The Fallout series has always been close to my heart, so when Bethesda announced their big plans for Fallout 4, I was both incredibly thrilled, but also very skeptical. They promised to take open-world exploration to the next level. They promised extreme flexibility in terms of weapon design, armor modification, and even in terms of building your own settlement from pieces of scrap you pick up along your travels.

I was afraid they had gone Peter Molyneux on us, and promised to take us to the moon, but only managed show us a photo in the end. However, Bethesda has managed to do what I considered to be impossible. They have created a world unlike any other, while still keeping the same distinct mix of 1950's utopia and a post-nuclear wasteland.

The only thing I am not a big fan of, is the Pip=Boy that comes with this particular release. While it looks amazing on the shelf, it is made from extremely cheap materials. This makes me extremely nervous that it will simply break into a million pieces, just by me looking at it. As a result, I put it on once, made a stupid little grin and giggled a little, before carefully putting it away on my shelf.

From what I can find of reviews online, I am not the only one who is upset about the low quality plastic being used. One person even compared it to the same material you would expect being used to create a Happy Meal toy, and I absolutely agree. However, a lot of people are also upset that none of the levers, buttons and switches don't do anything, and that the whole thing is basically a glorified smart-phone case, and I honestly don't know what their problem is. When the Pip-Boy was announced at E3, it was specifically said that the Pip-Boy would house your smart-phone, and that this again would run the Fallout app. So, yeah... it was announced as being a case, it gets launched as a case, and now this is somehow making people upset. I don't get it.

So, while the game itself is fantastic, this particular release suffers from having used cheap materials to create the reason why this release even exists; the Pip-Boy. This would have easily gotten 5 stars, had the Pip-Boy been made just a little sturdier.

Tom Aaberg