Fallout 4 has been out for over a month now and the first set of patches has been released. We’ve already reviewed the PC version at launch, but this review will be a look at how it holds up over time as well as some of the PS4 specific features of the game.

This edition of the Fallout series focuses on the locale of Boston, and while the main story is a relatively straightforward tale of discovering what happened to your kidnapped son, the game takes advantages of its setting to sprinkle in all sorts of interesting side quests and varied places to explore, from a flooded quarry to the remains of hotels and a radioactive sea. While you’ll be dealing with the typical raider types and Brotherhood of Steel, there’s also the mysterious Institute and its synths (a reference to MIT) and the Diamond City, which you might not guess what it’s referring to until you first see its waypoint on your map. While I think New Vegas was better written overall dialogue wise and with its interplay between factions, Fallout 4 is definitely a step up over its sparse desert as well as Fallout 3’s ridiculously drab capital wasteland and its many subways.

The core gameplay is mostly unchanged except for a few things. For one, you can build up your home bases throughout the wasteland with all sorts of provisions and defenses for their populations. This is entirely optional and can be quite a time sink with all the resources required for building, but it can also pay off by providing you extra income as well as the ability to craft more upgrades for your armor and weapons. The modding system is incredibly robust and allows you to specialize in the things you like doing best, whether it’s melee, sniping, or various other forms of gunplay and/or stealth. Finally, instead of dangling power armor in front of you like a carrot to get you to reach the endgame, Fallout 4 just hands you your first frame practically right from the start. The catch? Your suit must be powered by fusion cores which run out over time. At first I was a bit irked, but it turns out the cores last a good while and aren’t too hard to find or procure with exploration and plenty of caps. There’s also a perk that can really improve their longevity, and the fact is you won’t be needing it all that often, which is a good thing.

A downside of the PS4 is the lack of mods available for the game, but since very few mods have been released at all (and only on PC so far), we aren’t missing out on anything yet. Apparently support for mods will be coming, but only after Xbox One, so stay tuned. Console commands are also unavailable, so there’s no cheat codes or god mode like on PC, if that’s a problem. That’s not to say exploits haven’t been found like the infamous item duplication bug care of Dogmeat, which hasn’t been patched out yet to my knowledge. On the plus side, the PS4 version supports Remote Play. I’ve actually spent several hours playing the game on the PS Vita, both locally and over the internet, and it’s extremely playable, particularly with VATS if you have trouble aiming with the Vita sticks (for the record I am able to manage gunplay on the Vita just fine). The control scheme is a bit different from using the DualShock 4, using the dpad and touchscreen to replace certain buttons, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a pretty smooth experience.

In the several hours I’ve spent with the game, I’ve only encountered a couple of bugs. Companions get stuck on bounding boxes and fall behind from time to time. And a few times I’ve been unable to loot anything until I save, quit the game, and reload, but other than that, nothing gamebreaking. I’m sure others experiences may differ widely as it’s such an open ended game and you never know what can trigger certain glitches, but for me at least this has been an improvement on Bethesda’s previous work. All in all, Fallout 4 both looks and plays great on the Playstation 4, so if that is your platform of chance you can certainly do no wrong grabbing this version.

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall