Impressive how much they managed to make Miles feel so different to play as compared to Peter. Lots of small improvements, venom attacks bring a whole new layer to combat and fewer gadgets (which are also far better balanced than the prior game) focus you onto integrating the venom attacks into your flow. I like being able to jump in and out of stealth with camoflage as well, along with new interesting enemies to go up against the combat is a treat.

I wish I could go back to how it felt trying the web-swinging on PS4 for the first time, it has lost it's lustre slightly but is still phenomenally fun. Miles' new animations are great for adding that little bit of freshness back to it.

The story is really well told and cast, with a nice balance between cutscenes and gameplay. Insomniac's Spiderverse is a stellar one, with some of my favourite cinematic adaptations of the series' characters. Though, somehow has some of the best and worst suit designs, especially in Miles Morales.

I still can't get used to the new Peter face though. I hope we can have a option to switch to the old one in the next game.

One of the most toxic relationships I have had with a game. Visually it varies from shades of ugly to pretty good, I personally like that Bethesda have tried to make there own cohesive visual style for the Fallout universe. I'm sad to see a departure from the series RPG roots but also I do not think Bethesda could have done it justice so I'm somewhat glad they decided to try to do what they thought they could do best rather than try and emulate the series past. I don't think they really did that either though to be honest... Gameplay systems are a mess, perks vary a lot in quality and usefulness. But most importantly most of them are just boring... Much like Skyrim, so many of the perks are just... You can do 10 percent more damage with x type of weapon... Let me just take a single proficiency perk that makes handguns for example scale in damage with my level rather than having to spend perk points every dozen levels to up my handgun damage by a percentage? The quests are pretty awful, the non-radiant quest feel like they are. It feels as though they didn't have any faith that the player to want to do anything other than go somewhere and kill a thing and so didn't try to have any quests that are any more involved than that. In fact I often prefer the radiant ones purely because you don't have to wade through the mediocre dialogue. The plot of the main story is predictable and says very little. The only discernable choice you have in the game is to at the very end side with one of four factions that each sit on a gradient between comically evil and good. This only really changes what big set piece explosions happen at the end.

So why do I have an embarrassing number of hours in this game... I love the world of Fallout. And this game HAS potential. The sandbox elements and fun gunplay make this an ideal game to turn your brain off after work with retro futurist flare, where I can play through a chill loop of building settlements, requiring more materials, exploring and collecting scrap, rinse and repeat. It's fun and chill, with mods you can make the game a hell of a lot better. Overhaul mods like Horizon or Lunar Fallout or change individual systems you don't like (highly recommend WhiskyTangoFawks on Nexus), Sim Settlements 2 and it's multiple sequel chapters for the settlements you want to be a bit more hands-off with and a miriad of different settlement objects to make your scappy Commonwealth settlements look however you want, new weapons, new quests, more stuff to do.

But the base game is still there, you'll likely still have to interact with it. So often I will spend more time modding the game than I do actually playing it. Hours on the Nexus and in Mod Organizer 2 downloading, installing, patching, resolving conflicts, tweaking things myself, testing and finally... I'll play and remember, it's still Fallout 4... Exit the vault, talk to Codsworth, save Preston from Concord, Find Kellogg, check in with the factions... I still have to run through all the extremely uninteresting dialogue and abyssmal quests. Here is when it gets boring and I'll often turn off after an hour or so...

So I don't know. With mods this game has the potential to be a fun sandbox game with some stellar content created by the community. I would honestly say I have more fun modding the game than I do playing it most of the time. I've learnt how to make some simple mods myself, discovered a lot about how the engine works. For that I can't say I don't enjoy modding and playing Fallout 4. Modding is a bit of a fun puzzle in and of itself.

In the over 2000 hours I've played this game I have not reached the game's "ending" more than once. Each playthrough I give up trying and I ask... "Maybe it would be more fun with x mod". But it all comes with the unfortunate caveat that they are still mods built on top of Fallout 4.