Fallout 4 Review

Now that we are a little ways out, I can't remember any entertainment product that had more hype leading up to its release than Fallout 4 (though it was eclipsed a few weeks later by the new Star Wars film). The entire Internet went bonkers, with even mainstream news and information sites feeding the flames. Dedicated gaming sites were flooded with premature apologies to girlfriends and wives for the time that was about to be reallocated from them to the game, and fan art, speculation and rumors ran rampant. As soon as Bethesda's new game hit shelves, those speculators and rumor-mongers immediately switched gears, discussing whether or not the game lived up to the enormous pre-release excitement. "Well," you are asking, "Did it?" Like a great song with a horrible chorus or bridge, the answer is somewhere in between. There are definitely missteps in the game, but for the most part it is exactly what everyone wanted and hoped for.

Since Fallout 4 is an impossibly huge game, let's take things slow and a step at a time. First up, the game's storyline. Fallout 4 drops you into the year 2077, where everything has a very 1950's vibe to it. If that doesn't mean anything to you personally, imagine what Eastern Airlines or GE thought the future would be look like as evidenced by their aging attractions at Walt Disney World. Donna Reed housewives, men with hats, rounded tube TV sets, mechanical do-dads intentioned to make modern life easier and the like. Who knew the future would more closely resemble the film Pleasantville than Futurama? Anyway, this opening segment sets up the story nicely, and once the bombs start falling and you enter the Vault, the idyllic world is erased forever. Instead of pastels and good manners, you emerge from the Vault to a world devastated; lawlessness abounds, society is all but gone, and monsters roam the land. Your quest in Fallout 4, though, is much more personal than the huge wasteland suggests. Somehow, your son has gone missing and scouring the expanse is necessary to reunited with him.

This main quest brings to light the first of the game's problems. With all the quests, people to meet, and things to find, the search for your son is easily forgotten, by you and your character both. As you dig deeper into the Commonwealth (the game's main setting, modeled after Boston), you'll often go HOURS without hearing mention of your son and his whereabouts. This effectively erases the kind of panic and single-mindedness experienced by a parent looking for a lost child, and it ultimately hurts the game's immersion and believability. Getting to know the residents of the Commonwealth, good and evil, is as compelling as it was in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but without a strong main storyline, the plot often feels like a step backward for the series.

On top of that, the game feels much less open-ended for two reasons: the lack of any real good/evil events or major choices and lacking dialogue options. Did you play Fallout 3? If you did, you'll remember a little town called Megaton. Relatively early in the game, you were faced with an impossible decision to save the town or let it be vaporized by a nuclear explosion. Both decisions had major consequences on the story, and it left an indelible impression on everyone who was forced to choose. Fallout 4 doesn't have anything like Megaton. Most decisions are clearly either good or evil, with some indifferent thrown in for good measure. Even seemingly major choices, such as who to side with and which groups to join, have very little effect on how the story progresses, outside of differing sets of quests to tackle. A lot of this seems to stem from the full-voiced main character and slim pickings on dialogue decisions. By having to record so much dialogue, it feels like Bethesda intentionally limited your options to fall in line with the massive amount of voice over work needed. By no means is Fallout 4 a Final Fantasy XIII-style slog from point a to point b with no deviation or choice? No way. But, again, limited options feel like a step backward.

Ok, before we go further, let's talk briefly about the character creation. While Fallout 4 is by no means the best looking game on PS4 (more on this later), the character creation is absolutely fantastic. With options, sliders and colors, there are a zillion different ways to customize your player character, and I spent nearly an hour doing just that. I'm a big fan of good character creation, and Fallout 4 has possibly the best system ever seen. Oh, and if you are bored, head over to Reddit or YouTube to see what people have managed to do with this powerful tool. Celebrities, presidential candidates, even Nigel from The Wild Thornberrys, pretty much anyone you can think of has been created in Fallout 4, a testament to the care and detail you'll find here.

I mentioned that the graphics aren't exactly the best the PS4 can do, and that is an unmistakable truth. Sure, the presentation would explode the minds of N64 or PSOne gamers, but today's players will notice the game can look very last-gen. It's not uncommon to run into some framerate slowdown here and there, muddy textures pop up fairly frequently and its easily apparent that there is a lack of HD polish that games like Batman: Arkham Knight or Bloodborne have in spades. To be totally fair, New Vegas and Fallout 3 were not graphical powerhouses in their day either. Fallout 4 looks above average most of the time, but it's a misstep excused by being the kind of game that doesn't really demand the highest visual quality.

What kind of game is that, exactly? Fallout 4 is a western RPG by every sense of the descriptor, and its shooter exterior belies a very deep, stat-based game that has more in common, mechanics-wise, with the first Fallout games than it does a Halo or Borderlands. Like Skyrim, the game can be played equally effectively in first or third person perspective, with the returning VATS combat system being implemented more effectively than ever. This system slows time, allowing you to take full advantage of stat boosts, buff and bullet placement when fighting, meaning the game has much more strategy in combat than just clicking the trigger as fast as possible. In fact, there is no better way to get killed than indiscriminately firing on enemies. Fallout 4 isn't shy about pitting you against monsters you have no chance of besting, especially at early levels, so not only will you die, like, a lot, you'll also be forced to learn the VATS system if you have any hope of progressing in the game. Opinions are somewhat split on the combat, but I found that its depth and fun kept me playing, even when the main story had been forgotten and side-questing had grown stale.

Another welcome wrinkle to the combat and gameplay as a whole is the ability to recruit companions, NPCs that will aid in battle, carry some of your ever-heavier gear and stick with you as you explore and fight. The most notable among these is Dogmeat, a stray dog who you encounter early and will probably end up sticking with for most of your playtime. Having him around is endlessly beneficial, turning the tides of more battles than I can count and searching out items and secrets I may never have otherwise seen. Human companions are slightly less useful, and I found myself using them more as pack mules than equals. Dogmeat is a must, but humans never felt all that essential outside of making sure I could get all my crap from one place to another.

All that crap you find and collect brings us to the part of the game that feels most open, but is also a frustrating ordeal, crafting. With all the junk you find in the wasteland, you can craft literally ANY and EVERYTHING you can imagine. From weapons to buildings, Fallout 4's crafting system is only limited by your imagination. But it can also be extremely frustrating. Carrying bits and pieces you MIGHT need later can really weigh you down, and once you get into building and maintaining settlements, the game feels like it devolves into a cat-and-mouse game of balancing what you need versus what you can physically carry and hang onto (hence the pack mule companions). Making things worse is an inventory system that never feels intuitive or easy to use, and somehow painstakingly worrying about what goes where and why, sometimes for extended periods, detracts from the gameplay quite a bit. The crafting system is downright amazing, and the settlement building and maintaining feels free-form and very cool, but the necessity of micromanagement of an inventory that never feels completely in your control soured both endeavors for me.

Fallout 4 is an amazingly huge game, and the 1,600 words I've written here don't feel like I've even begun to really cover every aspect of the game. You could put 500 hours into Fallout 4 and still not see everything, which fits with people's high expectations. Unfortunately, story issues and inventory management ding the game's overall fun, with other niggling concerns and misfires amplifying their annoyance. Did I put over 100 hours into the game before even starting this review? You bet. Did I enjoy it? For the most part, but perfect game Fallout 4 is not. If you like western RPGs, strategic shooters or anything Bethesda's done before, Fallout 4 is probably already in your PS4. If you are on the fence, know that while the game can be considered a great one, it isn't without some faults.