Fallout 4

Fallout 4 is a bad shooter and a bad RPG, but you can end up sinking a ton of hours into it.

The shooter side is mechanically primitive and there are shots that don’t register. On the bright side you can mod your weapons and armor. The RPG side is just as bad. You can end up with a super powerful character, because the perks can give really high bonuses and you can easily increase your primary stats. Even when perks/stats matter outside combat, they have very little significance. The “quests” are “go there and kill that” with little nuance.

The world is absolutely HUGE with countless things to explore, some of them quite interesting. The level design at the large scale is pretty well done with just enough distance between locations, but crowded enough to keep you continuously engaged. But at a smaller level, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, this is not how I think a world would look 200+ years after nuclear war (there is pre-war food in populated zones, the a-bombs wiped the concept of tiding up where you live, etc.). The main story forces you into the role of a parent. It is predictable and it doesn’t make you empathize with your role. Fallout 4 is not a challenging game, even with mods. At best, the game is “hard” by inconvenience, which is by far the worst way of adding difficulty. I want to say that the AI is stuck in the `90s, but some of those games had great AI.

Writing all this, I realize that I might have inadvertently created the image that Fallout 4 is a terrible game. It is not. It depends a lot on what you want from it.  After accepting that this game will provide no challenge, I just enjoyed exploring and finding stories in side quests. The game also lets you develop settlements, something that you can skip or really get into. Drug dealers should take notes about how to keep people hooked. Oh, and I really liked that you can see what is in unlocked containers just by looking in their direction, great quality of life improvement.