Combat

Changing the Perspective

The game allows you to freely switch perspectives, from first-person to third-person. First-person is the standard view for most shooters and it's actually recommended if you're engaging targets at long range with your gun. Third-person is an ideal view for characters who prefer melee or close-range combat. This view provides a wider perspective, allowing you to track your character and your enemies' movements much easier. Changing perspectives is possible with just a press of a button.

V.A.T.S

The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System or simply VATS is a unique Fallout targeting system that will allow you to accurately target specific body parts of your target. VATS stops time in the preceding last-gen Fallout titles but in Fallout 4, VATS just slows down time. This means that you can't take your sweet time selecting the body part you want to blow up especially if the enemy is in mid-swing towards you.

The accuracy of your attack in VATS will be shown for each body part and is affected by several factors like cover, distance, target's armor, your innate accuracy, your weapon accuracy, perk bonuses, size of the target, etc. Damaging or destroying specific body parts have effects and will be quite important in different tactical situations. For example, targeting the head can instantly kill the target if the shots land. However, headshots have naturally low hit rates. Damaging/destroying a target's arm will prevent him/her from effectively using his/her weapon. Taking out the legs will greatly affect their mobility. The torso has the highest hit rate but the damage won't be that exceptional.

The number of actions you can do while in VATS will depend on your AP gauge. If ever you consumed your AP, you can still enter VATS but you can't do any actions within VATS until your AP replenishes to the desired action's required AP cost. This is a very efficient system especially once you learned the VATS-enhancing perks.

Covert Ops

Attacking an unsuspecting enemy allows you to deal more damage. Being able to silently infiltrate a base gives you the element of surprise. You can even work around defenses and take out the targets one by one. Stealth is affected by your equipment, perks and Agility attribute. Additionally, stealth combat is ideal only on situations when the enemy traps and firepower is superior than you. It's still best if you can accurately and effectively take out enemies from afar, let's say using a sniper rifle. The game offers a lot of variety especially with how you distribute your points and select your perks so having a stealthy sniper is all but one of the possible builds in the game.

Health management

Treat stimpaks are valuable commodity so make sure you use them sparingly. There are a lot of other options to restore your health like eating natural and processed foods but these have a small amount of radiation in them. The Water is also irradiated as well. Furthermore, you can kill mutated wildlife and consume their meat. Fortunately, the game offers ways to get around these tradeoffs.

In most settlements and marked buildings, you'll find crafting stations like Cooking Stations where you can cook the raw meats in your possession. Cooking removes the radiation in them (for some reason) and also frees up space in your inventory. Since cooked Food is lighter than the raw ingredients, you'll be able to carry more stuff.

Even if the Water is contaminated, you'll still have access to fresh underground water. Simply build a well in any of your settlements and interact with it to drink from it. Sleeping on any bed or mattress (even for an hour) will completely restore your health. However, you can only do that on unowned Beds or when the coast is clear.