If you are a fan of the “Fallout” series now is a good time to say goodbye to your loved ones and social life because “Fallout 4” is out and you are about to be lost in one of the biggest and most dense open worlds the series has seen.
It’s been about eight years since the last game was released so part 4 coming out is a big deal. The new generation of consoles allows Bethesda Game Studio to make a bigger game with more things to do, people to meet and collectables to find.
You are the lone survivor of Vault III set long after a nuclear war where the world was basically destroyed. The last game was set in the ruins of Washington D.C. but “Fallout 4” is on a new console and is now set in the city of Boston and the surrounding areas. Boston is huge and the places around it are diverse and full of landmarks to find.
The “Fallout” series is all about survival. You must explore to find new weapons, gear, and experience points to upgrade your character and base. In “Fallout 4” the world is much bigger than previous entries allowing you to get lost in the world in search of things to do. The world feels very alive. In the wasteland you will find a bunch of mutated monsters to fight and encounter a variety of bandits and robots. There are also a few cities to find and the people there will give you quests and things to do. When you do a quest you can choose to be good or bad but there aren’t really too many consequences other than you can get locked out of some of the story elements and endings. People will react to you differently if you are just killing people and doing bad things and you might miss out on rewards.
The gameplay is very similar to “Fallout 3” but it has been improved, the guns feel more accurate and I got stuck to things less than before. There is a much bigger world to explore including more buildings that you can go into. Early on in the game you aren’t very powerful so you must scrounge to find as many resources as you can to craft better items and get stronger. The only part I find annoying and it’s the same in most RPG games is over-encumbrance, you can only carry a certain amount of weight so you have to get good at managing your inventory, or head to town often to sell or dump your excess gear. A new addition to the gameplay that I enjoyed was the spoken dialogue. Now similar to “Mass Effect” you can choose what you are going to say from a list of text options. There are a bunch of different sentences you can choose and people will react differently based on what you choose so you can define what people think of you.
One of the new features is the ability to build your own settlement, it is a bit overly complicated because there is no tutorial but once you get the hang of managing things it becomes fun. You have to do things like mining, growing crops and providing electricity. As your settlement gets better more people will flock to your town and you can have them do tasks to help the community. If you want people to stay, you have to manage their happiness levels which can be difficult. Building your settlement isn’t mandatory but it is a fun diversion and gives you more things to do.
Overall I love “Fallout 4.” The world is huge and there are a ton of places to explore and things to see. The story is interesting and for the first time ever you can craft items and build your own town full of survivors. If you are just looking for a first-person shooter game, this might have the tight controls you are looking for, but if you like RPG games and you are fan of the series it will feel very familiar but it has a lot more to love.
