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Forums - PC Discussion - Mummelmann's Fallout 4 first impressions

So, I went out and bought the game today, decided on retail since I have a surf limitation on my current internet connection. Turned out to be a waste since only 5GB of the actual game is on the disc and you need a 20GB download during install, with my 4G speed, this took me roughly 3 hours.
That's not what I wanted to write about though, so here are my first, short impressions after roughly 4 hours of playing.

Controls and combat feel
The controls are tight and responsive, aiming outside of VATS is quite easy and even weapons without proper sights are fairly simple to handle at medium distance. The combat is somewhat too easy though, especially when fighting humans, the enemies which should exhibit the highest intelligence are the most stupid of them all and they are hopeless at taking cover and have terrible aim.
The critical system is good, just like in New Vegas, but some monsters you face early on have a shocking amount of HP, I ran into a monster that took about 9 full clips from my .38 rifle (that's over 100 shots), most went to the head.
Melee is kind of overpowered in the beginning but VATS has changed in a significant way; enemies are no longer stationary when you select which spots to aim for.
This is both good and bad; good because it makes it a bit harder but bad because it causes the percentages to vary greatly (and make it difficult to select the right part as well, especially on smaller and flying enemies) and the enemy can sometimes "hide" the juicy bits behind wings, arms, legs or other parts.

Visuals and sound
I find the visuals to be great, personally, I'm running it at 1440p with everything set to the absolute max, including all draw distance and godrays. The style is more pleasant than in previous games, this is at the expense of the more dreary feel though and I sometimes miss the lonely and oppressing atmosphere of the other titles, it simply becomes a bit too cheery at times, especially outside.
Overall though, bar a few poor animations and weird ass faces, the visuals are good.

The sound and music are fantastic, especially the music, I turned it off in F3 and NV since it annoyed me but I feel the need to listen to it in F4. Gunshots, and especially laser weapons, are improved, especially how they sound at a distance and the voice-acting is good, but not great.
Monsters sound as scary as they should but your dog companion becomes annoying right away and his constant yapping will drive you insane unless your name is Conegamer and your love for dogs trumph the annoying barking...

Customization and variation
There are a lot more weapons in F4, and the first ones you'll find are quite rudimentary, as they should be. The building interface is beyond terrible and clearly designed with controllers in mind, but I can't imagine using it with those either (tried it briefly with my 360 controller, didn't really help). The new armor system is great, you can wear a bodysuit and then individual plating on top of that, one on each limb, a helmet and even chest plates, this allows for more and varied bonuses and some fairly unique looks to your character. It's actually one of the biggest and best improvements in the game, in my opinion, and lends depth on all fronts.
Power armor is completely revamped and is more like a vehicle now, you enter it and can then leave it, just like a vehicle, this is also good since it's severely overpowered (lending a fair set of stats and qualities that match the name).
I still haven't modded my gear any so I can't say much about it but I can imagine it being sort of a chore to gather raw materials for mods since your inventory capacity is rather limited and you need to pick up everything you can that can be sold for some caps, money is rather hard to come by compared to the previous games and ammo is very expensive compared to NV and F3.

AI
The AI in Fallout 4 is terrible, no way around it. Humans enemies are the worst; they get stuck on walls, take cover behind low tables that leaves half the torso and all of the legs visible and exposed, forget you shot them in the stomach after 30 seconds or roaming around looking for you when you sneak and generally behave like morons. As has become commonplace in Bethesda titles, the sneaking mechanic is grossly overpowered and even early weapons can one-shot most human enemies in the beginning.
The monsters are sometimes more challenging since they can have enormous amounts of HP and appear out of nowhere, rad scorpions can burrow now and they have insane hit points. However high their HP is though, they remain quite easy to beat due to their AI, I avoided a rad scorpion's attacks simply by stepping onto a low rock, areas where he could not burrow seemed to be places where he wasn't interested in moving or attacking.
Another monster with insane hit points appeared in a house near the beginning, I shot him in the head and expected him to bound out the door and towards me where I was squatting in the low grass in broad daylight, but he never saw me and I kept firing, I shot over 100 bullets into its head without it caring or even moving outside to find me.
AI is the least impressive part of the entire game for me, this is an area in gaming in general that needs serious upgrades and a huge, open world populated solely by blind, blithering idiots takes some of the magic away for me.

Performance
Perhaps the most talked about part of Fallout 4 is the performance and there are reports popping up everywhere of poor frame rates and other issues. I'm happy to report that my experience thus far has been good in that regard, except for a few clipping issues and some draw distance shenanigans. My frame rates are more or less constantly 60 (appears to be locked and won't go higher), I've had my fps drop into the low 40's at worst.
Loading times are atrocious in this game, even with a SSD game disc, going from outside to inside and vice versa can take up to 20-25 seconds. Loading savegames is lightning fast though; loading quicksave takes me only 2-3 seconds at most, even less when inside a building/location.
Cutscenes have a tendency to tear a little but in-game is no problem.

 

Overall, my impressions are good, the dialogue system is so-so and the AI is a drag, but it's a solid title with some amazing qualities. I expected bigger issues, especially on the performance side, but I'm glad not to find them.
Yes; it's more of the same from Bethesda, but that's not always a bad thing when the same holds a standard and entertainment value like this.




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I've only played 3 or so hours so far...and I really don't know how I feel about it.

I honestly haven't felt disappointment when I first started FO3 back in days (even though I hated that Bethesda got Fallout license from Interplay), that came later when all the shallowness surfaced, but with FO4...I don't know, everything seems off from the very start.

For me, so far at least, this is less of the proper Fallout game than even FO3. I will keep on playing it, but my expectations are even lower than I've initially set them.



Glad to hear the PC version runs ok!



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016

Loving it so far. I spent most of the day working on my settlement in Sanctuary. I have four turrets, yay. I like that you can pick up and move anything if you don't like the original placement. I had a large building up with room for about 10 beds rather fast, along with a generator on the roof.

Weapon modding takes a little time to understand but when you get it down, you can make your primary weapon kick ass. Picking up stuff isn't that big of a problem, as you're mainly looking for things that have rare parts, like copper and circuitry. I haven't touched on armor modding yet.

Combat is good. Raiders have always been cake and it's easy to gain a firepower advantage on those that appear early, as their weapons are awful. Your 10mm pistol you leave the Vault with outclasses them from the start. Small targets are still tough to hit, which is where VATS comes into play the most. Looking forward to the tougher humanoid enemies I know will come later.

Zero bugs, glitches, or crashes after 12 hours.

Surprisingly, even though my PC's specs are slightly below minimum, it set me on Medium. Outside has been smooth but sometimes inside buildings causes a bit of a stutter. It's not bad but I might tinker with the settings a bit.

A radroach scared the hell out of me by coming from underneath a skeleton.



I've been getting mixed opinion on it, some like it and some think its disappointing. Though i'm not sure I would like it since i've never really played a Fallout before.



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HoloDust said:

I've only played 3 or so hours so far...and I really don't know how I feel about it.

I honestly haven't felt disappointment when I first started FO3 back in days (even though I hated that Bethesda got Fallout license from Interplay), that came later when all the shallowness surfaced, but with FO4...I don't know, everything seems off from the very start.

For me, so far at least, this is less of the proper Fallout game than even FO3. I will keep on playing it, but my expectations are even lower than I've initially set them.


Yeah, I haven't quite decided yet either, I really like the gameplay but the atmosphere it "too kind" or even cozy for that Fallout feel. It's not unlike Diablo 3, which had a style both in narrative and visuals that detracted from the ominous mood you're supposed to feel.
The AI is also bugging me a great deal; it just ruins the immersion sometimes and I feel that RPG's should be challenging in the beginning, this might be a title where you're basically overpowered through most of the game, which is also common for Bethesda titles.
For me, challenge and entertainment go hand-in hand, it does feel like they've turned it down another notch in favor of the "broader audience", like they did with Skyrim.
I still like it though, same as with Skyrim, but I'm seeing a game that could be so much more, again; like Skyrim.

I still haven't played any more, I have to attend a meeting now but I'll be home in a couple of hours and will fire it up again!



I'm gonna get this title sooner or later, so I'm glad that some of you are quite enjoying yourselves so far!



I'm on Twitter @DanneSandin!

Furthermore, I think VGChartz should add a "Like"-button.

Ive liked the game so far.

The graphics are great, nothing mind blowing but they serve the game very well. Im just messing around Sanctuary so i dont know the scope of the game, but i guess that is huge.

The voice acting and sound are great so far, i like that the main protagonist has a voice. Also, it FUCKING blew my mind when Codsworth said my last name in the game, when i heard "Mr. Gutierrez" i was like WTF?!?!?!?! That was a very, very nice touch.

The combat feels nice and very Fallout/Bethesda, ive played mainly in first person so i dont know how it handles in 3rd. The VATS is back, and like previously said, now its kinda in real time, the enemy keeps moving, albeit in slow motion so the difficulty is cranked up a little higher in that regard. I dont like that the 9mm gun that you begin with doesnt have that feeling of weight and power when shot, but thats mainly an engine issue common in Bethesda games.

What stroke me harder was the newest build your house kind of thing on this game. I wasnt expecting that! I see myself losing tons of hours messing around and creating stuff.



Mummelmann said:
HoloDust said:

I've only played 3 or so hours so far...and I really don't know how I feel about it.

I honestly haven't felt disappointment when I first started FO3 back in days (even though I hated that Bethesda got Fallout license from Interplay), that came later when all the shallowness surfaced, but with FO4...I don't know, everything seems off from the very start.

For me, so far at least, this is less of the proper Fallout game than even FO3. I will keep on playing it, but my expectations are even lower than I've initially set them.


Yeah, I haven't quite decided yet either, I really like the gameplay but the atmosphere it "too kind" or even cozy for that Fallout feel. It's not unlike Diablo 3, which had a style both in narrative and visuals that detracted from the ominous mood you're supposed to feel.
The AI is also bugging me a great deal; it just ruins the immersion sometimes and I feel that RPG's should be challenging in the beginning, this might be a title where you're basically overpowered through most of the game, which is also common for Bethesda titles.
For me, challenge and entertainment go hand-in hand, it does feel like they've turned it down another notch in favor of the "broader audience", like they did with Skyrim.
I still like it though, same as with Skyrim, but I'm seeing a game that could be so much more, again; like Skyrim.

I still haven't played any more, I have to attend a meeting now but I'll be home in a couple of hours and will fire it up again!

It's maybe to early to judge it, but for now I really have a problem calling this RPG at all - yeah, it has some RPG elements, but with skills gone, no traits, dumbed down dialog choices, (IMO) broken perks system and, as you said it, lack of that ominous feel Fallout needs to have, so far this is more like FarCry meets State of Decay, rather than proper Fallout. At least V.A.T.S. is there, so there's that.

Honestly, prior to launch I was pretty much in media blackout for this game, and I expected it do be either move in the right direction of bringing Fallout back to its roots, with pointers taken from FO:NV, or further dumbing down of franchise. Guess I was right about one choice, pitty it was the wrong one.

Nevertheless, I'll keep on playing it, maybe it will get better...though that power armor doesn't really promises much.



Could you guys dwellve a bit more into the conversation system? It's by far the thing I'm most worried about. Mass Effect style (or so it seems) over Fallout seems limited over the classic "choose what you want to say" structure.