SarcasticGoodGuy
*R O T T E N*
Bring up the criticisms then.I wonder what it would be like to discuss my criticisms of the game.I mean, I actually bring up the fact I have them.
CT Phipps' review of Fallout 4
- Thread starter CT Phipps
- Start date
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
I have a much much more detailed one a couple of pages in.
One thing I loathe about other roleplaying games is they often try to dictate to you about how things should progress to a ridiculous degree. One thing I liked about Fable and which Fallout does well is you get to set up your home situation and romances. No player is left out of pursuing the romance they want with the character they want.
And, hey, maybe they're just a colelction of bisexual or flexible people.
It's a giant baseball field shantyown. What is "unique" to you?
Probably because I'd never leave a concrete fortress with toilets.
Humanised Raiders who you can't even have a conversation with.[/QUOTE]
They are too full of delicious Squirrel Bits, Caps, Armor, and Guns.
You should check all those bits which don't have 10 out of 10.
I make fun of your criticism because despite it being quite severe you ignore it because your headcanon allows the game to be tolerable, and your asinine grading scale allows you to give a game that should not get much more than a 6/10 a perfect score. There's no point in adressing your criticisms, because this place already has all the criticisms there can be about Fallout 4. Only this place doesn't go "Eh, I jizzed, so 10/10".I wonder what it would be like to discuss my criticisms of the game.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Now, now, it's also the fact I still love shooting things and the characters don't look like fuzzy trolls.
SarcasticGoodGuy
*R O T T E N*
You're not harsh enough. The plot is badly paced and is entirely nonsensical. It should get less than a 3.I have a much much more detailed one a couple of pages in.
You should check all those bits which don't have 10 out of 10.
Prone Squanderer
A bit of a Sillius Soddus.
Bad romance system aside, storywise it makes little sense. The Sole Survivor loses their spouse, yet doesn't give a shit. If a companion that had been by your side throughout all the game eventually became a romance option I could understand it, if they helped the Sole Survivor recover from their loss. But it doesn't happen. It's literally "Oh my wife/husband is dead...look at that hot reporter!" As far as I can remember only one companion brings up the Survivor's spouse (MacCready saying "You still love them right?"), and the response is a cold "That's the past."
(Yes I know there's other options but it's likely only one stops the romance)
As fond as I am of Vaults and Vault life, do you realize how hard it would be to maintain such a place for so long? Things will fail eventually, no matter how much you might scavenge from outside.
Also, vaults are cramped. And weren't vaults supposed to be equipped with all the magic gizmos to make building a settlement outside the vault easy? Vault City certainly looks nice. Shady Sands is kinda run down, but they also had a falling-out with their comrades...
/edit:
It could have been unique. But like Rivet City in Fallout 3, just wasted. Why even bother with a big central hub if there's nothing there?
Imagine Rivet City with a large slum with farms around it, and only the rich people living in the aircraft carrier. A market place on top of the flight deck, and maybe some greenhouses. Or maybe some freshly constructed houses up there. But no, nothing.
Imagine Quincy as a serious settlement, with a fortified area up on the highway with a secure market place and rich people living there. It could have been a real hub, but no, it's just a throwaway area full of baddies.
Imagine Diamond City in full, with the back half and the stands also inhabited, and maybe the inner part being reserved for the rich folks (Old Camp in Gothic 1, anyone?). Put a market place and shanty town outside the stadium, and don't have raiders and super mutants live right next to it.
This fucking half-assery just pisses me off. Fallout 4 could have been good or at least believable and well-crafted. But it's just so fucking lazy. It's like Rob Liefeld made it, furiously drawing all the background characters with loving detail and then getting tired and half-assing the foreground.
Fuck Fallout 4. I finally managed to wade through Nuka World, and now I'm finally done with this mess.
Apropros Nuka World, since when were the Hubologists all about actual hubs and wheels and hubcaps (nice static reflection texture, btw., 10/10 AAA right there)? Wtf? Also, why are they not just a retarded pseudoreligion anymore but apparently on the right track with their stuff, since their founder has an actual alien blaster and was presumably in contact with aliens (which, thankfully, we also had forcefed down our throats and told to like it like we were Sasha Grey)? Why the fuck is Bethesda so incredibly bad at understanding how things in the original games were meant?
/edit:
As usual, Diamond City was a huge wasted opportunity. You barely interact with the characters there, you only have to visit the place like two or three times during the main quest. There could have been so much conflict and storytelling there, but... Nothing. And the back half of the fucking thing is just empty, because building stuff is hard.
It could have been unique. But like Rivet City in Fallout 3, just wasted. Why even bother with a big central hub if there's nothing there?
Imagine Rivet City with a large slum with farms around it, and only the rich people living in the aircraft carrier. A market place on top of the flight deck, and maybe some greenhouses. Or maybe some freshly constructed houses up there. But no, nothing.
Imagine Quincy as a serious settlement, with a fortified area up on the highway with a secure market place and rich people living there. It could have been a real hub, but no, it's just a throwaway area full of baddies.
Imagine Diamond City in full, with the back half and the stands also inhabited, and maybe the inner part being reserved for the rich folks (Old Camp in Gothic 1, anyone?). Put a market place and shanty town outside the stadium, and don't have raiders and super mutants live right next to it.
This fucking half-assery just pisses me off. Fallout 4 could have been good or at least believable and well-crafted. But it's just so fucking lazy. It's like Rob Liefeld made it, furiously drawing all the background characters with loving detail and then getting tired and half-assing the foreground.
Fuck Fallout 4. I finally managed to wade through Nuka World, and now I'm finally done with this mess.
Apropros Nuka World, since when were the Hubologists all about actual hubs and wheels and hubcaps (nice static reflection texture, btw., 10/10 AAA right there)? Wtf? Also, why are they not just a retarded pseudoreligion anymore but apparently on the right track with their stuff, since their founder has an actual alien blaster and was presumably in contact with aliens (which, thankfully, we also had forcefed down our throats and told to like it like we were Sasha Grey)? Why the fuck is Bethesda so incredibly bad at understanding how things in the original games were meant?
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Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
It's placing player convinience over world-simulation.
Fallout isn't supposed to be the type of game where you can get everything you want, regardless of what kind of character you are playing. If you want that type of game, go play Fable.
Maybe if they had a couple gay characters, a couple straight characters, a couple bi-characters it would be fine.
Having 8 bisexual companions seems blatantly unrealistic, and soley done so that players don't whine about not being able to romance companions.
Its a couple of generic shacks(Because Bethesda can't make any other type of town) in the middle of a pre-war monument(Because absolutely everything in Bethesda has to be built around something pre-war)
Nothing to see here.
Surely there Water Chips wouldn't last that long?, I mean the Vault was supposed to be for a one-off experiment, so they can't have that many.
What about there food supply? Vault 3 ran out of food shortly after it opened.
Why is a Vault designed to try and discover a cure-all-drug capable of lasting so long?
It makes little sense that they are still there after 200 years.
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SarcasticGoodGuy
*R O T T E N*
There's really no point in arguing with @CT Phipps. He can bring up good points, but a lot of the time all he does is make up his own reasons as to why things are there. It's a shame, because he's obviously intelligent, but he insists on defending this game. I'm not saying he should change his opinion, I'm just saying maybe instead of making excuses he could realize that F4 just isn't as good as he might believe.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
An article by Time Magazine had an interesting discussion about how the fact generally happy marriages result in quick remarriages by the parties who lose their spouse to trauma or injury. This is due to the fact happy marriages result in spouses trying to recapture the feeling they had with their original partner. It was noted that this was rarely sympathized with by the children of such unions and sometimes society as a whole but almost universally common. In the case of the Sole Survivor, I can easily see him attempting to bond with someone in order to make sense of their environment.
You're right, there's no acknowledgement about it being a remarriage, though.
I'm fairly sure that's explicitly what's happened in the Vault and a minor subplot.
Edit:
BTW, I can't review the Vault-Tec DLC because I hate settlement building THAT much, I refuse to play it.
*sigh*
You hate one of the main aspects of the game, a forced core mechanic that is a focus of the game and a mandatory part of the main quest of the main game and Nuka World... And you gave it a 10/10.
You said you worked in academia? Let me guess, something with literature?
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Actually, I gave it a 9 of 10. It's listed in this thread I went back and read my original review and found out I'd misremembered my score. That was after I did a lengthier review and determined, no, I actually didn't like it enough to give it a 10 out of 10 but only a 9.
My original review on my blog. This was one week after my first day purchase.
http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2015/11/fallout-4-review.html
----
I am a huge fan of the Fallout series. The original Fallout games were a bit before my time but Fallout 3 was a revelation and inspired me to check them out. I love their satirical look at society, comedy, pathos, melodrama, and, of course, shooting things in V.A.T.S. As such, I was very excited about Fallout 4's announcement and interested in what sort of changes they would be making for the series.
The answer?
Flawed but fun.
I'll get into a discussion of the game's storyline in a later article as the work deserves my full attention but both it and the gameplay have their ups and downs. This is a revelation of a game, truly, and I would remiss in not giving it a 10 out of 10 but this is because the massive amount of content as well as fun to be had compensates for its glaring flaws rather than the latter not existing.
My survivor looked like Ned Stark and his wife Daenerys.
Fallout 4 makes numerous improvements over Fallout 3 and New Vegas but, unfortunately, also makes several changes which are decidedly unwelcome. There's also numerous changes which are roughly as good as the previous version but took some getting used to. A frequent joke about Fallout 3 was it was "Oblivion with guns." A joke about this game would be it's "Skyrim with stiff voice acting."
The premise of the game is you are the Sole Survivor of Vault 111. You, your spouse, and your infant child are living a happy life in the Pre-War era of America when nuclear was breaks out. You all swiftly head out the door to the Vault, only to discover it is a cryogenic freezing chamber where you and your family are put in suspended animation. During your sleep, your spouse's chamber is attacked and your child taken away before you're awoken to the brave new world of 215 years after the apocalypse.
Cute joke on the time, Bethesda.
There was some mild controversy with the fandom over the fact the protagonist is voice acted now given the traditional blank slate protagonists of the series. Gay and lesbian fans of the series also expressed some displeasure over the fact that, in a series where homosexual relationships had always been possible, you were shoe-horned in a heterosexual one in the Pre-War era. I, personally, think it would have been better to have been able to determine the sex of your spouse as well but note the Sole Survivor can have actual gay and straight romances later. I'll get to the romantic element later, though.
Recognizable landmarks become excellent battlefields.
The biggest change to the character other than his/her set backstory is the addition of voice acting. While Brian T. Delaney (male), Courtenay Taylor (female) do a serviceable job with the Sole Survivor, the simple fact the writing is unchanged from things like Skyrim and Fallout 3. Choices range from superficial opinions ("I hate newspapers", "I love newspapers") to phrasing various levels of irritation with your surrounding associates. Compared to Hawke from Bioware's Dragon Age 2, the Sole Survivor comes off as somewhat flat and two-dimensional.
The changes to the leveling system are also questionable with the new Perk system replacing the perfectly serviceable and comprehensible skills system. The various Perk trees were confusing and complicated, making it more difficult to know who and what I wanted as well as what was available. The lack of a level limit is appreciated, though, because it allows you to eventually get everything you want. I also dislike the loss of the repair system since that provided a sense of rarity and decay to items.
Poor Garvey is the nicest guy in the Commonwealth.
Despite this, there are a lot more changes that I appreciate. Gone are the "easy" enemies of the game with Molerats, Radroaches, and Raiders all having much-much more powerful versions of themselves. One of the early enemies of the game is a Deathclaw which is encountered when you have a chain gun and suit of tank-like power armor. It's a nightmarish fight and really goes a long way to restoring that monster's terrifying nature. There's a later fight where you also encounter a Dagon-esque Mirelurk which is every bit as horrible.
Companions are an area where the game improves on previous editions quite a bit. In addition to taking the complex stories and personalities of Fallout: New Vegas, it also allows the much-desired romance plotlines for them. I was particularly fond of Piper and Garvey, the former being a post-apocalypse version of Lois Lane and the latter reminding me of Boone from Fallout: New Vegas. There's also guaranteed crowd-pleasers like Nick Valentine (an android detective) and the endearingly sycophantic Codsworth.
Nick has a face only his robot mother could love.
Changes I like include the alteration of the series' traditional Power Armor from something which is just an elaborate suit of plate-mail to something more resembling Iron Man. You can only use it for as long as your Fusion Cores last and yet, while wearing it, you are able to take on nearly invincible foes. Another change I liked is the ability to take over and lead your own faction in the Minutemen early on in the game. You get a real sense of power and authority from your association with these do-gooders and I decided to wear its signature combination of tricorn as well as Captain America outfit for the rest of the game.
Another welcome addition to the system is the revamped radiation system. Before, you could very easily ignore radiation throughout the game. Now, it replaces hit points and can swiftly fill up a meter with damage. This makes concern over radiation exposure much more immediately dangerous. I had to make ample use of both Rad-X and Rad-Away throughout the game as well as pay multiple trips to the doctor. Stimpacks and food are changed too, making both of them much more relevant to daily survival.
I played on Easy and Super Mutants were *terrifying*!
A big change to the game is the addition of Settlements which have their ups and downs. There are numerous locations across the map which the Sole Survivor can take over, invite settlers, and proceed to decorate to their hearts' content. While an excellent time sink I spent much time decorating with portraits, toilets, and generators--I felt this should have been more of an optional pursuit as Sanctuary was more than enough of a town for me to build rather than the dozen or so I ended up constructing. It doesn't help I often ended up having to bail them out from Raiders and other groups when I invested a great deal in giving them machine-gun turrets and artillery *grumble grumble*.
I will say the graphics aren't noticeably all that improved from the Xbox 360 version I played years ago. The character models are much-much better and that's not nothing but the gameworld doesn't feel all that different. It still has the same vaguely plastic, vaguely cartoonish style of the original game. Compared to say, the Witcher 3, it looks last generation. On the other hand, that same plastic and cartoonish style made the original Fallout 3 look more advanced than it should have been. Funny how that works.
The Commonwealth is beautifully detailed with some real crowd-pleasing sights like Diamond City (constructed on a baseball field), the Brotherhood of Steel's zeppelin (The Prydwen), and the U.S.S Constitution now outfitted with rocket boosters. The developers do an amazing job differentiating it from the Capital Wasteland, going for a dried scrubland look over Fallout 3's radioactive hellhole. The detail in individual levels is sometimes stunning with a comic book shop level containing dozens of unique models not used anywhere else in the game. It doesn't have a moment quite as amazing as seeing the Capital Wasteland for the first time but it has a few which come close.
Piper is awesome. That is all.
Fans of the series will be interested in several changes to the lore. The Eastern Brotherhood of Steel has reverted to the West Coast's doctrines in certain areas and is now an expansionist feudal state which eliminates all nonhumans it encounters. They're closer to Space Marines now than the heroic order under Elder Lyons and I couldn't be happier. Those who thought Bethesda should have come up with original factions for Fallout 3 will note all of the ones in the Commonwealth are really interesting and worthy additions to the setting's lore. I'm particularly fond of the Institute and think it's a great "villain" you might actually want to side with.
Indeed, one thing I really liked about the game was the addition of a very gray and gray set of morality throughout. Despite the fact Garvey, Piper, and most other characters are good, the simple fact is all of the major factions have serious flaws. You have a choice of evils to side with and everyone brings something different to the table. There's no group which is so awful, though, I didn't see why anyone wouldn't want to side with them, though. This is a stark change from the usual Black and White handling of things like the Enclave as well as Caesar's Legion. Hell, if I have a complaint, it's that your character has to work *REALLY HARD* at being evil if you want him to be a bad guy. There's no opportunity to nuke Megaton or be genuinely evil in this game and that's actually disappointing in its own way.
What is this strange object? A...tree?
Unfortunately, fans should be aware the game comes out of the package with the usual array of Bethesda bugs. Clipping issues, getting stuck in locations, parts of the map not loading properly, and even getting stuck in elevators for infinity are not unheard of. I had all of these happen to me. Also, whenever I took an elevator ride, a Mister Handy called "Doctor Goodfeels" appeared beside me for no apparent reason. That is perhaps the single strangest bug I have ever encountered in any game whatsoever. All of these will be patched out eventually but I wish they'd delay a month or three to get these hammered out.
I'm also a bit back and forth about the music. The majority of the licensed soundtrack, as mentioned, is from Fallout 3. I loved the soundtrack there and its very evocative. However, there's also an additional set of orchestrated music which is sometimes a bit too loud for the events onscreen. I would have preferred silence as an option since I could literally turn on a radio station if and when I wanted to hear the music. On the other hand, songs like "Atom Bomb", "Rocket 69", "Don't they know it's the end of the world", and "The Wanderer" are really-really good.
In conclusion, this is a great game with some serious flaws. I'm very-very glad I played it but fans should be warned it has a number of problems. The increase in enemy strength, well-designed companions, imaginative detail, and simple joy of exploration are contrasted with the bugs, mediocre protagonist, and unnecessary gameplay changes. The good heavily outweigh the bad but this is a game I repeatedly asked myself, "why did they change this?" I'm still going to give it a high score, though, because it's quintessentially Fallout and I'm off to play it some more.
9/10
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Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
You certainly make a good effort at rattling the cages around here (subtly or not). Can't fault you for liking what you like, and indeed you are allowed to, but I can't relate to your review(s) at all. It reads like a cross between fanboy loveletter and a totally-not-paid-for promotional pseudo-review to increase the sales on some mainstream gaming magazine. But that's just me, of course.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
It's really a sign of the separation of the fandoms. The reason I'm here is because I used to post religiously on the Bethesda fan forums but they moved and now it seems all the regular posters there are gone. Then again, the new forums aren't very poster or lore friendly. We used to have hours of debate and hundreds of pages on everything from the BOS to how the original games could be linked up with the modern.
And believe me, I have no desire to rattle cages. I just love Fallout 3 and enjoyed Fallout 4.
I find it kind of hilarious that I thought I was rather hard on F4. It felt paint by the numbers compared to Far Harbor and Nuka World.
9/10 though...
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
As I said to my friend who was asking to buy the game. "Warmed over Fallout is still Fallout."
But yes, Fallout 3 was one of the best games I've ever played. Something which really blew my mind. And I can't help but think everything but the Companions and improved graphics is worse. Even if not GREATLY worse.
Still worse.
Except the dialogue, which was terrible.
The game I compare it to most which I really regret giving such a high score was Dragon Age: Inquisition which was warmed over Dragon Age except also burnt on the sides. They took an edgy well-written game and played it ridiculously safe.
Safe is a good way to describe Fallout 4. Very few risks or SOUL to it. Fine, it was fun, I enjoyed it and it's still a return to the nuclear wasteland I love but it's not "home." Home is in Megaton goddammit.
Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
I used to post there in the old forums. Don't think I was among the most well respected posters around. The arguments that were frequently going on there seem to have migrated here to certain extent (possibly because it serves absolutely no point doing that on Bethesda's forums).
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
It's doubly frustrating because I wrote the script for an Ending Slides Mod but the move destroyed that.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1569034-ending-slides-mod-projects-for-fallout-4/
aenemic
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
"There's so much I don't like about this game, but since it's Fallout it'll still get a 9/10".
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Pretty much, yeah. I get to play in a radioactive post-apocalypse wasteland which is fun and full of fascinating characters and science fiction oddities. That forgives much. Is there any setting as good?