There are a lot of things that come to mind when thinking of Fallout.
It's a series that has previously delivered relatable characters, intriguing stories,
and most importantly, fascinating worlds.
Fallout 76 has none of this.
It takes the most superficial shell of Fallout and awkwardly shoves multiplayer into it.
Any time Fallout 76 has a clever idea,
it's buried by an embarrassing number of technical problems
and bewildering design decisions that only get increasingly infuriating.
Fallout 76 desperately lacks a reason to keep playing
and although it has many problems, insufficient motivation to trudge on
is easily the worst among them.
The story is told almost entirely through audio recordings, written notes,
and computer terminals.
Much of the time, the information is used to provide insight into what happened to a particular location,
person, or group before a terrible event happened.
It's an idea that has worked wonderfully in past games in which
uncovering the tragedy, horror, and aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse was gripping
because of how imaginatively twisted things could get.
Fallout 76 feels sorely lacking in ideas by comparison.
The main story is so divided that at best, you're only given tiny pieces at a time.
Audio logs can drone on and they rarely say much of any value.
In-between the breadcrumb narrative, players are sent all over the map doing menial tasks.
You'll collect or kill something only to be told to do essentially the exact same thing
once the objective is done.
Worse still is that the game may not even let you move ahead with those tasks.
Many times the next step of a quest simply won’t trigger,
forcing you to log out and then back in, hoping the issue will sort itself out.
Sometimes this troubleshooting step resolves a bug;
other times it forces you to lose progress and repeat lengthy quests.
Abrupt server disconnects, combined with a lack of saved checkpoints,
can also force you to replay hours of progress.
If such things were relatively uncommon, it'd be easier to generate some level of sympathy and understanding.
Yet these annoyances are so frequent it's hard to keep track of them all.
With a lack of characters to interact with and decisions to make,
there's an even greater emphasis on combat and it's an emphasis that Fallout 76 cannot support.
Real-time combat in Fallout has long been awkward,
but that awkwardness is partially mitigated by the ability to slow down or stop time with VATS targeting,
providing a greater degree of control over the action.
Since Fallout 76 is an online game, VATS also happens in real time
and feels just as awkward as everything else.
It's not that VATS is worthless.
The system can be far more efficient than dealing with the imprecise melee combat or shooting,
but even at its best, you're just fumbling through encounters.
A lot of this sensation comes from how inconsistent and boring enemies are.
So many of them just mindlessly swarm the player.
This leads to the vast majority of fights feeling the same
even if creatures technically do different things.
Sometimes an enemy will just stand in the open taking punishment
without making any effort to defend itself.
Other times they completely forget you're there, even when you’re right next to them.
AI isn't flawless in any game, but it's usually functional.
In Fallout 76, it's hard to find any sort of rhythm because fights are just so clunky and glaringly busted.
There are constant survival elements that need tending to, like
dealing with hunger, thirst, and radiation poisoning.
However, all of these can usually be easily addressed.
The new approach to perks makes for good ideas overall, and it's appropriate
given the online nature of the game.
Upon leveling up, players put a point into one of the seven SPECIAL categories
and then pick a perk card from those categories.
Some of the perks are straightforward such as dealing more damage
or getting less radiation from food and water.
Perks can be changed on the fly to suit the need of the moment.
The system as a whole is very intuitive, which is especially welcome in a game where you can't pause.
Yet even one of the game's better aspects is undercut with its own bit of frustration.
Every so often, you'll acquire a perk card pack that contains a random assortment of cards.
It can be great to get cards you're interested in, but
it’s irritating receiving entire packs of cards you don’t have any use for.
This is even more frustrating at higher levels
since progress gets slower and therefore packs come far less frequently.
What is meant to be an ongoing carrot on a stick
lacks the consistent usefulness to be genuinely exciting.
Personal, movable camps are maybe the best idea implemented within Fallout 76.
Every player has their own unique base of operations.
In that base, you can build vital things such as a stash to put excess items,
a bed for recovering health, and a variety of necessary crafting stations.
Along with the basics, you can spruce up the place with decorations or construct an elaborate base
with whatever setup you choose.
Actually placing and building things is relatively simple.
If you're not the type of person with grand designs,
plopping down the essentials takes almost no effort.
The area you're given to build is fairly small though, so
if you like to get creative, you may feel a bit limited.
For a game that has online multiplayer as its chief selling point,
playing with others bizarrely feels like an afterthought.
Instead of Fallout 76 using multiplayer to create something truly new,
it really does amount to little more than Fallout 4 with other people jammed into it.
Beyond the most basic joys of socializing with friends, encounters being easier,
and the ability to fast travel to teammates,
there's little within the game itself that’s enhanced by playing with others.
There are public events meant to encourage engagement between players on a server,
but much like quests, these events are dreadfully bland.
Expect to kill waves of enemies, run from point to point, or defend an area.
It's not that these concepts are inherently bad or that other games don't rely on them,
it's just that Fallout 76 so very rarely has moments that feel special.
The game seems content with only using the most basic ideas,
and the moment-to-moment gameplay is far too cumbersome to make up for it.
After reaching level 5, you can choose to engage with other players in PVP,
doing only minimal damage unless they fire back.
If they do, normal damage is applied.
There's little reason in bothering with it since the rewards are just a bit of cash and some junk for crafting.
Plus, the defeated player can respawn and get to where they died so quickly
that there's zero satisfaction of taking them down in the first place.
Without a strong drive to engage in PVP, it ends up fading into the background almost immediately.
It's just another aspect that doesn't have the support or depth to carry any interest.
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.
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