A few months ago, the much anticipated Fallout 4 was released by Bethesda Studios. On the recommendation of friends I acquired a copy to see if it lived up to the hype, and it most definitely has. Fallout 4 is entertaining, interesting, and in general very well done, most definitely worthy to be part of the franchise.

 

Unlike previous Fallout games, the main character is from before the nuclear apocalypse. The day the bombs fell, he, his spouse, and his infant son Shaun get put in an underground bunker called Vault 111, and then into cryo-pods. After a long time being frozen, people open the spouse's pod, kill him or her, and take the son. What seems like a short time later, the main character’s pod opens and he is free to begin his mission to find his kid and avenge his better half.

 

The catch is that it has been close to 200 years since the nukes fell. The hero’s full of peril, as most animals and insects, and even some humans have mutated into hideous monsters, not to mention the hostile groups of people in the wasteland. The main story involves four main factions: The Minutemen, The Brotherhood of Steel, The Institute, and The Railroad. Seemingly small choices can have a large impact on the outcome of the story.

 

The gameplay, though difficult at times, is fantastic. One can spend days just wandering around in the wasteland exploring and fighting mutants. Like previous Fallout games, Fallout 4 is quite harsh, particularly at the beginning. There were a few changes that made the game harder, but more realistic. For example, when one eats food or uses a stimpack to heal, it is no longer an instant heal, instead the character’s health comes back over the course of a couple seconds. Like always, the character has to be careful about radiation. The more radiation oneis exposed to, the lower the maximum health becomes.

 

The game world is very large, and contains many threats, from monsters as mundane as giant cockroaches known as radroaches, to powerful and huge scaled beasts known as deathclaws, or even the brutal super mutants, which are large creatures that were once humans, but now green skinned and unintelligent. There are hundreds of locations to explore, and even more side quests. Actually, there is no end to the side quests. There will always be someone who wants the player to get rid of the monsters that are living nearby. Of course, these eventually get a bit repetitive, but it takes a quite a while to run out of unique side quests to play.

 

Fallout 4 introduced some entirely new things to the series. First of all, one can now modify armor and weapons that have been acquired. Obviously, this takes resources, such as adhesive, steel, screws, gears, leather, and various other components that can be taken from objects that seem like junk, and actually appear in the “junk” tab of your inventory. Also one can help settlements, and they will agree to join you. In a settlement that is friendly, one can build structures. Settlements require food, water, defense, and an adequate number of beds for the population. Without these things, people are unhappy. Electricity is also a good thing to have at the settlements. Even though it isn't required to make the settlers there happy, it's useful for other things, such as certain defenses, lights, and radio beacons to attract more settlers.

 

A particularly notable character that you meet early in the game is Dogmeat the cat (just kidding, of course he’s a canine). This dog is happy to be a faithful companion. He cannot be killed, but he can be knocked down if he takes enough damage. Dogmeat will attack enemies and take hold of one of their limbs to keep them from attacking, which will come in handy. However, like all followers, he has a tendency to block doorways and tunnels, and to get the character spotted when he’s trying to be sneaky. But he needs to be forgiven, because no one can stay mad at that German Shepard.

 

 I give Fallout 4 a 9/10. It has a ton of great content to play. The world is immersive and fascinating, and the fights are always very satisfying to win, if you can win. The story is fairly well developed, and involves numerous plot twists and difficult moral decisions. This is a game that I have gotten my money's worth out of and will continue to play for quite some time.