I've played Fallout 4 for just over forty hours now, and I'd have to disagree that more of the same is a bad thing.

I’m not sure how long it’s going to take before I finish Fallout 4, if ever. I’m hardly even close to finishing the main story, I have a dozen plus quests I haven’t even started, a few I’ve begun but have yet to complete, settlements I’ve yet to start constructing and building upon, and this is all without even touching a single mod or finding all the locations. It’s a huge game with a silly amount of stuff to do, but the debates on whether it’s a better/worse game than the previous Bethesda Fallout’s is even sillier to humor. I would argue that 4 is graphically superior and plays better, but at the same time it has more bugs and glitches than both 3 and New Vegas combined. I’ve yet to encounter anything game-breaking, but the sheer number of goofy hiccups has left me shaking my head in bemusement rather than made me angry. Sure, being pushed up against a wall by an enemy and having my health implode or having my follower burrow underground sideways and therefore become useless in battle is frustrating, but being lifted up an elevator shaft through levitation while leaving the cabin behind, or people shifting through walls when their pathfinding goes bonkers is a stark reminder that yes, this is a Bethesda game and yes, this stuff made its way past QA. In open world games of this scope and size I understand that there is so much code to handle that anomalies are going to occur, but bug after bug fires off one after another so often that it astounds me that I’ve yet to have a hard crash.

The most popular complaint I’ve seen so far is that Fallout 4 is too much of the same old thing using the same old engine which results in the same old problems. This is always a difficult argument to tackle because there are some cases where more of the same isn’t always a bad thing, but just as easily can be the exact opposite in other cases - Call of Duty is the perfect example because each new game does introduce new components but just as easily can be called glorified expansion packs. For Fallout, the massive leap from 2 to 3 was certainly welcome and introduced a massive world to waste hours away in. You were no longer point-and-clicking and planning out actions in turn based combat, but now having open freedom in movement and battles. New Vegas might’ve had many echoes of 3, but enough was brought to the table in terms of mechanics and gameplay to happily have players waste even more hours in a new locale. Why 4 is getting so much flak makes me scratch my head, especially with base building, weapon and armor modifications, balances to being a pack rat and how perks work, more personable followers… While my first five or so hours was met with ho-humming and a case of the doldrums, it was upon receiving my first follower and building up my arsenal that the switch finally got flipped and I began to greatly enjoy my time in the Commonwealth. Perhaps I was so used to 3 and New Vegas that I was at first ignorant to all the immediate changes and additions that a new modern Fallout would bring. I was a bit aimless at first, having so many choices on things to do that for the most part I was just spinning my wheels around the starting area; now I’m having the wonderful ‘issue’ of having so many things to do that focusing on only quests or settlement building exclusively means I’m missing out on so much fun out in the world by exploring.

Never minding my disappointment with how squirrelly base building can get, Fallout 4 has so far been what I was hoping for since its announcement, and the modern feel and kick to the combat has helped remove the stiffness that I could not shake from 3 and New Vegas, even if the melee combat in 4 sometimes just refuses to work and is more trouble than it’s worth. Building weapons to fit my needs makes them feel that much more useful, especially when you can kit out a legendary, yet ugly, custom-built pipe gun to have incredible recoil control while raining plasma-laced lead at targets, or beef up a chest piece that already reduces damage from super mutants to offer up even more protection and ward against explosions… But this is all moot when the level scaling is taken into consideration. Even with my near top tier weaponry and armor, I am in a constant state of feeling like I’m made of glass and that my missile launcher is firing duds. While legendary enemies should naturally be an epic encounter, having a pack of mirelurks snap chunks of my health off despite wearing armor that reduces damage from said enemies has me constantly wondering if I’m being duped regarding legendary pieces of equipment. The aforementioned pipe gun, even with its high powered modifications and plasma rounds, continues to be an overwhelming disappointment in killing anything that isn’t a tier one enemy. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, you would eventually get to the point in level and perks where most encounters only became deadly if you were in a bad position, or up against too many high tier enemies. In 4, even a pack of mole rats can be a sap on your health items. At least these battles are taking place in a more visually appealing world that don’t have an ungodly number of caves that are annoyingly difficult to tell between one another. While some houses and structures are repeated across the Commonwealth, I’ve yet to really notice any tilesets, the carbon copy and paste method of building locations in previous Bethesda games that made it difficult to believe that the new location you were entering was brand new and had different flavor. Entering the same warehouse twice is forgivable when practically every location has been built from the ground up.

I’ve been having a lot of fun (and some frustration) with Fallout 4 so far, but I’ve yet to be really blown away. The improvements and glitches have been par for the course so far, and I can only look forward to what modders and creators will bring to the table once the creations kits become available, and this isn’t including what mods have already been released that add items, enhance or change visual effects and so on. So much has been made for 3 and New Vegas ranging from custom quests, locations, companions, weaponry and even new game mechanics that further increases the value and playtime that come with these games. Forty hours may not be much for open-world games of this size, but I’m certainly going to be playing for many, many more hours to come.

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	honestgamer - December 07, 2015 (08:20 PM) I've never understood why the general tendency is to complain when the second game in a series (or the third or fourth or whatever) is a lot like the one before it. Unless we're talking about a virtual carbon copy, as apparently happened in the case of Crackdown, that means the sequel is doing just what I want. If I wanted something markedly different, I wouldn't have purchased a sequel! But whatever. Different gamers look for different things, and that's part of what makes life and the industry so interesting...
	sashanan - December 10, 2015 (07:13 AM) I'm quite ready for something that resembles Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I'm more concerned about it being, once again, high on the glitch count. So I'll just stick with the backlog another year, maybe even two, and snatch the inevitable Fallout 4 Ultimate edition with several pieces of DLC and presumably a patch cycle or two completed.