Author: BurnTyre

Fallout 4: Kelly Macabre

Author(s): neeher

Link: Nexus Page

Lore-friendliness: 

Installation level: (easy)

Overall rating: (excellent mod)

Synopsis:

Endure a brief spooky quest to obtain the Kelly Macabre, a rifle made by a demented little girl named Madison.
Madison Kelly from The Kelly Manor Horror is back with another game for the player. 

My impression:

This one continues – as said in the Synopsis – the Kelly Manor mod by the same author. A new spooky house to explore (around 30-40 min playtime), a new story told, and the best of all that: You meet Madison again!

So, why did I give only 3 stars to that one? Because of one thing, that really bothers me – it doesn’t check anywhere if you played Kelly Manor horror or not. It’s completely standalone, and Madison spawns immediately after loading up the game (at least she did for me). The author acknowledges that in his dialogue, so Madison remains vague about where she knows you from, but, if you have both mods installed, and you’ve already played through Kelly Manor, everything is fine, the lore fits, chronologically everything is ok, and that would indeed end up with 5 stars like Kelly Manor got. I wouldn’t have to give that a thought.

But, if you haven’t played Kelly Manor already, and considering that the quest for Kelly Macabre starts immediately, it messes up your experience with those mods, ending up with you doing the Macabre quest first and only afterwards being able to play Kelly Manor. And that’s something the author should really look into – Kelly Macabre is new, so an update might be coming fixing that, as that in fact is requested on his mod page by quite some users.

And if there’s a fix, I will surely re-evaluate the rating of this mod.

But for the lore-friendliness, I’m in fact more happy with this one than the last one: Although it still has the – more or less – same look and feel, overall the house fits more into the world of Fallout than Kelly Manor. I’m highly subjective here, in both cases, I know, but after all, this is a review, so there’s of course subjectivity in it.

Fallout 4: The Kelly Manor Horror

Author(s): neeher

Link: Nexus Page

Lore-friendliness: 

Installation level: (easy)

Overall rating: (excellent mod)

Synopsis:

A spooky horror quest mod. Go inside the Kelly Manor, enter a world of terror and hope you can escape alive.

My impression:

If you’re into horror-themed mods, this one is exactly right for you. It’s a short quest (if you find everything fast, it averages around 30 minutes), but intense. Tells a good story, too.

So, why did I decide to give lore-friendliness only 3 stars out of five? After all, the story fits into the Fallout universe, and spookiness and horror aren’t exactly new to that universe either (the Dunwich stuff in FO3 and 4, etc.)

But it just doesn’t feel like Fallout – in fact, it’s look and feel rather reminds me of games like “Five Nights at Freddy’s”. That’s not bad, it’s in fact good, I love it, but it cut 2 stars off the max possible of lore-friendliness.

Otherwise, it’s so well done, I’ve given it 5 stars overall. I really do recommend playing through that one – you’ll love it!

Fallout 4: Fusion City Rising

Author(s): Recluse and Thuggysmurf

Link: Nexus Page

Lore-friendliness: (not really)

Installation level: (easy)

Overall rating: (good mod)

Synopsis:

There is an underground city in the Glowing Sea, called Fusion City. Founded by Ini-Tec, a new faction/pre-war company not represented anywhere in the lore (at least not that I’m aware of) of the Fallout universe. Attached to that city is the Club Fusion, a giant multi-floored night club. Some parts of Club Fusion are NSFW, but only if you use a nude body (CBBE is required, but that has nude and non-nude models).

My impression:

Overall, I give this one a 4 star rating. The only downside, that cost it the fifth star, is, that without CBBE it looks horrendous (although the mod author lists it as recommended, in fact, it is a requirement). But be aware of the other recommended mod, Valkyr Face Textures – I won’t post a link to that one, as it’s faulty and can totally mess up your game. Don’t download it – the people look good enough with other face textures, even vanilla ones.

Why did I give the lore-friendliness only 2 stars? Well, first of all, that Ini-Tec storyline is unbelievable. It’s fun to explore it, to fight through the dungeons (by the way, those are really packed with enemies, so better prepare your graphics card for some heavy load). But it’s a load of… well.

And they included an old – since long disproven – fan theory about Deacon, that he is in fact the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3. That has been disproven, because it’s impossible to fit that into the timeline of the Fallout universe. Deacon would have to be much older than he is. In fact, it’s so much off lore, that I really was considering giving an overall rating of 3 stars, but as the mod all in all is well done and much fun, I think, 4 stars are ok.

How to read my reviews

This will be my blog for mod reviews etc. Whenever I find something interesting in the world of gaming mods, I’ll share it here.

A quick guide to how my reviews are set up:

On the top of the page you’ll find the author(s) and a link to the mod, then 3 ratings with a five-star system: Lore-friendliness, installation level and overall rating.

Lore friendliness, of course, rates how good the mod fits into the lore of the established Fallout universe. I refrain from just saying “lore-friendly: yes or no”, because in my opinion, there’s a big gray area between those two possibilities. Fitting that into a five-star rating seemed a good solution to me. This also affects the overall rating – low lore friendliness can downgrade the overall rating. But, as those reviews are all my personal opinion, that’s not a must – I can decide to not downgrade the overall rating, if the lore-friendliness is not important to me with a specific mod.

Installation level is also a five-star level, but doesn’t affect the overall rating at all, because it just indicates how easy it is to install via a good mod manager (I’m using Vortex). Of course, the more dependencies a mod has, the lower will be this rating: 5 stars is simply easy to install, just download, install via mod-manager, and you’re good to go, 1 star means it’s hard with a lot of dependencies, possible conflicts with other mods, etc. If a mod gets a lower rating than 5 here, I will add an explanation what to take into consideration when installing it, but there will be always the need to read the mod description pages – they always contain all relevant information.

And the overall rating? Well, that’s 100 percent subjective. It’s simply what I think of the mod in question. 1 star = bad mod, not recommended, 5 stars = exceptionally good mod, highly recommended.

After those ratings, if it is a quest mod that tells a story, there will be a short synopsis. And after that – well, the review itself of course.