Republished on Wednesday, December 28, 2022: I will be reviving this review from the archives after the announcement. PS Plus lineup for January 2023The original text is below.
Fallout 76 will be remembered as a defining moment for Bethesda Game Studios, not in a good way. A fully multiplayer version of the Fallout franchise, this game is a technical blunder maxed out with bugs and performance issues. The real kicker, though, is that even without all of the glitches and frame rate issues, Fallout 76 feels like a jerky, empty piece of cash that can’t justify its existence on almost every level.
The core of Fallout 76 is taken from Fallout 4. This is an open world title that we really like. Fallout 4’s roleplaying elements have unfortunately been undone, but the gameplay loop of exploring, shooting mutants, looting, completing quests, scavenging resources, leveling up, and crafting is well done and addictive. was. This same gameplay loop exists in Fallout 76, but is set in an open world that is seriously outdated in 2018, both visually and mechanically.
The bottom line is that Fallout 76 feels like a fan-made multiplayer mod for Fallout 4, but it’s clearly a full-price retail release. It still has many of the same bugs and glitches as , only increased in frequency by taking advantage of the online experience. It stutters all the time, both in and out of combat, and struggles to maintain 30 frames per second on a regular basis. It’s an absolute embarrassment on a technical level.
But as I said earlier, even if, by some miracle, Bethesda were able to fix all of the game’s technical flaws, Fallout 76 remains a completely irrelevant multiplayer experiment. A uniquely vibrant Fallout game set in West Virginia just decades after the nuclear apocalypse. The abundance of flora gives this title a certain charm. The setting is closer to The Last of Us than Fallout as we know it. That charm is enough to make the game world look interesting on a surface level.
At the moment, Bethesda is considered one of the best games in the industry when it comes to creating complex open worlds, and Fallout 76 is another title that really asks you to explore every nook and cranny. Exploration is undeniably the highlight of the experience, even if the sense of place is marred by noticeable texture pop-ins and various other visual issues. It doesn’t help that it hardly looks any better than the games that were already out at the time.
Still, discovering overtly bizarre locations and combing through them for secrets is what keeps us playing Fallout 76. The game includes throwaway fetch quests that zigzag around the map just to find another note on a corpse, and holotapes that conveniently explain a particular character’s entire backstory, droned over and over again. It is full of things to be done. By the way, you’d better get used to seeing a partially decayed body. Because there are no non-playable characters you can control other than robots.
Bethesda emphasized this when the game was first announced. Every living human you meet in Fallout 76 is another player. Other than that he only has about 20 players on each server, the chances of actually running into another survivor from the vault are slim. You can spend hours without seeing another soul. another The corpse looks comical.how is that every day A man in West Virginia happened to be dead? Why are their corpses still there, perfectly placed next to the quest objective? How come you can’t see the soldiers on patrol? It’s very poor world building.
On top of that, there’s clunky moment-to-moment gameplay pulled straight out of Fallout 4. The barely upgraded combat mechanics make Fallout 76 feel very unstable and unsatisfying by today’s standards. If the stuttering misses aim or the game doesn’t require multiple button presses to actually register the action, then you’re swinging your melee weapon in the general direction of the enemy. A dangerous hitbox. It’s also a shame, because some of the new enemies that appear in this illuminated West Virginia are well-designed and pretty exciting to discover.
Even VATS, the slow-motion auto-targeting system of past Fallout titles, can’t save this awkward farce. When you enter VATS in Fallout 76, enemies will be highlighted and you’ll see real-time accuracy. It’s basically auto-aim, but sometimes it’s better to aim manually, as your accuracy fluctuates wildly as you and your opponent move. It’s a broken mechanic on the edge and you may wonder how it passed the test, but this whole game passed the test. somehow.
Moving on, the survival mechanics are meant to keep you hooked. There are generally no strict issues with survival elements, but they should be implemented properly. Unfortunately for Fallout 76, keeping hunger and thirst under control is just a chore. Food is plentiful, and cooking is always an option, as almost every beast you kill has meat attached to it. After all, it feels like the game is wasting your time by asking you to hop into a disorganized inventory menu and eat.
And you have a bloody weight limit to worry about.In Fallout 76 you’ll be grappling with inventory space, but there’s no effective way to determine what’s bothering you. A collection of stimpacks? Do you have all the ammo? The only way you’re going to find it is by meticulously examining each individual item you have. You’ll have to walk, and eventually you’ll find yourself spending more time fiddling with menus than playing games — and that’s even more true if you’re the type to build your own home. .
This review barely touches on the multiplayer aspects of the game, mostly because Fallout 76 doesn’t feel like a multiplayer release. never come across. If encountered, most people will happily ignore you and go about their own business. The only way to guarantee any kind of interaction is to play with one or her two friends, which honestly is one of the few things that make Fallout 76 fun . Fallout titles have always been lonely experiences, conveying devastation and loneliness.
Teaming up with a buddy is highly recommended.It’s a hassle to get through West Virginia alone, not because the wasteland is particularly dangerous.In fact, the problem with playing solo is that it takes twice as long to do everything and the gameplay loop is already more than enough. For example, some enemies have huge health bars, and thanks to brain-dead artificial intelligence, fighting yourself is a matter of whether you can shoot your head repeatedly for five minutes.
It’s not even worth elaborating on player versus player combat.
On the flip side, there is one thing I really liked about Fallout 76. It’s sheet music. We’ve got some great ambient his tracks here, and the gloriously named composer Inon Zur creates great atmospheric music that deserves to be used in a much better game.
Conclusion
Fallout 76 is a very lax attempt to make money in the multiplayer survival market. Fallout with Friends is an interesting concept on paper, but I can’t think of a better way for Bethesda to screw it up. Even as an experience, Fallout 76 is a letdown thanks to its archaic design and surprisingly poor worldbuilding. you really TRUE If you enjoy Fallout 4’s gameplay loop and want to share it with your friends, it might just be a nugget of fun scattered around, but still, can Bethesda fix the game’s relentless technical performance? Better to wait to see if Fallout 76 is dirt on the developer’s record and cannot be easily scrubbed clean.
