This has been such a brilliant and fun game. Having taken just over a year of steady playing to complete, this has hooked me into the Fallout series. With so many places to explore, and many quests to complete, this game has been a treasure trove of radioactive goodies.
*Update*
To be honest, I’m not quite sure why I started a Late review on a game that I had still not completed at the time. Anyhow, having finally completed the game after it taking me an entire year to complete, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that the game was absolutely brilliant from start to finish. Having never played any of the games in the Fallout series, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting myself into, but fell in love with the game somewhere within the first hour of play having just shot off all the limbs and head off an npc in Goodsprings. Chicken nugget anyone? Having experienced nothing like this before, and I’m normally against brutal violence in video games (and real life), I thought it was absolutely hilarious and creepily enjoyed it. It became a nod to myself to be able to finish an enemy by decapitating them with one bullet.
The weapons in the game are a brilliant array of worn out pieces of junk, 6 shooters, grenade launchers, laser rifles, mini nuclear missiles, you name it. The fact that these weapons would then degrade with use and required to be either thrown or repaired by finding similar parts is gratifyingly fun and makes the game more complicated as we decide what is vital to keep as we keep our carry weight low.
There are plenty of quirky characters and locations to discover. The wasteland map is extremely large to cover, with one of the only downsides of the game being that exploration is slow due to your characters slow walking pace. It does at least give you time to admire the sights and keep an eye out for any hidden caves, otherwise I’m sure this can be surpassed with the use of a mod. Some of the best locations are just walking into dungeons full of hardcore scorpions and Deathclaws.
Exploration of locations is rewarded with uncovering plenty of lore of the previous world before the bombs. There are also collectible bobble heads that will enhance your stats and some rare weapons. Combat can be exhilarating when it works, with plenty of one-to-one exchanges from cover, but there are times when you will encounter enemies that are far to powerful, requiring every expensive and rare explosive in your arsenal to overcome. The worst fight I had was getting stuck in a random encounter in the wasteland with a certain group that I’d previously pissed off by laying waste to their comrades. Having not had saved for over an hour, I had quick saved in the middle of this encounter, only to repeatedly die instantly over and over again from this overpowered gang, that required many trials to find the best strategy of laying waste to them with my small amount of explosives.
Interactions with npcs can be interesting in which I have reloaded and replayed many of these interactions differently to see the alternative outcomes. There were many hilarious scenes and plenty of times that I’d lol’ed. It was during these times though that I did find some game breaking bugs, which luckily as I was playing on the PC, after some research on the Fallout wiki site, I was able to use the console to circumvent the bug, but I can’t imagine the fury players must have gone through if they were playing on a console.
As in any game this it’s possible in, I left the main campaign until the end. Having maxed out the leveling system from alternative quests and DLC content, the main campaign was actually completed within a few hours, wasn’t the most compelling and wasn’t the strongest ending for a game, then again, I was playing the game back to front. Just like Skyrim, there is plenty to discover whilst in first person and extremely immersive. For those that are into them, the mod community is vastly full of additional quests, graphics, mechanics etc.
Just one last point to make on the game that I could never understand, was that even though the graphics hold up very well to today’s expectations, in the settings there was an option to set details and textures to high, but would keep defaulting to medium. Not a terribly serious problem, but after having trawled through the internet for a few hours and yet having not found a reason or solution, was slightly flummoxed by it, but like I said, the graphics do still hold up very well. Many hours of action and scares to enjoy, a title that I recommend to all.
