Fallout 4 is here: review, starter guide, and more – The Verge

The great Fallout 4 sustainable housing experiment

2015-11-19T09:37:21-05:00

Just south of what was once called the Charles River, a few minutes away from the bustling (by post-apocalyptic standards) metropolis of Diamond City, there's a unique piece of Fallout 4 real estate known as Hangman's Alley. It's one of the first places you're asked to build a settlement using the game's new crafting tools, but it breaks Fallout's standard mold of wide-open farms and ruined commercial spaces. As its name suggests, it's a short stretch of road sandwiched between two blocks of pre-war buildings, a shantytown that still feels almost urban. In Fallout's sparsely populated, largely suburban Boston, it's more Jacob Riis than Mad M …

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Fallout 4 gave me a well-written character, but I miss my godlike social powers

2015-11-12T12:55:48-05:00

In a stunning lapse of judgment, I decided to spend 70 hours playing Fallout: New Vegas just a few weeks before I started Fallout 4. In a way, it's made me truly appreciate the upgraded graphics and new mechanics. But it's also made me realize that so far, Fallout 4 is missing one of my favorite video game elements: the social power fantasy.

One of the unique things about computer role-playing games like Fallout is that they give "soft" social skills the same hyper-quantified treatment as a gun's fire rate or a piece of armor's damage resistance. In New Vegas, not only do you have a precise numerical value assigned to your speaking abilitie …

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Fallout 4 starter guide: 12 things to know before you play

2015-11-09T16:35:50-05:00

I have a very specific way of playing Fallout games, and I don't think I'm alone. I need to hack every computer, pick every lock, and persuade everyone I come across. If I'm going to devote dozens, if not hundreds of hours to a game, I want to keep as many options open for as long as I can.

For Fallout 4, I thought I'd try something different: a no-nonsense character with no charisma or intelligence - someone who can barely aim a gun but is lethal with a baseball bat. I thought it would be fun to see a different side of the game, but I was very, very wrong: not only was Fallout 4 more tedious, but parts of the game felt too challenging to e …

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The best part of Fallout 4 is the music

2015-11-09T13:30:02-05:00

There are a lot of reasons to enjoy a Fallout game: the story, the character creation, the sense of exploration. But the element that holds everything together is the fantastic music. The more recent games let you listen to the radio on your character's wrist-worn Pip-Boy computer, where you can not only hear news from around the wasteland, but also classic tunes from the likes of Billie Holiday or Billy Ward and his Dominoes. Roaming the post-apocalyptic world can be depressing, but the right music not only makes it bearable, but actually enjoyable.

Fallout 4 continues this tradition, offering a mix of new songs and ones featured in previo …

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Fallout 4 is perfect for parents — if you have a PlayStation Vita

2015-11-09T12:39:55-05:00

One of the biggest adjustments I've had to make as a parent is figuring out time to enjoy non-family-friendly entertainment. It's hard to watch Game of Thrones or play Assassin's Creed with two kids under the age of three running around. I really don't want my daughters seeing me (virtually) stab people in the neck. So I was pretty stressed out about reviewing Fallout 4: here's a game that lasts dozens of hours and frequently includes slow motion close-ups of exploding heads. If it wasn't for the PS Vita's remote play feature, I may not have been able to finish the game.

Remote play is a little-used feature that lets you stream a game from …

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Buy a PlayStation 4 at Best Buy or Gamestop and get Fallout 4 for free

2015-11-09T10:47:53-05:00

Best Buy is currently offering a promotion that packages a free copy of Bethesda’s Fallout 4 with Sony’s PlayStation 4 console. If you want to spend the least amount of money for the free game, your best option is buying the stand-alone console or the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection PS4 bundle that costs $349 — the console’s regular price. Aside from the Uncharted games, Fallout 4 and a free controller charging stand, going this route also gets you the newest hardware revision of Sony’s gaming machine, featuring an all-matte design and physical buttons in place of the touch-sensitive power / eject controls on earlier PS4 models. GameStop is offering the same deal.

Best Buy’s Fallout 4 toss-in offers a bit more flexibility, since the game also comes with the Call of Duty: Black Ops III 1TB PS4 bundle ($429), or even the custom white Destiny: The Taken King console if you’re still able to find it at a store. The deal applies both online and in-store, giving you the option to pick up everything immediately on launch day if you just can’t wait to enter post-war Boston and sink hours into all that Fallout 4 offers. The game will be released on November 10th, and our review makes for good reading in the meantime.

How not to get permanently stuck in Fallout 4’s elevator like this schmuck

2015-11-09T10:43:00-05:00

Update November 9th, 5:00PM EST: After fussing with the game for an hour and checking to make sure it was updated on patches, I checked my PlayStation 4 for system updates. A new system update downloaded, and rebooted the console. Now the elevator works properly - though oddly enough, the music mentioned in the earlier draft of this article never plays. In either case, be sure to download both the games' Day One patch, update your system manually, and restart the console before playing Fallout 4. I was quick to judge Bethesda off their buggy past, but it appears they'd already fixed my problem.

Nine hours into Fallout 4 I found myself stuck i …

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Explore Fallout 4’s post-apocalyptic Boston in photos

2015-11-09T09:05:02-05:00

The real star of a new Fallout game is the city it takes place in. Each location has its own look and feel, and the developers behind the series do a great job of reimagining some of America's most iconic cities as post-apocalyptic wastelands. For Fallout 4, that star is Boston and its surrounding area. Known as The Commonwealth to those who live there, the city has the elements you'd expect - lots of baseball references and coffee shops - but rendered in the brown-and-grey, burned out aesthetic the Fallout series known for. Over the past week I've spent more than 60 hours in the newest Fallout wasteland, and I couldn't help but snap some sc …

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Fallout 4 review: War never changes, and that’s just fine

2015-11-09T08:00:02-05:00

There's nothing quite like listening to "Crazy He Calls Me" as the sun rises over an abandoned highway. A radioactive scorpion could attack at any moment, sure, but when Billie Holiday is in your ears, the end of the world doesn't seem so bad.

The Fallout games are collision points of two disparate forces. On one hand, you have a role-playing game set during a horrific future in which nuclear war has decimated the population, forcing humans to become scavengers, fighting to survive alongside mutants and monsters. On the other hand, there's hope. Hope comes from trying to not just live in this awful place, but thrive. Hope resides in Fallout …

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A closer look at the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy

2015-11-02T08:47:36-05:00

Special edition video games aren't so special anymore. When every blockbuster release, even the not-so-great ones, comes with some kind of commemorative statue or lunchbox, it makes the entire concept a lot less interesting. But Fallout 4 is one of the few collector's editions that actually made people excited, and for one reason: it comes with a wearable Pip-Boy.

The wrist-worn computer is a staple of the post-apocalyptic RPG series, and the life-size version not only fits on your wrist, but can also house your smartphone and run a special Pip-Boy app so that you can check in-game information without hitting pause. (Its availability is als …

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