There is a phenomenon that is very strange.

It's just a sign now, and I can't see anything yet, but in the future, it's basically a place where game companies are often criticized by players.

That's about a game called a New Year's product or a cold meal.

So, what is cold rice?

Originally, this was just a joke between players, but somehow, the name of 'New Year's goods' suddenly became a derogatory term, referring to a game company that treats a heavyweight IP and unscrupulously consumes the value of this IP, basically in the way of new wine in old bottles, one work a year.

The new work and the old work in the gameplay,There is no improvement in the system,At most, the picture can be improved - sometimes even the picture is not improved,Change a story,Change a UI,Even the UI is not changed,Another work will come out next year,And players are also special to buy it,The most typical is Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed" and Activision's "Call of Duty"。

Especially Activision's "Call of Duty", this series has gradually moved from being amazing at the beginning to greatness, especially the Modern Warfare series, which directly established the status of the world's No. 1 FPS game for this game.

But then, Activision suddenly discovered the huge business opportunities hidden in this type of game, and they found that in fact, as long as this kind of game is reskinned, and then use the original things to continue to be the material, and the picture is slightly improved, you can be completely careful about the game selling! And players are buying it!

That's how the famous New Year's goods series was born.

Activision is even shameless to the point that the game is constantly being updated, but it doesn't even change the engine.

However, there is one thing that Jester finds strange when he researches this issue, and that is that it seems that players only call this kind of game once a year, but for those who have spent four or five years. It's a highly anticipated game, but the plot is average, the sound effects are average, the bugs are constant, the UI is outdated, and the graphics aren't even average. I'm sorry for the pricing of a sixty-dollar 3A masterpiece.

Other than the high degree of freedom and exploration as always, there are really no other advantages.

This game is Fallout 4.

This game has been badly reviewed since its release, and many people have washed the floor for it, saying that it is for mods, and this is for better freedom...... Statements like that, but really, if this is a game that came out in 2010, then there is no doubt about it. This game is great.

But it's the end of 2015, and I don't know how many games like this one have a high degree of freedom and a high degree of exploration.

Basically, for a triple-A title that wants to compete for the top game of the year, it's basically a must-have, and it's not something that makes one of these games better than others, but something that everyone has.

Moreover, it is still stale in "Fallout 3". The system that has been played rotten in "Old Roll 5" is taken out again, and it is once again eaten as a cold meal.

Do you really think that the bad reviews of this game at the beginning were vexatious by players?

Nothing new. No surprises.

It's as if you're playing a game that's been five or even seven years old, and the innovation is nothing more than copying something from the player's mod to make it into the game, such as building your own house - it's a mod that's been in Fallout 3, and it's an incredibly powerful mod, there's really nothing to brag about.

IGN's review of Fallout 4 at the time was flawed - but in Jester's opinion. This game is a cold rice of B company.,There's no difference between it and Activision's New Year's COD.,It's all a kind of goods.,It's even unceremoniously not as good as Activision's cold rice New Year's goods.,People Activision knows that they're going to make cold rice.。 At least the cold rice should be packaged beautifully, so that players can see something different from the previous one.

As a result, on "Fallout 4", Company B didn't even bother to package it.

A game that took five years to develop, at this level, it's no wonder that players are getting rave reviews.

Playful?

"Fallout 3" is fun, "Ancient 5" is also fun, of course it's fun to turn these things out and sell them again, the players are still those players, the audience is still those audiences, can it not be fun? At the beginning, "Ancient 5" was able to sweep GDC and VGA, and won two major awards at the same time, because of the groundbreaking nature of this game, but in the year, the game "Ancient 5" was great enough, but in a year or five, when "The Witcher 3" redefined the ARPG benchmark, and then came up with a game similar to "Ancient 5", that's it.

I can't say it's bad, I can only say it.

Besides, "Fallout 4" is not as good as "Ancient 5".

"Ancients 5" was the top in the industry from system to picture at that time, and "Fallout 4", in the environment he was in, could only be called an 'original' cold meal.

This may be the main reason for the overwhelming reviews from players, not that the game only has a score of five, and if you have a good conscience, the game will probably have an eight-point score - but for Fallout, the biggest sentiment in the European and American video game world, is there any difference between an eight and a five?

Or it may be more accurate to reverse IGN's statement that Yu does not hide flaws.

You said that Fallout 4 didn't improve at all, that's of course impossible.

Aside from the plot, the plot is definitely not as good as "New Vegas", but "New Vegas" has a complete Van Billen plan to support, which "Fallout 4" does not have.

Talking about his game environment, compared with the old work, the environment of the new work is more complex, whether it is a messy ~ messy forest or the ruins of the city, it has grown greatly in scale and refinement compared with the previous work. The world environment in the new background is more colorful~ beautiful, and the production team used high brightness, high saturation, and even supersaturation, with red and blue as the tone style in the world of radiation for the first time, not to mention whether it is "orthodox", but from the first impression, at least it is good-looking.

Thanks to the evolution of the scene, the overall sense of substitution of the game has also been strengthened to a certain extent. Interior scenes have always been Bethesda's forte. This time was no exception. The dark ruins and whispering ambient sound effects add to the tension. In contrast, the experience of shuttling between the ruins and the jungle is beautiful, but there is not much random content and it is mainly skirmishes. Therefore, it will be a little boring after a long time. Fast travel will still be one of the most used features for most players.

It must be mentioned that after "borrowing" from Fallout 3's mod 'Nevada Sky', FO4 finally has truly dynamic weather to a limited extent. But in fact, with the exception of radiation storms, which continue to increase the amount of radiation, the presence of other weather changes is still very weak. Compared to The Witcher 3's weather system, which has all kinds of sound, light, and animation effects, FO4, which uses fixed scenes, doesn't seem to be too "dynamic" due to changes in the weather.

In addition, the modeling of FO4 has been greatly improved from its predecessor. The details of the characters have been significantly enhanced, and the characters' movements, while still stiff, are also much smoother than their predecessors. The refined firearm is held in the hand. There is no longer the same light and fluttering texture as the FO3 and the cardboard box in the FNV, and the detailed animation, sound effects, and special effects of the firearm when firing are combined together, which also makes the FO4 finally have the so-called "shooting sense".

Of course, if you consider it by the standards of a shooter, his so-called sense of design can't even pass.

That's pretty much all the good things about Fallout 4 that Jester summed up, and to sum up these Fallout 4 in one word, for the progress of the old game, is to be good.

Why?

Truly. The world of the new work is much more beautiful than the previous game overall, but if you look closely, you will find it. In addition to the finer characters and props, the environments, surfaces, vegetation, and buildings continue to be scribbled from the previous game. The texture of the building is serious, and many scenes are obviously over-stacked with textures, resulting in the overall appearance of a mess.

Perhaps because of the engine, there are still many problems with the interaction of characters and scenes in the new work. The running motion is still like ice skating. The character will still stumble on the road, and will still be blocked by unidentified air walls in complex surfaces. As for the problems that often occurred in the previous work, such as dangling, diving, not opening the door, and sinking into the ground, they are also common in FO4 - this is a problem that will occur in the engine made by the old engine of the previous B company.

But five years later, they still haven't solved these problems.

Where is the old engine of the magic change?

Looking at the fact that COD hasn't changed engines since the eighth generation, the graphical improvement is noticeable - at least that's how players see it. That's what the hell is called the engine of the magic change.

If the above problems can be excused by engine flaws and "the picture is not the point", then as a triple-A game released in 2015 and produced by a first-tier manufacturer with the goal of being the best of the year, "Fallout 4" still has a lot of reading time, which makes all players very incomprehensible and even shocked, they don't believe how a first-tier manufacturer could make such a thing.

That's right, in the new work, most of the scene switches still need to be read.

The scenes mentioned here are not only scenes such as buildings with several floors and large abandoned shelters, but also chapels and utility rooms of more than ten square meters or even several square meters. From the perspective of empathy, this design may be due to the compatibility of scene mods with the original game. But look at the CDR and Kojima Studios next door...... Bethesda, have you been in seclusion for the past five years?

Keeping up with the times and opening your eyes to the world is so difficult for this company?

There is another point that Jester feels very dissatisfied with, that isUI, B Society is indeed a little bit of care on the UI, all kinds of first-person UI obviously "borrowed" from the famous mod of "New Vegas" "Nevada Project", but even if it is full of tricks, Bethesda's UI design is still thrown out of dozens of streets by obsidian - not to mention the dog's eye green color scheme that exudes fluorescent effects like radiation waste, of course, this is a color scheme that continues from one generation to the second generation.

Just the way to switch between the first and second menus, as well as the small and slow-moving map, many veteran players have not yet gotten used to it after more than ten hours of gameplay, and the UI animations that jump all over the screen are interesting at first, but after watching for a long time, it only makes people feel messy.

Since Company B has time to embed so many mini-games, can't you optimize the UI?

Of course, what Fallout players like to talk about is the gameplay of the game, and when they say that they play Fallout, they don't play the graphics, and why don't they play the Crysis - we have noble gameplay!

It's just the same ugly face as Ren Dolphin, facing the mosaic full of screens, Ren Dolphin proudly calls it a full-screen game.

Isn't that the same as radiant powder?

Speaking of gameplay, if you've spent a lot of time digging caves, picking up trash, farming branches, building equipment, reading entries, and opening waypoints in FNV, then this Fallout Scrolls: New Boston has basically no barrier to entry for you, because that's the same thing, it's just a different layer of Fallout 4 skin.

Yes, the game gives you huge maps and tons of locations to explore; Yes, there are many random events scattered around the world to enrich your journey; Yes, there are many NPCs with very different personalities in the game that can interact with you and even become comrades-in-arms - but looking at the previous game, looking at the classic RPG era from decades ago, looking at the two generations of Fallout in Black Isle, looking at the other open-world titles this year, can these things really count as "highlights" rather than "standard"?

At the end of the day, quantity doesn't necessarily lead to quality. What separates "fun" from "boring" may just be a well-crafted backstory, a charismatic character, a motivational motives that make people rush through the blood, and a little bit of thinking that is not usually thought of.

Unfortunately, FO4 does not have an advantage in this regard. Bethesda seems to be overly keen on telling serious, grandiose, and in-depth epic stories, and is at a loss for how to fill the world with different styles of humor, absurdity, and even weirdness. This flaw can be found in any previous Bethesda game, even Skyrim.

The build system is one of the "killer features" of FO4, but in fact, after getting started, you will find that whether it is variety or fun, FO4's build system has too many things to polish.

The game currently offers very limited materials, and in most cases, you can only build an "iron box" that leaks on all sides. To truly realize the brain holes such as "Modern Villa" and "Battlestar", most of them still rely on MOD or DLC to contribute new materials. Overall, the building system acts more as a framework and is fairly primitive compared to other games.

In short, from the first impression, Fallout 4 does make some new tricks in terms of environment, action, fluidity, etc., however, when these "new clothes" borrowed from the players are taken off, the world is still essentially a huge, empty, lifeless oversized set.

It boils down to a cold meal that can't be colder anymore.

And it's insincere cold rice. (To be continued......)