Okay sorry, got sucked down the anger of games past moment, so to Skyrim first off it isn't online multiplayer, ding for me. While you can create stuff a lot of your creations aren't as fun in the sword and sorcery era(at least in gaming, flaming sword of ultimate evisceration sounds fun in theory but you don't really get it), where as I get all kinds of cool grenades, automated gun emplacements, laser rifles, gatling guns, sniper rifles, sub machine guns, Gauss rifles, as well as machetes, swords, crow bars, and tire irons. Now yes if this game(or Skyrim) came out 30 years ago first it would have been a quarter vacuum(cause you are a death sponge, quicksave is your friend actually it is your master. Think I'm playing, aiight walk around that corner and fall to those zombie hordes after you had just found cool weapon number 15, leveled up and completed a mission if you want to(and yes I have).
Fallout 4 is the 5th installment in the fallout series originally created by Interplay back in 1997 with Fallout, as it's name implies it is a post nuclear apocalypse game. You play as a former vault dweller who has come out into the world because a piece of the Water filtration device has failed. Without this part, everyone in the vault will die, supposedly they have 150 days but I doubt time actually runs real time, it doesn't in most games. For anyone freshly out of high school, still in high school or else born after the calendar switched millenia YES this would be considered awesome graphics in it's day. To be fair of course this is just a cut scene, but as it was a PC game it would probably have PS2 to Xbox level graphics at minimum. I mean the shadows you see in that little intro would have been "cutting edge," instead of "Eeeeew my poor eyes what is this sucky thing?" Seriously I think we had just gotten in to the swing of Compact Disk based gaming at that point the playstation battling the cartridge using N64. It would be 2 more years before the PS2 would hit the shelves. Final Fantasy 7 was causing heads to explode left and right as we HAPPILY swapped in the next disk(yes children a 4 star legendary game would be held on more than one disk).
Now back in the late 90's I wasn't that big of a PC gamer, yes I played Warcraft, Starcraft, and a few cycles of a Civilization clone but that was the extent of it. Maybe a Doom or Duke Nukem here or there but for gaming it was mostly about consoles for me. My PC's originally were of the Economy class variety I could surf the web, type up a few things but you know whoopdee it was just a PC, the internet while around was basically Red Dot level. By red dot I mean slow as all hell, 56k was seen as fast in those time and 1 mbps that was crazy talk, a unicorn, you would have had a crowd at your house of people just watching you download a single photo in under 5 minutes(this is where you say "ooooh it wasn't that bad" uh huh, go ask a pepper and salt haired relative. They will learn you). The computer while convenient really wasn't as big as it is now, not every household had one(or a device as powerful as one, hell 100 megabytes seemed like it would take forever to fill back then), and online gaming was in it's infancy. This was still when you and your friends bought your own copies of madden to practice so that you could leave your house to challenge someone in their home. Depending on whether or not they had younger siblings you may have chosen to bring your own controller instead of subjecting yourself to "house stix"(mainly because it was the hosts right to make sure he kept his best controller for himself. Yes this is where the original "man this controller sucks" dispute came from, a sticky B/x button could be the difference between a Touchdown, a slam dunk, a goal and losing the game.
History of the gaming Series
As previously stated Interplay got the ball rolling with Fallout, it was decently received. Just like post apocalyptic movies, post apocalyptic games were well received, Don't look at me funny what do you think Terminator, Demolition Man, Mad Max, 12 Monkeys, and The Matrix are hmmm? Hell even Judge Dread(Stallone) technically fits this mode had the world ending badly and humanity picking up the pieces. The Fallout series has a sort of homey 1950's feel to it, yes they happen after 2077 but if you look at most of the items in the games they kind of stopped at the 50's in look and just improved innovation not design.
Fallout 2 happens similar to Fallout, nuclear holocaust, world ends in fire and vault dwellers came out to pick up the pieces, but this time you live in a village well after the original set of people left the vaults. Supposedly you are in a village started by a "legendary hero" known as the Vault Dweller, he saved the world from some Great Evil in the south, but in doing so became so scary that he was shunned by the people who he fought so hard to save. So he headed north and started your village, and lived out his days. Granted things aren't going well or else we wouldn't have much impetus to leave, and you have to get a device(the Garden of Eden Creation Kit or G.E.C.K) to help rejuvenate your village. If you are wondering yes the "Vault Opening" is kind of their thing, so even though you don't start in the vault you will see reference to a vault. There are also other vaults out there, or former vaults they you may end up searching through. These games don't have fun openings, I believe they were going for an authentic MAD experience(Mutually Assured Destruction). It was Released in 1998 a year after the previous Fallout game
Fallout 3 released in 2008, is the first game by Bathesda Softworks(the makers of the current Fallout game), it also appears to be the first one that allows you to pick the gender of your character since the intro screens has your "father" asking if you are a boy or a girl. And allows you to pick your character name, which honestly isn't that new in RPG's you can always change the main characters name(hell in FFVII, Final Fantasy 7, you could change everyones name. Or just leave it alone). In this one the story revolves around your father leaving the vault for some reason and you having to track him down, because the Overseer(guy in charge of the vault) is trying to arrest you to figure out why pops left. A sins of the father type of thing. As I haven't played any of the fallouts before 4 I don't know what city it revolves around, though I'm sure a little Googling or Wiki could help. Fallout 3 is also the first game that was simultaneously released on PC and consoles. No crossplay allowed(it's still mainly a single player game with SOME co-op ability but not multiplayer like say a CoD, Halo, or Destiny) but you could compare your trophies or achievements with friends to see who found what when, or hasn't found everything yadda, yadda.
Looking through the timeline there appear to be a few non MAIN story fallout games throughout the years some by interplay and some by Bathesda but they were more spin off than main series games. I may get into those later on.
The next game to be released on Pc and consoles is Fallout New Vegas It was made by Obsidian studies as a stand alone. As the name suggests you are in a post apocalyptic Las Vegas, a friend told me the ending but I won't give it away. Yes you get lots of crazy weapons, see insane enemies, can set off wild chain explosions, and can pretty much live out your mad max fantasy without having to actually play mad max. Granted as of yet there is no driving portion in any of the fallout games, most likely because while your Mr. Handy's still work somehow cars got fried by the EMP and thus are no longer viable, at all.
About the Current Game
This is an expansive open world game, things I can tell you:Even if you aren't good in the VATS(Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, which I personally am not. I guess my attributes aren't high enough yet) certain things can quickly even out the playing field, namely fragmentation mines and Molotov cocktails. Grenades are nice when they bounce around but molotovs and fragmentation mines have the chance to blow off peoples feet and legs. And nothing knocks a high level big bad down to size, like not being able to crawl after you and kill you. The targeting system is decent, and if you use the vats it does slowdown time for you, but being able to blow somethings leg(s) off so that it can't get to you where you can just pick it off from a distance, magical. As with all other fallout games the year 2077 is when everything hit the fan and you wake up from cryosleep 200 years later. 1950's music blares through the radio when you turn it on, either in your pip boy or various radios lying around the world.
You will gather companions as you go, so far I have Dogmeat, Cosworth(my personal Mr. Handy) and I just the Minute man character, though I don't use him yet. By companion I mean companion, he rolls out with you and helps you carry various loot items that you can pick up to either craft with, eat, sell, or use as a weapon/armor clothing. Like many of the more recent open world RPG style games, weight is important if you are carrying too much stuff you can't run, and if you can't run you can't fast travel. And fast travel can be a life saver, because if you can get far enough away from your enemies then you can travel to a location that you have already been too, escaping possibly certain death(which yes I have done a few times). Granted this can only be done from outside most buildings but if you just opened the door and realize that "holy rusted metal batman, I'm about to die) if you run fast enough(thus give your companion some of your crap) as long as the enemy isn't right on you it will let you fast travel and will bring your companion with you. There are lots of random raiders, ghouls, mutants, and animals in the world some of them normal sized, others gigantic. Supposedly though if you clear them out they don't come back, usually. I remember one place I went to I rolled up on some Mutants who had already killed the people I had left there. Thankfully mutants are not immune to grenades, or laser rifle shots to the head.
You can upgrade almost any wearable or weapon in the game, upgrading them at various stations around a settlement that are either already there or that you yourself build. You can also build various items to help a settlement protect itself or get back on it's feet, various defenses, resources, and dwellings. It's kind of fun, but also annoying, like you have to run back and save folks if you ain careful(see the area where I had left people only to find Mutants there later). Also food doesn't really grow while you are standing there, I usually go to another area walk around for a little while and fast travel back. Almost everything but ammunition has weight, so be careful what you haul around(I'm saying this like I myself aren't carrying like 170+ pounds of crap) you do get power armor in this game which helps to increase your carrying capacity, but not that much. Plus your weapons have weight so if you wish have multiple weapons to possibly do the job, maybe a pistol for quick shooting decent damage at medium range, a shotty(shotgun) for close range, and some sort of rifle for long range thats fine. Something like the gatling gun though I would save for only if you actually are wearing power armor. That thing is like 30 pounds, and makes you extremely slow. You also get the fatboy, a portable mini nuke launcher, which if you watch on twitch sometimes you can hilariously see people blow themselves up, or get blown up by some of the various opponents who carry the damn thing.
There are also Melee weapons, which are pretty strong but I'm currently like level 12 and while I could smack you away a little bit, I really prefer to snipe you from a distance and then switch to either my pistol or shotgun. The further out you get the better possibility you have of running into merchants, the currency in Fallout are bottle caps, yes you read right those things that come on top of chilled glass bottle beverages. completing quests gets you caps, looking on dead bodies gets you caps(clothes, if you have the weight to spare you can leave a trail of mostly naked bodies), checking desks, cabinets, safes, suit cases etc. There are also old DOS style computers around, which allow you to hack into things sometimes opening doors, safes, or activating various tricks and traps even sometimes turning them to your favor. There is a lock-picking mechanic in Fallout, similar to Skyrim even if it's a tumbler style lock you still use bobby pins(yes those thing people put in their hair) to pick the lock. There are different levels of lock passwords and computer passwords(just like in real life) and if you haven't spent enough perk points(skill tree) you may get a message from your character telling you "I can't pick that" or "I don't think I can do that." By the way while you can set it up to also put the words on the screen this is a voice acted game, which sometimes leads to interesting dialog between the characters.
Or even better side conversations/mumbled words in passing as they go over their various scripts. The little old seer lady is hilarious, I swear she thinks I'm her drug pusher I mean I know that is part of the karma chart of the game but if she asks me for jet one more time. Chems exist in this game, as well as alcohol and they all have side effects some longer lasting than others. To this point I haven't used chems(chemicals) well non healing, chems like Radaway/rad-x/or stimpaks(basically health packs)I have used of course, I may in the future just like food they give you certain short term abilities the only issue is the non health variety also have the potential of leaving you addicted. And I don't want to see what that is about, alcohol just like real life can leave you impaired. Yes it may add short term boosts in some categories but it sometimes leaves deficiencies in others(usually intelligence debuffs). Haven't gotten drunk yet either, thought about it a few times but I'll save that for later when I have a few more levels and HP.
Not everyone in this world is trying to kill you, some are already dead, others may be willing to trade with you, sell things to you, or give you quests. My current quest guy has no accounting for distance or my level. He'll tell me to go out places with no intel other than what ever the town I'm going to says to me. Man this last mission he sent me on, pffft I got through it(died a few times first, but I got through it) ended with a rather nasty surprise of the giant metal variety. I don't know who I should have slapped but I wanted to slap somebody oh and some ammunition/power sources are scarce so you need to be choosey with how you plan to use them. Like the .308 rounds I use for my various sniper rifles, I only have like 100 of those, so I try to conserve my shots. Fusion Cells tend to be a little more plentiful only because Synthetics use guns that tend to have them(synthetic guns suck by the way. No seriously like 10 points or more less damage than regular laser weapons) but fusion cores not so much. I don't know how many mini nukes are in the game for the fat man, and since that tends to be a Power Armor weapon I don't think I will be using that just yet, I have 3 suits so far I gotta build a better place to store them though. Think of tearing down my current large shack putting in some walls and corners and possibly an upstairs and storing them next to my first rack.
There used to be a glitch in fallout that allowed you to get an awesome weapon really early but it looks like they fixed it Dogmeat down to the vault thinking it's about to be cool, you will be disappointed. Even without early access to the "strongest weapon in the game" it's still fun, and while yes there will be some issues here and there(most games have glitches, it's an unfortunate fact of gaming) it still tends to be fun. Just make sure you save often, sometimes saving before you walk around a corner can save you a bunch of headaches. Get a new cool weapon, SAVE, finish a mission SAVE(or quicksave, unlike other RPG's where you can only save at certain spots Fallout lets you save anywhere), this is one of those YOU ARE GOING TO DIE games, which before the save feature we all hated but now it's like "aaaaargh" but as long as you saved meh.
About your settlements
Fallout allows you to save various people in small towns, and once you help them, finish their quest, yadda yadda basically yall are friends now. But they are needy friends, you have to set up their defenses, plant food for them, assign them to tend said food, create water for them, build generators, and stock them with ammo. You will sometimes see exclamation points in your pip boy next to a settlement which when you check it usually means they want whatever item the exclamation point is next to. Which means scavenging. One of the reasons there is so much loot in the game is because you have a lot of work to do with it, and everything gives out different parts. Need oil find and old oil can and you get steel and oil, need circuits blow up a machine gun turret somewhere and find it's targeting card, need wood scrap an old house/tree/box/bed/broken shelf and get some wood. it would be nice if they would venture out on their own and find nice things but they don't. Now part of you might say, "so what I've got other things to do," well guess what there is a happiness rating and you don't want that to drop too far or else all hell breaks loose.
I'll save that for another blog, suffice it to say fallout is fun(maybe a little too fun since I have rarely played another AAA game while playing fallout) but it is a time sink, so if you have other things to do you may not want to crank it up, you can get lost in the wasteland.
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