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Fallout 4 is here and it’s now time for this Christmas 2015 heavyweight to enter the ring, facing off against the likes of Assassins Creed Syndicate, Star Wars Battlefront, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 (review is coming once the PC version is fixed), and the newly released Just Cause 3 to name but a few. So here we have another time consuming massive open world to explore and save, just like Bethesda’s previous open world games (The Elder Scrolls series and previous 2 Fallout games), there are gazillions of things to see and do and of course if you have the time try and sort out this areas issues for the local inhabitants!
Much like how The Elder Scrolls always starts with some form of captive who will become the saviour of that given area and game, Fallout sees a resident from one of the vast vaults where survivors live underground with full amenities leave for a specific reason. In the case of Fallout 4, the vault is a lot smaller than Vault 101 from Fallout 3. This time there are cryo chambers – a few rooms have these in them but nothing on the scale of Vault 101 to really explore as you are virtually guided out of the vault.
After creating your character (choice between male or female) and doing a full on facial configure in the same way as prior open world games from Bethesda, you are quietly living in one of the Nuketown type places you used to see on the old nuclear tests – space age-looking TVs and a servant robot. This small home will have you interacting with a few different objects and people. You then get a knock on the door. It is a vault salesman and you and your family have been awarded free entry into the local vault, given your time as a soldier if nuclear war breaks out. A few seconds after signing the paperwork, a rather large explosion happens in the distance and you have to run for the vault. Once getting to the lift, you see the nuclear mushroom as you descend to safety. Here you follow a corridor and are asked to step into a machine to test vitals – little did you know that yourself, wife and son are being cryogenically frozen. You wake from sleeping to see someone opening your wife’s chamber, take your son and kill your wife. Of course you are helpless and end up drifting back off to sleep after seeing the carnage. Once awake and saying goodbye to your wife, swearing revenge on the killers and a promise to rescue your son, you work your way through the vault back to the surface and the wasteland around the Boston Massachusetts area.
Fallout 4 Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1 [1080p 60FPS PC ULTRA Settings] – No Commentary
– MKIceAndFire
Gameplay in Fallout 4 is essentially a rinse and repeat affair, almost identical to the 2 prior Fallout games (Fallout 3 & New Vegas). It is also very similar to The Elder Scrolls series with the large open world and hundreds of locations to find and explore. You will notice an icon appearing on your compass at the bottom of the screen so you can either go visit it to see just what it is or memorise for later – personally I love going on these small expeditions as you never know who you will meet or just what you will find, but more importantly it unlocks a new fast travel location, and this can be handy when doing missions getting closer to where you may want to be instead of long treks through the hazardous open. Granted, sometimes you will hit a brick wall and come across enemies that are way to tough to tackle presently (super mutants etc) but at least the location will be stored for when you have levelled-up and are ready to tackle what is there.
Now, like I said, your story is to avenge your wife’s death and rescue your son. The thing is, there are so many other things at play – shortly after getting your companion dog, you will be heading out towards Diamond City. On the way, you will come across a small town and it is being attacked by raiders. Here, you can just let the raiders get on with it or you can decide to help out, the latter opening up a whole new set of missions and The Minutemen (Check out their history on Wikia), another faction that used to be quite large until something went wrong and citizens lost faith in them. So here is where you get the Brotherhood of Steel Power Armour and fend off the raiders. This then moves the NPC to your starting point and it is now named Sanctuary. So, you head off doing small menial tasks for various people recruiting for the Minutemen and telling people to head to Sanctuary etc.
I have to say that I didn’t even touch the main quest until around 12 hours into the game!!
Once again, you move through the world in first-person, or you can – if you wish – go for third-person. Combat can either be completely live or using just the VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System). Personally, I tend to use a mixture of both systems in place. If just using the VATS, then your action points need to be at a certain level to be able to attack – this can be a bit time – consuming and survival can be tougher. Use VATS to get a few shots off at enemies heads or torso etc, which will stagger or kill them, allowing you to concentrate on another enemy and so on. There is also a base-building mechanic – early in the game, you are asked to put rooves on some of the houses and build some beds. I found this side of things quite irritating, having to salvage stuff I didn’t want and then mess about trying to position stuff in first-person. At one point, I had a stream of square metal roof pieces, linking two buildings just to meet the requirement of the quest to get it over and done with. There is also an early mission for the Minutemen, where you have to put up a propaganda speaker and then build a generator. Next, you must stand outside of the work table and access the build menu and link power from the generator to the speaker – not a big task but it took me over 20 minutes to figure out just how to do it, with the game constantly telling me to power the speaker – understandably becoming became infuriating pretty quick.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game plus conclusions.
Fallout 4 Gameplay Walkthrough Part 2 [1080p 60FPS PC ULTRA Settings] – No Commentary
– MKIceAndFire
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!