Over the next two weeks I will be looking at different parts of Fallout 4, the newest entry in Bethesda’s truly massive open world game series. Some of you may wonder why I have decided to review the game in this way. This is because the game came out last week and I haven’t had enough time to speak for everything in the game yet. This week’s entry will be about the gameplay.

I have to say right off the bat that I infinitely prefer the gameplay of this to its older counterparts. Those that loved the strange mix of turn based and real time shooting in Fallout 3 and New Vegas will, I think, find a nice happy middle ground with Fallout 4’s new combat system.

Fans of the series will, of course, remember V.A.T.S, the targeting system that in previous games stopped time and allowed you to pick which body part you wanted to target. It remains mostly the same except for one big change, V.A.T.S no longer stops time but instead slows it down.

This is an interesting change to say the least and one that the internet was not happy about but honestly I like it a lot. In Fallout 3 the real time shooting was bad and pretty much impossible to use so you had to relay almost completely on V.A.T.S because you weren’t going to hit anything outside of it. In Fallout 4 however they have balanced it out so that the shooting outside of V.A.T.S feels like a good modern F.P.S. and V.A.T.S is no where near as over powered as it used to be.

A lot of people have been complaining about frame rate drops when inside of building but I honestly haven’t had too many problems. I have seen some frame rate issues but not nearly enough to warrant complaint and it is never anything too bad.

I haven’t messed around too much with the building and crafting system yet but so far I found it to be a nice add on but other wise kinda pointless. The game really doesn’t need it but it did make for a pretty cool moment in one of the mainline missions.

All in all, at least as far as gameplay goes, Fallout 4 is a massive improvement to everything Fallout does and I am excited to keep playing with it. Come back next week for part 2.

To read more from the blog Checkpoint, check out Halo 5 captures imagination.

This author can be reached on Twitter @EthanNathe26