Fallout 4 is one of many post apocalyptic RPGs brought to us by Bethesda. It is personally my favourite games in the franchise and of all time. It has a great balance between gameplay elements and world design giving the player the wasteland experience while keeping it jampacked with mountains of content. I still go back to this game for a playthrough at lease once a year and these playthroughs last around 70+ hours each.

You leave the vault and you are left the the wasteland to fend for yourself you have many ways of doing that. Guns guns guns, they are great to kill irradiated bugs or even raiders. If you are smart enough you can modify these weapons to your advantage giving extra ammo in the magazines or a sight to help you aim the gun play and crafting is very good for this 2015 RPG.

Melee weapons are effective for smacking the wasteland rebels across the place. Sledgehammer we got it, flaming katana we got it, brick on a fist? We got it. Similar to the weapon crafting giving them more damage and style.

Having the power of companionship on your side is where the 13 unique companions come in. You can give them armour and guns to help you fight in the wasteland. They all have their own personalities and lore about the world. Some can be romanced to give different voice lines and experience.

Workshops are a unique game play point that this game provides. It allows you to create a home for you and settlers alike they can farm and man defences to give that 'safe' feeling to your settlement. There are many different settlements to choose from and style in different ways with the large number of in game props.

There are some bugs in this game that do effect the game play massively but if you have played for some time and have messed around the console commands or if you have played any other Bethesda game you will be well versed in fixing these issues. The game has a huge community and most bugs have their work arounds and fixes if you simply do some research on them. The game was designed to be played on a console so tabbing out can cause GUI problems and even crashes. The game engine is tied to FPS and forcing vertical synchronisation and having a higher refresh rate monitor than 60 will make things weird.

There is a huge levelling system in this game that gives the player a number of perks that they can choose from that can grant them different buffs. It is really hard to get all the perks in on play through that makes the game replay ability. These different perks influence you to play in different ways. For example a perception based build can focus on V.A.T.S or if you are strength based you can focus on melee. There are more than 70 unique perks to choose from and they all affect different gameplay aspects weather it be dialogue, via charisma, or pistol damage via agility.

Workshops have a tower defence mechanic where if a settlement gets too populated and its not well defended it will targeted by other enemy factions and will spawn enemy units to attack the settlement. If they are not well defended then the settlers in the settlement will be unhappy and eventually you will loose control.

Legendary items are an amazing part to this game where you can roll a random effects to random items. This system can be quite degrading because most of the time you get something that is quite useless and not work anything but caps, but there is that small chance that it could be something like the explosive shotgun or the never-ending laser musket.

The aesthetics of Fallout 4 is a retro futuristic having lots of the design represent the 1920's with cars and furniture but also having some elements from modern day appliances. This gives the game a 'fresh coat of old'. The use of darker colours in the wasteland by the sudden pop of colour from before the war gives that ray of hope feel to you when you are wandering the baron lands.

The animations to the game are pretty good for 2015 and have smooth transitions between different states from standing to sitting the player will move down toward the seat. In conversation the player's character will have facial expressions that will relate to the type of dialogue used.

The music that this game uses is much like the previous games and they are just amazing tracks from the 1940s that just fits really well. Being out in the wasteland and The Wanderer by Dion comes on and you are suddenly having a better time. It gives the dull atmosphere a spark of life.

The environment for fallout is a large open wasteland scattered with junk and scrap with many points of interest to keep you occupied. Exploration is a huge part of this game rewarding you to find new places. From quarries to farms to pre-war military bases there are many different places to discover.

I'd like to see the main game's environment split up into three major parts. The City, where a large density of instances with complex navigation of destroyed buildings and many different factions established there so there is a difference between encounters. There is common wasteland which is filled up with agricultural site, quarries, and more. Then there is the glowing sea. There isn't much going on there but that'd be due to the bomb that has destroyed most things there and now all that's left is the mutated creatures that are left behind.

The Storyline consists of three acts that push you through the games content you leave the vault in search for you son and meet some interesting characters along the way. Upon reaching the second act of Fallout 4 you will have the ability to side with one of the 4 factions, the minutemen, the Railroad, the Brotherhood and the Institute. All four of these factions have their own lore flavouring and reasoning to be in the common wealth.

The side quests that this game gives are great, why wouldn't you want to be a crime fighting superhero stopping drug trade? All jokes aside, the side quests aren't just your average fetch quests. They are side storylines that have different rewards and interactions. Just go speak to Ironside.

In conclusion this game is a brilliant experience to the Fallout franchise and is my personal favourite game. I believe it has a great balance of game play mechanics and story progression easing the player into the environment and introduction to characters. Giving them the freedom to choose different weapons, perks, factions, and dialogue options is a core part of the RPG genre and this game does it really well. This is all excluding the DLC expansions, which I will be covering separately. So go now and explore the wasteland and make sure that you tune into Diamond City Radio.