Videogame Review: Fallout 4
tl;dr — it’s fun with mods.
Slightly longer: I replayed this a bunch over the Summer. New Vegas is a top ten game of all time for me and I remember hoping that Fallout 4 would come close to that level of storytelling. What I got instead was a step down in terms of actual role-playing. The story is not nearly as open-ended as previous games. The factions are mostly lame. The endings aren’t very satisfying. And yet still, it is a lot of fun. The graphics are solid as is the core gameplay engine. I absolutely adore the soundtrack. With the right mods on PC, you can make a really atmospheric game with just the right amount of challenge. Also the Far Harbor DLC is brilliant.
Fallout 4 isn’t as great of a start to finish game experience as previous entries, but it is still a nice big serving of Fallout content with good music, graphics, and an improved gameplay engine. For my money the best way to play is to ignore the main story as much as possible and just explore and vibe. I have no intention of getting into Starfield so for the foreseeable future this and Skyrim will more than suffice for getting that Bethesda fix.
Grade: C- (Vanilla) B+ (heavily modded)
