Fallout 4. Likely the fallout of the franchise

Written by: Scott Beers
Feb 28, 2016, 9:00 a.m.
Tweet to: @SkottBeers

How did this game get rated a 9+ on every media site? *cough* Paid off?

I was a huge fan of Oblivion (2006), Fallout 3 (2008), and even Skyrim (2011). However, Fallout 4 (2015) is still using the same game engine that was groundbreaking a decade ago. The graphics have improved marginally and they’re outdated for sure. Let’s say the graphics look good for 2010, if you’re running maximum settings.

Regardless, the AI is no different than any of the games mentioned above. The FPS controls are garbage compared to today’s standards such as Destiny. I’m not just talking about the AI, but also the way the guns handle. The loot system hasn’t changed, and the horribly clunky user interface that forces you to pause mid-combat to navigate your 2008-Pipboy inventory to find a piece of rat meat to eat in order to keep your health up remains.

Who the fuck wants to play a game when you’re spending 60 percent of the time in your inventory, 20 percent of the time sneaking around hoping not to spook any high levels, and the rest of the time trying to run past enemies in order to get to the next quest quick point? Sure you can slowly grind your level up by fighting random bandits, but the combat is so mundane that you’re better off throwing rocks into an outhouse shit hole. A better title for this game would be RPG Inventory Manager 2015.

If you played Fallout 3, which was great for its time, Fallout 4 is basically a waste of your time. They had seven years to produce this heavily marketed “game of the year” which is far from it. Metal Gear Solid V or The Witcher 3 clearly take the cake for 2015. You could even make the argument that Halo 5 was better, and that game was a bigger dud than Late Night with Larry Wilmore and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah combined. Fallout 4 is essentially a slightly graphically improved version of a game created nearly a decade ago.

*SPOILER ALERT*

The story starts off interesting, but takes a strange turn less than an hour in when you’re frozen for X amount of years. In the midst of that freeze you see your wife and your baby escape their freeze pod. You then get frozen again for an unknown period of time. Somehow he wakes up thinking he’s going to track down his infant son, yet he doesn’t know when his son was unfrozen. You go on this ridiculous journey across a very inaccurate portrayal of Boston (I went to college there, so I know the layout of the city, and it’s way way off).

Your character’s quest is to track down his son, but he seems to have no haste in regard to doing so. He’d rather being fighting bandits to save some random farmer’s locket or go digging through the sewers for a giant crab claw instead of going about his primary objective in reuniting with his son. He seems to believe his son is an infant for some reason. I wasn’t sure either. In my mind, his son was rather too old to still be alive or possibly the same age as the main character. I don’t know the answer to that question, and don’t care to continue playing to find out.

Fallout 4 is a huge disgrace to anyone who has played the previous three Bethesda RPGs. If you haven’t played the others, have fun! Otherwise, be prepared to give up between two to 10 hours due to unsatisfying repetitiveness.

If you want to, try some enticing action RPGs from the past decade. Your best choices in my opinion would be Oblivion, Dark Souls (super hard), Dark Souls II (not as hard), Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Diablo III (with 2-4 friends), Borderlands 2 (with 2-4 friends),  and Dark Souls III (in April, 2016).