I'd like to watch a video review by Todd Howard playing the game. He would impersonate an unbiased game reviewer and would outline pros and cons.

The way things are going, I think it's a matter of time when someone does that angry Hitler clip that's popular on YouTube.

He does not have any videos about it... where does he say it?

In his other videos.

Like what videos?

The one about Destiny for example.

Do they really verify the refunds? For steam using much time verifying would fast cost them more money than they loose on refund.

I would like to see your review. I hope you reconsider.

It will be a long time before I can even play this game to comment as I will be spending weeks/months downloading it .

how can anyone like me give this game a positive rating when i cant even [censored] LAUNCH THE GAME WITHOUT INSTANTLY CRASHING ?!?! Thanks bethesda...

Yeah these people are on the drugs...and not he good kind. Graphics are great IMO and way better than previous titles. The cover system is one of the best I've seen. Simple but very effective. I'm absolutely hooked right now and can't say anything bad about it. I had one slight dip in FPS other than that. No technical problems at all.

Sales now are great. Cause of all the pre-orders. What matters are christmas sales. We'll see. By Jan you've lost most buyers. Except those who are in it for the mods. That's why you release DLC's. And that's also why we have this season pass.

It's no Skyrim but I quite enjoy it so far, crafting your base or shelter is great but can get pretty damn annoying sometimes when something wants to automatically lock into the other one when you're trying to angle it in a different direction, so it could use some work but I HOPE that this crafting system makes it into the next Elder Scrolls.

Skyrim was by far my fav and possibly most beloved game of all time, well maybe not to that extreme but it's top 10 definitely.

And why do some guns weigh so much FFS I hate getting too much good stuff only to walk slower than hell back to base or outside to use a buffout and then fast travel, and now I'm literally addicted to it in the game.

Have to wait for the hype train to slow down and the people who enjoy hating hype move on to hating something else. Then the scores will even out.

You are right about the key bindings. While not a big deal for me, there's just no excuse for not having this feature in game. Most games do.

Number 4 is spot on. You can't play this game in stealth. Especially if you have a companion. My companion has broken my stealth every time. I suspect we'll get this fixed with mods though. But right now, wear the power armor. And cheat. I did. [censored] it. This is the first game I've played (been playing since the 80s') where I actually cheated on a first play though. Called up the console and gave myself plenty of power cores. If I gotta stay in power armor the whole game so be it. Right now, I wear the power armor,, and when I arrive at location with people, I "park" the armor and get out of it. I don't like having conversations with it on.

I bet you someone is gonna say I'm playing the game wrong. And that's the problem. There shouldn't be a wrong way to play the game. If you wanted to run the game in drag carrying side pistols, you should be able too. And expect to live though most of it (ok not the big fights - hard to fight in heels).

You know, I don't mind RP'ng a soldier in power Armor, I just don't like being forced to. And since this is suppose to be a RPG, having conversations with the armor on inside s shop, and no one notices really pisses me off.

My first mod will be a hotkey for the helmet.

After a few more hours in I still stand by my metacritic review of 7 even thow I would probably drop it to 6.5 for the same reasons : Keybinding is atrocious, crafting is fun to start of with but is just bad after ... I mean try building an object within a built structure of your own, stupid E key you need to exit the building then come back in.. just stupid design. There are graphic settings on the launcher but missing a few basics ones, aka gamma, V-sync and probably the most important no FOV setting ? some of the guns even the pistol take up much of the screen it just ludicrous.

It is fallout, just not much innovation (feels like a revamped Fallout 3) and not much attention to detail where it matters (aka my previous comments) I am still enjoying it, but my experience could of been so much better with a bit more thought and less lazyness 4 years on a game (not having to create a new engine ... ) well I expected more.. let down.

Just got a armor component that stealths me when i am sitting still. I am currently on a rooftop in downtown Boston sniping mutants and raiders, no one is detecting me. Also i have a companion with me, and it doesn't really ruin anything. Just tell them to wait while you sneak, or to take up another position etc. I am so glad that stealthing requires you to actually have some decent perks for it, and you just beeing good at using it. Skyrim's stealth was so frackin' broken and they had to fix it. I am not saying you are playing the game wrong, i just think you should have a little more patience and try out different styles to get going what you want. Don't expect to get right out of the vault trip over a sniper rifle and then stealth headshot Super Mutants and the like.

Actually no. Fans of Fallout sticking their heads in the sands about genuine issues with Fallout 4 do the game as much disservice as the trolls and haters giving the game 0.

It is easy to dismiss scores on sites like metacritic but to do so ignores things like Witcher 3 getting a 9.1 user rating. Skyrim got an 8.0 which kind of shoots down some kind of "people hate Bethesda" conspiracy theory.

Good games do get good scores.

So, while Fallout 4 doesn't deserve 4.7 it certainly doesn't deserve more than a 7 either. Which is very disappointing for such a well known and popular title. The reasons why should be self-evident:

a) its bug ridden. Sure all new releases have bugs but this has some real [censored] ones, requiring you to reload and in some cases start the game over. People are getting tired of Bethesda releasing software like this and not learning anything from their past games.

b ) The UI is appalling. On the PC we have the usual console port rubbish of mouse cursors being in the wrong place and the game being designed for controllers. However, given the sheer volume of junk you have to go round picking up, some logical way of dealing with it all instead of a big long list would have gone a long way. All of the UI criticisms from Fallout 3 and Skyrim are still there and have in no way been addressed.

c) The AI is bad. I can't count how many times that bloody dog has got me killed. In turn, the primary method of beating mobs on survival mode is exploiting their terrible AI and pathing.

d) The graphics are lacklustre. They are badly optimised and give patchy performance on different systems. Having to play on medium settings or below dates the game way more than necessary. In addition, there are clearly reused art assets that have not been updated and have bad textures and so on.

e) The story, quests and dialogue are average at best. They're just ok. This is not the quality that you expect from a Bethesda game and it is disappointing. One review wittily notes that ten minutes after watching your wife being murdered and son being kidnapped, the game has you rearranging chairs and planting carrots.

f) S.P.E.C.I.A.L is a pretty ironic name now. There is nothing special here anymore. Dumbed down and less flexible.

g) FPS combat has improved. This is not an FPS game though, as is evidenced by Bethesda not even allowing mouse acceleration to be switched off in game, so people don't give it that much credit for this.

h) The base building is fun if you like that sort of thing and I do so I have spent quite a bit of time in it. The controls are ok, a bit cumbersome but you can make some interesting stuff. However, it has little or no bearing on the game itself. I could see they had ideas of a game within a game - making a base, holding off invaders and so on. Right now though that just doesnt pan out as it is at best a sideshow.

i) The tutorial for all these features, both new and old, is a joke. I had to keep going back to the keybindings to find out how to use basic things like VATS or chuck a grenade. Some Twitch streams I have seen with people new to the franchise have been sad to watch, some being hours into the game and not even knowing VATS exists.

Overall the sad fact is Bethesda has rested on its Skyrim laurels and not iterated or improved meaningfully over Vegas. In fact, even the most positive critic reviews I have read have called this a backward step. Compare that to the leap between Witcher 2 and 3 for example. Bethesda is simply not keeping up with their competition.

Hence, people are disappointed and annoyed.

Weird as I fight mostly in stealth, with dogmeat who works nice for pulling and some tanking also in watching my back.

Playing pretty much as I would with Skyrim or Fallout 3.

Yes AI is a bit smarter but I start with sniping then move in, getting the enemy to try to find me while redrawing tend to work.

Right, i too just cleared the Corvega factory by sneaking with pistol, SMG and sniper rifle. Sure they found me a couple of times, but that's what SMG was for. No tanking or Power Armor required

And yes, i have Dogmeat too, though i think i would have done better without him.

I don't deny those groups exist, but whose fault is it that "Bugthesda" has become such a meme, especially when so many of the bugs are ones that appear over and over again with every release?

And one thing that does not help is seeing supposedly professional game reviewers practically praising Bethesda for all of the bugs, claiming they add to the "charm" of the games or some other such rot.

I don't think that the skills are removed. I believe they are still there, but abstracted behind the SPECIAL implementation.

As you raise your SPECIAL stats, skills all bump up behind the scenes

This means that you spend more perk points on raising SPECIAL than on perks.

However,

Books are now given relevancy and reading them gives a lot of perk like bonuses allowing you to spend some of your level ups on SPECIAL enhancing items.

I would bet that if I looked at the stats behind the curtain that my level 10 sneaky ranged attacker is statistically very similar to my Fallout 3 complement.

One crucial aspect that is removed is the inevitable min-maxing of only raising stats high enough in order to accommodate the bumps from skill books and bobbleheads.

This also means that you are blissfully unaware of any skill caps.

So the thing is the skills are all there and are raised by SPECIAL investment, reading books, and perks.

As far as the removal of wear and tear, I think they were following Skyrim.

There is a laundry list of reasons why the repair skill was previously non-nonsensical, including wear and tear for the pc only(unless you shot the Terrible Shotgun out of the NPCs hand. Followed by putting your weapon down, and making friends again, followed by leaving, coming back, and pick pocketing the same shotgun. Followed by making friends again by buying a couple of regular shotguns to repair the one you just stole). How the heck do you repair the minigun with another minigun while you are fighting to the Jefferson memorial with a posse of Brotherhood of Steel. Colvin, Sarah, Dusk, and Gallows all seem to be firing off the same number of shots without taking the time to fix anything up.

I would say this. Armor and weapons which are modded should lose their efficacy and you should have to reapply the mods. So your studded leather loses it's studs during an adventure, back at town you reapply. Same thing should go for the guns.

Fortunately the pc fix will be to just make the skills visible with a few scripts, and to reduce the effect of stats and other effects on your skills. I believe that this will produce the same character build for most people. For example in Fallout 3 at level 20, your pick lock and small gun skills will be maxed out. However reintroducing skill points will allow you to have a character that is great at lock picking and terrible at small guns.

I think the missing freedom of choice and high levels of customization are what people are missing, and not necessarily the abstraction of the skill points.

Not sure Christmas sales matter much for Fallout 4 or Skyrim. Most of the players for this sort of games buy them themselves.

Games mostly for kids on the other hand. 445.000 user at once at max on steam today, beating Skyrim who stopped at 380.000 I think.

Right on brother! I'm sneak criting just about everything and I don't even have augments...and using only a sniper pipe rifle (heavily modded of course . No sneak issues here...at all; but it didn't just happen out the vault door.

The real deal is this for all you fellas:

We shouldn't give a damn about haters, they are the ones being really prejudiced, they are not enjoying this awesome gaming experience.