Sure, the landscape looked a little rough around the edges compared with, say, Horizon Zero Dawn or the Cowboy Game, but the lighting was gorgeous, and Appalachia felt like the epitome of the American wasteland. I could hear the wind rippling through the autumnal woodland spread out before me, and the land seemed to thrum with the promise of freedom. It was fun generating a sort of emaciated, red-nosed Stalin-alike called Big Mike Lunchtime, and the moment when he left the vault and took his first digital lungful of Appalachian air was a real thrill.
I had set off determined to make the most of things, in defiance of expectations. Whatever lurks at the end of Fallout 76’s muddily-textured rainbow, there’s no way it’s transcendentally brilliant enough to justify the dour monotony of the mid-game. In talking to players who have gotten there, I’m satisfied that I didn’t miss much by taking an early bath. I’m pretty sure the denouement involves massive bats, but I can’t be sure: I couldn’t muster the patience to reach it, due to the sheer frustration and boredom involved. The plot ropes in various factions and characters, but they're all long-dead. This involves travelling around a vast open map, sweeping the brutes from key areas, then looting them for better kit while listening to your latest audio log marching orders. Swarms of diseased rage-lads have wiped out all pockets of decent civilisation, leaving only robots and ghouls, and so you’re swiftly commandeered (by… yourself, I suppose? You never meet the overseer, so you’re essentially being ordered around by audio logs) to deal with the situation. As soon as you set out, you’re sent on the trail of the vault overseer, who left ahead of you and discovered grim business afoot in Appalachia. You never really get to do much rebuilding, though. Now, however, it’s Reclamation Day, and you’re all being kicked out into the wilderness of Appalachia with a mandate to rebuild America. You and a group of other survivors have been huddled in the underground shelter of Vault 76 for a quarter of a century, enjoying jaunty propaganda films and shredding on acoustic guitars. It’s set in an alternate timeline, where the culture and aesthetics of 1950s Americana have persisted right up to a cataclysmic nuclear war in 2077. And so, alas, the kicking must begin.īut before the first savage whoomph of leather on foam, a quick idea of what the game’s about. This crunched-up mascot has beckoned me to street level with a mauled finger, put my ear to its blood-dampened beak, and called me a wanker. This game isn’t a noble vision gone awry, or a gleefully reckless creative overstretch - it’s a stolid failure to innovate, resting imperiously on the laurels of a 20-year-old RPG.
By the time I picked it up, it felt unsporting - cruel, even - to run in and deliver a sharp kick to a man already dying inside a foam owl costume.īut mercy should be reserved for those who ask for it - and Fallout 76 does not. In the weeks since its release, reviewers have piled on it like a pack of football hooligans who’ve just seen the opposing side’s mascot waddle desperately past their pub.