Fallout 4
(Xbox One, PS4, PC, Bethesda, cert: 18)
★★★★
Relax, Fallout fans, the long wait is over and Bethesda has delivered in spades. Simply put, Fallout 4 is a masterpiece, albeit a flawed one.
Set 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse, the game has you waking from cryogenic suspension with one goal – to find your son, stolen from the arms of a spouse murdered mid-chill. It’s a powerfully emotional set-up for the game, providing drive to pursue the core quest despite many diversions on offer.
Vastly bigger and palpably more ambitious than its predecessors, Fallout 4 incorporates complex item-crafting and camp-building mechanics, while tweaking controls and systems to be more intuitive. Along with complex dialogue options and relative freedom on how to complete quests, the game positions itself as an entire universe that hangs on your decisions.
Unfortunately, occasional low frame rates and iffy load times on consoles, plus random mission-killing bugs, rob Fallout 4 of true greatness, technical errors that, while perhaps inevitable in a game of this scale, are irksome nonetheless. MK
Rise of the Tomb Raider
(Xbox One, Xbox 360 PS4, PC, Square Enix, cert: 18)
★★★★★
Gaming’s leading lady Lara Croft is back and her latest outing is, pleasingly, just as breathtaking and exhilarating as 2013’s exuberant return to form. Here, Lara embarks on a journey from Syria to snowy Siberia, following her father’s research into an ancient prophet, doggedly pursued by a sinister cult. The story allows Rise to focus more on exploration and survival than the previous game; you use the environment to your advantage to hunt for resources, craft gear and find historical relics.
In the main, though, it sticks to the last iteration’s formula – no bad thing – with a few welcome tweaks and twists. Crafting is a little more involved and there are more collectibles to find. Lara can decipher texts to discover more information about the world, but needs to “level up” her Greek or Russian first. The combat is a little floaty to start with, though it improves alongside Lara’s abilities. Where Rise really shines are the tombs, the game’s real draw, on offer here in greater number and as grander set pieces than ever before. PH
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
(Xbox One, PS4, PC, Ubisoft, cert: 18)
★★★
There is something of an awkward correspondence between the historical adventuring of the Assassin’s Creed series and its now buggy, old-fashioned gameplay. Wandering Victorian London in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, the feeling is that of exploring a museum exhibit of both mid-1800s Britain and video games of the late 2000s. The franchise’s regular weaknesses are all here: combat is overly simple, parkour mechanics frequently don’t work as intended, pointless fetch quests litter the world map, and the plot flirts with maddening incoherence.
In spite of all this, it’s the first Assassin’s Creed in a while that aims to be greater than the sum of its parts. There’s a notable attempt to keep things entertainingly light and pulpy, and for every mission crippled by ageing ideas there are two or three more that blister along with surprising ingenuity.
Still, Assassin’s Creed hasn’t returned to the lofty heights of the old days, but for the first time in a long time it’s climbing in the right direction. SR
