Review: Fallout 4
Originally Posted: November 28, 2015
Release Date: 10 November, 2015
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Depth and imagination bring the world of Fallout 4 to life. It’s large and well planned environment, and amazing amounts of customization out weigh the many minor issues you may find in your journey across the wasteland of Boston.
The Good:
Fallout 4 feels enormous. Not just in the generous map size, but in the sheer amount of things you can do throughout the wasteland. It would be quite easy for you to simply go out and explore, and never do any quests at all and still feel quite accomplished in your chosen path.
After customizing either your male, or female character, you get a short prelude into the world that was. It’s high tech, high tension cold war atmosphere filled with advanced tech, but still locked in a 50’s style environment is a ton of fun. Every character in the game is also fully voiced, regardless of their importance. They will even try to say your chosen name so long as it’s recognized by the game.
It’s not long before everything goes downhill and you are thrust into a nuclear destroyed future, alone, confused and missing your young son who is stolen away from you by raiders. From here it’s up to you to decide what you want to do. Whether you follow the story, do some random quests, or simply ignore all story and just start shooting things, there is always something to do in Fallout 4.
The main story will push you to go and find your lost son, finding clues and new friends along the way. These friends will join you on your adventures if you choose, and have a few benefits. Alongside the extra fire power, each companion you find will also add unique skills, and a perk once your relationship is solid enough. For instance if you’ve chosen to ignore increasing your lock-picking skill, Cait is a great companion to have around as she can open up locked chests and doors for you. Your loyal dog Dogmeat is able to hold down enemies to give you time to use your V.A.T.S. targeting system to target individual limbs on your enemies.
If you’ve played Fallout 3, then combat will be familiar to you, but the combat is based around similar FPS games, so new comers should fit right in easily. Combat can be approached in several ways, either through stealth, melee, or taking advantage of your V.A.T.S. to target enemies. V.A.T.S. allows you to slow down time and individually target enemies and limbs to cripple them, or engage in gruesome slow motion kills as body parts explode off of your enemies. It’s a huge amount of fun and the fact that time sill continues as you target takes away the feel of invincibility you got in Fallout 3 when time fully paused using this system.
The stealth systems are workable, but I never quite found it that much fun, as compared to just running in guns hot and firing away, or using V.A.T.S. to slow time. Either way fights are challenging, and you will die often if you take on enemies who are too high in level or too numerous.
As you embark in battles and exploration, you will scour the corpses and environments for scrap and salvage, along with weapons and armor. Scavenging in the wasteland is of dire importance in Fallout 4. Early in the game it’s an absolute necessity. Salvaged items can be either consumed if edible, or broken down to their components and can then be used in crafting.
You will spend a huge amount of time crafting and building in Fallout 4. Every piece of weaponry and armor you collect can be customized. This adds a great deal of depth to combat as you can build equipment to suit your every need, or your play-style.
To be very successful in Fallout 4 you will also have to build up various settlements throughout the world. These settlements are unlocked early in the game and you can acquire more by completing quests in the areas surrounding farms, or other central locations to align yourself with the settlers there. Once allied with them, you’ll have to take time to build them up and protect them so that they grow larger, and help you with your resource collection. This is a great added feature to the game, and allows you to add your mark to the desolate wasteland.
Every action in Fallout 4 gains you experience. Whether you’d like to do all the quests, kill all the enemies, or simply spend your time building up settlements, you’ll continue to earn experience and level up.
The Bad:
Though there is a ton of things to do in Fallout 4, outside of quests, there is very little information about what you need to do. As you explore, your quest log will load up quickly, and though each quest is searchable on the map, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish which ones are side quests, or part of the main story line. If you are someone who want’s to power through the main story line, you’ll have to keep track of which quests you need to do next to do so.
There’s also very little explanation of some of the concepts of the game. For insatance as you build up your colonies, there is no mention about how to link the resources for each of these sites together. I personally only found out how to do it by watching a friend play the game, and had been missing out on having all of my resources connected to make building up settlements faster.
As you find new companions throughout the game, it becomes increasingly hard to keep them organised. There doesn’t seem to be any utility to tell you where your people are unless you keep a list of where you’ve sent them. I for instance have no idea where I left my dog and have to search through more than a dozen settlements to find if I want him to accompany me on a quest. Also, beyond the first few times with a new companion, you may not know what their particular perks will help you with.
Power armor is available in the game, and gives you extra strength and endurance, but it became rare late in the game where I felt I needed to use it. I seldom felt like taking the time to go all the way back through a couple of loading screens to collect my armor to come back and fight a tough enemy or boss.
When it comes to the main story, there is little urgency in completing it, and considering it’s your son you’re looking for, my character never really seemed that concerned about finding him. Although I understand that Bethesda wants you to play the game however you like, it seems strange that my character doesn’t really care if I spend weeks building up a settlement while unknown fiends have run off with my only child.
The Ugly:
Unfortunately, like with most Bethesda product, Fallout 4 comes with a variety of graphical and gameplay glitches. For the most part these glitches are minor and don’t effect the gameplay, and are often good for a laugh, but every once in awhile this is not the case.
In one case at my largest settlement, I decided to store my extra weapons inside a cupboard in a house. When I returned one day to the settlement a cow had somehow found it’s way into the house, and was unable to fit through the door, essentially blocking me from accessing my inventory. Even after exiting the game and coming back, the cow was still there, mocking me.
Other occasions found me getting stuck in the environment during massive fire fights, resulting in my untimely death. Other combat issues like feral ghouls launching at you, and passing through your body to the other side, resulting in you having to quickly twitch around in order to hit them, or aiming straight down to make impact with them.
These along with various other clipping issues, and weird graphical issues throughout my experience made me occasionally want to rage quit the game when things didn’t go my way.
In the end:
Fallout 4 has a lot going for it. There are countless things to do and see. The environment is large and beautiful and whoever designed the map should earn an award. The open world, and customization choices mean you can play Fallout 4 however you like. There are no rules or obligations for you to play any particular way, or even complete quests to have fun. Adversely, with such a rich story and history, it’s unfortunate the game doesn’t really push you to want to complete the main quests and discover the mysteries of the wasteland.
This, along with a variety of glitches and exploits mean that Fallout 4 is far from perfect, but it’s rare that these issues will interfere with you having a blast blowing limbs off of super mutants or raiders the like. The sheer amount of funny, awesome and interesting things to find and do have stopped me just before rage quitting from some silly glitch more than once. Fallout 4 is definitely a great addition to the franchise and I am sure to spend many more hours in the wastelands of Boston.
Review: Mad Max
Originally Posted: September 21, 2015
Release Date: 1 Sep, 2015
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Welcome to the wasteland; time for some good old-fashioned revenge. Enter Mad Max, the grizzled, apocalypse-surviving ex-cop with a bad temper, and even worse demeanor. Brought to us by the folks at Avalanche Games, Mad Max is a terrific open world action game with various RPG elements thrown in to boot.
Dropped in the middle of the wasteland, you take over Max after he’s been beaten, abused and robbed of his beloved V8 after one of the most epic opening scenes experienced in recent memory. The gist from here is simple. Get a new ride, and take out the guy who stole it from you.
If you are familiar with games like Assassin’s Creed, Shadow of Mordor, or Batman: Arkham Asylum, you’ll fall right in line with the basic gameplay for Mad Max. You roam around in third person in a massive, fully explorable map. At any time you can view this map for insights as to special locations throughout the world. These locales can be discovered similarly to Assassin’s Creed, by finding viewpoints and exploring the world, only this time they come in the form of hot air balloons.
There is a wide variety of missions you can take on, from simple scavenging quests to races to taking down powerful convoys or even invading fortified bases and taking them over. There is always something to do, and even these similar tasks are made less repetitive by changing up the layouts or objectives in each area.
Each of these will involve combat of some type. Ammunition is extremely limited early on, so most of this combat will take place either on foot, or in your vehicle. Ground combat is a theatrical thrill, and takes more than a nod from Batman and Shadow of Mordor, with its button-clicking, counter-timing style. The speed, variety of enemies and attacks, and pure adrenaline it inspires from its theatrical approach, however, makes you completely forget any of the before-mentioned similarities to other games. Combat here is simple to learn, but just a ton of fun to take part in, as Mad Max takes on dozens of enemies at a time with his bare fists, or weapons found laying about. Later combos also let you perform magnificent kill shots, and use the environment around you to assist in a multitude of ways.
If you aren’t fighting on your feet, you’ll be fighting on your wheels, in your own customizable death machine, better known as the Magnum Opus. You’ll spend most of your time in your vehicle, building it up from a scrap pile of a dune buggy, to a monstrous machine of death, spikes included! You can customize and upgrade your vehicle with an assortment of armor and weapons, or configure it into special Archangels which will give you various bonuses to driving or combat.
Early carnage (pun intended) starts with simply ramming objects and other vehicles, but you quickly gain useful accessories, like a harpoon able to rip pieces, or even people off of opposing vehicles, and even taking down towers and snipers and other stationary targets. Later additions like a rear mounted sniper rifle, and explosive harpoons add to the mayhem.
Throughout the game you will upgrade your vehicle and Mad Max himself by collecting scrap strewn throughout the world. You can also gain scrap by taking over opposing camps, and building relationships with the leaders of the mighty strongholds. Managing your scrap intake is a big key, especially early on, to upgrading Max’s abilities and customizing your ride. For the most part though, besides a few visual choices, most players’ Mad Max will more or less play like everyone else’s; there is simply just not as much uniqueness available in the skill sets, and you can eventually just buy everything, or gain it through either in-game quests, or your notoriety which will raise as you complete quests and accomplishments.
These small misses are generally completely wiped out by the pure scale, scope and feel to the giant, and quite literal, sandbox laid out for you to explore. The Wasteland is vast, beautiful and treacherous. You can explore nearly every mountain, valley, or distant point with no fear of any invisible walls or dead ends. The lack of any loading screen only makes this world seem more massive.
And the Wasteland isn’t just a pretty place to look at. There are various dangers out there just waiting to kill Mad Max. Massive dust storms throw debris everywhere, tornadoes appear out of nowhere to knock you off of cliffs, and massive scary as hell thunderstorms destroy nearly everything in their path. The surroundings are beautiful and deadly, and you’ll never know when to expect attack from roaming patrols, or snipers.
The only major downfall to Mad Max is the story. After the initial awesomness, the story falls to the background and there is little motivation to proceed with it, except to unlock new upgrades for yourself, or your Magnum Opus. Though the story does pick up again in the final chapter, you’ll have more fun just exploring the world, blowing up things, and knocking out bad guys. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Regardless of any of it’s shortcomings, Mad Max is a huge amount of fun to play. There are a couple of different ways to go about the combat, and there is always something else to do. Completionists will find a ton of items to collect, scrap to find, and historical relics abound in the massive and beautiful environment. Fans of the movies will also see a variety of call-outs to the series as you explore, though there is an obvious disconnect from direct references to any of the movies. By far, if you are looking for a fun time-killer and love over-the-top action and beautiful explosions, Mad Max is a fit for you.
Stranded Deep, Early Access Review
Originally Posted: February 17th, 2015
Release Date: 11 Aug, 2022 1.0 Release
Developer: Beam Team Gaming
Publisher: Beam Team Publishing
I am a few hours into the gameplay of Stranded Deep and I can tell you this is a very solid game for an early access on Steam. Graphically the game looks beautiful. The water, and lighting effects are amazing and add a lot of realism to the game, especially any dives you might decide to take at night. The animal models are solid and move fluidly. The only lack so far being the absence of any player model, or any shadow effect, which leads to some odd situations where whipping a potato out of your sack resorts to an odd instant shadow materializing from nowhere. The game maintains a solid frame rate throughout most of the game, unless you have piled up a large amount of supplies on your beach, as the physics engine seems to struggle to maintain frame rate with more than a dozen or so sticks floating around.
The gameplay included with the early access model is solid, but to some degree underwhelming. Everything works well, and is fairly easy to accomplish, but with no story, or end game to shoot for you are limited to building a massive beach cabin on all the various islands around you. On these islands there is a lack of uniqueness as each island is a carbon copy of the next, and holds roughly similar amounts of resources for you to use. The real gameplay begins once you start to explore the depths around your tiny island for shipwrecks hidden deep below the ocean. With limited air, and sight lines, and never knowing when the weather may change and your visibility under water will be reduced to zero, these dives are fun and exhilarating. The fauna is filled with small fish and the occasional shark, though I have yet to truly feel threatened by the massive tiger sharks, and great white’s swimming around as their AI is not very aggressive and you can easily swim past them, which leads to the only major downfall of this game, survivability.
I found it entirely too easy to create a beach paradise with dozens of sources of food available on each island in the form of crabs, small fish, and dozens upon dozens of coconuts which serve as both food and hydration. The overall game balance feels off as I never really feel like I am in danger of not surviving the day, or the night.
Overall this is a very solid start, and with some balancing done and an overal story, or end-game in place this game offers a unique take on the survival/craft genre, with its beautiful surroundings, and the exploration of a vast, endless ocean.
I look forward to spending more time lost in an endless ocean.