"Fallout: London" Ambition Beyond Repair

 

    I have close to 100 hours on this game, and I can say with confidence that it is certainly an experience. I'd like to give my flowers out now, get it done with before I unceremoniously rip into a mod who's insides are barely being held together by tape as we speak. It truly is a testament to the FOLON team that this mod made it to release, in whatever state it might have been. I truly do mean it as a compliment when i say I don't think I've ever experienced a mod this ambitious, and the environment they created is massively impressive. To me, that is by far the coolest part about this mod, they created this entire detailed setting that transports you to another region, and does so fairly convincingly (as someone who's never been to London of course). I will say this, when you can suspend your disbelief, and find yourself completely immersed within the game it truly is incredible. I remember the first two hours that hooked me into this game, finding myself alone in the dark, giddy with joy as I got to experience this fully realized sandbox, that was free to boot. In fact, I'd go as far to say that this is the second best mod I've ever played, too bad for the FOLON team that Enderal exists right?

    Of course, so far everything you've read sounds great about this game right? So what's up with the title? Why didn't I start off this review yelling from the top of my lungs that people should be installing this game instantly? Well, that's because it only ever sounds nice on paper, the actual experience you get is laborious, and frankly clunky at best. The reality is the game is after the first two hours once you become good enough to explore more and more of the world, everything quickly begins to fall apart, like a powerful phone that overheats quickly. Let me start off with the technical issues. Most of which are foreshadowed by the fact that you need to go perform a downgrade of your game, which either involves you giving up your personal information to a program they created, or to painstakingly download a downgraded version of Fallout 4 straight from Steam bit by bit. Oh, and did I mention that you should probably install this mod through a mod manager? If you don't you're liable to crashing every 3 minutes as soon as you launch the game, because for some reason they highly recommend a mod to solve this, but initially didn't have it pre-installed with the game? 

    Supposedly, they eventually did do this in a future update, but I did not have the opportunity to test that out for myself, after all did I really feel like going through that entire install process another time? Finally, you launch the game, and everything is mostly working, until you realize that sometimes you'll face an infinite loading screen, so you alt-tab out only to see that despite having 16gb of RAM on your computer, it seems to have run out of them, and then you alt-tab back into the game to magically see your UI shrink before your eyes. Should I even mention the random deathclaws spawning in? Or perhaps the entire quests that are either simply broken, cannot be solved unless you do other quests a certain way, or simply refuse to start no matter what you do without the use of console commands? Need I say more? This game just leaves a lot to be desired technically, and that's why it makes it so hard to suspend your disbelief. I'd say I enjoyed this game relatively fine for about 50% of the time, but keep in mind this is someone who is used to modding/modded games and has played both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas on modern Windows. As such, my tolerance for crashes/other bugs is pretty high I'd say, but even I have to admit that I was incredibly annoyed by the amount this mod had.

    Of course, that's not the only irritating thing about this game. Should I go into the story, or the almost lack of one? No disrespect to their writing team, I understand they were doing this all for free, and that there was a lot to write for, but it is so hilariously subpar, I think its the worst part of the game. I'd tolerate all of the bugs if the writing was better, otherwise with both of those factors working against it, it is very hard to maintain immersion playing this game. If you are lucky, an NPC will respond to you if you try and talk to them, otherwise all you get are these hilarious blank stares that just kind of end up staring at you like you're a goldfish in a fishtank. It's just odd, even when the NPC's do have something to say, that's only when they have a quest, and half the time it just feels like the dialogue consists of them giving these large grand exposition speeches. That's if you're lucky to get any information though. By far, the most egregious part of this game is that you learn nothing about the two major factions, and simply have to make a decision based on a whim. Sometime around the 2nd or 3rd act, you're given the choice to choose between Camelot or the 5th Column, and the writers in their infinite wisdom decided you don't need to learn anything about either group before you join them. You can't even do a couple quests before being locked out by the way, as soon as you interact with their leaders in any sort of capacity you are instantly locked out of the other factions.

    At least they got the companions right though. I dislike many aspects of this game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the companions. It almost felt like they were the only NPC's that had any sort of serious writing/development. As someone who interacted with 6/7 companions I can safely say their stories/quests involving them was the best written quests. I mean sure there are some other ones, but the dialogue is so clunky it really just takes you out of it half the time. Not to mention the quest items/rewards are usually pretty poor anyways. Speaking of combat, one thing that you will hear parroted by the developers/fans of the game is that this game has a larger emphasis on melee, which I suppose is true in a sense? The final battle requires you to use a melee weapon, but it does so little damage that it's just a hassle to get through. Notably, ammo becomes much less of an issue after a while, you just end up collecting so much, and selling so much loot that the only thing you end up buying are radaways and ammo. Guns which by the way are balanced in a way that makes no sense, supposedly they just gobbled together a bunch of gun mods, and it really shows with pistols doing way more damage than what should be some great rifles. Don't get me started on armor either, why is it that some clothing items can use ballistic weave 5, and others can't? There is no rhyme or reason to the way certain items can be modded but others can't, it's just so frustrating to witness.

Final Score: 65/100

    Even still, with all it's warts and bumps, all of the imperfections that are as clear as day on this game, it still manages to shine through. I'm not one to say that you shouldn't be so critical of this game because it's free, I think that sort of mindset is just a shield. If you put something out in the public for people to play and try, there's nothing wrong with some feedback/criticism to come along with it. Was I a little harsh in my review? Absolutely, but the only reason I said that is because I really did fall in love with this game at the beginning. Those first hours of the game really reminded me of when I first launched Fallout 3, that sort of horror element that comes from just being so underleveled embarking on a journey through an unknown land. It managed to itch that scratch for me, it's just that it didn't stay for long enough. I do see real potential in this game, it is ambitious, and it actually managed to deliver on most of it's promises, which is more than most mods can say, but I'd be remiss to ignore all of the mess that lies underneath the surface. I write this review hoping that one day they do work through all of the kinks, though I'm not sure if they'll commit to the major overhaul of the story/dialogue, that seems almost a bit too much when there are legitimate bugs to the current rendition of the game as is. Either way, give it a shot, if you're patient, there really is a jewel hiding in plain sight once you wipe away all of the grime.