With its highly anticipated release, Fallout 4 blew away all expectations as it brings the series’s best game to date.

The world of Fallout takes place in a world parallel to our own. The United States began isolating itself in order to preserve all of the remaining fossil fuels as all oil reserves across the world become exhausted.

The Middle East increases the price of oil drastically, which causes many small nations to collapse, and the European Commonwealth (The game’s equivalent of the European Union) invade the Middle East and starts the Resource Wars. Neither side benefits, and disputes in the United Nations cause it to disband. China’s economy never recovers, and the Soviet Union never collapses. The Middle East then begins to war with each other, and after a nuclear weapon deployed by terrorists destroys Tel Aviv, Middle Eastern countries launch all available nuclear weapons against each other and completely decimate the area.

As the oilfields in Mexico and Texas run dry, the United States bumps up their military presence along the Alaskan pipeline, causing tension with Canada. Leaders of the United States foresee the impending nuclear war and decide to start an organization, Vault-Tec, to build underground vaults in order to preserve the remnants of humanity.

Communist China invades Alaska starting the Sino-American War in order to seize the oilfields, and the United States and China battle for years until The United States captures Anchorage back from China. On the fateful day of October 23, 2077, all nuclear capable countries launch their nuclear bombs and missiles at each other, completely decimating the Earth. Many people thought the sirens were simply a test, and very few actually made it into the faults. Those who survived the blasts and those who survived in the vaults emerged to a devastatingly hostile world, with irradiated water, mutated creatures and corrupt human raiders.

Fallout 4 takes place in the Boston/Lexington/Concord area of Massachusetts referred by Wasteland survivors as The Commonwealth. As the lone survivor of Vault 111, you embark into the hostile wasteland in order to find your son, Shaun. The world of Fallout 4 is the most hostile Fallout world to date. Almost everything is trying to kill you, and will usually succeed if you are not prepared. The mutated creatures of the wasteland were terrifying in the last installments of Fallout, but with the enhanced graphics used in Fallout 4, you may think twice about straying away from safe zones in fear of Deathclaws, giant Radscorpions and the zombie-like feral ghouls.

This is personally my favorite Fallout game. I put countless hours in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas and I knew Fallout 4 would be the same but even then it blew my expectations right out of the water. There has not been a game that I have been immersed so quickly in. As with every game that Bethesda studios puts out, there are tons of bugs with the game whether major or minor, but the overall gameplay and perfectly written quests and characters overshadows these errors dramatically.

Fallout 4 is definitely my contender for game of the year.