Shortly  after its release, Fallout 4 has already made gaming history, breaking many records, including the number of concurrent players by a game not developed by Valve. The previous record holder for the most concurrent players was “Grand Theft Auto 5” with a peak of 300,000 players at a given time. Fallout 4 put that record to shame by having 445,000 concurrent players on the first day alone. Fallout 4 is the top selling game on the Steam platform which is the world’s largest and most popular for game distribution. Fallout 4 shipped out 12 million copies on its very first day of release, which amazed the people at Bethesda (the creators of  Fallout 4).

Fallout is set in a post-apocalyptic world, this installment is set in Boston in the year 2287, hundreds of years after a nuclear war. Gameplay in Fallout 4 is similar to that of Fallout New Vegas. The player can either play the game in first person mode, or third person. Personally players found the first person view to be the best but people will want to experiment for their own liking. This game brings a few new gameplay elements such as a crafting system, customizable weapons and base building. as people enjoyed the customizable weapons, always something craved for in New Vegas.

However, the community wasn’t a massive fan of the base building;  this aspect was a little dull and uninteresting; building the base seemed pointless as it very rarely did anything of any real use apart from making more resources. Players make the base using a crafting system which incorporates every piece of “material” loot the player can find, so everything will have some sort of use. A base will attract settlers in which can be assigned  tasks, such as farming or taking control of artillery.

Along with the new gameplay features, all of the classic elements make a return. The use of Pip-Boy will aid players in  combat situations, letting them select a specific part on their target to shoot. How accurate the player is in this mode will depend on the base stats though. Fallout 4 is another really expansive open world that allows the player to explore to hearts content, everywhere is accessible (apart from locked doors etc.) from the start of the game, meaning the player can do anything they want right from the word “go”. The game has four factions in which can work for and raise the player’s reputation with; but of course, working for one will mean consequences with the other, so pick wisely. Normally we are not a fan of a decision a player makes in a game,  the player miss out on content, but with this one given that the way the story changes and the quest lines adapt to whatever the player may chose.

The graphics in Fallout 4, whilst they are good, did seem to fall a little bit short of expectations. Mods in the previous two installments in the franchise are still better looking than this game. That doesn’t mean the graphics are bad, no no. They are definitely on the upper scale of the market out there right now, expectations may have been inflated due to the hype, but due to being based on the PC, mods will surely be released which will make this game absolutely gorgeous, and will no doubt make it photorealistic! The game is also fully voice-acted to a very high quality, the only issue  was that when a player is deciding what to say in a dialog option, what the player can choose may come out in a different way, and it would have been helpful to see the actual words that the player will speak show on screen rather than a summary of the words.

The story of Fallout 4 is completely immersive. It hooks players  right from the first key point in the game, and the player is on a search to find the son who was kidnapped. The main story is only one of the plot lines the player can follow in the game, not only does the player have the four factions that are available for missions for, the player  also has plenty of other smaller side quests which also add their own flavor and interesting side plot to the world the player is in. The game has some brilliant individual storylines and a lot of them many will remember for a long time.