So at the moment, I'm somewhere between 10 and 20
hours into Fallout 4, and I don't think I'll be finished anytime soon, so I
thought I'd start a new segment here on the Multi-platformer: 15 Hour
Impressions. This is for big open world games that I definitely will never
finish and if I do, it will be in 2078. When I get games like this, I always
think to myself "I should've gotten something that will help me. Ya know
like with my job, maybe." But then once I'm in, I have no
regrets about it. So I decided, if I enjoy this game so much, why not find a
way to talk about it without even having finished 10 percent of it? This is 15
Hour Impressions.
Fallout 4 is a post-apocalyptic WRPG set in a
futuristic 1950s style Boston after a full scale nuclear war. If that sentence
was rather confusing to you, don't worry: it is confusing. Point is, you shoot
things, get experience, level up, and then get a passive ability
that occasionally makes people explode into a (name drop) Bloody Mess
*puts on sunglasses*. You also get experience from (here we go): Picking locks,
hacking computers, giving people things they want, choosing specific dialogue
when you have enough Charisma, building shit, modifying weapons, or just
inputting a console command to make you level 400 and make a grenade that blows
up releasing a pack of Deathclaws an item which unfortunately does not exist in
the base game for some odd reason.
The combat is incredibly satisfying, feeling like a
refined version of Borderlands. People often say that Fallout 4 relies too
heavily on VATS, seeing how it's often your best chance of doing damage, but it
never feels like that to me. In my opinion, VATS is merely a complement to the
rest of the game's combat, especially now that VATS has been nerfed from
previous games, only slowing time instead of freezing it. Standard shooter
tactics like sniping, getting cover and stealthily avoiding sight are still valid
tactics. Also, your use of VATS is tied to your ability to run the fuck away,
so often, you end up choosing between getting some extra damage in while your
enemy's close or having the energy to run off to a better position. This,
combined with your limited time to decide, makes strategy and careful planning
a large part of the experience.
The world of Fallout 4 isn't always the prettiest
open world, but it's definitely the most alive. Every person wandering the
wasteland or trying to pick the pieces up and start a life in a settlement
really pulls you into the game's world, reminding you that life in the
wasteland isn't easy or fun (like the term "video game" would have
you believe) but is instead full of hardship and despair. The quests aren't
exactly Witcher quests, but a lot of them do open up new parts of the world you
wouldn't have found on your own or get you to interact with some interesting
characters. In reality, most of them are just "go here, clear out the
raiders, come back and tell me about it" but even those end up holding
your interest because you'll usually get them from characters that you straight
want to talk to because they're just so real. They don't just ask you to clear
out Raiders from a specific area because they have a feeling that the a Raiders
might be big meanies. They actually have problems that they need your help to
overcome.
The story is quite interesting. I'm not going to
say all that much about because of spoilers and the fact that you can ignore it
if you feel like it, but I will say that it definitely keeps you engaged for a
prolonged amount of time.
But what this game truly excels at is something that eludes far too many
games these days: Finding the borderline between making you feel like a badass
and not overpowering you. Make no mistake. You will die far more often than
your enemies will. It will be frustrating at first but then you'll be able to
take your experience and apply it back to the same event. And then you can rush
in, knowing perfectly well what to do, and suddenly, you're the Fallout master.
So you're always feeling like a badass, especially when you're using a really
cool, badass weapon like a baseball bat or the infamous Cryolator, but
simultaneously you're always feeling like you need to improve. And in the game,
the progression system also enforces this concept. When you level, you have
three choices: choose a perk, a typically passive ability that enhances your
experience without ever completely altering it; increasing one of your stats
which also opens up a new perk that can be chosen; or enhancing a perk you
already have so that you can go further with that skill. As I said, the perks
never give you some broken new ability but instead offer a new option that will
make your experience just a bit more convenient. Some perks give occasional
multipliers to your experience gains; some make you do just a little more
damage; and some make traveling in water easier by removing the risk of
drowning or being irradiated like nobody's business by it. These all do nothing
more than make Fallout 4 a bit less helpless. You now can control the way the
game reacts to you rather than just having to go in and play by the game's
rules. And if none of that made any sense, well I can't say I'm surprised. Now
if you'll excuse me, I need to massacre some Raiders to see if I can find some
glue. I need it for basically everything.
