Combat in the Elder Scrolls always felt strange to me. It lacked ‘oomph’, it was floaty, and the magic was mostly a matter of hoarding Magicka potions to fuel an assortment of rather unimpressive spells that you would spam all day long. Melee combat is mostly an endless repetition of clicks with no strategy and using the bow or crossbow requires you nail that sneak attack, or else get ready to kite an enemy from one end of the map to the other. Having damage-soaking bad guys on top of all that only aggravates the issue, relegating the job of making the game truly fun to modders.
To say that I’ve been disappointed in Fallout 4 is a bit of an understatement (At least it wasn’t anything like Dragon Age: Inquisition) but I’ve seemed to have fallen into a rather cynical pattern of negativity where I just bash a game for not living up to my standards. While I still hold such criticism to be valid, I wanted to try to approach the situation, Gopher style, and see what I like about a game rather than what displeased me. Here’s a short list of things about Fallout 4 that genuinely made me smile.
I’ve tried to find something significant to praise with Fallout 4, but the only things I could really appreciate were a few improvements on certain mechanics like the quick loot or the armour system. The roleplaying aspect of Fallout 4 remains woefully underwhelming. By that I mean that it lacks choice or complexity.
I have some grievances with Fallout 4. It’s not the game it’s supposed to be, and while the Consolitis of the PC version is rather appaling, my main gripe happens to be with the decidedly lacking role playing aspect of a role playing game. Bethesda, it would seem, chose to make an open-world shooter rather than an RPG, despite the Fallout franchise being thoroughly rooted in the RPG genre.