Fallout 4, my experience so far
Entry posted by Clephas
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First, I should say that, despite Gamespot's glowing review of this game, I can honestly say that this game's story sucks. This is fairly typical of Bethesda, as the main stories of all their games have sucked. Frequently a side-quest chain will be the best part of the game's 'story'. For instance, the political issues in Skyrim were way more interesting than all that Dragonborn BS, and they never did manage to make the main story of Morrowind seem compelling. Fallout 4 suffers from the usual pitfalls of Bethesda using its own internal team to write the story, and I honestly thought that they completely wasted the settlements.
That said, there are some high points in the game, so far... Codsworth is probably one of the most amusing companions they've ever produced, and Dogmeat actually feels like a companion rather than a hindrance in this one.
The most jumbled and difficult to use mechanic of the game (and seemingly the most pointless) is the settlements. What do you basically do? You build buildings, fill them with beds, plant enough food and water to provide for the random settlers attracted by a radio beacon, set up a few shops and some auto-turrets for defenses... and basically they do nothing for you, if you don't bother setting up shops (the shops can be useful, obviously). Theoretically, setting up artillery in your settlements can give you an advantage, but I honestly don't think it is worth it. The only reason I bother is to have places to drop my junk after looting various buildings.
Power armor in this game is a vehicle... and that has its downsides and upsides, as it is very much like being in a walking tank in terms of unstoppability... and it gobbles fusion cores. Fusion cores are a relatively rare find amongst (rarer than any non-unique item except the power armor itself) the items in this game, though you can buy at least one from every merchant in the game (including the ones you set up yourself)... at a cost of around five hundred caps, which is an impossible amount early on. That said, because you can purchase them in potentially unlimited amounts, power armor has more utility than you'd guess from the concept. I do suggest you keep a solid stock of cores on you and remove any cores from power armor you get out of (so someone else can't steal it). When it comes to dealing with armies of super mutants and other massive horrors, power armor can be a nice powerful crutch, lol.
Enemies in this game work a lot better than they did in Fallout 3. Why do I say this? Because ghouls act a lot like fast-running, brain-eating superzombies (they can come crawling out of the weirdest places) and super mutants are even more insane than they were in the other games. Flying insects, moles, and dogs are all more dangerous/scary than they were n Fallout 3 or NV, and Deathclaws are even scarier.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for humans... raiders are weak, there is no really interesting human faction out there (the Minutemen being a bunch of idiots carrying around slow-firing lasers), and there is no even relatively interesting antagonist available. I mean, the entire thing takes me back to the bad Bond movies from the seventies... in a bad way. The idea behind the Institute is way too super-villainy for me.
All in all, while the gameplay itself is fun, some parts, such as the settlement functions and inventory management, are clunky, and I honestly have to wonder if they really were trying to tell a story in this game at all...
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