Recent reviews by SlamYoJam

Yeah it's all right I suppose.

*NO SPOILERS*

Ok, this is a bit of a long one, so if you're planning on reading this buckle up.

Now, I'd say that I'm a long standing fan of the fallout series, but only in terms of the Bethesda / Obsidian entertainment, I've got 500+ hours on both NV and 3 on my xbox, (Long gone are the days of my console peasantry - I apologise) and I've just hit the 60 Hour mark on Fallout 4, does this make my opinion better than a new player? No, each to their own, but, it does give me a good grounds for comparison.


Now I'll do this like any average review and split it into numbered pros and cons list.

Pros:

1. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Excellent gameplay:
The game is just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ great to play, there are a variety of guns to use, a variety of armour and wacky clothes to equip and just generally a lot of quests to play through, currenly I'm level 44 - 45 and while I've completed the story, I still have a lot of side quests to find through the thousands of zones I've not yet visited, while guns and weapons are limited to just under 60 weapons, the amount of customization you can do to them make's them completley different guns to play with, as well as the 44 unique weapons hidden around the world.
it offers a variety of different difficulty settings that go "Very easy, easy, normal, hard, very hard, SURVIVAL," which offeres different levels of play styles and difficulty and rewards those that play on harder difficulties with better chances to get legendary weapons.

2. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ beautiful:
A lot of people are complaining about the graphics and I really, really don't know why, I play on the lowest settings and barely scratch 60fps, and I can play fine and happily with how the game looks because even on low, it looks great, sure, textures are a bit awful, but they're better than Fallout 3 / NV by a long shot, even the general look of outside feels more apocalyptic with it's washed out look, abandoned burnt down buildings, rustic civilizations of scrap metal, feral and tame abominations of radiation riddled creatures, even zones like the "glowing sea" all really capture what you would expect from a nuclear disaster perfectly.

3. settlements:
Now this was something that had me practically grasping at my balls and tugging on my meat during the initial reveal trailer, and while in reality I find myself rarely using this feature of the game because I prefer blood filled rampages of shooting things, it is nice to come to a place to build a home for myself and/or others, maybe even trying to set up a town and trade routes, it's implemented as something in a world of fast paced shooting, you can just take your time with and relax while listening to some classic old music.

My only recommendations of improvement on this are:
-Remove height cap.
-Improve the clip feature, it's a bit ♥♥♥♥♥♥ at times.

4. Replayability:
I've played this game's main story through once, and I'm still not done exploring the rest of the game and it's many side quests, there is however, still a lot for me to go through in regards to the alternative endings, I could save at a specific point and do all the different endings from there, but, personally I'd prefer to start again and do the different endings with different companions following me, the game is set up incredibily well for at least 4 or more play throughs if you are someone who has a lot of time on their hands.

5. Companions:
Companions are extremeley well done, they all have a backstory to them that are slowly revealed as you earn their trust, they all have dislikes, hatreds and loves for actions of the player, and they all have thoughts and feelings towards current event's of main quests and side quests, I love practically every one of the companions, especially the dog - who you can even dress up with bandanas or dog armour.

Cons:

1. Limited speech options:
Yes I know, this is a con that's already been shoved down your throat with a billion other reviews but it's just something that needs mentioning, NPC's that aren't shop keepers just seem usefull for only one thing, and that's quests, you speak to someone, you choose from your limited options and you're told only what you need to know, sometimes you can dig for bits of information regarding the quest, but that's it, after completing the quest, the most you get out of a NPC is a passive sentence after you call their name.
In Fallout 3 / NV it was completley different, you usually had a wide array of options to choose from that didn't limit themselves, you could talk about stuff other than the quest and more about the area and the secrets it holds, and after you had done a quest, you could talk to the quest giver again except maybe this time the npc was happier or angrier with you depending on how you did their quest.
Overall I just think it was something that could have been a bit more fleshed out.
This however, does exclude companions, I'll talk more about them later.

2. Lack of Karma:
Now this is one that even I will agree is an argueable subject as to whether it's truely needed in the game, but, it's just something that made fallout for me.
The game in it's current state is set up very much like Skyrim, anything you do in the world is regarded in any way shape or form as positive so that the player feels good about themselves, personally I feel that this is a step back, if I murder all of Diamond city, I want to feel like an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, have people scared of me, have children run away in fear by my presence and be known as the "Diamond crusher."
Instead I get an empty city, maybe a companion who is pissed off at me (If they were their to witness said culling,) and nothing to show for it other than whatever I loot off of peoples bodies.

3. Survival mode = bollocks:
Ok, this is probably my most hated part of Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas did one thing Very well, and that was Hardcore mode, you had to eat, sleep, drink and limit your bullets, as they actually weighed something, it added a survival aspect to the game that intensified the difficulty and made it a lot more interesting.
Survival mode on Fallout 4 on the other hand, is just... No.
It's not survival, it's just "extremeley hard," enemies do more damage, have more health, take less damage, are more likely to be legendary and drop more legendary weapons, that's it, there's no mode to include anything actually "survival" or what we expected to be survival, other than "don't get killed by the guy/creature with the weapon!"
A recommendation for the devs: renamed survival to "extremeley hard" and reiterate survival as something similar to Hardcore mode.

4: Critical hits are pointless:
Through the 60 hours that I've been playing, I've found that I'm never using my VAT's unless I'm fighting something extremeley annoying to hit, such as "stingwings" or "bloatflys" and critical hits are set up so that they can only be used during VAT's, I personally find that slowing down the game, to hit a specific point on a target, to do a critical hit, is another downgrade.
Critical hit's should have stayed the same as they were in fallout 3 / NV, a critical chance was a percentage based on your luck, and whenever you were to shoot a creature or humanoids, without VAT's, there was at least a chance it would hit a critical, I wouldn't have to open up VAT's to do it or build it up over time, it just happened.
It's a unique twist on criticals, but it's just one I don't use.

TLDR:
Pros:
-Good gameplay.
-Good Graphics.
-Good implementation of settlements
-At least 4 playthroughs (without upcoming DLC)
-Companions are fleshed out and fun.

Cons:
-Boo! 4 dialog options
-No Karma system
-increased Difficulty = MOAR HELTH, MOAR DAMAG
-Critical hits = pointless

Rating:
8 legendary Glowing Radraoches out of 10
Personally Fallout: New vegas was better, but this game far outclasses Fallout 3.