Fallout 76

With the classical Bethesda core gameplay that all we love, and also the old flaws (with a bunch of new additions) Fallout 76 is possibly the worst modern Fallout, but the worst Fallout is still a title plenty of games would want for themselves.

It’s not perfect, but look beyond the bugs and there is a deeply rewarding game to be found in Fallout 76.

As much as I’d like to be able to tell you that this title is terrible or amazing, the truth is that it’s just okay.

Fallout 76 fails at many things, but its core gameplay still is fun and engaging. This is enough to keep you going, but it is not what you would expect from an online-based AAA, and even if all the bugs can be fixed, there are many things (combat, mission design, inventory system) that would be much harder to fix.

While Fallout 76 is effectively a buggy mess, marred by frame-rate issues, quest bugs and general calamity when it comes to the engine, there’s still a decent amount of fun to be had here. Whatever you do, though, don’t come in expecting Fallout 5 otherwise you will be supremely disappointed. Fallout 76 is effectively about base-construction, survival and world-building, not the story and your part in it, which isn’t a bad thing. The execution is though.

But it’s hard to feel as if you’re truly affecting the world when there are no NPCs to express satisfaction or disdain, or to be directly influenced by your actions. Even killing feels hollow. Some of my best battles in Fallout 4 came when I stumbled across an outpost and found there a raider in there; he’d yell and scream at me as we were facing off. The Scorched, while armed, feel like nothing more than zombies.

If you enjoy multiplayer games of this type and are willing to overlook the engine anomalies, you may find yourself rapidly addicted to the game's exploration density and loot systems. If you're easily frustrated by bugs and issues, you may want to sit tight a bit to see what Bethesda does to polish things up, cus oh boy, it could use a bit right now. If you're a fan of the single player, branching narrative the series is known for, you'll want to wait for Fallout 5.

Fallout 76 is fun to play; the simple loop of scavenging and exploration and crafting and progression works well when you’re in a group. Alone, it gets pretty old pretty fast - especially when dealing with bugs and glitches and performance woes. Ultimately it’s disappointing that the size and scope of the multiplayer doesn’t match the impressive West Virginia you get to explore.

Before we can even think of what might come next, Bethesda needs to make the core game more stable and fair. While I found it to be mostly enjoyable from an exploration standpoint, the frequency of server crashes, freezes, and technical issues is unacceptable. The foundation for another fun Fallout experience is in place, but you end up watching it crumble before your eyes as you play. The game just wasn’t ready for showtime.

Fallout 76 is a confusing experience, a discord of half-baked ideas and false premises but also some genuinely smart gameplay mechanics that allow solo players and groups alike adventure in equal terms. I want to desperately love it more but as it stands now, the game makes it pretty tough. Still, I will have my Frankie keep on going, no matter how stubborn that might be in the long run.

The expansive and varied Appalachia in Fallout 76 cannot compensate for the tormenting bugs and a huge list of defects. Uninspired MMORPG quests, brainless grinds and disposable co-op functionality make this game feel like an enormous piece of Fallout DLC, but without the factions and compelling side quests, and added frustration.

Fallout 76 is akin to Ark: Survival Evolved, being that much of its potential is lost in the midst of its many technical faults. To be clear, at its core, this isn’t a bad game, in fact, there’s a lot of fun to be had in its padded world if you enjoy this type of gameplay loop. It’s a shame that in its current form, most of that fun is frequently interrupted by horrendous framerate, countless bugs, delayed rendering, and shoddy design choices.

Neither in its concept nor in its execution has the first Fallout Online convinced us, which perhaps should have looked a little more in the mirror of The Elder Scrolls: Online for its debut. Will it come back? Only time will tell.

The addition of multiplayer feels as though it comes at the expense of Fallout’s memorable story-driven moments. What good is a vast map full of players if they're given little to no purpose? When no other players are around, the game’s world feels almost empty. The attention-grabbing locales and landmarks add to Appalachia's charm, but it's difficult to not wish for living, breathing characters to inhabit it. Post-apocalyptic West Virginia is described as a wasteland, and this term paints an inadvertent but accurate picture of what Fallout 76 is right now.

With the emphasis on human to human interaction, Fallout 76 removed many living NPCs in favor of journals, AI, and radio broadcasts to fill the void. Although this makes sense for a game that is meant to concentrate on multiplayer, it certainly seems to have made the wasteland feel a bit more empty and lonely.

A fascinating world and several good ideas are ruined by lots of technical problems and some design choices that make Fallout 76 almost unplayable. When it works, it can really shine; but this happens very rarely at the moment.

The main problem with Fallout 76 is that it is built by a company which has specialized at creating solid single-player titles, and the result is countless bugs and technical issues. Maybe Bethesda is laying the foundation and gaining experience for future MMO titles, or maybe they’ll improve it by releasing patches and more, but in its current state, Fallout 76 is a not a title worthy of the Fallout name.

In an effort to do everything, Fallout 76 fails to do any of it well enough to form an identity. Its multiplayer mindset robs its quests of all the moral decisionmaking that makes the series great, and all that’s left is a buggy mess of systemic designs that never seems to work together and regularly contradicts itself.

This experience isn’t ruined by other players trolling or harassing me or breaking immersion, it’s ruined by the mere concept of being on a live server itself, and the fact that this was rushed out before any engaging story elements were able to be crafted to populate this map. This is a huge, rare, total miss by Bethesda, and even if it’s improved in time, I can only judge it by the hours I’ve lost to it so far.

We tried so hard to like Fallout 76, but the game didn’t allow us to do it.

An interesting experiment that fails to nail either side of the experience, it uses Fallout trappings to good effect and can be fun with great environmental storytelling and West Virginia itself is gorgeous. The lack of NPCs and overall cohesion along with lacklustre PvP hinder its identity, however.

A sort of big multiplayer mod of Fallout 4, which shares the features and interface errors that have not changed since 2015, Fallout 76 is a collection of uncertain mechanics and unclear rules, served in a dated and technically unstable fashion. All that remains is for Bethesda to work hard so that we can better understand the real strengths of the game, and not its many weaknesses.

There's no sugarcoating it: Fallout 76 comes up short at nearly everything it aims to be. It's not a good role-playing game and it's not a good multiplayer experience. It never really feeds into the gradual RPG power fantasy but it's also inadequate as a survival simulator. In wanting to be so much, Fallout 76 doesn't amount to much at all.

I can’t recommend Fallout 76 to more than a handful of people. A niche few will still be drawn to it, perhaps out of curiosity, a completionist’s need to devour all things Fallout, or, like me, a morbid desire to simulate life after the end of the world. For everyone else, hold onto the hope that Bethesda learns a lesson from this failed experiment.

Bethesda has betrayed Fallout's spirit to create a game full of bugs and without a soul.

Fallout 76 can look and feel like its illustrious predecessors at times, but it's a soulless husk of an experience.

Bethesda has chosen to release a half-finished, buggy mess of a title in its current state. This isn’t early access, nor is it a beta — this is apparently a finished product that I have to assess. I have: it’s garbage. This poor release provides Bethesda the opportunity to take notice of two key takeaways: the Creation Engine needs to go, and single-player developers shouldn’t bite off more than they can chew when making a multiplayer game. And this comes from a guy who looked past Fallout 4‘s last-gen engine and subsequent failings to give it a 10/10. Free pass no more, Bethesda.

Even if all the systems would work, this would be a mediocre and shallow Fallout experience. With all the bugs, inconsistencies and technical problems this is little more than a post-apocalyptic mess.

Fallout 76 is a confused product that blows it on so many levels. 76 represents a critical misunderstanding about what makes the Fallout franchise special, and sacrifices all those pieces to shoehorn in a half baked and barely functional online system. While I applaud taking a chance on a crazy idea, Fallout 76 would undoubtedly have been a better and more engaging experience as a traditional open world RPG. As it stands, this is a broken, unfun, and repetitive title that I can’t recommend. And that hurts me to say.

A disastrous failure whose technical shortcomings may one day be fixed but whose design failings, and obliviousness to its own potential, suggests a game that is irrevocably broken.

Stripped of the series’ trademark color and hi-jinx, Fallout 76 turns into a heartless trek through a barren wasteland filled with mindless enemies and arduous, inconsequential quest lines. Although there are some curious set-pieces, the lack of interaction with the world means even the most detailed of its environments fall flat. You shoot mutants, collect scrap, build things and repeat, all under the guidance of cosmically vast reams of recordings left by dead people. Despite its colossal size, Fallout 76 stretches out into a whole lot of nothing.