Survival is a difficulty on Fallout 4 that changes many things about the game, making it much harder to play.

Hunger, thirst a sleep need to be managed if you want to have any chance of survival. Diseases must also be managed now as well as fatigue. This means that the most effective character is one at the top of its health. I quite like these things about survival mode, it means you have to me more careful about what you take with you plus you’re limited even further by a lowered max carry weight than in the normal game. Another change is that enemies are no longer marked on the compass to make combat more challenging, which works quite well. Fast travel is also removed which is good because you can explore instead of just bouncing back to base after every mission.

The survival mode fails when it only lets you save while you sleep and you have to find a bed to sleep. This would be fine but the game is totally unpredictable, you never know what the enemy is carrying or what they’re likely to do which can mean lost progress for something that wasn’t your fault. The save issue is worse when you remember that Fallout 4 is notorious for glitches and losing twenty minutes and a new rifle because you got stuck in a wall isn’t good. One of the most predictable areas of the game is Concord at the start of the game where you know there’ll be a Deathclaw waiting for you – Deathclaws are some of the most dangerous enemies normally, on survival this is just brutal. The mode also doesn’t work well because of the developer’s attitude to difficulty which is that the enemies deal more damage while you deal less which makes it take forever and a bit to kill something while the player dies in one shot.

I honestly think that if the game had fewer glitches and the survival elements had been put in with normal damage numbers then this could be a great, maybe even the best way to play Fallout 4. If it gets fixed then it could be perfect but as it is I can see what they’re doing but it doesn’t work.

 

The art that I’m using as the featured image was found on the achievements section of the Xbox website. The character shown is the vault boy who fans of the series will recognise and anyone else might not see the appeal of. The vault boy has his thumb up which could be to the player or it could be to do with nuclear safety as he has one of his eyes closed too. I like the artwork and think it’s quite clever.