Fallout 4

[Niloc]

Spent a good long time playing Fallout 4 over the weekend. Unfortunately, even after sticking to my plan, which was "Don't pre-order. Read reviews for several days after launch to check for any game-breaking bugs." - it still crashes. A LOT. PC version specifically.

The reviews mention some bugs - and I expect the usual Bethesda-game weirdness. Graphical glitches and odd physics don't phase me much but the crashing is obnoxious. It just freezes for 2-3 seconds, then black screen for 2 seconds, then back at the desktop. No "this program has stopped responding" or anything - it acts like nothing was running. No processes still running in the background either. None of the reviews mentioned it crashing anything like this much however so I have to assume it's partially down to my PC.

My PC is up to the task: 3.4ghz Core i7 (plus whatever "boost" speed nonsense - 3.9ghz, I think), Samsung SSD, 16GB RAM, nVidia 670 card (a bit dated, but fine for 1080p), Windows 10 64bit (possibly the problem) and all the latest updates, latest video driver.

I've tried every fix Google has to offer - so far nothing has helped. I only have time to play on the weekends so I'm REALLY hoping for a patch sometime this week.

One thing I didn't experience that some reviews mention is long load times - people are saying 30+ seconds even on an SSD. Load times are fine for me, only a few seconds at most. Wondering if it's down to the amount of RAM maybe?


As for the game itself... well, it's more Fallout. I can't complain much about that, I would have happily taken another game with the Fallout 3 engine - I'm surprised they didn't crank out another one after New Vegas in fact.

There are a lot of tweaks and improvements - I haven't gotten too much into the crafting and settlement system yet and that appears to be the most major change. Graphically it's a big step up from (un-modded) Fallout 3, but not much of a step up from the PC version of Skyrim. Doesn't really look current-gen IMO, doesn't even look as good as GTA5 - and that had versions on the last-gen consoles. The PC version requires a 64bit OS, presumably to use more than 4GB of RAM, but it's really not clear why that's a requirement when it wasn't (as far as I know) for Skyrim.

Controls... well, it's clearly designed to be played with a controller. Keyboard & mouse, how I had planned to play it, just feels a bit off. I think mouse acceleration may be the problem. There's a user-made tweak tool for this out already but I haven't messed with it yet. It does play fine with a controller though, it's not really an action game or something that requires laser-precise control.

The intro portion of the game gets rolling pretty quickly and doesn't overstay its welcome, you get let loose into the wasteland fast enough. There's some plot setup where I'm 90% sure I can see the eventual twist coming, and I hope I'm wrong - but screw the main story, that's not what these games have ever been about really anyway.

Very minor non-story SPOILER WARNING for the stuff below this line:

So I get out of the vault, and they quickly give you a "home base" area to store your stuff, and send you on the way to the first main quest plot point - explore Concord. Just like in Fallout 3 with Megaton I said "To hell with that!" and just set out to the nearest edge of the map, then turned north and followed it around, exploring various map points along the way. Get some XP and have places open for fast-travel later. Exploration and dicking around in areas that I'm not supposed to be in yet - that's what these games are all about for me. Eventually running into a Deathclaw that slaughters me in one hit, etc. - but also sneaking around them sometimes, getting higher-level weapons, etc.

Some pretty cool "emergent gameplay" (maybe) type moments;

One place I found was a fish-packing factory. 2 super-mutants guarding the bridge leading to the place. I'm still level 3. No chance of taking them out, but going around the long way... yup, got past them. Strangely, in the factory grounds, no super-mutants. I did find a dead human raider though - and he had a key to the factory, so that was nice. Exploring around the factory... this is odd, lots of dead raiders, no super-mutants or other enemies. Clearly this was a raider stronghold that was taken over, but there's no one left. Plenty of loot though! On the roof there was a very nice sniper rifle - probably long before I should have gotten it. Useful for the high-powered scope alone to scout ahead.

Deeper and deeper into that factory and I finally stumble across some enemies - the new "Synth" android enemies. Not sure if those appeared in Fallout 1 or 2, but they definitely were not in 3 or New Vegas. After maybe 30 minutes of exploring what appeared to be an abandoned place, coming across them was pretty effectively scary. They were clearly out of my league level-wise, so I ran for it. I'll definitely be back once I'm a level-30 (or whatever) god of death. I hope to find out why the super-mutants are guarding the bridge. Do they work for the synths? Or perhaps do you get a quest to kill the synths for them?

Later on I came across a convalescent home run by friendly "Mr. Handy" robots. Predictably they've been taking good care of corpses for the past 200 years or so - but as soon as I told them I was there to visit Grandma they let me right in. Exploring the place there were safes for the residents valuables behind the front desk, and keys hidden throughout. No real enemies since the Mr. Handy units were all friendly (they didn't even object to my obvious and rampant theft) but hey, good loot and I'm still a low-level character - great!

So I find a bunch of the safe keys, some much better hidden than others and I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to carry all this crap when I hear the front desk robot say "Oh good, more visitors!". Now this event seemed more scripted, but once again it was the Synths. They come in and start slaughtering the Mr. Handy robots. I've got no chance against one of them, much less a big group and they're spreading out, searching the entire place. Eventually I manage to kill one of them through a lucky stealth-crit, but that attracts others, I wind up running into a room on the 2nd floor above the lobby, dropping through a hole in the floor and book it right out the front door. They give chase but I managed to hide around the back of the building.

The game excels at stuff like this. No quest, no one sent me there, just wandering around and cool, fun stuff happens.

I think that Dogmeat also probably distracted them - and that's one downside to the immersiveness of the game. People didn't like it if the dog died in Falllout 3, so in 4 they made him immortal. He can be injured and stop helping you in a fight, but he'll always recover. You can use a stim pack to heal him but since he always recovers on his own... why bother? It's a fairly minor thing I guess, and you don't have to travel with the dog (or any companion) - there's even a perk that gives you benefits if you don't. Still it takes me out of the game a bit. The dog also seems to wander off or get stuck from time to time, but he resets back at the gas station where you found him originally (very shortly after the start of the game).


TLDR: Good game. Still some major bugs/crashing. Quicksave CONSTANTLY.

[lordtakuban]

Thanks for the thorough review.  I'll probably pick this game up at some point, but I'm so far behind being able to play the other stuff I have already (Witcher 3).  I'll probably get this one on the PC when I do get it, so I'll check to see how well the bugs have been resolved by the time I'm ready to get it.  I have a machine powerful enough to run it when that happens at least.  So I won't want it crashing all the time. 

[jtslade]

Thank you for the review, I need to get off my but and finish fallout 3.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ratsflif]

I have about 10 hours in on the Xbox One version, not a single crash...  It's definitely more Fallout, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it through this game, I'm already starting to get burned out.  I've beaten Fallout 1,2 and tactics but I just cant seem to finish the new Bethesda games.  With Halo 5, Black Ops 3, and now Battlefront now out it's going to be even tougher to play Fallout as I can just jump in and play a quick game on the other titles while I need to set away a block of time to play Fallout.

[Niloc]

Had a bit less crashing this past weekend, but it's definitely not gone. Lots of reviews report no issues at all on the PC version so it's either a Windows 10 problem or a video driver issue - I suspect drivers.

Last week it was crashing "silently" giving no info at all, this week, after another driver update (one version past the Fallout 4 "game ready" version... not so ready apparently) it's now giving a lot of "video driver has stopped responding and recovered" and one weird one which was something like "application Fallout 4 has been prevented from accessing the GPU" (I can't remember the exact wording but it was something like that).

I've tried tons of fixes from the web, may have finally found a solution but I'm not sure yet - probably won't know until after Thanksgiving when I have more time to put into it, but what seems to have worked is using a GPU app to turn the fans on 100% and leave them there. Problem is, that doesn't make a lot of sense for several reasons;

1) Even before doing that the game would sometimes run for several hours without issue, and tolerate alt-tabbing, and a few minor things running in the background. Then at other times it would crash every 5 or 10 minutes - and not only after it had run for a while and gotten heated up.
2) If it is a heat issue the card should crank up the fans automatically on its own, I've got nothing set to prevent that, and it doesn't seem to be doing it - the fans are noticeably louder when I force them to 100%. No "thermal event" type errors either.
3) Other, presumably more-demanding (graphically) games such as The Witcher 3 run fine with no crashes.

So while I hope the fan speed does fix it, since that's pretty simple, I suspect it's more of a driver issue, probably related to Nvidia not giving a shit about my card, a GTX 670, since it's 3+ years old and 2 generations back. When it's not crashing the card has more than enough horsepower to run the game well and I've got no interest in upgrading yet.

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Anyway, as for the game itself I've explored more of the settlement system, which is interesting but kind of a mixed bag.

It's very satisfying to go around the first base area you get and scrap everything for parts - clean up the whole place then re-build as you like.

This satisfaction is reduced quite a bit by a few factors though; you can only scrap entire buildings if they've completely collapsed, the other ones you're stuck with, even though they've all got holes in the roof and walls.

Certain items can't be scrapped - most trees inside the base area can be, but a small cluster can't for some reason and there's no clear explanation why.

You break down items to construct new items - building beds for settlers is the first thing you're tasked with. Problem with that is that the beds you can build are the same, dilapidated looking ones that already exist in the wasteland. It would make more sense, and be more satisfying, IMO, if you were able to build crude, but cleaner and newer looking items from the scrap. That could perhaps improve as the game goes on, as you get more skills and better followers who can help - and maybe it does later in the game, but it sure doesn't seem to be headed that way so far.

Dogmeat REALLY needs a heel command, or at least an aggression setting - something like passive, only attack what I attack, or aggressive - attack everything. As it is he wanders off a lot and can attract enemies while I'm trying to be stealthy. Gives incentive to try one of the other followers out though I guess - but the dog is the only one who doesn't judge you for stealing everything that isn't nailed down, that's the re-vamped karma system in this version.


Couple tips for anyone starting out;

1) Shotguns are a bit overpowered and therefore very useful. Shotgun ammo is pretty common, and you'll find a ton of the most basic short, double barreled shotguns in the game right from the start. They're super effective against human enemies - raiders, scavengers and bandits. Run in close, use VATS, target a headshot and you'll kill them in 1 hit most of the time, right from very low levels. Works well on "hard" difficulty anyway - your mileage may vary on "very hard" or "survival". They also work well on all the giant insect enemies. Only downside is that it's a double-barreled shotgun so only 2 shots before re-loading, but you'll find better shotguns (loving the combat shotgun I found recently) fairly soon.

2) In my opinion one of the best perks to get ASAP for exploring is "Aquaboy". This lets you swim anywhere without absorbing radiation from the water. Great for exploration, great for getting away from enemies, great because radiation is a much bigger problem in Fallout 4 as compared to Fallout 3 or New Vegas.
Also the swim speed is stupid-fast.

Actually movement speed has been increased across the board - your "sneak" speed is about the same as the walk speed in prior games, run speed is even faster and there's a limited sprint that is faster still.

A lot of sites recommend "Bloody Mess" as a good perk to take early on. That seems to make sense since it gives a 5% damage increase across the board, no matter what weapons you favor. Long term though you won't need it, and in previous games it got very annoying because it reduces the enemies to giblets, so it's often hard to find what to loot, and because the game is so proud of showing you the effect that it goes into the slow-mo cinematic "kill cam" mode WAY too often. Aquaboy over Bloody Mess all the way.


Still enjoying the game, if the crashes really are fixed I'll be very happy. There's supposed to be a patch coming out soon as well - hopefully that helps too.

[the architect]

I love the game, I'm an xbox1-er. Game plays great, haven't experienced any crashes yet, but I have noticed slight freezing from time to time, however it always recovers.

The game is "more fallout", but I'd say it's definitely much bigger than its predecessors in gameplay and size. The new factions keep it fresh, while additional options for vats and building add to my overall happiness playing the game.

As for finishing the game, it's a marathon for sure. Cmon though flip side to that is Bethesda is one of the best at giving "bang for your buck".

[Niloc]

Finally finished the game yesterday - so playing only on weekends (and a few holidays) I got over 3 months out of it. Definitely get your money's worth, there's a LOT of game there.

My save game file says 177 hours - that may be accurate, but my estimate would have been more like 140-150 hours. Still a hell of a lot regardless. The Steam client says 276 hours played but I know that's wrong - it must be counting all the time I had it paused, alt-tabbed out, etc. and I may have left it paused and running overnight at least a few times.

I've done pretty much everything other than one side quest and the companion quests. It's still an option to do those, but at this point I'm pretty burnt out on it.

The story had exactly the predictable twists I was worried about. I was hoping for a double-twist or something, but no such luck. The main plot is probably the weakest part of the game.

The best side quest, without a doubt, is the U.S.S. Constitution - definitely do that one, it's hilarious and you get nice unique weapon at the end.


I'm still a big fan of these games, but they definitely need to evolve more. My idea would be "Fallout: Miami" - starting from a vault in the Okefenokee swamp you'd proceed through an number of smaller, linked maps around Florida. The ruins of Disneyworld. Miami. The Everglades. The Keys. Maybe even down into Cuba for some missile-crisis type lore.

Introduce a lot of new enemies - mutant alligators are an obvious choice but also pythons, etc. -  plus a lot of the existing Fallout enemies would already fit well in a Florida setting - Radroaches, Bloodbugs...

I'm rather concerned that the bullshit Elder Scrolls Online may hold up or prevent the release of the next proper, single-player Elder Scrolls game too. I've had my fill of Fallout for a while but would not say no to the next Skyrim.