Review roundup: Critics rave about new "Fallout 4" video game

A nuclear holocaust hits Boston in the 1950s. You hide in Vault 111, a fallout shelter, where you and your family enter a cryogenic sleep. You wake up 200 years later, only to find your child missing and your spouse dead. Looking for your child, you head out into a strange apocalyptic future with a retro aesthetic, full of robots, monsters, and fellow wanderers, each with his or her own agenda.

While it might sound like the intricate plot of a new sci-fi Hollywood blockbuster, it's actually the premise of "Fallout 4," the new role-playing video game available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PCs. "Fallout 4" has caused a stir among gaming fans, and now the critics are weighing in with mostly positive reviews for the game, which hit the market at $59.95.

For CNET's Jeff Bakalar, "Fallout 4" reels players into a believable world with a "seemingly endless amount to do" in its open-world environment. While it's been over seven years since Bethesda Game Studios released the last game in the franchise, Bakalar says it's been well worth the wait. This game is "amazingly focused and realized and is easily one of the best games I've played all year," he wrote. In addition to the cinema-quality storyline, he said it is the freedom that the photo-realistic world gives players that is the main selling point.

The game isn't without flaws. Bakalar noted that there are moments when a character might be seen from a bizarre camera angle with an object blocking a face from view, and the PC version presents some problems -- sometimes characters might be locked into place and unable to move, while others won't always respond to the player's button command.

But ultimately, he said fans will not be disappointed: "Fallout 4 is one of the year's best games -- an amazing post-apocalyptic world to explore and experience."

Popular video game site Gamespot echoed those praises. Reviewer Peter Brown wrote that the game is "engrossing" and "lures you in with mystery and the promise of adventure." Part of the appeal of a role playing game is to really feel invested in the character's circumstances: "You transform into an influential wasteland warrior over the course of a multitude of dangerous quests," Brown wrote.

Adding to the game's realism is its emphasis on the fact that, as with real life, many of the choices the protagonist has to make aren't easy. "Everyone wants to survive, but nobody wants to work together," Brown wrote of the nuclear war-ravaged Boston in the game's bleak world. He added that it is this conflict between "perfect" versus "imperfect" choices, "where your decisions influence the victories and tragedies" that makes the game particularly engrossing.

Brown also found some glitches with the game. He said that "basic animations" have a roughness that doesn't always make it feel finished. And he noted that character dialogue will sometimes end abruptly mid-sentence, so you might want to turn on subtitles to make sure you catch important lines. But "in the grand scheme of things, Fallout 4's minor issues pale in comparison to its successes," he concluded.

The Associated Press's Lou Kesten was also drawn into the immersive world. "I've spent dozens of hours gleefully immersed in 'Fallout 4,'" he wrote, though he took issue with "monsters floating in air" and "characters whose lips don't match with what they're saying."

While the world of the game is decidedly gloomy, Kesten said he appreciated some moments of comic relief, like the "wisecracking robots" and "sarcastic mutants" that offer a much-needed break from the dystopian future the protagonist wakes up into. He especially liked Vault Boy, an animated mascot who "responds to any tragedy (like, say, getting his foot blown off) with a smile and a thumbs-up."

Kesten added that the endless possibilities the game presents add to the fun. "I can't imagine any two people choosing the same path through this world," he wrote, giving an example that he spent hours "engaged in the seemingly tangential task of helping androids escape to freedom -- only to discover that those so-called 'synths,' were central to the core of the mystery." Essentially, even when diverging on an unexpected path, the player can expect his or her actions to tie back into the game's overarching plot.