heather perkins

You know what? I’m enjoying the hell out of this game. Cool world, interesting characters, infinite choices. And I’m playing on an Xbox One. I do think the crafting and hacking is a little too complicated, and there are a few glitches sure, but I’m enjoying basically inhabiting a mid-90s William Gibson novel and getting to kick ass in it. In technicolor, with great music and lots of mayhem. Haters gonna hate, I guess. Me, I’m enjoying the ride.

Just started this game, and I love it. You play a survivor of a nuclear apocalypse, woken up 200 years after the war and tasked with escaping the cryogenic bunker to explore and survive the huge nuclear wasteland. The graphics, sound and music are incredible, well wrought and with just enough of a tinge of melancholy and sadness to perfectly fit the ravaged world before you. Whoever curated the pop songs of yesteryear that you can play on the radio via your PipBoy is a genius - they are great. The game is ramping up slowly enough for me to get a feel for the controls, menus, and world, but challenging enough that I catch myself literally on the edge of my seat. The first time I played Fallout 4 I started it up just to see what the graphics and character choices were like, and snapped to 6 hours later completely immersed. If I hadn’t gotten careless after a save and fallen off a building, I might still be playing! But that was a good sign to go get some dinner. And I am itching to get back to the game tonight. In this game you’ll explore bombed out buildings, rusted out atomic cars, radioactive forests and cities gone to ruin, all while trying to stay alive and help people if you can. (There are “bad” game choices, like stealing stuff from people, but I always play games with good-bad choices according to my own morals, so - mostly good.) The weapons, looting and crafting systems feel like an RPG. That said, I this is essentially a first person shooter, although I did find a control that lets you play in a 3rd person perspective. I am NOT a hardcore gamer, and find most FPS games very frustrating - in fact I tried a similarly themed FPS that made me so angry I had to stop playing after about 45 minutes of running around in the dark - but Fallout 4 is fun and engaging for me. REALLY fun. Moving around, choosing weapons, aiming and shooting are all very intuitive. Safe cracking and general lock-picking are - well, I’m working on it. I play to relax, so the “Easy” setting is my friend, but those who crave more of a challenge can certainly set the difficulty level higher. I was advised by a friend to start with Fallout: New Vegas, but Fallout 4 was free on GamePass, which made it an easy decision. I like the game enough to try New Vegas down the road, though. Yes, I know it came out 5 years ago. A lot of the games I play are not new. I’m a casual but enthusiastic gamer who likes games that are fun, interesting and challenging, but not insane. Bonus if I can play free. EXTRA Bonus if I can play as a female character. Right now, Fallout: 4 is right up there with Assassins Creed Odyssey, ReCore Definitive and Jedi Academy as my go-to X-Box adventures.