Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition - Review
It has been more than 10 years since I originally reviewed Fallout 4 and while I did spend some time in the Commonwealth in the year following that, with the various DLCs, I have not strapped on a Pip-boy since then. While the Anniversary Edition released last year for other platforms, I wanted to wait for the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game. Was it a wait that ended up being worth it?
Honestly, yes. There is little I can say about the Switch 2 version of the game, other than it runs great, looks great and still contains the same fun adventure that the original game launched with back in 2015. Ok, before I dive into more platform specific things, let’s talk story. Now this is the same story as what released originally, your character wakes up from being frozen in Vault 111 and sets out to find their son, who was taken from the vault and your partner was killed trying to stop that. Now as this is Fallout, your story will often take a back seat to the various other stories that you discover along the way. Some of these stories were contained within the game originally, others have been added to the game since then via the DLCs. If you are someone who never played the DLCs or just plain forgot about them, then there is a nice level of discovery for what is original and what is expansion content. Now if you were not a fan of the story from the original game, there is nothing here that is going to change your mind, Preston is still himself after all.
Gameplay wise, again a lot of this will be very familiar to anyone who played the game before. The only major change is that there are extra quests and construction items in the game by default. This is either going to be something you notice, or something you don’t and while some items in the construction space are easily labelled, the quests are harder to pin down. Now if you had played the original game through and then added on the DLC, discovering what quests were new was easy. It is for that reason alone; I would have loved to have seen the option to disable some expansions in the game. As they are always on, even if you go into the option on the main menu, there is no disable option, they are just there. So anyone looking for a pure vanilla Fallout 4 experience won’t find that here.
What you will find is still an amazing game, with solid gunplay, a great world to discover and of course, companions that you will want to spend time with. While the early parts of the game are going to be slow going, what with you being unfamiliar with the world and the dangers that await, once you have about 10 hours under your belt, the world should not be a threat anymore. There will still be times when legendary creatures will be spotted by you and if they spot you in return, retreating will be the course of the day. For those who want to rush in and try their luck, I wish you all the luck in the world as you are going to need it.
Now one of the things that I was really keen to discover was just how well or bad the game ran on Nintendo Switch 2. Last year Bethesda did drop the Switch 2 Edition of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and to say it has issues, is like calling the sun hot, accurate but missing nuance. Coming into Fallout 4, I honestly expected a few of those same issues to be present, but I was surprised, after a few hours of play, nothing happened. Even after spending almost an hour building up Sanctuary, planting all the crops I could, nothing went poorly. About the only weirdness I discovered was when trying to sit at a computer, if there was a chair in front of it, beyond that I had no issues. Now the games biggest strength and weakness is the base building, because the more you build, the more custom the game is, but the more the game needs to keep track of. I ended up with 7 settlements in addition to Sanctuary and at no point did I discover any issues.
Visually the game looks fine, it is a slightly better-looking version of the original game and as long as you are ok with shades of green and brown, you will be ok here. There were a few times when the weather turned and left me impressed at how much better it made the game look. There were rainstorms, fog and even smoke, all of which helped make the world feel a little more real, you know before a Super Mutant came into wreck that. Characters still have their same wax type faces that most Bethesda Game Studios titles offer, which is fine and again as long as you know that you should not be let down.
Now there is a nice option here where you can toggle the games FPS, with 30, 40 and 60 modes selectable. I played the game in 30, as that is what I knew the original Xbox One release played at and it was fine. I did try the 40, and if you have a TV that supports it, it is a nice option and 60 while smooth, did make things a little blurry. Given that it is a toggle you can swap around, I am sure you can find one that works for you. I did notice a few issues of objects popping in, these are decorative items like traffic lights or ruined cars and never anything of importance, but it does happen a bit. The level of detail is also a bit smaller here than I was expecting, it is not an issue if you just walk around, but if you sprint across a field, trees, shrubs and other world details will pop in.
The sound is the same as it was in the original release, though I did think the mix was a little off for me, music from the game, not the in-game radio, but the main score was a bit loud to me, but a slider in a menu fixed that. The voice work is still good and while there are some NPC voices that do pop up in a few places, it does not impact things too much.
Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition is a really great port on Nintendo Switch 2. I was concerned of performance issues coming in, simply due to how demanding the game can be, but I encountered none. The addition of the DLCs is great, but I would have liked to have been able to toggle them, letting me enjoy the game in the same release cadence as the original game. If you have never ventured into the Commonwealth before, this is a fantastic way to do so.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by Bethesda
The Pros
Still lets you do the story and adventure anyway you want
Offers a vast world with a lot to do, especially with the included DLCs…
The Cons
… but I would have loved to have been able to toggle them off
There are a lot of elements that pop in, more so if you sprint around the world and the 60fps mode leaves things looking a little blurry
