Fallout 4 - 2/20 hours

I didn't want to stop playing long enough to write this post. "Luckily," I have my nightly hotel paperwork that can't be put off, so I was more or less forced to take a break (this is part of the reason I can get through 4Xs so fast - I don't have to turn the game off to write on my clipboard).

I had a bit of a scare starting the game up. It crashed to desktop instantly. My rage was not quite incandescent, but that's probably because having a meltdown at work would not have been a good idea. A little research was able to mitigate the problem. I have to play on windowed mode, which is not ideal, but could be a lot worse. Leaving aside the fact that the edges of my desktop are visible as I play, the game looks great, even on "low" settings and it runs smoothly. The new laptop has pulled through.

So, what about the game itself? I love it. It's Fallout. You're in this fantastic, retro-futuristic world with all this gorgeous desolation to rummage through and explore. I never want to leave. It's exactly as I expected it would be. And though I haven't got far enough into the game to really dig into the crafting and settlement-building aspects, I can already tell that I'm going to love them. More than any other game in the series, Power Armor feels like a badass weapon of war that makes a decisive difference on the battlefield.

And now for the complaints . . .

There aren't really very many, especially since I've decided to avoid specific spoilers until I encounter something that either delights or outrages me, but in general terms, as much as I enjoyed seeing a glimpse of the prewar world, your character feels like less of a cipher than in previous games. You get a real sense of his motivations, which theoretically is good storytelling, but . . . well it is not a new problem for Bethesda rpgs to have this amazing open world to explore and also a main quest that feels urgent and time-sensitive, so you feel like kind of a jackass for ignoring it.

I'm going to mull over whether I want to talk about the plot, because I do have some things I want to say about it, but maybe I'll save them for one, big, spoilery post. In the meantime, I can't wait to get back into it. I've only scratched the surface of post-apocalyptic Boston, and there's a ton more I want to see.