Fallout 76

An unfinished game with bifurcated identity and in an almost dysfunctional state. It's hard to build on a bad base, that will never change. Like the war. [Issue#292]

The reality, inevitably, is that you want Fallout 76 to play like a Fallout game, and on those terms it fails to satisfy. After all, how could you not want that from it? [Jan 2019, p.110]

Α shell of this franchise's glorious past. Fallout 76 is a disgrace to the series, with tedious questing and material grinding. Buggy and glitchy, clearly it was not ready to hit the market and the beautiful, huge world remains unexploited. An on-line survival co-op that, simply put, doesn't possess the “know-how” these games require.

Fallout 76 just barely fulfills its promise of the ability to experience Fallout with friends. However, an overall lack of content and polish will wear down even the most ardent Fallout fans.

At launch, Fallout 76 is a poor experience. There are echoes of the series' admirable qualities, but look past that facade, past the cute Vault Boy animations, past the familiar radio tracks, and you'll find no heart--just an inconsequential wasteland doomed to be nuked over and over again.

Fallout 76 isn't particularly indicative of the best of the modern Fallout games, nor is it an amazing survival game given its competition. It's not the worst game in the world or anything, but it very much just exists. It merely says, "I'm here too," instead of standing out. Fallout 76 in its current state is the game version of the Amphicar Model 770: it sometimes works, but it's still the worst of both worlds.

Fallout 76’s mundane quest and lifeless story put too much weight on the aged combat and trivial crafting for them to bear. It’s a multiplayer experiment with far too many flaws to put up with, both in its limiting player interactions and its woeful technical polish. Fallout with friends is still an idea that could work one, but that’s not what Fallout 76 is serving up.

Its empty and soulless world, completely bland quest design, limited variety of unpolished content that gets repetitive very quickly, plus the typical game-breaking bugs and glitches we've come to expect from a Bethesda title using the same decades-old game engine, mean that Fallout 76 is a game that doesn't even quite manage to appeal to the special "co-op/survival" crowd it wants to appeal to in the first place, let alone old or newer fans of the Fallout franchise.

Fallout 76 represents a big disappointment and the lowest point of the series so far. Riddled with bugs, repetitive and dull gameplay, nonexistent story and outdated graphics, it fails as a both multiplayer and singleplayer experience for fans and newcomers alike.

It's sloppy and boring wherever you look. Fallout 76 feels like a mishmash of half-baked ideas rather than a proper MMORPG with a decent story and exciting challenges for both lone wolves and groups.

Fallout 76 is a game where you keep hoping that things will get better if you stay patient and play just a bit further. Such a moment never arrives, and with more time, it only becomes more obvious just how broken it is. When something goes wrong, you're not quite clear if it's your fault or the game's because of how many issues you run into. Any game releasing in this state is unacceptable, but the problems go well beyond the technical ones. When this hollow game is not actively breaking, it feels as though it's barely hanging onto a concept that doesn't seem in any way remarkable even in the best circumstances.