🚀 go-pugleaf

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Well, it's been a busy month for me, although you wouldn't be able to
>tell it by my playlist. Although I only played three games this month
>- not the fewest I've ever played, but far below average - one of
>those games hogged so much of my time that it's a wonder I found any
>time to play any other games. Plus the addition of some fun new
>computer hardware and, oh yeah, real life and I'm amazed I managed to
>squeeze everything into one month.
>
>Anyway, it's the end of the month (well, slightly past but as I said,
>I've been busy) and we all know what that means. I tell you guys what
>games I have been playing, you guys tell us all what you have been
>playing. Maybe we share our thoughts on those games too, or maybe not;
>it's all good. Anyway, let's get right into things.

>* Fallout 4 (new)
>If pressed to give a final opinion on Fallout 4, I would probably
>respond by saying that - while it has excellent production values - it
>was a game I ultimately did not enjoy playing very much. But this
>statement is very much at odds with my reported play-time on Steam: I
>invested over 100 hours into the game. It's an unusual discrepancy
>that I have struggled to understand myself.
>
>Certainly Fallout 4 is not without is merits. Its large open world is
>beautifully detailed and Bethesda has well-utilized the updated
>Creation (nee Gamebryo) engine to crank out their best renderings yet.
>The texture detail in some areas is simply stunning. The game-world is
>far more open than Bethesda's earlier titles; while you still
>encounter a load-screen when entering the larger dungeons, many
>smaller areas that once would have been separate maps are now part of
>the overland map, giving the whole game a much more cohesive feel. The
>map is stuffed full of things to discover, and - like all Bethesda's
>games - the biggest thrill is walking across the world and discovering
>a new area to explore. Like a jackdaw to a shiny object, I was
>constantly distracted by the lure of some new dungeon or ruin to
>discover, and rare was it that I'd cross the wastelands on some quest
>without numerous detours because some new "unexplored area" icon
>appeared on my mini-map. 
>
>Unfortunately, this was the only real joy I received while playing the
>game. The individual quests - always a weak point of Bethesda's games
>- I found uninteresting, with particular disdain for the main quest.
>The procedurally generated "Radiant" quests were exceptionally poor,
>especially when they were auto-assigned ("Rescue the town from
>imminent attack" and saddled with a time-limit; the latter was an
>egregious sin as it took me away from the freeform wandering that was
>game's strength. The game's new mechanic - the base-building - was
>encumbered by tedium, limited options and fiddly controls and after
>establishing a few homes for my braindead followers I largely ignored
>it. Many of the older mechanics - unfulfilling combat, dry dialogue
>options, uninspired AI, and cumbersome crafting - still suffered from
>rough spots that have haunted Bethesda's games since the start.
>Individually these issues didn't harm the game too much, but the
>continued lack of improvement in this area was disheartening

I hated this nonsense to the point that on a restart I simply refused to
talk to the militia guy once he got to sanctuary.

>I think that if I had to put my finger on Fallout 4's biggest problem,
>it would be that it was such an unadventurous sequel; except for the
>addition of the base-building, it added very little new to the
>franchise.  Most disappointingly, it took absolutely no chances with
>the setting. In many ways the game felt little more than a re-skin of
>Fallout 3, both in terms of gameplay and setting. Once again I took
>the role of a bad-ass (albeit easily diverted) vault-dweller facing
>off against the same bunch of mutants and wasteland factions. Oddly
>enough, the increased level - while pleasant to look at - made the
>game actually that much less immersive, since its increased realism
>only brought into contrast many of the inconsistencies of the game's
>world (like, if the war was over 200 years ago then why are there
>still-fresh corpses from the war all over?).

For me it was the architecture - just another example of stupid
programmers/designers.

Sure the ramshackle hut with gaping openings is fine when you've set the
game in California, or Nevada or such, but FO4 is set in Boston, where
it gets damn cold and gets loads of snow - that kind of living quarters
= everybody dies the first winter.

For fucks sakes they were building better than that in the Bronze Age
and worst of all, there was often building materials right there beside
the crappy hut.

Worst of all is to find that the settlement building options you have
are full of this kind of non-protective walls, ceilings and floors to
build with.

What's next, Fallout 5, set in Barrow, Alaska and with the same useless
"walls" to build with?
What's a little thing like being north of the Arctic Circle compared to
keeping that signature Fallout style, no matter how little sense it
makes?

>It was the lure of discovery that kept me playing as long as I did,
>but the payout was rarely worth the effort. Like an addict, I kept
>scouring the wastes - adding tens of hours to my overall play-time -
>in hopes of finding some redeeming and exciting set-piece but instead
>was reward with an unending sense of ennui. When I finally did come to
>the end of the main quest, I found I had little desire to keep playing
>beyond that point. This is a distinct divergence from my experience
>with other Bethesda titles, where I would happily play and re-play the
>game; with Fallout 4, I was happy to have finally come to a concluding
>moment so that I could abandon it without guilt or worry I might be
>missing something.  I'd seen enough to realize that even were I to
>play another hundred hours I still wouldn't discover anything that
>would make that investment worthwhile.

It was fun to explore, but once you've found it, there's nothing more to
discover and the replay value is minimal since you know where everything
is since the randomized stuff is basically just the "same the people at
X" and all the rest is set pieces.

I actually started a new game and started walking south and was deep in
the crater before long, and shortly had the best power armor in the
game.

There's no real exploration when the game specifically TELLS you to go
to Concord and then sets you up with the militia after which you're on
the "save the settlement" treadmill for life.

Don't get me started on the absolutely arbitrary building sites, the
arbitrary decision of what you're allowed to tear down, recycle or
build.   Oh look, a broken building is in the middle of the site, but
you cannot tear down or repair it's walls, so it's just in the way.
And what the fuck is up with not being able to repair roofs?

The artificial materials limit really bugs me - you can salvage this
car, but not those 300 just 5 feet outside the green zone.
Oh you can't plant there.   The why did you send me to a PAVED drive in
theatre lot to build a community on?

Where's the friggen PLANTERS - made worse by the fact that you actually
find settlements and some random buildings where planters are being
used, but you can't use them.

It's worst offense is it feels like a game because of all these
nonsensical decisions;   You can't grab "unapproved" materials, you
can't remove obstacles even in power armor, you can't tell Mr Militia
"I'm busy, go do it yourself", you have to have arbitrary points in
arbitrary skills before you can do the community building thing or
transfer materials (but they're quite happy to instantly make you their
leader 15.2 seconds after meeting you.)

There's just no immersion possible when you're being slapped in the face
by one of these idiocies every couple minutes.

Bethesda has forgotten how to build worlds.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr