Fallout 4

Fallout 4 is a post-apocalyptic action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks.

It is the fifth major installment in the Fallout series and was released worldwide on November 10, 2015, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Plot
In the post-apocalyptic Boston, Massachusetts area, you play as the "Sole Survivor" of Vault 111, recently revived from centuries of forced cryogenic stasis, determined to find your kidnapped son.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) A massive open world to explore, set in the ruins of Concord, Lexington, and even Boston. The map includes most of the state of Massachusetts, as well as bits of New England to the north, even if the map wasn't that interesting.
 * 2) The game's graphics are pretty decent at best, even in 2015 standards.
 * 3) Many of the vehicles in Fallout 4's graphics looks beautiful, and they look improved and better than older Fallout games, mostly for Station Wagon, Pick-R-Up, and even a Corvega at the pre and post-war Boston in the game.
 * 4) Some of the newer companions are interesting and likable, such as:
 * 5) *Preston Garvey is a senior officer of the Commonwealth Minutemen, a volunteer defense militia operating in the Commonwealth in 2287. He is also available as a companion of the Sole Survivor.
 * 6) *Nick Valentine is a synthetic private detective that he was trapped in Vault 114 under the city of Boston, and he can be your partner after you complete the quest "Lucky Valentine".
 * 7) *Piper Wright is a reporter living in Diamond City in 2287 and possible companion of the Sole Survivor. She runs her own newspaper called Publick Occurrences, which she operates with her younger sister, Nat.
 * 8) *Codsworth is a domestic-model Mister Handy purchased by the Sole Survivor. He can be recruited as a potential companion upon reaching a trigger point in Concord during the quest Out of Time and returning to him.
 * 9) *Curie was designed to be the guardian of Vault 81, responsible for preserving the knowledge amassed by the Vault 81 scientists, as well as ensuring that every single one is aware of the significance of the mission undertaken within the halls of the Vault.
 * 10) The soundtrack is really good, thanks to Inon Zur, the same guy who composed previous Fallout games.
 * 11) The idea of a opening Fallout scene just shortly before the nuclear bombs fell in the United States on the day of the Great War on October 23, 2077 is a pretty good idea for a Fallout game, which it hasn't got any pre-war opening of Fallout games back then.
 * 12) *The fact that many of the fans were quite more interested about the pre-war setting in Boston, or the whole Fallout universe, and it also make fans wonder about having a pre-war Fallout world in the future.
 * 13) The level cap from previous games has been removed, thus players no longer have to worry about being limited to choosing a certain amount of perks and SPECIAL stats.
 * 14) Huge modding community on PC, with mods also available on PS4 and Xbox One.
 * 15) The workshop mode can be extremely addicting and there are even tons of workshop builds seen online, also, the idea of building your own home and settlement is a really cool idea for a Fallout game for many reasons:
 * 16) *Even though the whole map isn't quite interesting (See BQ#3), it does have many interesting workshop places, such as:
 * 17) **Sanctuary Hills: a perfect, and a big workshop place that you can turned Sanctuary into a city, or a base.
 * 18) The game has four main factions, each with their own unique styles, ideas, goals, quests and rewards. The player can join any of these factions and decide the fate of the other factions.
 * 19) It spawned two major DLC expansions (Far Harbor and Nuka-World) add huge new maps as well as tons of new armor, quests, weapons, companions, factions, etc.
 * 20) The game brings quicksaves to consoles by simply and effectively putting the quicksave button as the first option in the pause menu. Quicksaving has been a staple of PC gaming, but due to a smaller quantity of buttons on a controller, people used to believe it was impossible on consoles.
 * 21) Power Armor is greatly improved from the previous games and is now being more like a vehicle than just a regular piece of armour.
 * 22) Greater variety of armour, in that you can mix and match pieces of armour (i.e. each armor set is composed of a helmet, seperate arm and leg pieces, and a chestplate. Armour can also be worn over skintight clothing such as vault suits)
 * 23) Multiple random encounters happening at the same time can sometimes lead to some pretty epic unscripted battles.
 * 24) The redesign of the Ghouls (both feral and civilized) to be more realistic gives them the impression that they did get mutated from radiation.
 * 25) Excellent voice acting with Nate/Nora, Nick Valentine, Paladin Danse, Elder Maxon, and Kellogg being a notable few.
 * 26) The enemy AI is improved from the previous games, with enemies now trying to make use of cover rather than just standing in the open shooting at the player.
 * 27) Dogmeat moves around like an actual dog, rather than just following you around like other companions do.
 * 28) The V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) mechanic allows you to land devastating precision shots on your enemies in Matrix-style bullet time.
 * 29) The weapon variety is really good, and you can even modify them with a lot of mods, in other words, weapon customization.
 * 30) Some characters from Fallout 3 make a return, like RJ MacCready, Liberty Prime Mark II, Arthur Maxson, and Dr. Madison Li.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Though officially considered an action RPG; the game (as well the DLCs barring Far Harbor) offers little roleplay and story, and focuses more on its gameplay, unlike its previous main installments.
 * 2) Preston Garvey's settlement side-missions are extremely tedious, ruining the character with his infamous "Another settlement needs your help" lines, this has even become a meme.
 * 3) It easily had the most divided fan reception of all the Fallout games prior to Fallout 76, and the reasons are:
 * 4) * Some mechanics such as the karma meter/reputation system, weapon and armor condition managing, and the skills have been removed, which did kinda ruin the Fallout feel. Fortunately, they can be restored via modding.
 * 5) * It has an awful dialogue system that blatantly rips off Mass Effect's wheel system (that can thankfully be improved with the Full Dialogue Interface or the XDI mods). There aren't many dialogue options to choose, and some of these choices don't even matter as the game will force you onto a set path sometimes.
 * 6) * While the locations are interesting, the map as a whole isn't very interesting compared to New Vegas or even Fallout 3.
 * 7) * The Sole Survivor's sarcastic quotes are consider mixed in quality by some people.
 * 8) * It is also infamous for its retcons and lore breaks, such as the T-60 Power Armor appearing in the start of the game where the Great War happened - despite the fact that the T-51, the most advanced model of power, was utilised during the Great War, and the T-60 power armor wasn't developed until after the Great War.
 * 9) * Lengthy loading screens with some lore inaccuracies. One loading screen claims that the Enclave's power armor was made after the Great War, but when you visit the Galactic Zone's main control center in the Nuka-World DLC, there's patriotic themed-Enclave power armor from before the Great War.
 * 10) ** Since the rest of the game also reveals it has been a (10 for Fallout 3s events) 6 (for New Vegas events) year time skip from the last main canonical entry, it also resulted in unrealistic and seemly rushed resolutions or continuity errors like the aforementioned unified Eastern Brotherhood was somehow resolved by an older looking 20 year old Arthur Maxson offscreen, despite that in Fallout 3, he was looking clueless and acting naive.
 * 11) ** Some quests and locations (most infamously the "Kid in a Fridge" side quest, which now implies that only a few younger ghouls can stop aging too) seemingly retcon the lore as well.
 * 12) Modding on PS4 is much more limited in comparison to Xbox One and especially PC, though this is more due to Sony's "security concerns" rather than anything Bethesda has done.
 * 13) The Bethesda Creation Club caused a lot of backlash from many Fallout fans because you have the option to buy mods with microtransactions. Bethesda had previously said that you wouldn't have to pay for mods, and the idea of paying for mods was (and still is) universally loathed by gamers. This is made worse by the fact that many mods have free counterparts that are of much higher quality.
 * 14) The story makes no sense when you think about it and is mostly just a rehash of Fallout 3's main plot, but with the main roles switched.
 * 15) * Ron Perlman doesn’t narrate the story. He does make a cameo as the news anchor at the start of the game though.
 * 16) * Some faction names are considered lazy, in contrast to previous titles in the franchise.
 * 17) * Liberty Prime's reason to be revived for this game is to fight the Institute. However their headquarters is hidden beneath the CIT (the Fallout version of MIT) ruins. So it makes no sense story-wise, other than nostalgia pandering for Fallout 3 fans.
 * 18) * This led to the beginning of the superficial aspect problem in the later games in the series by Bethesda, with the reintroduction of the Super Mutants (like somehow the Institute wants to create a new stain of likely the Vault 87 Super Mutants? By somehow means to keep the region's status quo they accidentally make???) and the (now apparently unified; as they mentioned in the previous game, were in a civil war within the faction) Eastern Brotherhood, which the latter begin appearing after killing Kellogg.
 * 19) * It also portrays some post-apocalyptic settlers or NPCs (especially the Diamond City settlers) acting as though the Great War nor its aftermath never happened, and treating this as unrealistically normal like in the pre-Great War days, where the player's main character was from, except for the specific settlements like the Covenant settlement, supposedly doing this role for them.
 * 20) * The ending is even the same regardless of what faction you've joined.
 * 21) Though less of an issue than in previous Bethesda games, there are few voice-actors for minor or unnamed characters, leading to you hearing the same voices from different characters.
 * 22) Several game-breaking glitches.
 * 23) * One of the notorious glitches in the game is the glitch that allows you to join all of the available factions at the same time. Which results into the supposed enemy in the other faction's quest to not attack you despite you're apparently siding with the other faction. For example, if you've joined the Brotherhood and the Institute at the same time, when you're doing a quest to attack the Institute as the Brotherhood, the Institute will not attack you at all, and vice versa.
 * 24) * The fact that some glitches can be traced back to previous Bethesda Game Studios games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc.- and that some were carried over to the infamous Fallout 76 can cause frustration.
 * 25) The radio station music is a bit of a downgrade compared to New Vegas, quickly becoming as repetitive as Fallout 3's. Travis Miles is also a terrible radio host compared to Three Dog and Mr. New Vegas, though there is a quest that changes his personality to make him more tolerable.
 * 26) The skill system from previous games has been removed in favor of overly simplified versions of the SPECIAL and perk systems. Choosing certain perks and their ranks will make the game way too easy, though choosing them is optional in this game instead of being mandatory like in the previous games.
 * 27) Some odd weapon and item redesigns. The assault rifle in this game looks and weighs more like a machine gun than a rifle.
 * 28) Big downgrade in weapon variety and no ammo variety whatsoever. Most of the guns you'll be coming across are just different builds of the same design.
 * 29) Disappointing expansion packs that pale in comparison to Fallout 3 and New Vegas DLC. Speaking of which, there are only 2 (Far Harbor and Nuka-World) that add new large maps to visit compared to the 4 in past games. The other expansion packs are focused on settlement building or adding a few new robots and locations in the base game (Automatron).

Reception
The game received positive reviews from critics and fans of the series. With many praising the world depth, player freedom, overall amount of content, crafting, and soundtrack, while criticism was mainly directed at the game's visuals and technical issues.