Saturday, June 20, 2015

Fallout 4 - Kiss Your Real Life Goodbye


An article by Hank:

Ah…November, there's nothing like that time of year: crying kids, mobs of shoppers, annoying Christmas music, an influx of cold viruses, and everyone's favorite food holiday: Thanksgiving.  Yes…it's safe to say that nothing says family time like the month of November.  Well, not this year.  This year the family can kiss your ass.  Because there will be no time to converse with the In-laws, or ask the kids for their Christmas list, or even sit down with a turkey leg and listen to your favorite drunk uncle tell you why the country is going down the crapper.  Why?  Because this November 10, the sequel to a game that sucked hundreds of hours of your life back in 2008, will make its return to your joystick-fondling hands.  What game is P&P talking about?  Brace yourselves my pixel-loving friends, because Fallout 4 is dropping in less than five months on the current generation consoles and PC…and your life will never be the same again.

"Oh man...that's really gonna make traffic this morning a bitch."

STORY:
Fallout 3 was immense.  It started by birthing you from your mother's special place (Kansas if anyone is wondering) and then with Liam Neeson's sexy voice instructing you on life in a vault.  Well Fallout 4 is going further back.  It will begin before the nuclear bombs even drop.  And what does this do?  This allows you to relate more to the characters and their story.  You as a player will see what your character had before the nuclear explosion (a loving family, a beautiful home, a wonderful town with happy neighbors, maybe even a dog).  And then all that will be ripped away and you will be left with nothing but your Pip Boy and your wits.  As of this moment, not much about the story has been released, but you can be rest assured that your character will be searching for something dear to them within the game's main story.  But is that really why people play the Fallout series from Bethesda?  For the story?  Nope.  Fallout 4 will be played because of the amazing ability to create your own story, carve your own way through the wasteland of Boston…the ability to set out on your own pixelated adventures.  And Fallout 4 looks to deliver on all those fronts and more.

COLOR AND GRAPHICS:
Fallout 3 had all the aesthetics of a bleak, desolate world: trashed cars, blown-apart houses, hungry ghouls, silly killing machines, psycho settlers, giant scorpions, and an overall saturation in the greenish department.  This created a game that continuously seemed sick in some dark humorous way.  But Fallout 4 has thrown that art direction out the window.  Sure, all the inhabitants of the wasteland are still here, but the graphics have had a complete overhaul, and the green hue has been dropped and replaced with color everywhere.  So now you get a dangerously horrific wasteland with blue skies and colorful settlements that'll make you want to live there…right up until a grotesque creature tries to eat your face.

"I don't know, Honey.  What do you think?  Is the Abe Lincoln chin in this year?"

WHAT'S RETURNING, CHARACTER CREATION & GUNPLAY:
This is what's great about Fallout 4…everything you know and loved about Fallout 3 is coming back: the same goofy guns, silly armor, a canine companion, mister gutsy, deathclaws, the Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, etc.  Everything is still here.  So it's safe to say, if you're a fan of Fallout 3, you'll feel right at home playing Fallout 4.  But there has to be more right?  You can't possibly take seven years creating a sequel to a game and not put more in there for your fans.  And that's where all the fun begins.  Fallout 4 is bigger and more in depth than any other Fallout game before it. 

So let's start from the beginning with character creation.  The character creation engine and sequence is fresh and innovative compared to others found in games.  Now your character is looking in the mirror with their significant other standing behind them, trying to decide on a look for the coming day.  It's what everyone does before getting ready for work, or for school, or for a party where you're going to get sloshed, dance on tables and then throw up in a toilet.  It's such a simple concept and seamlessly allows you to change your character on the fly, by selecting a facial area and just pushing and pulling.  Simple.  Elegant.  Fresh.  On top of this the V.A.T.S. system has returned.  So selecting a body part of a beastie and blowing their face off in bloody chunks is still an option, while gunplay looks like it’s much smoother and much more precise than previous titles.  So running and gunning now has taken on similarities of other quality first-person shooters.  It looks like you won't have to constantly depend on V.A.T.S. for survival this time around.

"Damn...left the stove on again, didn't I?"

ITEM CRAFTING & SETTLEMENT BUILDING:
This is where the Fallout series has grown immensely from Fallout 3 and New Vegas.  In Fallout 4 there are about fifty base weapons in the game to strap to your back and unleash when the time comes.  But heading to a workbench now allows you to apply around 700 different mods to your arsenal.  So you can take a basic Laser pistol and modify it to become a Laser rifle.  Or continually add and change so many parts that by the time you're done it's a completely different weapon.  How is this possible?  Well, remember all that wasted garbage you saw lying around in Fallout 3?  It all has a purpose in Fallout 4.  All the junk you find in your environments can now be broken down and used for various building and crafting.  So not only will you be able to fully customize your weapons, but you'll also be able to customize individual armor pieces and…your very own settlements.  That's right.  In Fallout 4 you get to build your very own settlements.  Not a house or shack for your character, but a settlement which can be considered a small town.  The funny thing is some gamers may not want to spend time scraping tires and building walls or outhouses, but that's okay, because creating your own settlements with caravan trading and unique looks is totally optional.  Which is the best feature of Fallout games: after the beginning cutscene, you don't have to follow one damn quest within the game.  You can basically run around and just shoot things in the face for your entire play through or…you have the option to fully customize your world and your arsenal.

"OMG...put us down right near that rocket.  I wanna grab some awesome selfies for Facebook and 
Twitter...oh and maybe for that new thing called Tinder."

THE PIP BOY AND RETRO STYLE GAMES:
Just like in the past Fallout games, your trusty Pip Boy has made a return.  But now it comes complete with full animations from within the screen and you have the option of not even bringing it up while playing the game.  If you have a smart phone or tablet, a Pip Boy App can be used to navigate the Pip Boy features without covering the game screen.  But the developers didn't stop there.  Within the Pip Boy screen there are now retro-style mini arcade games that can be played.  So when your character has to make a pit stop to an outhouse, no more will they have to sit there and stare into space worried if a Radscorpion is going to bite their nether regions.  Nope, they can finally relieve themselves while playing games, essentially taking their mind off of the Deathclaw waiting just outside.  Thanks Pip Boy.  And if that isn't enough for you die-hard fans, you can purchase the special edition of Fallout 4 which comes with your very own life-size Pip Boy that can be strapped to your wrist and used for impressing the opposite sex.

The Mini Nuke: Why just kill an enemy, when you can destroy the entire land mass they're standing on?
Mini Nuke launcher and Nuclear Winter outfit sold separately. 

CONCLUSION:
Whether you're a humongous fan of the Fallout series or just a newly introduced gamer, one thing is for sure: with an extensive customizable world, hours upon hours of quests, beautiful graphics, humorous undertones, and a story sure to capture the Sci-Fi lover in us all...Fallout 4 will suck every second of your time without you even knowing it.  Why?  Because the game isn't about following a path or competing in online matches.  It's about creating your own story, your own pixelated adventure that no one else will have the pleasure of experiencing.  So come this November, Gamers from around the world will be kissing their real life goodbye and filling their time with pixelated Fallout fun.

Writer & Editor: Hank – Twitter / Twitch

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