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.