Fallout 4 Review - Post-Apocalyptic Warlord Simulator 2287

Conrad Zimmerman

New member
Dec 24, 2013
588
0
0
Fallout 4 Review - Post-Apocalyptic Warlord Simulator 2287

Fallout 4 has some concessions to make a more accessible game, but the wasteland is as alluring as ever.

Read Full Article
 

Barbas

ExQQxv1D1ns
Oct 28, 2013
33,804
0
0
Not long now, my pretty...not long at all.

Thanks for the words, Paladin Rad.
 

Naqel

New member
Nov 21, 2009
345
0
0
Disappointingly high final score for a disappointingly lacking final product(I've seen the leaks).

Even on a scale from 7 to 10, Fallout 4 is a 6 at best.
 

ShakerSilver

Professional Procrastinator
Nov 13, 2009
885
0
0
Naqel said:
Disappointingly high final score for a disappointingly lacking final product(I've seen the leaks).

Even on a scale from 7 to 10, Fallout 4 is a 6 at best.
Same. It's a pretty lackluster game. Map is somehow smaller than Fallout 3 and just as empty. Gunplay is rather subpar. RPG mechanics seem like last minute additions hastily shoved in there. The real dealbreaker is how awful the story and characters are. It's just so laughably bad, especially the main story's ending.

That's not even mentioning the bugs and poor performance on some platforms. And yet people will gobble it up and when confronted with something bad they'll state "mods will fix it". They better hope they don't have to pay for them too.

Oh, and just like Fallout 3 before it, the ending is only influenced by a binary choice you make at the very end of the game. No nuance, no taking accordance of your previous choices in the story, just ending A or ending B. Just as bad as Mass Effect, but at least this didn't have a whole trinity of choice-making to ignore.
 

Andy Shandy

Fucked if I know
Jun 7, 2010
4,797
0
0
Sounds closer to Fallout 3 than New Vegas.

Ah well. I'll probably pick it up at some point, but it can wait.
 

Erttheking

Member
Legacy
Oct 5, 2011
10,845
1
3
Country
United States
Doesn't seem that bad. The streamlined dialogue sucks but you said the characters are interesting, so I think I can get over it.

Settlements sound like a bucket of fun.
 

Naqel

New member
Nov 21, 2009
345
0
0
Smilomaniac said:
In what way are we going to be dissapointed, apart from the minimalized dialogue options?
Will someone like me who obsessively keeps an eye out for details be wasting all my time actually discovering the game?
Is it just a sandbox shooter without actual content?
It drifts further away from the style of writing from the originals/NV, it is mechanically less RPG and more shooter than F3.
The world is about as detailed as it was in F3, there's things to find, but they have little meaning and lack impact.
For the most part, yes: you're engaged primarily through gunplay, rather than intellectually or emotionally.
 

Conrad Zimmerman

New member
Dec 24, 2013
588
0
0
Naqel said:
Disappointingly high final score for a disappointingly lacking final product(I've seen the leaks).

Even on a scale from 7 to 10, Fallout 4 is a 6 at best.
Oh, well, if you've seen the leaks, that's exactly the same as having played it. Despite effectively killing myself to play this thing for 60 hours in a week to write this, I'll bow to your superior knowledge.

Setting aside that numerical scores in reviews are pretty much bullshit, sorry, the game is really good. It may not be the game you wanted. It's not the game I wanted in many, many ways, but I cannot deny that it is a soundly designed game that does the most important things in Fallout right.
 

Erttheking

Member
Legacy
Oct 5, 2011
10,845
1
3
Country
United States
Smilomaniac said:
The real fans
Oh don't pull that No True Scotsman ploy. I got into the series on Fallout 3, loved New Vegas, tried to go back to 1 and 2 and thought they were boring as sin. Do I have to revoke my true Fallout fan card?
 

Conrad Zimmerman

New member
Dec 24, 2013
588
0
0
Smilomaniac said:
I'm guessing that this review had to be churned out in no time, but I miss more information on a lot of things like how varied the locations are, if factions are interesting and lock eachother out or not, does the setting make sense (What do they eat? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0]) and more things of that nature.
It's also already over 3000 words. There's a limit to how much you can expect the average person to want to read. The setting doesn't make sense because Fallout has never made sense, so there's no problem there. The locations are decently varied, though the game classifies them in some different ways based on their function pre-war to help you figure out what materials you may scavenge there.

Smilomaniac said:
How mature is the game? Is prostitution still around or has it been shoved to the side in this age of political correctness?

If it's still there, is it cheesy or does it aptly show the desperate situation of the wasteland?
I can't confirm prostitution, as I haven't run across it (and I wouldn't say the inclusion of it makes a game mature; hate it when used as a catch-all for sexual content, as sexual content can be totally juvenile) but the game does feature some romance options that can develop with companions, and you can be in a polyamorous relationship, so it's really kind of progressive in some ways.

Smilomaniac said:
Believe it or not, Fallout used to be an RPG and that meant being in an immersive setting and not just a gimmicky shooter]
Believe it or not, Fallout is still an RPG, and Fallout 3 was too. The application of first-person shooting in combat doesn't invalidate the RPG elements of a game.

Conrad Zimmerman said:
Long time fans may be disappointed with the game's new direction.
Smilomaniac said:
In what way are we going to be dissapointed, apart from the minimalized dialogue options?
Will someone like me who obsessively keeps an eye out for details be wasting all my time actually discovering the game?
Is it just a sandbox shooter without actual content?
If you hated the direction Fallout 3 went, then I wouldn't even bother. Just go No Mutants Allowed and grumble with the other people who have been left behind.
 

Bob_McMillan

Elite Member
Aug 28, 2014
5,175
1,851
118
Country
Philippines
So many differing opinions... Eugh.

Then again why do I care, the only time I would pick up this game is when Bethesda (more likely modders) fix and polish the game and when I (if ever) get a gaming PC. Mods on Skyrim and New Vegas are just amazing.

Conrad Zimmerman said:
Oh, well, if you've seen the leaks, that's exactly the same as having played it. Despite effectively killing myself to play this thing for 60 hours in a week to write this, I'll bow to your superior knowledge.

Setting aside that numerical scores in reviews are pretty much bullshit, sorry, the game is really good. It may not be the game you wanted. It's not the game I wanted in many, many ways, but I cannot deny that it is a soundly designed game that does the most important things in Fallout right.
I can't really see how a 5 star rating system is any way better/different from numerical scores.
 

Erttheking

Member
Legacy
Oct 5, 2011
10,845
1
3
Country
United States
Bob_McMillan said:
So many differing opinions... Eugh.

Then again why do I care, the only time I would pick up this game is when Bethesda (more likely modders) fix and polish the game and when I (if ever) get a gaming PC. Mods on Skyrim and New Vegas are just amazing.

Conrad Zimmerman said:
Oh, well, if you've seen the leaks, that's exactly the same as having played it. Despite effectively killing myself to play this thing for 60 hours in a week to write this, I'll bow to your superior knowledge.

Setting aside that numerical scores in reviews are pretty much bullshit, sorry, the game is really good. It may not be the game you wanted. It's not the game I wanted in many, many ways, but I cannot deny that it is a soundly designed game that does the most important things in Fallout right.
I can't really see how a 5 star rating system is any way better/different from numerical scores.
I don't think he's saying it is. He's just stuck with it because of Metacritic.
 

Conrad Zimmerman

New member
Dec 24, 2013
588
0
0
Bob_McMillan said:
So many differing opinions... Eugh.
Yeah, I haven't read any other reviews just yet (need my coffee), but I was sure this would be a game that gets generally high praise, with strong feelings about the things people didn't like and people not agreeing on which things to like or dislike.


Bob_McMillan said:
I can't really see how a 5 star rating system is any way better/different from numerical scores.
It's not. In fact, I didn't even remember that Escapist uses stars when I made the comment. It certainly wasn't to indicate that stars are somehow better. Any distillation of complex, nuanced ideas into a number is pretty gross to me, but I don't set editorial policy.
 

Darth Rosenberg

New member
Oct 25, 2011
1,288
0
0
Conrad Zimmerman said:
Nice review, and kinda what I expected, so I doubt I'll either be disappointed or blown away when I get to play it.

Could you - or anyone else - confirm whether components of the HUD can be disabled individually? I kinda detest Bethesda's HUD's post-Morrowind, and would love to learn I can make it so locations and enemy don't show up on a realtime radar/navbar. I know [some] mods are coming to console, but I've no idea if tweaked UI's are something that'll be supported.
 

Naqel

New member
Nov 21, 2009
345
0
0
Conrad Zimmerman said:
It's not the game I wanted in many, many ways, but I cannot deny that it is a soundly designed game that does the most important things in Fallout right.
Soundly designed, yes, but a minimum of competence achieved through rather heavy handed methods is not something that should get 9/10.

It doesn't really do Fallout things right, since the writing is done by Bethesda again(they aren't particularly famous for being good at it, don't want to spoil anything though), and the whole SPECIAL thing becomes much less meaningful.

It doesn't really do the Gamebryo/Bethesda thing right either, since modding tools are going to only come in a few months, and the game's core design choices prevent anything substantial from being made.

It's lacking in pretty much all technical aspects as well, with plenty of the usual glitches and bugs, some of which date back to TES: Oblivion, and graphical fidelity from half a decade ago.
 

Fcbook Del Orto

New member
Feb 11, 2013
9
0
0
Conrad Zimmerman said:
If you hated the direction Fallout 3 went, then I wouldn't even bother. Just go No Mutants Allowed and grumble with the other people who have been left behind.



The real fans of the series have ever since before the release of Fallout 3 forseen pretty much all that has happened, that Fallout has become an eyecandy shooter with little else to offer. So whenever a new Fallout game comes out, this should be the focus of any and all reviews - how the series has changed and not just a short statement that it has somehow.
Yeah, we'd love to consider New Vegas the third fallout but it seems that we can't have nice things anymore (Thanks to Metacritic ratings and Bethesda). At least they took us into account one time.
 

Conrad Zimmerman

New member
Dec 24, 2013
588
0
0
Whoops! I managed to miss some tagging in this here forum post. Just noting that I didn't say the second bit in the preceding quote. Here's how it probably should have looked.

Fcbook Del Orto said:
Conrad Zimmerman said:
If you hated the direction Fallout 3 went, then I wouldn't even bother. Just go No Mutants Allowed and grumble with the other people who have been left behind.



Smilomaniac said:
The real fans of the series have ever since before the release of Fallout 3 forseen pretty much all that has happened, that Fallout has become an eyecandy shooter with little else to offer. So whenever a new Fallout game comes out, this should be the focus of any and all reviews - how the series has changed and not just a short statement that it has somehow.
Yeah, we'd love to consider New Vegas the third fallout but it seems that we can't have nice things anymore (Thanks to Metacritic ratings and Bethesda). At least they took us into account one time.
 

Poetic Nova

Pulvis Et Umbra Sumus
Jan 24, 2012
1,974
0
0
I'll probably buy it 2 years down the line when it lies in the bargain bin and FO5 is released/underway.
Rule of thumb with Bethesda games is waiting a year or 2 when the biggest issue are patched. In my book atleast.