By Everett Will, ’18
Image courtesy of Wikipedia (Logo) and Flickr (Background).
Fallout 4 was released on Nov. 10 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows, and came out as the fifth game in the successful Fallout series. Fallout 4 is rated Mature and developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is also an action role-playing game with many options to choose from such as first/third person and multiple difficulty settings and it comes at the usual $60.
When the game begins in a part futuristic, part 1950’s-esque world, the player can choose between a male and female character with a newborn and a spouse. Everything is normal and peaceful in the player’s home until a man from a company called Vault-Tec asks if the main character is interested in signing up for the local fallout facility called Vault 111. Moments after the player signs up for Vault-Tec they begins hearing reports of a nuclear fallout, with nothing else to do, the they run to the vault. Once inside, the Vault technicians ask the player to step into decompression chambers before the player descend deeper into the vault. Only after the player steps into the chamber the player realize too late that the chamber is actually a cryogenic pod. An undetermined amount of time later, the player wakes up only to see two people steal the main character’s child and kill their spouse, and then the player are once again frozen. Another undetermined time later, the player finally awakes again and exits the pod into a destroyed world that they must find their child in.
One of the greatest aspects of the game was the perfectly blended story. The introduction to the game is one of the examples of the perfect story. It brings an emotional appeal to the game that make the player want to keep on playing until the they’ve achieved the their purpose. The in-game dialogue is also an intricately crafted system that complements the playing experience. When talking to non-player characters the player have four options on what the player want to says and the options change depending on what the player choose. The responses of the non-player characters are well thought out,natural, and make the character interaction flow and sound realistic.
One of the most important aspects of the game is the fighting experience, and it is evident that extensive effort was put into creating it. First of all the weapon variety was excellent, with weapons ranging from switchblades to tire irons to mini guns. Along with the variety the game also allow for the player to customize parts of the player’s weapons at special crafting stations called a “weapons workbench”. One small downside to the fighting experience is the run cool down. The cool down made traveling long distances slow and could prevent the player from running away from a monster that was too powerful to beat. Even though it was annoying and a sometimes frustrating it still added a layer of realism to the game.
The controls and graphics of the game were excellent, much like the rest of the game but fall short a tiny bit. The graphics were excellent when looking out at a huge expanse and could even be breathtaking, but if the player started to one spot to long flaws started to appear. Nothing was wrong with the controls except a few of them were different than the normal set in their popular games. One of these differences in controls is the jump button. In Fallout 4, the control to jump is the triangle button on PS4 but in other game such as Destiny and Uncharted it is the X button to jump. If you player likes to switch from game to game this small difference could start to become a major annoyance to deal with.
Overall Fallout 4 is great game with many aspects that greatly outweigh the small annoyances such as jump differences and run cool downs that sometimes are present. Fallout 4 is a game that is definitely worth the time and money gamers put into it, as long as the type of game fits the player’s style.