Fallout 4

Drew_TNBD · November 2015

Bought it Thursday, had a quick play last night. I'm nowhere near ready to comment.

Stevepage · November 2015

I preordered it from Amazon as game tried to charge me a fortune.

I've put about 11 hours into it so far and i think it's fantastic. They storyline is just starting to pick up. The game itself is beautifully done, the sun glare, the storms and how the environment reacts to you.

I look forward to this kind of thing with the next Elder Scrolls game.

Handsome_Chris · November 2015

I am loving it so far. My first settlement is really coming on... as long as Synths don't attack!

d8m · November 2015

This looks good but I'm gonna hold out for battlefront I think. Pick this up in a few months when it's cheaper

octatonic · November 2015

I tried Fallout 3 and just found myself wandering around a lot, not getting anywhere.

Is it a game that you need a walkthrough cheat from time to time?

hugbot · November 2015

eehhhh. I have mixed feelings about it. The combat and environment is better than ever but...it's a fallout game where you only have 4 dialog options. That's just insane to me.

stickyfiddle · November 2015

Haven't got it yet cos I'm still on MGSV. LOVED F3 and F:NV. Looking forward to picking it up around xmas once it's had a couple of patches.

Have no problem with the graphics and conversation options as long as the story and random side quests are good.

monquixote · November 2015

When I finally get around to getting a PS4 this will be the first game I get alongside the new Uncharted (if it's out at that point).

PolarityMan · November 2015

The old isometric ones were better than the 3 and new vegas.ill prob pick 4 up after xmas

strtdv · November 2015

I've just started playing through 3 again. I never really got into new Vegas, never even completed the main storyline.

Alas my computer is getting on a bit so I doubt it'll manage fallout 4, but it is tempting me to get an Xbox or a Steam machine..

Handsome_Chris · November 2015

I've just worked out the new perk system in F4. You can either select for the point to go to SPECIAL or to the perk. #GrrrrrrMondays

Myranda · November 2015

I had the option to play this for a bit... and "meh"

Graphically it appears to be a handful of more polygons with a smattering of extra pixels but with the same graphical engineering as the previous games. There's a frame cap - which isn't terrible for me because I only have 60 hz monitors - but the 144 hz monitor I tried it on was going to waste.

The textures are so low quality that with the higher resolution everything has an almost cartoon feeling. In 2015 the rendering of a bottle of vodka is an opaque white bottle, whiskey an opaque brown bottle... it's almost like transparancy is something other developers do.

The settlement crafting system is a lot less clever than it could be. Minecraft it isn't ... if they added a snap-to-scenery option then you could line things up to foundations more easily... and where there are slopes maybe have the wall conform to the slope so you don't end up with a gap you can walk under or a wall so short you can step over it.

The game was clearly written for consoles and then ported to PC - which accounts for all the lacking in the engine's power, everything has been limited for inferior hardware then copied over to PC... textures are low quality to ensure they can fit into the small memory available on the console...

The plot - this is the only thing that I think stood out as OK or better... this will save the game.

And before any Bethesda fanboi/girls get on their soap box, YES the game will get modded and the mods will make it prettier, YES the crafting system will get overhauled to be more interesting (like why can't I take a good magazine off a gun? Why must I craft a bad one to replace it?). Yes, the settlement system will be re-done to improve it... but the game is out and shops want £40 for it and will only be complete after people volunteer their time to make it, so NO Bethesda shouldn't have released it yet as they're not finished. I'll be waiting till it hits a much more reasonable price for half a game

guitargeek62 · November 2015

Not sure what you expected, it's been very obviously built on the same engine as F3 & Skyrim, and there's only so far you can push that without relying on an amalgamation of add-ons.

It's actually a pretty clever way to build it; it's likely that mods won't be difficult to produce as the engine is already very familiar to the F3 & Skyrim modders. Besides, the story is key to these games imo, and if that's not suffered then I'm happy.

I'll probably pick it up this week, although I'm still on MGS:V so I'm not really in a rush.

Myranda · November 2015

guitargeek62 said:

Not sure what you expected, it's been very obviously built on the same engine as F3 & Skyrim, and there's only so far you can push that without relying on an amalgamation of add-ons.

It's actually a pretty clever way to build it; it's likely that mods won't be difficult to produce as the engine is already very familiar to the F3 & Skyrim modders. Besides, the story is key to these games imo, and if that's not suffered then I'm happy.

I'll probably pick it up this week, although I'm still on MGS:V so I'm not really in a rush.

I was hoping that in the squillion years since Fallout 3 that Bethesda could have made some improvements.

Took out the skill system as that was apparently too taxing for ... cabbages playing games

Altered the accuracy of guns so VATS is no longer relevant (use a reflex sight and always hit where the dot is, sniper pistols for the win!)

Took out the NPC indicator pips from the compass bar at the bottom

Found that by the end of the DLC in the last games peeps were level 30 and could craft/do anything so thought "screw that" now by level 30 you can be good at one thing or bad at a few, if you want to do everything well then wait till lvl 100+

Didn't bother improving the textures - in how many years?!

Have a crafting system which on the face of it looks like it adds variety but in reality still boils down to Bad-better-more better-best grading of components

People have had bugs that rendered the game unplayable for some time, others had bugs that meant they couldn't use a terminal without needing to restart - given that the engine is practically the same, they've had several years to iron out bugs.

Why big-up the graphics in your press statements and then release a game that looks like this? It looks like a higher resolution version of Fallout 3 - but no other graphical improvements in those years...

They made some thematic visual changes which I'm sure have had neck beards pulling out their hair.

Bethesda still can't render glass bottles - visually it's not possible to identify an "empty milk botttle" or "milk" they look the same

Build settlements - as long as you don't mind them being so simple that Minecraft players will be all "woah, this is shitty..."

Limiting the PC version because the console versions can't be any better is something that Bethesda have seen countless developers criticised for doing, and rather than be above it all they caved and made one version worse to meet the others

Skyrim was 2011 ... in 4 years they could have remade the engine from the ground up, so making improvements to the visual renderer should not have been difficult. The press conferences they actively promoted the game on Graphics, and Facial expressiveness of characters... instead we get a 2008 game in 2015 with mildly more pixels, and the same uncanny valley barely-animated sex doll characters.

Metacritic scoring is rather suspect too - most of the "critics" gave it a solid 10/10 or close to it, where significantly more actual players gave negative reviews (and if you add on the neutral reviews then it got nearly twice as many negative to neutral than positive player reviews).

In short I expected that in the last few years they could have made the experience better, not worse.

Drew_TNBD · November 2015

Myranda said:

Metacritic scoring is rather suspect too - most of the "critics" gave it a solid 10/10 or close to it, where significantly more actual players gave negative reviews (and if you add on the neutral reviews then it got nearly twice as many negative to neutral than positive player reviews).

Not judging by the steam user reviews.

Myranda · November 2015

I'd not looked at the steam page (silly really) but still more than 25% not recommending and of those that are the first review says

the story is "okay"

the graphics are better than Fallout 3 but not 10/10 and "not horrible"

Then lists cons like the "UI is horrible" and that it needs to be modded - NO. Bethesda should have done that!

Voiced protagonist removes immersion because you can't imagine your own voice in it

Bugs

PC version lacking options

So even the most helpful review on Steam that recommends the game is far from a stirring endorsement ...

I was a massive fallout fan, rushed out to get Fallout 3, rushed out to gte the special edition of Fallout New Vegas with the platinum chip and comic book... were it not for cash flow issues I'd have pre-ordered the pip-boy edition of this... instead I find myself glad I was too poor to get it. It's decidedly average for a AAA title and I think I'd rather play Fallout New Vegas again

Chuffola · November 2015

Well, having bought the original Fallout (the 2D isometric one) on the day it came out (yes, I'm that old...) I am absolutely loving it on my PC.

Looks great, plays great and story / quests are fantastic fun. Much better than Fallout 3 and better than New Vegas.

I don't notice the graphics when the underlying game is so good. And developing your own settlements is almost a game in itself.

Fun to teh max0r.

guitargeek62 · November 2015

@Myranda - you're right, they should have built it for super-computers only, why allow just anyone to play it?!

RaymondLin · November 2015

Bethesda gets a free pass on buggy game because they have always shipped buggy games. People in the community then makes t better...it's been that way for years and years and people accept it.

Ubisoft ships AC year after year and one game gets a minor glitch and it blows up to headline news. It's more to do with they have always shipped non-buggy games.

People have much lower expectation of Bethesda and they are willing to turn the blind eye because It's not a game that comes out every year and they are willing to look pass it.

Can you imagine Nintendo brings out a buggy Mario? The expectation for Bethesda to bring out a perfect game is so low it is ridiculous.

Myranda · November 2015

guitargeek62 said:

@Myranda - you're right, they should have built it for super-computers only, why allow just anyone to play it?!

Or.. you know have a "high quality textures" option? Madness I know... we should only have graphics allowed to the lowest common denominator - new games should ALL run with max settings on Casio graphing calculators?

Don't be silly!

Just not ADDING a frame cap would have been an improvement, those with the processing power could benefit... magic - they had to encode a frame cap, so it was EXTRA work to stunt performance.

Battlefield 3 or 4 on the consoles had a higher quality texture pack which you could install to hard disk if you desired... could have done a similar thing here...

Not catering for 40% + of PC users with more power than a console because someone on a console can't see a benefit is being a dick, and that's what has become increasingly common these days. Consoles were behind the top end of PC power when they were released, and they haven't gotten more powerful, PCs did, and the cost for that power dropped over time... so an awful lot of the 30ish% of the market using a PC to play games have more computer power than console owners, give them the OPTION of turning the graphics up... so it doesn't look like a cartoon.

Not the same as only allowing super computers to play... lots of other games give you that option, better textures, better lighting or shadow all sorts of things you can turn on or off depending on available processing power, like pretty much every PC game since Quake.

What they got was a game that everyone could play at the highest settings because it's textures look like they were done on a colour etch-a-sketch

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