Accidentally discovering Fallout 3 at a thrift store for $5, I figured “eh, the cover looks cool, I’ll get it.” Little did I know that the play-through upon play-through upon hours upon hours I would be playing that game. How many times I would save every few minutes out of fear of loosing a companion or Dogmeat…dear god not Dogmeat.

Fallout 3 was my first, proper RPG, scavenging weapons in order keep my favorite weapon working. That one heavy weapon in case a horrible creature came along…and lets face it, the horrible creature was always going to be a deathclaw. But the thing was about non-patched Fallout 3…it was more Bethesda than Fallout. And if you don’t get what I mean…I mean it was UNPLAYABLE. Crashing every few minutes, corrupt saves, and where I lived at the time I had dial-up internet so downloading the final 200-300MB patch was a bit of a stretch. Thank goodness for neighbors Wifi. But once you patched it, you never really had problems.

Many years later, Fallout: New Vegas came out…and once again the non-patched version…UNPLAYABLE. And ever after patching it fully, one DLC was nearly unplayable because every day you went through seemed to crash the game. And if anyone has played either of these games, it doesn’t tend to save that often so if you crashed without saving beforehand…feeling that anger of having to do that part again makes you want to stop playing.

So upon the announcement of Fallout number 4…don’t get me wrong I was happy as everyone else. Better graphics, better game play, just an overall upgrade from the previous games, I was very happy. But that underlining fear…itching, bugging you, hoping that it wasn’t going to come true. “Made by Bethesda.” That really had be scared. I truly did want FO4 to be as bug free as possible and not a day one disaster. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was hoping that, and also one of those who went “this can’t be a Bethesda game..” at the launch of FO4…“it has no bugs.”

If I could dance in that game…or indeed in real life…I would have. Day 1, no game breaking bugs, no corrupt saves, no random BSoD or crashing to desktop. Yeah Dogmeat may have gone vertical, balanced on his nose and had his butt through the ceiling of one of my houses but I’d take that over game breaking bugs ANY DAY!

But yes ladies and gentle gamers, a Bethesda game that was released and other than the classic Fallout physics and such, the game is wonderful and game breaking bug free. I have heard of one major bug that crashes the game and is consistent through saves but it never happened to me, so I’m counting myself lucky.

Going down the list of things I like, very clinical here:

1) Graphics: Major upgrade, very good. Far better looking than either FO3 or FO:NV.
(And if anyone complains they’re not modern graphics or anything like that: SHUT THE HELL UP! The damn game was upgraded, it doesn’t need to be Crysis style “melting your GPU” style graphics.)

2) Sound: I might have to wipe my brow, I’m overcome with happiness. Weapons sound really good, the laser rifle is so far my favorite and if anyone read my first impressions about the game, turns out the special laser rifle I picked up, it doesn’t have a “special” sound but either way, love the sound of it. The music is beautiful, very high quality music, love the piano theme on the main menu. The voice acting is fantastic and all the companions seem real. They make comments on things they see, they comment on what you do and help in conversations. (I have a new crush in another game now, Piper for the win.)

3) Gameplay: GUNS FEEL REAL NOW!!! If anyone has played the previous games, you’ll know that the normal gun play doesn’t exactly feel…right. It works, but there’s just some kind of disconnect between the mouse and the gun in the game or maybe how the guns worked. The majority the time it was easier to use VATS to do it all. Now the guns feel proper, you don’t have to rely on VATS all the time when you run out Action Points. And like always, plenty of guns to choose from. The classic RPG stuff that required you to scrimp and save weapons you find to repair your guns is gone. All weapons work forever, you find parts to mod them. Special/unique weapons are still there and offer some limited modding abilities.

I’ve seen people complain about the fact that standard RPG stuff, i.e. talking your way out of combat, was taken out. I don’t know what they were playing but I had that happen at least twice to me, one of which I was very happy to talk them out of fight because going against a tough ass robot was not in my plan nor did I have the ammo to do so at the time. Don’t get me wrong, the game was simplified a bit compared to the older games but not to the point that it’s not worth it to play. The negative reviews I’ve seen on Steam are people that wanted there classic RPG stuff untouched completely and for some reason the story. And they have right to there opinion, I just feel they’re being a bit more harsh than they need to be.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L., perks, and rank is all the same as before, however with no cap, you can unlock every single thing and max it out if you wish, obviously that will take forever to do but hey, feel free to do it. There’s always cheats right?

4) Story: Again, the negative reviews I’ve seen of the story, I don’t understand. The story is on par with the previous games. FO3, find your dad, help your dad with a project. FO:NV: find who attempted to kill you, choose a side, Hover Dam. FO4: Find your son, choose a side…I’m not going to spoil this story with the ending in the description. And unlike the previous games (non-DLC FO3), the game keeps going after the ending. So you can still ramble around and do side quests and such.

FO3 and FO:NV, neither of them had, to me at least, award winning stories going on, and FO4 is no exception, but I’m not saying any of those were bad. They were all good, including FO4, and the human aspect of the characters, and the character you play, makes you feel more apart of it instead of just a generic hero/generic evildoer, makes the story in FO4 more personal.

5) A.I.: F*** DEATHCLAWS! I HATE THEM! They scared me in the previous games, now they scare me even more in this game. Who knew a horned murderous tank of a beast needed an UPGRADE! The main reason I hate them is simply cause I never walked around with heavy weapons to deal with them, so partially my fault. (Game note: BEWARE THE MUSEUM OF WITCHCRAFT)

But anyways, bad guys are tough now. They take cover instead of just strafing left and right. The Fatman glitch of the previous games that made using it with VATS or the AI using it is fixed. Raiders with power armor makes them even harder to deal with. AI do use stimpacks in combat, they’re not bullet sponges anymore. They’re very accurate and you better bind a key to using a stimpack or else you’ll die quickly.

Overall, this game is fantastic. It may have been slightly simplified but it’s still a fantastic game. The addition of settlements and of course everyone’s favorite character builder where you will spend 95% of your time making your character, it is a great game. I’m still playing happily and finding more things to do, classic Fallout. And of course still stressing that the next patch of field I cross or the next road I follow will have a random Deathclaw…can’t wait to have another heart attack.

And of course the one thing that will make Wiggin happy, a new game that hasn’t locked out modding. If they keep that going in the future, I’ll be very happy. And I’m sure someone will make a mod that will bring back classic RPG to FO4 to those who really want it.