Recent reviews by 4.20 / 🅶🅾🆁🅱🅴

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019829486

This isn't exactly a controversial opinion among Fallout people, but here goes: Bethesda's Fallout 4 is a super-fun open world sandbox AAA title and a terrible Fallout game. If you're still on the fence about it or want to know more, I'll try to outline both points below.

Fallout 4, the Terrible Fallout Game

If you're a die-hard fan of the Cain, Sawyer, and Avellone "Fallout Trilogy" comprised of Fallout, Fallout 2, and New Vegas, let "this is a terrible sequel" be your primary takeaway. Where those games are characterized by a breadth of robust and consequential roleplaying choices, excellent character writing, and a coherent vision of what a rebuilding society would look like after a nuclear World War, Fallout 4 pointedly lacks all of these things.

The player character Nate/Nora is fully voiced and characterized, meaning that the dozens of alternate dialogue options from prior games have been pruned down into "I agree," "I agree sarcastically," "I don't agree but actually I agree," and "I'll agree later," the hallmarks of every post-Bioware Action "RPG." With few exceptions (most notably, the excellent robot-detective Nick Valentine), the characters are underwritten, sporting exactly one played-to-the-hilt note like "gumshoe newsie" or "baseball guy." This is when the game bothers to give its characters a complete concept at all: in particular, at least two "faction head" characters, Preston Garvey of the Minutemen and of the Institute, feel like they have no meaningful guiding philosophy beyond a loosely-associated aesthetic, which is inexcusable when these are the Big Good and the Big Bad of the entire story respectively.

Fallout 4's Equally Terrible Story
The aforementioned story begins when Nate/Nora, a Vault Dweller, has his or her son kidnapped by a mysterious organization called The Institute. He or she ventures out into the wastes in search of their son, and in so doing discovers a four-way faction conflict with four associated endings. The first faction the player has the opportunity to join is the Minutemen, who have no characterization at all beyond "dress old-timey" and "are the good guys." The other three factions are ideological rivals over a central Blade Runner-esque "are robots people?" question.

The mysterious Institute, you see, likes to murder people and then replace them with Synths: lifelike robots. Why they're doing this is never answered coherently within the entire text of the main story. Multiple Institute characters have voice lines stating entirely different reasons for this pod-people plot: one insists that it's for a captive workforce, another for political compliance, and a third that it's for genocidal warfare. In case you want to fight for a cause that not even its own adherents can meaningfully explain to you, though, you can join the Institute.

In any case, despite the Synths having no compelling reason to exist in the first place, the Brotherhood of Steel is here under a new, edgy leader, and their answer to "the Synth Question" is complete robot genocide. This may be shocking to players of Fallout 3 who expected the Brotherhood to be the good guys, but is mostly in-line with their prior jarhead douche characterization from 2/NV.

Opposing the Brotherhood are the Railroad, as in "the Underground Railroad." This faction seeks to end Synth slavery. The game never confronts the metaphorical problem that African slaves, unlike the Synths, were not pod-people who murder and replace their originals. Before you can join, the faction leader makes you swear that robot lives are more important than human lives and you'd kill yourself if it meant a robot could live. I'm thoroughly unclear on how laughably-unreasonable the writers intended this statement to be.

Because this is Bethesda Fallout, the story always ends with one or more of the factions getting a nuclear bomb dropped on them, and fan-favorite robot Liberty Prime shows up because why not.

With one exception, you're better-off ignoring the story of this game. That exception is the brilliant DLC Far Harbor, which has a nuanced antagonist offer what the main game lacks: an extremely compelling and well-written argument for the Institute's villainous motivations. This is especially bizarre because the Institute does not appear in Far Harbor.

Fallout 4, the Super Fun Sandbox Game
In strong contrast, Fallout 4 is probably Bethesda's most fun and engaging world since Skyrim and maybe even Morrowind. The environment artists, combat designers, and sidequest writers, the unsung heroes of this game, have immaculately captured a compelling Vibe. The Vibe is comprised of two halves: a dense aesthetic understanding of what makes Fallout look and feel "Fallouty," and the sort of absolute reverence for its geographic location that also characterized Fallout 3. Although Fallout 4 is weirdly missing the Boston accent, its Boston is rich with New England history and culture and it's very clear that the whoever designed the world was having an absolute blast taking colonial Americana and finding out how to blend it in with the Jetsons-esque 1950s retrofuturism of the Fallout verse.

In a lot of places -- actually, in all of them -- this makes no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense. Why is the city still comprised exclusively of Mad Max bottlecap bartertowns built onto recognizable Boston landmarks, when this game is the furthest into the future (and thus the ostensible rebuilding of society) that Fallout has ever gone? Why are the Super Mutants here, beyond a handwave about "errr uhhh the Institute also made Super Mutants for some reason?" Why are the Enclave still showing up, albeit in a cameo capacity, when they've been "completely destroyed" in like three games now? Why are all of the mutant animals still recognizably West Coast animals, rather than anything indigenous to New England?

The answers to all of these questions, and more, are the same: it's because of the Fallout Vibes. This is Fallout at its most purely aesthetic: it's the best-looking and best-sounding Fallout game by a landslide, and not just because of its graphical bona fides or its art design. Because the roleplaying and story are so terrible, the game had to put its budget into fresh mechanics, and boy does the gunplay feel good for the first time in -- arguably -- the entire history of the franchise. The leveling system allows you to level infinitely, absolutely throwing to the wayside any of the struggles of "building wrong" in the prior games in favor of letting you become an unstoppable, endlessly-improving God King of the Wasteland. Lastly, the Power Armor in this game totally bops: unlike in previous titles, you start the game with a highly-customizable suit that you tinker with like your personal jalopy all game long.

On top of that, if you're not content with the highly-aesthetic Mad Max gimmick settlements that the game already has, there's a robust system of Rust or ARK-style player housing that allows you to build your own themed scrapyards and populate them with NPCs from the ground up. Some of the DLCs add automation and switchboard features, so you can even turn your Fallout 4 into a kind of inbred sibling to Factorio if you really want!

In Conclusion
In short, Fallout 4 is Fallout as a theme park: it's a curated selection of thrill rides and clap-because-you-recognize-it-kids brand iconography that will keep you entertained for dozens of repeat visits if you let it. It's not Tolstoy, but did you really expect that? This is Bethesda Fallout. It's the best Bethesda Fallout, but it's Bethesda Fallout. It's fun and dumb.
If you are tired of normal game mode, you can visit my workshop:
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019829486

This game is good for your mental health problems. and Here I will leave the cat, whoever pass by can pet it and give it a thumbs up (I need Steam Points)
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　 　　 　／` ミ＿xノ
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　　　 /　 ヽ　　 ﾉ
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　| (￣ヽ＿_ヽ_)__)

Over 230 hours in Steam, and much much more over the launcher later, I have come to the conclusion:

This game will entirely, and fully, change you as a person. It will destroy your mental stability, force your money out of your wallet while you're still fresh, and then keep you playing as a sunken cost fallacy. The fun factor is very limiting, especially with the last updates, which add new stuff, yet make it nearly unreachable for players who don't actively invest hundreds of dollars into the game.
This is, as far as I know, the only game which ACTIVELY PUNISHES you for playing it. Even in battles with a K/D over 1 you will most likely lose SL if you are playing on high tier ... unless you buy a ridiculously overpriced vehicle or premium account. Even with those bonuses, the grind is extremely long. After literal years, I managed to grind only ONE tech tree, and not even in its entirety. Only to see my setups destroyed by BR changes.
The economy is the worse of the worst. Vehicles are overpriced and take long to research, and then for some reason you have to research and buy modules that are already installed on your tank. You cant even properly repair or put out (more than one) fires without the modules. And everything takes long to grind and will empty your SL pool. But don't worry, you can always buy it for gold and waste your hard-earned real money on something that would give you a barely playable vehicle.
The balance of the game is also very bad. Sealclubbers in low tier, hackers in high tier. Vehicles with thermals fighting vehicles from the 40s-50s. People shootng through houses and hills. CAS with guided munitions team-wiping all allies. If you play CAS, you get pilot sniped from 20km. You respawn in a tank and die to a UAV. You spawn in a UAV, fly for 15 minutes to the battle, then die to AA. You get sent to hangar after a gruelling battle to see that you lost 12k SL as a result. And then you grind your teeth and push that "To Battle" button yet again, hoping for it to be different. It won't be.
Every good aspect of this game is covered up in its entirety by the bad ones. For every pro, there are 10 cons. All the graphics are good for is to see your plane/tank gracefully explode after yet another unfair death.
Sometimes they have sales too, which allows you to buy vehicles not at "ridiculously overpriced" price but at "highly overpriced" price. Wonderful news for you, little Timmy, go get your mother's credit card. You'll get good if you buy this vehicle. Or the next. Or the next.
Someday you will deinstall the game. And then you realized that it was for nothing. You wasted time and money on it, and you aren't getting it back. All you can do is weep and try to move on, only for your addiction to return after a month or two, as you sigh, feed the snail your last 20 bucks for premium time, and begin the cycle again.
If you are new, you're free to have some fun. But if you don't stop soon, you will not be able to later. If you're an experienced player with a long playtime, I'm sorry.
The snail giveth, the snail taketh away.

I’ve absolutely loved this game for years and highly recommend it. So you may ask… why am I posting a negative review?

Because the game I love has been updated out of existence. To the dev’s credit, you can still download previous builds and play those, but I have little hope for the game to ever get more polished now since it’s completely changed directions.

The root issue to me seems to be the developers have suddenly shifted from improving the overall experience to trying to force players to play the way THEY want them to play. Which to me is a terrible idea for an open world survival crafting game.

Previous systems allowed you to bypass endless RNG grinding by using your skill points to unlock crafting options rather than trying to find recipes as loot. This system was excellent because it made two different play styles viable, the base builder and the explorer.

You could find a place to huddle up and grind for xp by mining and base building, then use that xp to unlock crafting recipes by spending perks. Or you could go out exploring and use your XP to increase your killing potential as you raided progressively more dangerous structures for better loot which might contain crafting recipes.

And the two play styles complemented each other beautifully. If your friend wanted to just hunt zombies but you wanted to just play mad scientist, two of you could enter a symbiotic relationship where both prospered. The adventurer going off and bringing back new wonders while the mad scientist invented new weapons and tools for the adventurer.

It would seem however that in spite of the previous system being allowing for multiple different play styles, that encouraged team play, the devs didn’t like the idea of players bypassing the RNG grind.

The new system merges the two play styles resulting in a system that to me is the worst of both worlds. Now you have to grind for xp to use your skill points to buy an improved chance at finding the books that might or might not be the recipes that you want. You now have no choice. You HAVE to grind endlessly for XP to buy perks like you did when going base builder, and then you HAVE to grind random loot to find the books you actually want to unlock the recipes you need. This doubles the grind needed to accomplish anything, forces players to rely on RNG, and takes away their choice of playstyle.

Now everyone needs to play the exact same game loop. Grind XP. Grind RNG Book drops. No exceptions.

To me this is objectively less fun regardless of what play style you enjoyed. And this is only the most recent of the major changes that in my opinion make the game worse with each recent update rather than better.

The other major change being the removal of liquid containers. In builds alpha 20.7 and before you could find or craft empty jars and take them to water sources to fill them. Then boil them to get clean water to drink or craft with. A very logical way to gain water in a post apocalyptic wasteland.

However, for reasons beyond my understanding, this feature was also removed. It is no longer possible to find or craft empty vessels. So instead your post apocalyptic survivors who are smart enough to build power tools and vehicles from scratch, apparently never learn how to fill empty jars…

It's completely filled to the brim with cheaters.

- VAC is the worst anti-cheat in existence. Valve takes HWID of users however, they will not ban based on HWID. They only ban by account so the hacker can just make a new one and do it all over again.
- Valve is making a huge profit off NOT banning hackers. When a hacker gets their account banned, they just get another one and purchase prime ($15). Valve clearly sees this as a revenue source and will never actually take any real action against cheaters.
- There is a secondary market for leveling fresh accounts to premiere and selling them, people use inexpensive hacks to level accounts and then re-sell them for more
- People are running automated AI-based bots that can dupe weapons and automatically cheat same as in TF2
- Premiere game mode is completely off balance. Once you reach 10k+ ELO your matches will only net you ~50-100 ELO and you will lose between ~300-1000 every game. Complete timesink.
- Valve's "subtick" is garbage. The game will always have peeker's advantage - if you have a high ping around around 50ms-100ms you will always have that much more time to see someone on your screen before they will see you
- Public "find a group" feature is filled with Russians posing as "professional" players who invite you to lobbies, try to get you into a discord channel and then socially engineer you to "signup for their team" which is a steam account phishing page.

Game is still fun and a classic - but is clearly still in an alpha development stage. Valve trying to claim or boast that CS2 is a "competitive" shooter is completely invalid. Any "competitive" teams are phony. Faceit, ESEA and competitive game modes all filled with blatant cheaters. You could dump years of time into this game trying to "git gud" but you will never beat the script kiddies let alone be able to keep up with the constant updates to the game mechanics.

I highly encourage everyone to play this game on competitive/premiere mode and treat it as if completely casual, because it is.

I started playing 'Rust' last year.

Within 3 minutes of my first time playing, a bear ate me. Then I watched two other players club each other to death with large stones, while completely naked, penises (penii?) dangling in the wind. Having managed to slay a small pig, I fashioned some clothes to cover my genitals, then went exploring.

Ate some uncooked meat and threw up all over the place. Made a small fire to cook the rest of my meat. Fashioned a bow and arrow out of some wood I collected, also a shirt and a pair of boots. Went about fashioning a small shelter out of some random crap laying around so I wouldn't have to sleep outdoors. I could have chosen from one of the many, many, ramshackle structures dotting the landscape. But those may or may not belong to/contain other players. Who may or may not be armed or clothed. I just wanted to peacefully live alone, so I stuck to the wilderness.

I slipped off a cliff and broke both my legs. I shouted out to anyone who would listen, asking what to do to fix my broken legs, I didn't understand the game and I needed help. A naked man came over, typed '??? i help' in response to my pleas, then bashed my head in with a rock and presumably looted my corpse.

Then I starved to death when I forgot to eat. Out of desperation I butchered a wolf that attacked me instead of running away, but didn't have time to cook so I ate raw meat again. Nope. Instead of just starving to death, I vomited, then starved to death.

An hour after, and many adventures later, I've decided to sleep in a small shack I made myself in the mountains. I don't dare risk making a fire, as someone might see it at night and kill me for the tin of baked beans I acquired from a crate I found whilst wandering around a town that gave me radiation poisoning. Oh yeah, I'll probably die slowly because of the radiation, but that's a problem for later-me.

I'm now in a tiny hut on a mountain with my sleeping bag and meagre belongings and can probably safely say that I'm enjoying this game.

good game

1. You drop
2. Loot for 15 minutes
3. Get insane loot
4. Die to a 500th LVL player
They should make training map so people can practice their aim.
I can't say it's a good game, mostly due to the vast majority of its player base trying to get under your skin to make you as angry as they are.
I don't blame them. This game is so flawed in many aspects, and no amount of perks will ever fix that.
Take it from me. You could spend your time doing much better things, like learning to cook Bucatini with mushrooms & sausage.

Hell, let me teach you how:

You'll need:
-1 lb Bucatini pasta
-1/2 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
-8 oz sliced mushrooms
-1/2 onion, chopped
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1/2 cup dry white wine
-1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
-1/2 cup heavy cream
-1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
-2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
-2 tbsp olive oil
-Salt and pepper, to taste

Cook the Bucatini pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until it's al dente. Drain and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the Italian sausage and cook for 8–10 minutes, breaking it up into small pieces with a wooden spoon, until it's browned and fully cooked. Remove the sausage from the skillet and set it aside.

In the same skillet, sauté sliced mushrooms, chopped onions, and minced garlic for 3–4 minutes, until the mushrooms are tender.

Pour dry white wine into the skillet and cook for 1–2 minutes, until the liquid has reduced by half.

Add chicken or vegetable broth to the skillet and bring it to a simmer. Let the mixture cook for 5–7 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened slightly.

Stir in the cooked sausage, heavy cream, and grated Parmesan cheese until the cheese has melted, and the sauce is creamy.

Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste.
Divide the cooked Bucatini pasta onto serving plates and spoon the mushroom and sausage sauce over the top. Garnish with chopped parsley and additional Parmesan cheese, if desired.
You're done! Go prepare some nice pasta and impress your friends.