Video Game
I don’t recall the first time I loaded up Fallout 4. I had played the previous instalment, Fallout 3 a few times, and struggled with the difficulty. I was always getting pasted into mush by raiders wandering the wilds. Yet for some reason, and facing very similar odds, I persevered with this title.
Maybe it was the story. I mean, Fallout 4 is the story of a desperate parent, a survivor who sees a family tragedy unfold against the backdrop of a global catastrophe. As a parent myself, and only a half dozen years into the gig when this title was published, maybe that caught my attention.
Or maybe, and probably more likely, it was the base-building aspect. I was pretty hard core into Minecraft back then and so an RPG that was trying to roll a crafting sim into its story, and was doing an okay job of it, well—that appealed too.
In the end, I think it really was just that I hadn’t sunk my teeth into a big story-driven RPG in a while (probably too much Minecraft, huh?) so when Fallout 4 showed up in my game library, first on PC and then shortly thereafter on Playstation I tucked in and—well, the rest is history.
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios;
Post: Minutemen for the Win
Friday the 10th of May, 2024, in the late afternoon.
As I continue my adventure thru the commonwealth slaying beasts and robots and ghouls and super mutants I’ve been trying to break some of my gaming habits, like the rainy day rule, that itch in the back of my head that begs me to be frugal with weapons and ammo rather than just having fun and using the big guns more often. I too often find myself saving up all my precious resources only to find that either I’d way over-prepared or just getting bored of some game before I ever used them. So sure, I was stomping around in my power armour launching missiles at robots, what’s your point. They make big explosions. As a progress note, I took the Castle this afternoon and now we’re cooking with gas.
Post: Fallout 4
Thursday the 9th of May, 2024, in the late afternoon.
Another few hours and I moved into some deeper exploration and sussing out a few of the deeper missions of the game rather than just building my little empire. I found two more sets of power armor and started the robotics quest in earnest. I built myself a new companion in the form of a little orange robot with laser arms, named Frodo because I’ve been watching Lord of the Rings again and it’s a bit stuck in my craw. All that said my biggest challenge is finding interesting moments to grab screenshots without getting my arse blown away while I move my attention to the photo button.
Post: Fallout 4
Thursday the 9th of May, 2024, posted after lunch.
My adventures thru the wasteland continues this week. My build this time has been less of my usual tank and more focusing on the intellectual pursuits, ramping up my base building perks so that I’ve been able to build supply lines early in the game and really focus on the Minutemen story. That said, I’ve as already built out at least two sets of respectable power armors and have done some serious wandering and cleaning up some of the main thru routes.
Post: Fallout 4 Next Gen
Saturday the 27th of April, 2024, in the morning.
I’m not sure how much effort goes into rebuilding an eight year old video game’s graphical assets, but the folks at Bethesda thought it was worth doing to bring Fallout 4 onto current generation consoles. The free update for those of us who owned the original version and played hundreds of hours prior to the update emerged this week and I installed it to check out the fuss. Maybe it was lucky that after a playthru a few years ago, I’d started a fresh save less than a year back and only really made it thru the first few intro missions, and so I was able to upgrade that save and keep trucking thru the wasteland with a foundation of about 5 hours under my belt. My lack of a 4K tv probably means most of the value of the upgrade is lost on me, tho. Things do seem a bit crisper I will admit and the play seems smoother too, but to be honest I tend to be fairly old school about graphics having grown up in the 8 bit era and played (and loved) games in my youth that were often just line art or CGA 4 colours. Gameplay! That’s the whole point. I appreciate the free upgrade but there’s so much more to a good game than crispy visuals.
Post: Fallout 4
Wednesday the 21st of June, 2023, during morning coffee.
I crossed the 100 hour mark in #fallout4 about 18 months ago just before I quit playing. Quit is the wrong word tho. The game has been squatting in my mind since then, tho rather than jump back into my #oldsave in which I made a few questionable choices in my #characterprogression I opted instead to kick off a new run thru and focus on some of the things first that triggered big gains when I’d discovered them last time, but later on.
For example, three hours in I built my first supply lines between camps and #iykyk why that’s an early game #gamechanger