7 Days Until Fallout 4

[SirAndrewD]

I felt this as well. My first thought was why wouldn't I bring the power armor with me. But the trade off to power armor is that it actually requires power in the form of fusion cores, and those things don't grow on trees, especially early on.

Yeah, that's the trade off.  For anyone that wants to use Powered Armor a lot, they need to invest points in intelligence.  There's a perk that makes Fusion Cores last longer down the INT perk line. 

Some vendors do also occasionally have Fusion cores in stock. 

I also heard that there is no more repairing of weapons, that they do not wear out like they did previously. If that's true that's kind of awesome also.

Yep, item and armor decay is gone. 

The only item you need to repair is power armor, and that's not really difficult at all to do as it can be repaired from resources at the power armor harness.

[Jarhead0331]

Its really drawing me in and I can feel myself growing hooked. For me, the "story" doesn't really matter. For me, the real story is that there was a nuclear war and the civilized world the main character knew is entirely gone. Exploring this new world and reflecting upon all that has been lost is for me extremely thought provoking. Besides, once you leave the vault and start exploring, you are constantly running into side quests that not only seem to be keeping me occupied, but are really encouraging me to get out there to discover new locations.

I also like how things pick up pretty quickly after leaving the vault. For instance, in FO3, I never got power armor. Even though I played for hours and hours, I never managed to ever get really good gear. So far in FO4, the player is provided with power armor and a minigun fairly early in the game, and there is a good amount of usable loot out there in the wastes.

Anyway, so far, I seem to be enjoying FO4 more than its predecessors.   

[glen55]

Well, it happened. I'm hooked.  8)

Now about 18 hours in. The crafting system is badly explained and unintuitive (plus buggy), but now that I understand it, I'm kind of obsessed with it. Especially when it comes to upgrading your weapons -- there are a lot of cool gun-smithing things you can do. I've also begun to spruce up Sanctuary, which winds up being more fun than it should be ("clean up this mess and make something new" sounds pretty meh on the surface, but it's cool.)

I think what hooked me was "learning to stop worrying and love the open world," rather than get hung up on the 'main quest' and character development. Decided I'd make the trek from Sanctuary to Diamond City, and this is where the game really came alive for me. It's a fantastic environment. I thought Skyrim had a terrific environment but this tops it. Got side-tracked on the way into the Cambridge Police Dept. quest -- which I highly recommend for anyone looking to upgrade their weaponry. 

There's a huge amount of depth here. Just tons to explore and tons to do. I'm officially impressed now.  :)

I've still only played an hour or so, but I got the same idea from reading the reviews that I get from your comment: it's best to just ignore the main quest until you blunder into it.  The main thing is building up your character and your base and just experiencing the world.

It's not hard to ignore the main quest, because as somebody else has already pointed out, the game spends about 15 seconds on building your emotional investment in the person you're supposed to be doing everything for.

[sandman2575]

I'm a little divided on the game decision to provide you with power armor so early. It kind of feels like a misstep, similar to the way getting your dog companion right away and with no effort feels like a misstep. It just feels like the power armor and Dogmeat would be more meaningful if you had to struggle a little more to get them.

The 'early access' power armor also feels like a bit of a tease -- like, "Here ya go, have fun! And oh, be really, really sparing with how you use it because fusion cores are very rare and you're likely to run out of juice in the middle of a mission if you're not careful!" My T-45 is sitting unused in my Red Rocket station, nearly out of power. I just got a fusion core doing the Cambridge Police quest, but I'm saving it up for a rainy day. Which is surely what the game wants -- to force you to make hard decisions about when to use the armor. I see the logic in that, but it also irks me on a deeper level. Let me play with my shiny toy!

I'm also complete s**t at combat, in general. If not for my companions, I'd barely make it from point A to B. Mole Rats cause me to panic and waste precious ammo shooting wildly. Even radroaches rattle me -- they're already on top of me before I have a chance to switch to my truncheon.

[BanzaiCat]

Are you not using VATS, then? I saw in one of those videos that it looks like you can target multiple creatures using it, which is pretty awesome.

[Asid]

I played FO4 on a pc with great specs for just over 4 hours over 2 days. This is what I found:

Field of View: Disappointed. Gave me motion sickness. I tried all the tweaks in the ini file. I ended up playing in 3rd person view but the camera was never "correct".

Character animations: Disappointing.

Graphics: Disappointing. The quality as well as the clipping.

Controls: Clunky. Designed for a console. Yes I tried the mouse acceleration fix.

Sound: Not bad.

Gameplay was disappointing and I found it boring. I lost the will to play. That dog is amazing though....It gets attacked but all sorts and still just appears. Even when it is getting squashed by a giant dinosaur thing...The dog just appears in an underground level.

The story just did not pull me in. I know I haven't spent a lot of time with it but 4 hours was enough...Especially with the motion sickness. Why should I have to mess with the ini file?

You never know. Mods might change things for me.

I was very disappointed. I know many of you are really liking it though and that is good :)

This is just my experience and opinion.

Regards

[Nefaro]

I think what hooked me was "learning to stop worrying and love the open world," rather than get hung up on the 'main quest' and character development.

This is key to all Open World games like this. 

I criticized the reviewers for complaining about the storyline/questing in this game, and that was the reason.  I don't know why they focus on bashing the expected thin storyline in an Open World game, where we are primarily meant to wander and discover stuff on our own.  More so when there are plenty bitches to be had about the bad port job and occasional physics oddities.

[sandman2575]

Are you not using VATS, then? I saw in one of those videos that it looks like you can target multiple creatures using it, which is pretty awesome.

I really like VATS, actually. It works great when you're facing one or two enemies, esp. if you have some distance between you so you can unload with your laser musket or whatever. But the thing about the mole-rats is:  they pop out of the ground unpredictably and seems like there are 6 of them at any given time surrounding you. You only have a few action points for VATS, so you can't take a bunch of mole-rats down just using that method.

Usually I just run around in a panic shooting aimlessly while Dogmeat takes care of the damn things.  8)

[glen55]

Use alt-LMB and you can bash critters with your pistol instead of having to pull out the baton.

[JudgeDredd]

Ok - I've searched for a manual and can't find one. I know...it's an FPS/TPS RPG - what's to learn. But I really could do with help with the icons that show up on your "hud"

I like VATS too

[sandman2575]

Use alt-LMB and you can bash critters with your pistol instead of having to pull out the baton.

This I did not know. Thanks!

[Nefaro]

You can also use the 'E' key, instead of 'ENTER' or clicking on the Enter button, to confirm stuff.  That had been one of the console port things driving me absolutely nuts, having to reach across the keyboard and hit enter or click on it for the constant confirmation pop-ups.

[Kushan]

Thought I'd share this. I really like that Dogmeat doesn't count as a follower as far as the Lone Wanderer perk is concerned.

[sandman2575]

I know this will sound like a fanboy-ish effusion, but -- I was really struck last night by this game's absolutely amazing artistic design. Warts with clunky UI and annoying bugs aside -- the world of the Commonwealth is incredible, and particularly the "alternative future 1950s world" of vehicles, buildings, you name it.

I had a moment of sheer delight of a kind I can't recall in a game in a long while -- when I hacked a terminal and got a Robotron "Robby the Robot" to activate. Watching the thing come to life, lumber out of its stall, and then lumber around while occasionally blurting "protect and serve!" in classic 50s sci-fi robot voice... Not exactly sure why, but watching this happen pleased me to no end.

The atomic cars and "Wicked Lines" freight trucks, the diners and super markets and gas stations -- the crash site with the super airliner.... I just think the sheer imagination and attention to detail with these things is amazing. It's a world I love just wandering around in far more than previous Bethesda games (and I thought the world of Skyrim was pretty damn good).

Anyhoo -- yeah, the game's not perfect and maybe a let down in some ways but man, did Bethesda achieve something great in creating this fantasy alt-'50s world to play in ... 

[airboy]

I've played the game about 8 hours and I've also played all previous Fallout titles to completion.

The attribute system works very differently than previous versions.  Putting a bunch of points into IQ to get more skill points no longer works.  This gives the potential for greater game balance through the game.  I've found that in previous Fallout games that if I did not jack up the difficulty level by character level 8 or so I could hit anything pretty much every time.

Targeting outside of VATS is also much more difficult - in some ways too difficult.  I realize in combat many cannot hit the broad side of a barn due to panic - but I can hit what I aim at even when surprised.

The game plays much more like a first person shooter in combat.  Your reaction to that probably depends on how much you like FPS.

My approach to the main quest is a little different from others (no spoilers since these events occur before you start gameplay).  I don't know WHEN my son was stolen because I have no time sense from being frozen for 200 years.  He could have been stolen 2 days into freezing and only my great-great-great grandkids could be alive.  He could have been stolen 48 hours before I became unsealed.  Remember, the pod completely freezes up again after that cut scene. 

I'm playing the game as if I don't know if my son could even be alive.  I just don't know what is going on.  I'm only going to contact my son (or his heirs) if I stay alive and prosper - so I'm not worrying about it at all.  I'm trying to explore around my base, gain some survival skills, and carefully try to find out what is going on 200+ years in the future.  So far, the family robot is the only thing that touches my previous life - and I don't trust it because we just got it out of the box and robots can be reprogrammed. 

Combat for me is much harder than previous Fallouts because of the difficulty of hitting anything at longer range while in stealth mode.  The designers also have made multiple low level (and low damage causing) animal/insect opponents jump out at you from cracks in the wall or burrow up from the earth.  This was a good design choice IMHO.

So I'm enjoying the game.  Graphics are a great improvement from New Vegas.  I'm not getting motion sickness which I can suffer from in some games.  But I am having the colors screw up or my firearms disappear requiring a reload.  This keeps happening occasionally with a reload needed every 45 minutes or so of gameplay.