Month: November 2015

So I’ve been enjoying the HELL out of Fallout 4.  For all the shit it’s gotten from some groups, it’s a fantastic game.  It takes the best stuff from Fallout 3/NV while removing some of the things that were a pain in the ass to be honest.  Remember having to carry around three or more of the same weapon so you could repair it, gone! Screw that mechanic in any  game..  I hated having a weapon break on me after barely using it.  I can understand it’s realistic to have a chance of a weapon breaking, but those guns wore out fast.

The VATS system has changed a bit, and I didn’t like the change at first.  It no longer stops time.  This is not ideal when the enemy you’re trying to target is right next to you.  However, it REALLY does add to the emotions you’ll feel when playing.  VATS now causes a ‘bullet time’ effect where time slows down when activated.  So you can watch the Fat Man round slowly creeping up on your crotch.  Yes, you can die a bit easier with the new system. Although, It is pretty exciting to see the the danger coming your way.  A good game will provoke you in some way.  Fallout 4 sure does that in the right ways.

*ProTip – use vats to shoot enemy moltovs being thrown at you.  They will explode if you hit them.

Another new system has been added to Fallout 4 in the form of crafting.  If one wished, you could even craft whole buildings or towns.  Personally, I have enjoyed fussing with some town building, but the weapons mods are where it’s at.  You can really do some amazing stuff to customize your weapons.  You are free to blur and cross the lines between the types of firearms.  So your semi automatic pistol can become a revolver if wish and have the scrap.

The new crafting has changed the way I might play an earlier Fallout game in terms of bottlecaps.  You are no longer collecting junk to sell for the most part.  You’re mostly going to be using that junk to help craft and mod things.  You might need to save up the caps if you wish to buy a legendary item off of a trader.  However,  I’ve found that modded guns can be just as effective to get you through the game.

Foodies can rejoice in being after to craft your own meals now.  And while that’s a bad joke, the in game food crafting is not.  You can make some seriously stat boosting food items in game now.  Damage resistance, damage boosts, extra carry weight, and extra XP food items can be made.  You can save your stimpacks for serious injury and save lots of caps by not having to buy healthpacks all the time.  It’s great!

The story.  Eh, nothing really groundbreaking so far.  It works, but really brings nothing new to the table.  Although I’ve found the little side interactions to be more entertaining.  I guess I’ve been more focused on the gameplay and beefing my character up, I have not done much of the main quest.  Hmm, I do that a lot in Bethesda games, and that’s not a bad thing.  The world is more fun then following the main quest.

Bugs?  The giant bugs are a joy to gibb in the game.  As for the nastier kind that are hard to beat without a patch?  I’ve had it crash on me once in about 48hrs of play.  Although the game REALLY hates to be alt-tabbed.  The worst glitches appear after an alt-tab and require a game restart to remove.  Other then that, the bugs I’ve found have been hilarious.  Plant life ‘buzzing’ at an unnatural frequency,  cars vibrating across an area, and people being launched into a low earth orbit upon death.  I like these bugs.  I’d like to see MORE of these bugs.  However, I’ve only seen each of them once in my gameplay.

The graphics have improved a bit, but the damage model seems like a throwback at times.  The people in Fallout 4 are much improved, but when things go south and you get your critical headshot, the Gibs seem like stuff straight from Fallout 3.  Eh, they are still effective, they just do not seem as improved as the rest of the graphics.  I should note that the landscapes are beautiful by the way.

So, should you get it?  I would recommend it.  I feel like you’ll get $60 in gameplay out of it.  Although, it will probably go on sale soon enough.  I know I paid less then $60 using Greenman gaming.  I’m happy with my purchase so far.

Good luck Vault Dwellers.

 

I grew up at a time when computers were not the easiest things to use.  You needed your DOS boot disk, and you would not get far without knowing console commands.  Every game would come with a slip of paper telling you the exact commands to get your game to run.  Little me would screw around with everything else on a disk to see what would do what.  If a game didn’t work or I broke something on my dad’s PC, it was up to me.  He’d show me the basics, and let me learn on my own in terms of making it work.  Good times.

The bad thing about those times.  The computer prices at the time were kinda outrageous.  I believe the Tandy 1000 was around $2000 for the base machine.  I’ll have to dig up some old advertisements to show how much simple accessories would cost, but for now you’ll have to trust me.  I know I paid $230ish for a 1.2gb drive way back then.  Ugh..

Being about ten years old at the time, this presented me with some issues.  I really liked my games, but they would not always run well.   Buying a new machine for myself was out of the question.  I needed information on how to optimize things specifically for gaming performance.

At some point I started to learn the networking side to things.  This was fantastic!  I could get my PC to call a friends PC and we could play in the same game!  Just hope no one calls and 2nd line *beep* doesn’t drop your connection, or someone picks up the line before the PC does.  It can be awkward when your friend’s dad picks up the phone late at night.  Learning the Hayes command set helped a bit with the odd issues though.  It really helped to optimize things.

Shortly after learning the AT commands, I found out about BBS sites.  You’d dial into them and were presented with a txt base website.  Immediately after that, I learned how much the phone bill was for that month.  I think it was about $40 in the mid 80’s.  Oops.  I suppose this grew the night owl in me because the rates were cheaper late at night.  Heh, a ten minute call to California to the Sierra OnLine website was $10 with the night rates.  It was worth it $ wise though.  They had all the guidebooks on their site that would have been $10+ in the store.

The Prodigy Online network comes into the picture shortly after.  Now the BBS sites would have some cool info on things, but with Prodigy, I could get A LOT of cool info on A LOT of things.  Naturally, optimizing my games was a priority right away.  Special boot disks became a rather useful tool about that time.  Why waste memory booting windows up when I can keep it all for the game?  It just seemed like a no brainer.

Well then you have that whole internet thing..

I learned computers like a 2nd language in my youth, and I will only consider myself better then average with them.  My idea of just what average is may be a bit skewed though.  I just realize that so much can go wrong, and I’ve never stopped learning new quirks about specific hardware/software combinations.

Like a brand new game on my brand new personal computer that will crash on startup every time.  There was a specific bug for my specific Gateway computer (It was before I built my own) with the gaming port.  The game would not run until that port was disabled.  They did not explain why, but the fix worked like a charm.  I knew then that computers will not always make sense.

Be excellent to each other folks.