fallout 4,” director Todd Howard admitted that Destiny was a perfect template because it shares some crucial technical similarities to Fallout 4. Specifically, how Destiny presents action at 30fps, the exact framerate that Fallout 4 will run. Bethesda also hired former Bungie developer Josh Hamrick to concentrate “intently on tuning firearms." Source 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: “Just like Skyrim, there are mods that can break your game pretty wildly, and so we have some safety things on the console for that, but at the same time, we are going to let people break their game,” game director Todd Howard explained to IGN. Source 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! New gun physics bring new life to fights Features like Settlements add new gameplay elements Mods coming to console Oh bollocks! The normal glitchy Bethesda offering Companions have little back-story What do you like/dislike about the game? Let us know below or on the forums! [gallery columns=5" link="file" ids="3627,3628,3629,3633,3634] All images obtained from Fallout 4 Wiki