Ragemage
Wept for Zion
I was requested by @DirtyOldShoe to do my own review of Fallout 4, so here it is. I'm also going to use his 22 point format since it's very neat and tidy. You can read his review here: http://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/fallout-4-review-by-dirtyoldshoe.205367/#post-4137362 I'll base this game off its own merits rather than comparing it to the past games (though I will be comparing it to Fallout 3 since that one was made by the same company).
Overall Score: 4.5/22
Interior/Clutter Design: 0.5
Comparing FO3 to FO4, I'd say interior design is better. In FO3 you would spend a looot of time underground in the subways if you were planning on getting anywhere at all downtown. These subways all looked exactly the same with hardly any variation. It made the game very stale insanely quick because many missions require you to go downtown. Many of the building interiors also looked very similar. When it comes to FO4, there are a LOT of repetitive buildings (the subways and skyscrapers all look exactly the same inside) but I'd say there's enough "special" buildings in the game that it's less noticeable. For every shitty skyscraper interior there's a comic book store with a unique look, or a nice looking Super Duper Mart that gave me Dead Rising vibes. The only thing that's similar between every single location in the game are skeletons and teddy bears, which gets annoying after maybe the 3rd time of seeing a sex joke or bathroom joke with them. I'd rate it a 0 just for the damn skellies and teddies being in every single building as a "joke" but there's enough variety to enough buildings that I'll keep it at 0.5.
World Design: 0
At first, I thought the world design was very pretty. The graphics were nice and everything seemed "different" so to speak. That all pretty much changed around the 5 hour mark when I was running around doing settlement missions for Garvey, not realizing they were radiant quests. It seems like every single "settlement" is located right next to a raider camp, a deathclaw lair, a super mutant town, and so forth. Considering over 3/4ths of these so-called settlements have less than 5 people, how am I supposed to reasonably believe they've survived this long? Honestly I like the world's look, it's very stylized and the downtown area isn't a slog to get through like DC's was, but it just breaks my suspension of disbelief. If there had been at least a few settlements that weren't right next to deathtraps then it might be better, but no, they all are. There's also the fact that there's only 2 major settlements in the game. I've seen people call Bunker Hill a big settlement but honestly it's barely bigger than some of the smaller settlements. They just crammed more people inside to trick you into thinking it's bigger than it really is. There's also the fact that you have normal people, not raiders, living in buildings that not only have a completely collapsed roof, but are also full of skeletons. Best example I can think of is Croup Manor. Not only is that place completely falling apart with giant holes in the ceilings and walls, but it's full of skeletons and the corpses of feral ghouls. It's a complete mess and yet people will gladly live there. It's also right next to Gunner territory and right across from the BOS's main base, so I'm constantly seeing vertibirds fly over the manor to attack the gunners only to blow up on my settlement and kill everyone. I've had this happen in multiple settlements, just replace Gunners with Raiders/Super Mutants/Deathclaws.
Atmosphere: 0
The atmosphere never did anything for me. In Fallout 3 I would walk around, thinking "My God, the world's a complete mess. Look at what we've done." The well placed dilapidation on the surface combined with the eerie music without the radio on, as well as Super Mutant bodybags slung everywhere and so forth, it just made me want to keep looking over my shoulder the first time I played it. I was never sure what would be around the next corner and it all felt gloomy and spooky, at least in the main city area. I loved it. Maybe it's because FO4 tries to basically copy FO3's world design minus the eerie music, green fog enveloping everything, and so forth, but it just does not work. First of all, the world's too bright and cheerful. I didn't think this would be a problem when I started playing but it really is. When you see giant bloody bags stuffed with human body parts or slathering hulking beasts ripping people to shreds while it's bright and sunny as if nothing's wrong with the world, it just loses me. I know a lot of people hated FO3's green fogginess but personally I thought it added to the atmosphere and made everything seem bleak. In FO4 everything's too bright and cheerful looking for me to think post-apocalyptia except around The Glowing Sea. There's also the problem that despite the fact there's skeletons and destruction literally everywhere you look, way too many things are still standing to give that complete destruction vibe FO3 gave. There's no reason more buildings shouldn't be standing considering Boston was apparently only hit by a single nuke. I guess the rain and the radiation storms are nice but they barely happen often enough. I've maybe seen 4 radiation storms in my entire 150 hours of playtime, 2 of which occured in the Glowing Sea.
Suspension of Disbelief/Balance: 0
Like I said before about settlements, for every 2 person settlement there's at least 2 Raider camps right next door. There's no feasible way these settlements should be anything other than carcasses for you to pick. They needed to space out these locations a lot better. I think the main issue is that since 1/3rd of the map is nonsensically covered in water with nothing in it, they had to make up for it by squeezing everything together so tightly that nothing makes sense. If they had not covered the map in so much damn water for no reason and instead put everything further apart, a lot of problems involving immersion and suspension of disbelief would disappear right there. Let's also go over the fact that many of these people are living in "settlements" that consist of a SINGLE house (one that's falling apart at that) and they need you, some random stranger, to rebuild everything for them. If I can make them a bunch of metal shacks in less than an hour, why have these jackasses been sitting on their thumbs the last 200 years?
Main Story Writing: 0
It's so full of plotholes and completely idiotic contrivances it's not even worth discussing. So many other threads (including like 5 I've made myself) have gone over the huge glaring problems with this stupid, STUPID story. Moving on.
Side Story Writing: 0
I wanted to give this a higher score, I did. The problem is that 99% of the so-called side stories are either KILL, LOOT, RETURN, radiant quests, or they're way too linear with no choices at all. I'll give you an example of a sidequest I was actually kinda excited about, Building A Better Crop. See, I was a Railroad spy working for the Institute, and this was one of the Institute's sidequests. It's all about finding one of these synths they've used to replace someone and giving him these modified seeds which should make a fine harvest. So since I'm a Railroad spy I thought I'd be able to expose this Synth for what he really is, or at the very least find out more about why the Institute are replacing people with synths. He was living with the guy he was replacing's family, acting as their father. There's a farmhand who's figured out this father is actually a synth, and it's my job to track him down. I thought I could tell this farmhand that I'm with the Railroad and I want to help him stop the father too, but no. I'm literally forced to side with the Institute for this quest and convince the farmhand to stand down. I don't get any option to stop the synth father or ship him off to the Railroad for reprogramming and let this family know that isn't their real dad, none of it. I'm forced to go the Institute path only even though I'm not even working with the Institute. I also never got any answer whatsoever as to why the Institute is kidnapping people.
Faction Story Writing: 0
This has also been picked apart and dissected to death on this site, so I'll keep it brief. None of the factions make any sense, especially the Institute. The only driving force between 3 out of the 4 factions are the Synths, and that's it. That's all they care about. The only one that doesn't is the Minutemen and that's just because you're pretty much the only Minuteman. You're an entire faction because the Minutemen don't actually do a goddamn thing and you must do everything, including defending settlements and doing shitton of radiant quests for them. None of the other Minutemen do squat besides sit around in your settlements, mooching off food and water.
Dialogue: 0
At first I didn't think the dialogue was that awful, until I got this one mod that turns the dialogue wheel into actual sentences like in 3 and NV. Holy shit is it bad once you see the full choices written out. 99% of the time it truly is just Yes, Yes, Yes?, or No (Yes). Many of the voice actors don't emote in the slightest, and most of the lines in the game are repeated again and again. Can't tell you how many times I've heard Mama Murphy say "Mama Murphy's as good as her word kid. No more chems. No more Sight either." or hear an NPC talk about how he/she wishes for rain. It's like 75% of all NPCs in the game have only 4 set lines to say and will say nothing else no matter what you do. At least in Skyrim and FO3 people might mention something you did, like "Oh wow that's the guy that shot up (insert NPC name here)", but in FO4 there's none of that except with Diamond City's guards, who're basically just Skyrim Guards modernized.
NPC Design: 0.5
Even though the mouth animation is just about the worst effect I've EVER seen in a video game, honestly the NPC designs aren't that bad. At least they're less potato-y than FO3's. I wouldn't consider any of them attractive at all, but the designs are okay. There's enough distinction between named NPCs and non-named NPCs to tell them apart. It's not like FO3 where Walter from Megaton and Herbert Daring Dashwood have the exact same face just with different skin tone and hair.
Combat: 1
To me, I like the combat fine. It basically feels like FO3's (which I enjoyed) and there's enough variety in the outside location appearances that battles with the same enemies will be slightly different each time. VATS is still a fun system to use even in this game.
AI: 0.5
I've seen many people say the AI act like complete bumbling retards in this game, blowing up grenades in their own face and the like, but honestly I haven't had this problem. The AI are fairly responsive and can even be dangerous at times. Sometimes they'll even duck for cover and try to shoot at me from behind a wall where I can't hit them. The problem is that for every smart AI, there's usually some stupid AI. Like the Vertibirds that randomly fly up in the air, stop shooting, land, then just start flying again out of nowhere, or the Super Mutant Suiciders who sometimes won't even run at you but instead run in circles and get themselves killed. Still, there's some good AI in there, thus why this isn't getting a 0.
Weapon/Armor Design: 0
At first, I thought the weapons and armor looked pretty nice and different compared to FO3. That was, until I realized there's maybe like 40 different weapon designs and armor designs in the whole fucking game. It seems like they just slapped some weapon designs together from FO3 and made maybe 5 new ones, but instead of making more weapon designs, they attempted to trick us with "legendary weapons", which look exactly the same as the normal weapons but function differently. For instance, the most OP gun in the game (and the one I have used since the beginning) is the Overseer's Guardian, an assault rifle that fires 2 shots instead of 1 with every fire. It looks exactly the same as every other assault rifle with the small tweaks the mods I put on there did. Mods really don't change the weapon appearance that much, and it just seems like a way to make it seem like there's tons of weapon variety. The same can be said for armor. Not much base armor, and there's really only 10 strap-on armors in the whole game with, once again, mods and enchantments to make them seem more different than they really are.
Crafting/Building: 0
In my game, food never works properly no matter how many people I assign to a crop, and thus I can never get food. Every time I leave a settlement my bed count drops to 0, which is a known bug in some games that they've never fixed. Even if I wanted to build a settlement, the game is so fucking fidgety with roof tiles and wall tiles that it's next to impossible to make something presentable, because unless you place it in an exact fucking spot, it won't let you place it at all. Broken, sloppy, and terrible. I'd rather use the FO3 mod "Real Time Settlers".
Player Character: 0
Completely predetermined backstory which we are not allowed to change at all, forced to be a heterosexual male/female with a baby, was either in the military or in law school, and we're stuck with voice acting stale toast would be ashamed of rather than voicing our characters how we want them to sound in our heads. Say what you want about FO3, at least you could sort of shape your character's personality before you left the Vault. For example, you could help Amata from being beaten up by Butch's gang or your could encourage Butch by telling him Amata hates being called fat. Later on you can hit on Amata/flirt with her or you can be a complete dick to her and refuse her help. FO4 has none of that. You're stuck being a nice military guy with a wife and a kid or a nice lawyer with a husband and a kid growing up in pristine suburbia.
Player Creation: 1
Player Creation is pretty much the only reason I open this game anymore. I personally prefer the new system as opposed to all those sliders. Much cleaner, much easier to use, and there's a lot more variety in what you can do with their faces than in Skyrim. It doesn't go to Oblivion levels where you can make the most horrifying faces imaginable, but there's a lot of flexibility. I enjoy making faces in the game. Usually I'll use it when I make a new character in New Vegas and want a more detailed version of what they actually look like.
Attributes/Skills/Perks: 0
By the time I hit level 30 I was struggling to find things to put points into. Everything's combat oriented or gives you super powers like being able to breathe underwater or be immune to radiation. It's all very bland. The only perk tree I actually like is Charisma because of the perks that let you pacify enemies and make them join you. It's fairly amusing pacifying a Super Mutant Suicider and forcing him to nuke his friends, as an example. And since it works with literally every enemy in the game there's a lot of different ways to make people kill each other. Unfortunately every other perk is pretty damn shit. I won't make it 0.5 just because the Charisma tree is a blast.
Loot: 0
Considering the best loot you're going to find is actually by fighting Legendary Enemies and not by looting containers, looting isn't worth it in the slightest. There's maybe only 3 or 4 times I can recall going on a loot quest was worth it. The Dunwich Borers has a unique sword at the end underwater and not owned by a legendary enemy. There's some quest involving finding this secret treasure trove from the 1700s which gave some gold, silver, and copper bars, which I thought was pretty nifty. Other than that though, every time you open a container you're most likely just going to find a shittier version of a weapon or armor that you either already own or have a legendary version of.
Voice Acting: 0
Same problems as Fallout 3, 1 out of every 10 NPCs is voiced uniquely while the rest are voiced by the same 3 people. Everyone just sounds bored in the way they say they're dialogue, no one really stands out voice-wise. There's no Moira Browns with their happy, chipper voices, no Colonel Autumns with his unique accent, none of that. Everyone sounds "normal" and it makes for a very boring listen. The only NPCs that really stand out voice-acting wise are the companions, but that's about it. Even the Radio announcer for the main radio of the game sounds generic as fuck. Hell, half the time I was actually wishing Three Dog would come back. THREE DOG.
Player/NPC interaction: 0
There is none. I'll semi-quote user @Spacemunkey here in how none of the NPCs react to your SPECIAL stats, your perks, what you've done in the world, nada. If you walk into the Institute with a 10 in Intelligence and have most of the science-y perks unlocked they'll still comment how you're too stupid to be here or how you aren't a scientist. The most I can think of is when you go to Diamond City, the guards will comment on some of the things you did, like the guards in Skyrim. The difference here is that while the guards in Skyrim talked about a lot of things you did and made you at least a little bit immersed, the guards in Diamond City only talk about 3 or 4 things you did in Diamond City, and nothing else.
Replayability: 0
There is literally no replay value because everything is so linear it's not even funny. You'd think having 4 factions would mean more replay value but even if you join one faction you'll be forced to join another faction as a "spy" and do all their missions. For example, I joined the Railroad. Halfway through the Railroad plotline, once I reached the Institute, I was suddenly forced to do the ENTIRE Institute plot line with absolutely no difference from if I'd just joined the Institute instead of the Railroad, leaving 0 incentive to play through it again and side with the Institute because I'd already seen everything the questline had to offer. The only divergent choice in the game is whether to blow the Institute up or not, and that's it, which leads to one of TWO (yes there are only two) endings in the game. Absolutely pathetic. The only faction I don't know much about after just 1 playthrough is the BOS but I'm not willing to play through the game a 2nd time just to see what the BOS's radiant quests are like.
Exploration: 0.5
Like I said about the interior designs, there's enough difference between buildings and locations that you'll want to have a look around whenever you reach a new area. There are a lot of places to explore and Hell, some of them are actually pretty gorgeous. Just stay away from Settlement markers or you'll be slapped with a million radiant quests.
Sound/Music: 0.5
What little sound and music there is, is pretty darn good. When I hear vertibirds firing on Super Mutants in the distance, I kinda wanna go check it out and see what's going on. At the very least all the different environmental sounds do a somewhat good job of keeping me involved. The problem with the music is that, there's barely ANY MUSIC. I swear to God I've heard that one song with the bagpipes 40 times. Maybe my game's just busted considering it's supposed to have a 4 hour long soundtrack but I've heard the same songs over and over and over again with no variation. Don't even get me started on how Diamond City Radio's soundtrack consists of the entirety of FO3's radio with only 5 new songs added. That's bullshit. At least in FO3 you could find Agatha's Radio which added some much needed variety from Enclave and GNR. In FO4 the closest equivalent is Radio Freedom which is actually a rip off of Agatha's Radio, but it only has very short violin songs and only 3 or 4 of them at that. Completely shameful. Why in the Hell did they throw the entire Fo3 soundtrack into this game instead of finding new music?
Overall Score: 4.5/22
Interior/Clutter Design: 0.5
Comparing FO3 to FO4, I'd say interior design is better. In FO3 you would spend a looot of time underground in the subways if you were planning on getting anywhere at all downtown. These subways all looked exactly the same with hardly any variation. It made the game very stale insanely quick because many missions require you to go downtown. Many of the building interiors also looked very similar. When it comes to FO4, there are a LOT of repetitive buildings (the subways and skyscrapers all look exactly the same inside) but I'd say there's enough "special" buildings in the game that it's less noticeable. For every shitty skyscraper interior there's a comic book store with a unique look, or a nice looking Super Duper Mart that gave me Dead Rising vibes. The only thing that's similar between every single location in the game are skeletons and teddy bears, which gets annoying after maybe the 3rd time of seeing a sex joke or bathroom joke with them. I'd rate it a 0 just for the damn skellies and teddies being in every single building as a "joke" but there's enough variety to enough buildings that I'll keep it at 0.5.
World Design: 0
At first, I thought the world design was very pretty. The graphics were nice and everything seemed "different" so to speak. That all pretty much changed around the 5 hour mark when I was running around doing settlement missions for Garvey, not realizing they were radiant quests. It seems like every single "settlement" is located right next to a raider camp, a deathclaw lair, a super mutant town, and so forth. Considering over 3/4ths of these so-called settlements have less than 5 people, how am I supposed to reasonably believe they've survived this long? Honestly I like the world's look, it's very stylized and the downtown area isn't a slog to get through like DC's was, but it just breaks my suspension of disbelief. If there had been at least a few settlements that weren't right next to deathtraps then it might be better, but no, they all are. There's also the fact that there's only 2 major settlements in the game. I've seen people call Bunker Hill a big settlement but honestly it's barely bigger than some of the smaller settlements. They just crammed more people inside to trick you into thinking it's bigger than it really is. There's also the fact that you have normal people, not raiders, living in buildings that not only have a completely collapsed roof, but are also full of skeletons. Best example I can think of is Croup Manor. Not only is that place completely falling apart with giant holes in the ceilings and walls, but it's full of skeletons and the corpses of feral ghouls. It's a complete mess and yet people will gladly live there. It's also right next to Gunner territory and right across from the BOS's main base, so I'm constantly seeing vertibirds fly over the manor to attack the gunners only to blow up on my settlement and kill everyone. I've had this happen in multiple settlements, just replace Gunners with Raiders/Super Mutants/Deathclaws.
Atmosphere: 0
The atmosphere never did anything for me. In Fallout 3 I would walk around, thinking "My God, the world's a complete mess. Look at what we've done." The well placed dilapidation on the surface combined with the eerie music without the radio on, as well as Super Mutant bodybags slung everywhere and so forth, it just made me want to keep looking over my shoulder the first time I played it. I was never sure what would be around the next corner and it all felt gloomy and spooky, at least in the main city area. I loved it. Maybe it's because FO4 tries to basically copy FO3's world design minus the eerie music, green fog enveloping everything, and so forth, but it just does not work. First of all, the world's too bright and cheerful. I didn't think this would be a problem when I started playing but it really is. When you see giant bloody bags stuffed with human body parts or slathering hulking beasts ripping people to shreds while it's bright and sunny as if nothing's wrong with the world, it just loses me. I know a lot of people hated FO3's green fogginess but personally I thought it added to the atmosphere and made everything seem bleak. In FO4 everything's too bright and cheerful looking for me to think post-apocalyptia except around The Glowing Sea. There's also the problem that despite the fact there's skeletons and destruction literally everywhere you look, way too many things are still standing to give that complete destruction vibe FO3 gave. There's no reason more buildings shouldn't be standing considering Boston was apparently only hit by a single nuke. I guess the rain and the radiation storms are nice but they barely happen often enough. I've maybe seen 4 radiation storms in my entire 150 hours of playtime, 2 of which occured in the Glowing Sea.
Suspension of Disbelief/Balance: 0
Like I said before about settlements, for every 2 person settlement there's at least 2 Raider camps right next door. There's no feasible way these settlements should be anything other than carcasses for you to pick. They needed to space out these locations a lot better. I think the main issue is that since 1/3rd of the map is nonsensically covered in water with nothing in it, they had to make up for it by squeezing everything together so tightly that nothing makes sense. If they had not covered the map in so much damn water for no reason and instead put everything further apart, a lot of problems involving immersion and suspension of disbelief would disappear right there. Let's also go over the fact that many of these people are living in "settlements" that consist of a SINGLE house (one that's falling apart at that) and they need you, some random stranger, to rebuild everything for them. If I can make them a bunch of metal shacks in less than an hour, why have these jackasses been sitting on their thumbs the last 200 years?
Main Story Writing: 0
It's so full of plotholes and completely idiotic contrivances it's not even worth discussing. So many other threads (including like 5 I've made myself) have gone over the huge glaring problems with this stupid, STUPID story. Moving on.
Side Story Writing: 0
I wanted to give this a higher score, I did. The problem is that 99% of the so-called side stories are either KILL, LOOT, RETURN, radiant quests, or they're way too linear with no choices at all. I'll give you an example of a sidequest I was actually kinda excited about, Building A Better Crop. See, I was a Railroad spy working for the Institute, and this was one of the Institute's sidequests. It's all about finding one of these synths they've used to replace someone and giving him these modified seeds which should make a fine harvest. So since I'm a Railroad spy I thought I'd be able to expose this Synth for what he really is, or at the very least find out more about why the Institute are replacing people with synths. He was living with the guy he was replacing's family, acting as their father. There's a farmhand who's figured out this father is actually a synth, and it's my job to track him down. I thought I could tell this farmhand that I'm with the Railroad and I want to help him stop the father too, but no. I'm literally forced to side with the Institute for this quest and convince the farmhand to stand down. I don't get any option to stop the synth father or ship him off to the Railroad for reprogramming and let this family know that isn't their real dad, none of it. I'm forced to go the Institute path only even though I'm not even working with the Institute. I also never got any answer whatsoever as to why the Institute is kidnapping people.
Faction Story Writing: 0
This has also been picked apart and dissected to death on this site, so I'll keep it brief. None of the factions make any sense, especially the Institute. The only driving force between 3 out of the 4 factions are the Synths, and that's it. That's all they care about. The only one that doesn't is the Minutemen and that's just because you're pretty much the only Minuteman. You're an entire faction because the Minutemen don't actually do a goddamn thing and you must do everything, including defending settlements and doing shitton of radiant quests for them. None of the other Minutemen do squat besides sit around in your settlements, mooching off food and water.
Dialogue: 0
At first I didn't think the dialogue was that awful, until I got this one mod that turns the dialogue wheel into actual sentences like in 3 and NV. Holy shit is it bad once you see the full choices written out. 99% of the time it truly is just Yes, Yes, Yes?, or No (Yes). Many of the voice actors don't emote in the slightest, and most of the lines in the game are repeated again and again. Can't tell you how many times I've heard Mama Murphy say "Mama Murphy's as good as her word kid. No more chems. No more Sight either." or hear an NPC talk about how he/she wishes for rain. It's like 75% of all NPCs in the game have only 4 set lines to say and will say nothing else no matter what you do. At least in Skyrim and FO3 people might mention something you did, like "Oh wow that's the guy that shot up (insert NPC name here)", but in FO4 there's none of that except with Diamond City's guards, who're basically just Skyrim Guards modernized.
NPC Design: 0.5
Even though the mouth animation is just about the worst effect I've EVER seen in a video game, honestly the NPC designs aren't that bad. At least they're less potato-y than FO3's. I wouldn't consider any of them attractive at all, but the designs are okay. There's enough distinction between named NPCs and non-named NPCs to tell them apart. It's not like FO3 where Walter from Megaton and Herbert Daring Dashwood have the exact same face just with different skin tone and hair.
Combat: 1
To me, I like the combat fine. It basically feels like FO3's (which I enjoyed) and there's enough variety in the outside location appearances that battles with the same enemies will be slightly different each time. VATS is still a fun system to use even in this game.
AI: 0.5
I've seen many people say the AI act like complete bumbling retards in this game, blowing up grenades in their own face and the like, but honestly I haven't had this problem. The AI are fairly responsive and can even be dangerous at times. Sometimes they'll even duck for cover and try to shoot at me from behind a wall where I can't hit them. The problem is that for every smart AI, there's usually some stupid AI. Like the Vertibirds that randomly fly up in the air, stop shooting, land, then just start flying again out of nowhere, or the Super Mutant Suiciders who sometimes won't even run at you but instead run in circles and get themselves killed. Still, there's some good AI in there, thus why this isn't getting a 0.
Weapon/Armor Design: 0
At first, I thought the weapons and armor looked pretty nice and different compared to FO3. That was, until I realized there's maybe like 40 different weapon designs and armor designs in the whole fucking game. It seems like they just slapped some weapon designs together from FO3 and made maybe 5 new ones, but instead of making more weapon designs, they attempted to trick us with "legendary weapons", which look exactly the same as the normal weapons but function differently. For instance, the most OP gun in the game (and the one I have used since the beginning) is the Overseer's Guardian, an assault rifle that fires 2 shots instead of 1 with every fire. It looks exactly the same as every other assault rifle with the small tweaks the mods I put on there did. Mods really don't change the weapon appearance that much, and it just seems like a way to make it seem like there's tons of weapon variety. The same can be said for armor. Not much base armor, and there's really only 10 strap-on armors in the whole game with, once again, mods and enchantments to make them seem more different than they really are.
Crafting/Building: 0
In my game, food never works properly no matter how many people I assign to a crop, and thus I can never get food. Every time I leave a settlement my bed count drops to 0, which is a known bug in some games that they've never fixed. Even if I wanted to build a settlement, the game is so fucking fidgety with roof tiles and wall tiles that it's next to impossible to make something presentable, because unless you place it in an exact fucking spot, it won't let you place it at all. Broken, sloppy, and terrible. I'd rather use the FO3 mod "Real Time Settlers".
Player Character: 0
Completely predetermined backstory which we are not allowed to change at all, forced to be a heterosexual male/female with a baby, was either in the military or in law school, and we're stuck with voice acting stale toast would be ashamed of rather than voicing our characters how we want them to sound in our heads. Say what you want about FO3, at least you could sort of shape your character's personality before you left the Vault. For example, you could help Amata from being beaten up by Butch's gang or your could encourage Butch by telling him Amata hates being called fat. Later on you can hit on Amata/flirt with her or you can be a complete dick to her and refuse her help. FO4 has none of that. You're stuck being a nice military guy with a wife and a kid or a nice lawyer with a husband and a kid growing up in pristine suburbia.
Player Creation: 1
Player Creation is pretty much the only reason I open this game anymore. I personally prefer the new system as opposed to all those sliders. Much cleaner, much easier to use, and there's a lot more variety in what you can do with their faces than in Skyrim. It doesn't go to Oblivion levels where you can make the most horrifying faces imaginable, but there's a lot of flexibility. I enjoy making faces in the game. Usually I'll use it when I make a new character in New Vegas and want a more detailed version of what they actually look like.
Attributes/Skills/Perks: 0
By the time I hit level 30 I was struggling to find things to put points into. Everything's combat oriented or gives you super powers like being able to breathe underwater or be immune to radiation. It's all very bland. The only perk tree I actually like is Charisma because of the perks that let you pacify enemies and make them join you. It's fairly amusing pacifying a Super Mutant Suicider and forcing him to nuke his friends, as an example. And since it works with literally every enemy in the game there's a lot of different ways to make people kill each other. Unfortunately every other perk is pretty damn shit. I won't make it 0.5 just because the Charisma tree is a blast.
Loot: 0
Considering the best loot you're going to find is actually by fighting Legendary Enemies and not by looting containers, looting isn't worth it in the slightest. There's maybe only 3 or 4 times I can recall going on a loot quest was worth it. The Dunwich Borers has a unique sword at the end underwater and not owned by a legendary enemy. There's some quest involving finding this secret treasure trove from the 1700s which gave some gold, silver, and copper bars, which I thought was pretty nifty. Other than that though, every time you open a container you're most likely just going to find a shittier version of a weapon or armor that you either already own or have a legendary version of.
Voice Acting: 0
Same problems as Fallout 3, 1 out of every 10 NPCs is voiced uniquely while the rest are voiced by the same 3 people. Everyone just sounds bored in the way they say they're dialogue, no one really stands out voice-wise. There's no Moira Browns with their happy, chipper voices, no Colonel Autumns with his unique accent, none of that. Everyone sounds "normal" and it makes for a very boring listen. The only NPCs that really stand out voice-acting wise are the companions, but that's about it. Even the Radio announcer for the main radio of the game sounds generic as fuck. Hell, half the time I was actually wishing Three Dog would come back. THREE DOG.
Player/NPC interaction: 0
There is none. I'll semi-quote user @Spacemunkey here in how none of the NPCs react to your SPECIAL stats, your perks, what you've done in the world, nada. If you walk into the Institute with a 10 in Intelligence and have most of the science-y perks unlocked they'll still comment how you're too stupid to be here or how you aren't a scientist. The most I can think of is when you go to Diamond City, the guards will comment on some of the things you did, like the guards in Skyrim. The difference here is that while the guards in Skyrim talked about a lot of things you did and made you at least a little bit immersed, the guards in Diamond City only talk about 3 or 4 things you did in Diamond City, and nothing else.
Replayability: 0
There is literally no replay value because everything is so linear it's not even funny. You'd think having 4 factions would mean more replay value but even if you join one faction you'll be forced to join another faction as a "spy" and do all their missions. For example, I joined the Railroad. Halfway through the Railroad plotline, once I reached the Institute, I was suddenly forced to do the ENTIRE Institute plot line with absolutely no difference from if I'd just joined the Institute instead of the Railroad, leaving 0 incentive to play through it again and side with the Institute because I'd already seen everything the questline had to offer. The only divergent choice in the game is whether to blow the Institute up or not, and that's it, which leads to one of TWO (yes there are only two) endings in the game. Absolutely pathetic. The only faction I don't know much about after just 1 playthrough is the BOS but I'm not willing to play through the game a 2nd time just to see what the BOS's radiant quests are like.
Exploration: 0.5
Like I said about the interior designs, there's enough difference between buildings and locations that you'll want to have a look around whenever you reach a new area. There are a lot of places to explore and Hell, some of them are actually pretty gorgeous. Just stay away from Settlement markers or you'll be slapped with a million radiant quests.
Sound/Music: 0.5
What little sound and music there is, is pretty darn good. When I hear vertibirds firing on Super Mutants in the distance, I kinda wanna go check it out and see what's going on. At the very least all the different environmental sounds do a somewhat good job of keeping me involved. The problem with the music is that, there's barely ANY MUSIC. I swear to God I've heard that one song with the bagpipes 40 times. Maybe my game's just busted considering it's supposed to have a 4 hour long soundtrack but I've heard the same songs over and over and over again with no variation. Don't even get me started on how Diamond City Radio's soundtrack consists of the entirety of FO3's radio with only 5 new songs added. That's bullshit. At least in FO3 you could find Agatha's Radio which added some much needed variety from Enclave and GNR. In FO4 the closest equivalent is Radio Freedom which is actually a rip off of Agatha's Radio, but it only has very short violin songs and only 3 or 4 of them at that. Completely shameful. Why in the Hell did they throw the entire Fo3 soundtrack into this game instead of finding new music?
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