I've been playing now for 60+ hours, so I thought I'd put my initial thoughts down. Of course, my opinion may change as I continue with the game, but this is how it seems to me right now.

To make my prejudices clear up front, I'm a big fan of Fallout 3; but I've tried to avoid making comparisons to that game as I've been playing, simply because I've got FO3 modded up pretty-much exactly as I want it so it's unfair to compare it with a brand-new game. However, now it's time to take stock.

Executive Summary:

This game suffers badly from a poor and unfocused start. In Fallout 3 you step out of the vault and Megaton is there to introduce you to the game, give you a base and give you some starting quests to get you on your way. In New Vegas you actually start the game in Goodsprings, a town that serves the same purpose. In this game there's nothing. You don't come to a functioning town until all the way down at Diamond City. We were told that Fallout 4 was about humanity rebuilding, yet I felt myself to be more of a lone wanderer and more of a scavenger living off the land than in Fallout 3, a game about a blasted, contaminated wasteland. Sanctuary is Springvale and Concord is Springvale School: imagine Fallout 3 without Megaton and you have the start of this game. Yes, you can make Sanctuary a settlement, but it won't do you any good: there will be no shops unless your character has the necessary build to allow them to be created, and no quests except Garvey's 'build another settlement' quests.

The map is far too busy. Note that this is most definitely not a complaint about the amount of content in the game - that is just outstanding. No, it's just crammed into too small a space. The worldspace may be larger than that of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but it feels much smaller for the simple reason that one cannot take two steps without bumping into another camp or building. The map simply needs to be bigger to accomodate all this stuff. Getting from place to place in FO3 and NV takes time and that makes those games feel bigger than they are. FO4 feels smaller than it is.

Put the above points together and you have a world I don't understand. Here's a world teeming with farms and camps and occupied buildings, but there's no organization of any kind, no communications, no trading (I've run into one roving trader so far). If they were further apart it would make sense, but as it is it all seems like a town where no-one speaks to anyone else.

The Good:

• Stability. I'm tempting fate with this one, but so far not a single crash while playing in over 60 hours. I've had one crash on exiting the game. I've had a couple of collision-related problems (walked through a door and fell through the floor of a building), and a horrible slideshow when entering one particular building (which went away when I restarted the game) but nowhere near the bugs of the older games thus far.

• Graphics. If you're using NMC's texture pack for FO3 then the textures here are no improvement (and there's some nasty pop-in), but the models certainly are. Having models with real details beats relying on normal maps. Rain that looks and behaves somewhat like rain is nice too. Not MGS V level, but nice.

• Crafting. This is more of a mixed bag. It's fun to mess around with, but so far I've found far better weapons than I've been able to mod. Plus, it's a pity that there's no hardcoe/real needs mode to make that cooking really necessary.

• Crap. Perhaps it's an odd thing to focus on, but as a modder of FO3 it's always struck me how few debris and general crap items there are in that game. A few rubble piles and a few bits and pieces of junk that can be strewn around and that's about it. Here at last there's plenty of that stuff. Lots of times I've found myself thinking 'that's just what I wanted to see in Fallout 3'.

• Settlements. Although I'm not especially into the whole 'create settlements' thing, I do think it's a great (optional) mechanic to add and I've already found myself engrossed in building fences, lol.

The Bad:

• THE CONTROLS. In capital letters, because this is CRAP. Really CRAP. Two of the worst mistakes a control scheme can have are giving a single control too many functions, and using too many controls for the same function: and this game manages to have both!

• If I change the activate key to be Enter, I want it to be Enter; I do not want it to be 'Enter except in the places we forgot about where it's still E'. And I most certainly don't want it to prompt me to 'use E' when it actually means 'use Enter'.

• In FO3 and NV, if I press F I go into 3rd person mode and if I press F again I go back to 1st person. In this game I press F and go into 3rd person, then I press F again and nothing happens; and I press F again and nothing happens. And I press F again and nothing happens. And then maybe, if the game feels like it, maybe if I press F again I will get back to first-person view. WHY? Why did you mess with this mechanic? If it ain't broke...

• And on the subject of 'F', why does the POV control have two functions in this game? I have a keyboard with 40+ keys on it. Use them!

• When I press ALT, I get iron sights. Yay! When I press it again, the iron sights go away. Yay! Except when the weapon has a telescopic sight, in which case the sight won't go away because the ALT button now has another function. WHY? Why do I have to put my gun away to remove the sight? Did anybody from Bethesda actually bother to try and play the game with this idiotic control scheme?

Words cannot describe the depth of burning hatred I have for these controls, lol. Although it came in for a great deal of criticism I personally never had any issues with Skyrim's UI. It might have been a little clunky at times but it never interfered with the gameplay; unlike this MESS.

• Dialogue. Or what passes for dialogue. Single-word options? Single-word options where I have to guess what my character is going to actually say? No skill-based options other than an occasional vague 'persuade' entry? Terrible. Just awful. Crap. Appalling. Badly thought-out. Badly designed.

• Weapon and Armour Condition. Where is it? Why was it taken away? Pointless change.

• Acoustics. I'm sneaking around a raider-infested factory. Suddenly, someone right behind me starts trash-talking me! Yikes! Except, he's not right behind me, he's actually in another room across the other side of the building. Again, FO3, NV, Skyrim: none of these older games had this problem.

• Idiots. I don't know if this is a general problem or something to do with survival mode, but why have enemies suddenly decided to start shooting wildly when they go into a Caution state? Here's a post-nuclear wasteland where everyone is scavenging to survive, and these people apparently have so much ammo they can happily afford to blast away randomly at the walls. Oh, did I say at the walls? Of course, I meant through the walls. Yes, I've had enemies shooting through not just one but two walls. Apparently, when they go into a caution state, not only does common sense go out the window, so do the laws of physics.

• Extrasensory Perception. I'm in a room by myself. I'm not moving. But somehow, someone in a different part of the building knows I'm there! Spooky! This may be another 'feature' of survival mode, but I've had raiders constantly going in and out of caution for absolutely no reason - unless, of course, they can see through walls. I guess if they can shoot through walls there's no reason why they can't see through them too?

• Oblivion. In the old games, one could manipulate enemies by shooting at things and watching them all run over to the point of impact. That wasn't the best AI; but Bethesda seems to have decided to 'fix' this by making the enemies completely oblivious. Shoot as much as you like and as long as you don't actually hit one of them they won't take a blind bit of notice. One bit of silly AI replaced by an even sillier bit of AI.

• No criticals outside VATS (sneak excepted)? what happened to 'play how you like'? More like 'play how we want or get nerfed'.

• Monsters From The Fifth Dimension. This is a pet hate of mine: enemies that spawn out of thin air. "You've taken one step too far and now you're surrounded by super mutants!" It's cheap and totally immersion-breaking. One of the things I like about FO3 is that it's a realistic (within the bounds of the story and lore) world first and foremost, one of my complaints about NV was that some elements were contrived, clearly 'this is a game' elements. FO4 has gone in the wrong direction for my taste. Stick to building worlds, Bethesda, and leave the BS to others!

• Companions. This is actually a mix of good and bad. It's very nice that the companions have a bit more life to them now, and nice that they can be prevented from going crazy when there are enemies about, but it would be a lot nicer if they stopped running away; or at least give them a New Vegas-style marker on the map so I know where they've gone. It would also be a hell of a lot nicer if they stopped teleporting about: if I tell my companion to stay in one place that's what I want them to do - I do not want them teleporting to my side just because I got into a lift. If there's an alien companion, then I'll accept that it can teleport. Dogmeat: No.

• The Story. I'm sure I'm just repeating what's been said a million times by others here, but giving the main character too much back story can be detrimental in these games. There were plenty of complaints about that in FO3, but at least there it was possible in good conscience to ignore the main quest because, after all, Dad was an advlt who had made his own decision to run off into the wasteland. Here we're being given this tear-jerker story about a stolen baby: what kind of person doesn't care about their own son being kidnapped? Well, maybe the kind of person who wants to play the game in their own way with their own kind of character.

In summary: As I said, Fallout 3 is my favourite game, so Fallout 4 had a lot to live up to for me. But so did Fallout New Vegas, and while I had some issues with that game it never came close to irking or irritating me. FO4 has irked and irritated me many times. It's got so many good things going on and there have been times where I've thought 'this is just like being in Fallout 3', which for me is high praise indeed, but then always it seems to manage to bring me back to earth with an annoying bump.