Wednesday 26 December 2018

PC Game Review: Duke - Nuclear Winter


GAME: Duke - Nuclear Winter
RELEASED: 12/30/1997
DEVELOPER: Simply Silly Software
PUBLISHER: WizardWorks
AVAILABLE ON: PC

Duke Nukem 3D had a few expansion packs released for it after its release in 1996. These were "Duke It Out in D.C", a capitol themed campaign through DC, "Duke Caribbean - Life's A Beach" which is more of a summer vacation themed pack. And then there is "Nuclear Winter", the mandatory Christmas themed pack which was the only one to be developed by Simply Silly Software. So while I am sitting here with my mulled wine and Christmas cookies, and having just finished my annual playthrough of this expansion, I figured I'd give my thoughts on it before the year is over. Consider this my Christmas review this year.

The story goes that the Feminist Elven Militia (... yes, you read that correctly) has brainwashed Santa and are being supported by the aliens in a plot to take over the world. This brings up a fair amount of questions... Like why is there a Feminist Elven Militia, why are they taking over the world, and how does this stop Christmas from happening? In either case, Duke has to stop the feminazi elves, evil snowmen and aliens, get Santa back to normal and save Christmas. 

One of the most interesting and surprisingly out of place things in this expansion is a partial recreation of E1M1 from Doom.

Your journey begins surprisingly by playing the first two levels from Episode 1 of Duke 3D in reverse with a bit of a Christmas twist. While it does feel a little lazy, the levels still feel different enough to be somewhat fun to play, especially since these are levels that most people have probably played a fair bit. After that you journey towards the north pole through numerous levels that all carry a pretty fitting winter theme, complete with snowy weather and icy water.

Your enemies consists of reskinned pigcops and aliens, though some new enemies make their appearance exclusively to this expansion pack. Evil snowmen replace the Assault Commanders, Pigcop tanks and also function as generic troops that throw snowballs at you. The flying ones also use Freezethrower projectiles in place of the rockets from the vanilla Assault Commanders. And of course, the Elven Feminist Militia (EFM for short which sounds like a radio station), which consists of all female elves that either use dual UZI's, shrinkers or shotguns. 

Elves have a tendency to drop gifts upon dying which Duke can unwrap to pick up extra goodies like health, armor and weapons.
The level design is mostly alright in my opinion. It might be because of how much I've played the expansion but I rarely feel lost and aside from the level designers having a bit too much of a fetish for cheap tripbomb traps, I find the levels pretty fun to play. I especially love the level set in Santa's workshop and a Christmas village at the North pole. The levels are full of cool little details like Santa's naughty list, boxes of presents for rich and poor kids, and even a launch facility for Santa's sleigh. I must admit playing this pack always brings a smile to my face the further I get into it. My only complaint if anything would be that it's probably a bit short. The fight with the evil Santa Clause feels like it always comes sooner than I expect, perhaps not helped by the fact the first two levels are just reskinned versions of older levels from Episode 1.

Santa's a bit of a dick in this expansion until you beat him.
Graphically I think Nuclear Winter holds up fine. It doesn't always impress a lot with the level design, which at times feels like it could easily be made in the Doom engine, but I still love the little "Christmas-fied" details like the reskinned enemies, Christmas trees, unique enemies and even singing carolers in the second level. The cutscenes all use pretty cheap looking CGI which even at the time looked kinda nasty and some of the sprite work is also not up to par with an official Duke Nukem product. But it gets the job done.

The game features a rather nice selection of MIDI renditions of classic Christmas music. If you've ever wanted to hear a crappy synth version of Sleigh Ride, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty The Snowman then you're in for a treat. Admittedly I have a bit of a soft spot for these renditions and there is something endearing about spilling a ton of Feminist Elf blood while a cheery Christmas tune plays in the background. Santa himself has a pretty crappy voice too which sounds like it was recorded by one of the dev team. Definitely no Jon St. Jon.

This ending screen almost perfectly sums up the entire experience. I especially love the cheap Arial text and the "where" typo.
All in all, Nuclear Winter doesn't really feel like an official expansion at all. It feels like a fan made mod pack that you'd download for free. But despite its somewhat amateur presentation, I do feel the people who made this game were legitimate fans of Duke Nukem and wanted to do a fitting Christmas themed expansion for the game. And while the jokes don't always land that well and stuff like the "Feminist Elven Militia" and kinda weird Mario parody almost makes me feel like the game was made by angry teenage fanboys who just kinda hate anything that isn't porn and guns, I genuinely have fun with Nuclear Winter every Christmas. Whether I play it on my PS Vita or on PC, I don't feel Christmas is complete without it. I definitely don't recommend spending a lot of money on it, but if you got it with the Megaton Edition while it was still being sold or got it for free through less legal means, I definitely recommend at least giving it a try.

Merry Christmas!

SCORE:

STORY: 5/10
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 7/10
SOUND: 5/10
TOTAL SCORE: 7/10

Friday 21 December 2018

PC Game Review: DOOM (25th Anniversary Review)

GAME: DOOM
RELEASED: 12/10/1993
DEVELOPER: id Software
PUBLISHER: id Software
AVAILABLE ON: PC + all major platforms
1993 was an amazing year. Norwegian electro-rock group Apoptygma Berzerk released their debut album “Soli Deo Gloria”, Intel shipped the first Pentium chips, Windows 3.11 was released and a little game from a small indie developer was released on the 10th of December. The developer was the Texas based “id Software”. The game was simply titled “Doom”.

Leading up to the date, id Software had already released Commander Keen, which became a pretty big hit for the company due to being one of the first PC sidescrollers that actually smoothly scrolled the screen similar to console games like Super Mario Bros. They had also released the grand-daddy of FPS’s, Wolfenstein 3D a mere year earlier. But Wolfenstein 3D would look a generation behind what was to come and the moment Doom released, the hype had already reached a fever pitch. Demos had been released to the press, screenshots had been shown. People already knew that what was to come would be groundbreaking.

The day it released, the server it was hosted on crashed. It became a game that would define the 90’s for gaming as Nirvana’s Nevermind album had for music. It would be installed on more PC’s than Microsoft Windows, prompting Bill Gates himself to acknowledge the game’s immense popularity in a Windows 95 press conference. And it was one of the games that prompted the ESRB rating system to be created. When Doom arrived in December of 1993, the world changed and nothing was ever the same again.


Doom was a groundbreaking title mostly for the technology behind it. Back in the days of the early 90’s, 3D was seen as the next step in gaming. A lot of developers seeked to create a 3D game that could not only deliver a fully 3-dimensional immersive experience, but also run very fast on consumer hardware of the time. Wolfenstein 3D had achieved this by utilizing a technology called raycasting, where it would only draw the parts of the world the player looked at and the rest of it would not be in memory. This had its limitations of course and id Software dropped this engine in favour of something that would make a far more believable 3D world, without actually being 3D.
Due to CPU’s of the time still not being powerful enough to actually draw a true 3D world fast enough, and dedicated GPU’s not having even been made available yet, certain tricks were employed to make the game seem 3D without it actually being it. In reality, what you see on the screen is not actually 3D, but rather a 2D plane that appears 3D. This is why you can’t look up or down in vanilla Doom, and why your aim generally doesn’t matter since if an enemy is in front of you, he’s still on the same plane even if he’s drawn higher up than you.

What this meant for computers at the time was that Doom could run on any standard 486 computer of the time, and it would generally run very fast, and still deliver a world that seemed like true 3D. For many, myself included, playing Doom was like witchcraft. It turned your PC into a dimension to another world. The marine, who was left intentionally nameless (though he’s been affectionately known as Doomguy by the fandom), was meant to be you. Doom transported you into a world of demons, shotguns and heavy metal music unlike any game before it. It sucked you in relentlessly in a mercyless grip. It’s not without reason Doom was banned at several workplaces due to how insanely immersive (and ADDICTIVE) it was at the time.


Doom’s story is simple, almost cliché to a point. Science experiments on Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos have unintentionally opened a portal to hell itself, and hordes of demonic forces have made their way through these portals and either killed everyone or turned them into zombies. Everyone except you. As the lone survivor of the invasion, it is up to you to put an end to it, and shooting, punching, chainsawing, exploding, eviscerating and all around killing every single demon that stands in your way of doing so.

John Carmack has been quoted saying “stories in games are like stories in porn movies; they are nice but ultimately pointless.” And that mantra certainly holds true in Doom as the game is almost solely about its gameplay and the story takes a massive backseat to it, almost feeling trivial as the only story you get are a few text screens at the end of each episode.
Doom is split into 3 episodes, with a 4th episode added in the Ultimate Doom retail release (which is the basis for all future releases of the game on PC).
  • Knee Deep In The Dead (shareware episode)
  • Shores Of Hell
  • Inferno
  • Thy Flesh Consumed (Ultimate Doom)
The first 3 episodes are where the main story is and the fourth episode provides little more than some extra levels of extremely high difficulty compared to the main trilogy. It ties losely into the events of Doom 2 but otherwise was probably meant more as a bonus to those who bought the retail release.


To aid you in the battle for humanity, you have access to an arsenal that would serve as practically the prototype for all future games in the FPS genre. Your fists serve as your last resort, a mostly useless weapon, unless you get yourself a berzerk pack. Your starting gun, a pistol serve as a way of dispatching with the weakest of enemies and is only useful for dealing with zombies. You’ll soon acquire the most iconic weapon of the game and its main workhorse, the shotgun. A weapon that can efficiently deal with most of the game’s enemies and has a lot of ammo available for it.

The chaingun, which you first pick up in E1M2 if you gain access to a secret area, is the game’s main automatic weapon and can easily deal with large groups of enemies. And if you look closely in E1M3 you can pick up your very own rocket launcher. A weapon that can splatter most weaker enemies and deal reliable splash damage to larger enemies. Just make sure you don’t stand too close when firing it as the splash damage applies to you too.

Of course that is just the beginning. Episode 2 also gives you access to the Plasma Rifle, a powerful automatic rifle that can deal with most enemies quickly. And if you are clever you can even get access to the legendary BFG (Big Freakin’ Gun) 9000. A weapon with such devastating power that it can clear an entire room of enemies. In addition to these weapons you can also pick up a chainsaw, which becomes the default weapon on your number 1 key. It’s a more powerful melee weapon that is useful against some enemies that like to get up in your face such as the pinky demons and the spectres.

Guns aren’t the only thing helping you though. In addition you also have numerous powerups. Green armor will boost your armor to a maximum of 100%, while blue armor will boost it up to 200%. A blue sphere will boost your health to 200%. In addition you have the invisibility sphere, which turns you invisible. You have the berzerk pack which turns your fists into some of the deadliest CQC weapons in the entire game, able to splat weaker enemies in a single punch. The radiation suit which protects you against hazardous chemicals, including lava. And finally the invincibility powerup which makes you immune to all damage while it lasts.


The hordes of hell are definitely not to be trifled with and even if most of the enemies you fight are fairly weak, they do face you in large numbers. Especially if playing on the higher difficulties. Zombies come in two varieties. The normal pistol zombie and the more powerful shotgun sergeant. The shotgun sergeant in particular needs to be a priority in firefights as their shotgun can dish out some serious hitscan damage if you’re not careful. The imp is a fairly weak demon that flings fireballs at you and does claw attacks up close.

The pinky is a lumbering pink (hence the name) beast that likes to run up to your face and eat it off. Spectres are pinkies that are invisible. Barons of hell are towering demons that have more of a typical devil look with goat legs and a bloodcurdling roar. They fling plasma balls and can take quite a beating before going down and two of them serve as the episode 1 boss fight. Later on you’ll face the cacodemon, a floating monstrosity that belches plasma at you.

Boss fights are also a bit of an ordeal in Doom. At the end of episode 2 you’ll be face to face with the Cyberdemon, an enormous towering beast of cybernetics and flesh that fires rockets at you. Best dealt with if you have a BFG-9000 handy. The episode 3 boss is the Spider Mastermind, a frightening demon consisting of a brain with cybernetic spider legs that fires massive gatling guns at you. Both need to be dealt with using superior weaponry and fast skills.

Some of the demons, such as the aforementioned cacodemon, seem to be largely influenced by DND, which is no surprise given that the game started out as a DND campaign the team were playing.


For its time, Doom’s graphics were unparalleled in gaming. It marked the point where consoles could no longer deliver an experience that PC could, although attempts were certainly made given the game’s immense popularity at the time. A lot of it stemmed from the fact that the team put a lot of effort into making its world as realistic as possible with limited resources. Unlike today where everything in a game world is 3D, given the limitations of the engine most of the in-game assets are 2-dimensional sprites and textures. A lot of the textures were made from photo-references of various things. Even a fresh wound from one of the team members was used as a source for one of the textures.

The use of real-life objects also extended to the game’s weaponry and enemies. Several enemies, particularly bosses were modeled out of clay and then digitized into the game to give them a realistic look. And some of the weapons such as the chainsaw and shotgun were photographed from real life props. The shotgun was a toy shotgun they bought at Toys R Us and the chainsaw was borrowed from one of the team members. This immense attention to detail and dedication helped give the world a more realistic feel than most shooters of its time.

The graphical display became another essential part of Doom. Not only displaying all important information about your current state, it also shows a portrait of the helpless dude you’re playing as, and as your health drops the face will get bloodier and bloodier, similar to BJ’s face portrait in id’s previous game Wolfenstein 3D.


Sound-wise Doom has since become legendary for its use of stock library sound effects for pretty much all of its sounds. This is probably the reason a lot of the sounds from Doom can be heard in a multitude of other media, especially movies. Which often makes people assume the sound effects are taken from Doom, not realizing not a lot of sounds were made exclusively for Doom to begin with. Even its music is somewhat derivative, with a lot of it almost copying other works by hard rock bands such as Judas Priest and Metallica. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, given the music fits the game perfectly. It’s very hard to imagine Doom without its iconic soundtrack.
But there’s no doubt that from its legendary shotgun sound, to the haunting cries and roars of its demonic hordes, and its mostly silent but grunting protagonist, Doom’s soundscape is as memorable as it is perfectly fitting its setting. id Software did a lot with very little and it paid off. And with a decent sound card such as the Roland SoundCanvas or MT-32, the music sounds amazing.


It is hard to imagine a gaming world without Doom. Doom was a groundbreaking achievement not for how well it did 3D graphics, but how well it did them for machines at the time. And while it may seem outdated and not as shocking nowadays, it is important to remember that at the time, there simply was no other game like it. It marked the beginning of an era, the true beginning of the 90’s era of gaming. With Doom came the first person shooter genre. With Doom came multiplayer, modding, and a lot of the culture we now take for granted with first person shooters. It coined terms such as fragging, deathmatches and gibs (short for giblets).

The only sad thing about Doom is really what it could’ve been. Originally it was meant to have more RPG elements, and more of a story and be a more cinematic game. The team even envisioned hub worlds that one could travel back and forth in. Imagine how groundbreaking the game could’ve truly been if the team hadn’t decided to make a pure action game. But perhaps the world was not truly ready for that yet and needed Doom as a stepping stone. Because as fun as it is, Doom is also repetitive and very little new is added in each episode. And once you have completed it in its entirety, there’s not much incentive to revisit it beyond playing mods. It’s not a game that is fun to play for long periods given its lack of story and gameplay beyond simple shooting. But it’s definitely really good at what it set out to do.

And regardless, Doom is a true classic in every sense of the word. A game that despite showing its age will continue to age like wine. Or perhaps blood. Because Doom has served as the life blood for so many following games after it. Games that will be remembered for a long time in the future. And with Doom Eternal soon showing its face, there is certainly no reason to stop celebrating this game’s 25th anniversary any time soon!

SCORE

STORY: 8/10  
GAMEPLAY: 9/10  
GRAPHICS: 10/10  
SOUND: 10/10

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

Friday 14 December 2018

PC Game Review: Fallout 76

GAME: Fallout 76
RELEASED: 11/14/2018
DEVELOPER: Bethesda Game Studios
PUBLISHER: Bethesda Softworks
AVAILABLE ON: PC, PS4, XBox One
Thanks to my friend Kira for helping out with screenshots.
My first memory of the Fallout franchise comes from when I was in junior high, around 2001 or so. My mother subscribed to this gaming mag that would come with free full versions every month. One month it came with this game called Fallout 2. I blame this game solely for me missing school several days in a row. I was obsessed with Fallout 2, so much it took up nearly all my free time. It was the game that introduced me to RPG’s as a whole, and to this day remains my favorite in the franchise.

Later on I played Fallout 3, and became hooked again. Another game I played almost religiously and the amount of hours I have in the game is probably only rivaled by the amount of hours I have in Deus Ex. Fallout New Vegas I dug as well but didn’t play as much. And of course, Fallout 4 I loved (make sure to check out my review of it in case you don’t believe me).

So my point is I’m no stranger to this franchise and it is one of my favorite franchises in gaming as a whole. And it’s probably the reason I was really on board with the idea of releasing a multiplayer Fallout game. In fact, me and my friends discussed it as we played through the aforementioned Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4. What if we had a big wasteland to explore together, could form different factions and all around go wild in a multiplayer Fallout game?

Well, it seems we weren’t alone in thinking this, because Bethesda has now released Fallout 76. And as you may already know, it is the first game in the franchise to be a multiplayer focused Fallout experience. You may also already know it hasn’t exactly delivered on that promise to any satisfying degree. But I’m not here to tell you what other people have said about the game.

Fallout 76 Power Armor
Nothing like walking around in power armor and kicking ass.
A Different Fallout
Fallout 76 sets itself strictly apart from earlier entries by being the first Fallout game without any human NPC’s. In Fallout 76’s setting of West Virginia, which takes place shortly after the bomb fell, the vault dwellers are the only humans that exist. Which means the only humans you’ll run into are other players. The game is still full of quests to do and unlike what people will tell you, it does actually have a story. Just not one that is straight up told to you, you will have to read a lot of emails and listen to a fair bit of holotapes left behind by the people who died.

It takes a bit of an oldschool Bioshock approach to storytelling which to me feels a bit refreshing. While it does make the world feel really void of any friendly life, it does make it feel more like the humans you meet in the world aren’t just glorified quest-dispensers, they’re actual people. And you’re never left in a situation where you’re caught in a conversation with a NPC while something attacks you out of nowhere, which was common in Fallout 4.

The main story is basically just figuring out what the heck has happened to the world, and digging into the backstory of Appalachia, of which there is a fair bit. Most of the quests are related to sort of fixing the world and rebuilding it, trying to just sort of survive and make a new world out of the ruins. It’s a theme that fits the multiplayer approach the game is taking. A lot of focus is put on survival and exploring the world of Fallout 76.

Fallout 76 Cooking
Crafting is back in Fallout 76, with recipes found in the wild that you can use to cook up anything cool or tasty.

Exploration

And there is a lot of incentive to. Exploration rewards you with caps, recipes for your crafting benches, enemies to kill which grants you experience and holotapes, terminals and notes that offer a look into Appalachia’s past. And when you’re not exploring, you can build your own place and deck it out with paintings and other decorations. Unfortunately, the building leaves a lot to be desired as a lot of restrictions are put on you. For one you can’t really build anywhere you want, your camp must be plonked down in an area that is free of obstructions, nowhere near an established settlement and you’re given a strict budget that means you’re limited to how much you can build.

Compared to Fallout 4 where you could build entire settlements, it feels a lot more scaled down. It’s pretty much like comparing EA’s Sim City reboot to older Sim City games. You’re mostly left with an inferior experience that is fun, but could be better. It doesn’t feel like you are rebuilding the world as much as you are simply making your own little cabin in the woods. And the building itself can only be described as… finnicky. It’s very particular in how it allows you to place parts. It likes flat terrains in general and as you will soon find out, Appalachia is anything but flat. So finding a place to build can be a real challenge.

There’s also the issue of your camps disappearing after a while in-game. Your stuff is thankfully stored in your inventory when that happens, but you still have to find a new place to place your camp when it’s removed. Generally there are a lot of these minor annoyances that don’t really ruin the game but does make it feel like it could be a lot better.

Fallout 76 Building
Building houses is easy but a bit finnicky.

Crafting

Crafting is pretty much as easy as it was in Fallout 4. You gather junk and can even break these down into materials that you use for everything from crafting building materials and pieces of armor or weapons. You’ll need to find specific plans for some things if you want to craft them, which adds some further incentive to explore the game world. But overall it’s pretty simple. You can even craft your own ammo if needed and overall I find the crafting a lot more fun and deeper than it was in any previous game.

There is a photo mode where you can freely move the camera, add filters, adjust FOV and generally take really good screenshots. Even better, the game will display your screenshots on loading screens, which I wish more games would do. An even bigger bonus is that you can customize your appearance anywhere you want (as long as no enemies are nearby and such). Just having this option without having to pay a plastic surgeon to do it makes the game a lot of fun for me, since I love customizing my appearance a lot.

You can share items with other players in the world by dropping them on the ground. And thankfully items that are stored in containers are client-side so you don’t have to worry about people taking stuff in front of your nose too much. I did notice items that appear in the world itself are server side though. And someone taking it before you do will remove it from the world (for a while anyway). And in your camp you can store items in your own stash, which helps if you need a place to store stuff like junk or legendary items you don’t want to sell or scrap.
Fallout 76 Creature
Fallout 76 features quite an additional and unique cast of enemies, some inspired by West Virgina folk lore.

Enemies and Weapons

Enemies range from the expected Super Mutants, ghouls, mole rats and radroaches to more unique enemy such as the game’s Scorched faction. Which are semi-ghouls who can wield guns and other weapons and pose more of a threat than regular ghouls. There are also things like Mothman, Scorchbeasts and Grafton Monsters that can seriously ruin your day if you come across them. So don’t piss them off. Ghouls and Scorched are fairly easy to deal with. But the more powerful monsters will require a lot more manpower to take down.

The weapons also feature a lot of series mainstays such as the 10mm pistol, pipe rifle, pipe pistol and hunting rifle, but also more unique melee weapons such as the fire axe and golf club. Playing a melee focused character in this game was a lot of fun for me because of all the different melee weapons. And you can customize your weapons as well, adding all kinds of new things like rocket engines to your sledgehammers.
Fallout 76 Power Armor Glitch
If you ever wondered how you would look without power armor while wearing power armor, now you know… and I bet you wish you didn’t…

Glitches and Bugs

The game does have its fair share of glitches which range from mild annoyances to straight up hilarity. Sometimes the game will just give up, have a complete seizure and things will go horribly wrong. Such an experience was when a world I was in for some reason wouldn’t let me equip power armor. Instead it would disappear from my inventory and leave me a horribly disfigured glitchy mess until I rejoined the world. I think I must’ve gone through like 3 power armors this way since all of them disappeared. Luckily I’ve never had any crashes or seriously game-breaking bugs. So my experience has been fairly tame compared to what I’ve heard from other players.

I’ve also never had any particular issues with the game’s performance and it’s been fairly decent on my rig. Granted my PC is pretty powerful, but not more so than what other people are running. I’ve heard the game plays a lot worse on console though so take that into consideration. I’ve had some server issues of disconnecting, stuff that’s completely expectable in an online game, and not really that annoying.
Fallout 76 Landscape
The game might be the most colorful in the entire franchise, with a very beautiful autumn atmosphere to it. Beautiful godrays also help make the game look rather beautiful.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically I’ve heard people say the game is pretty ugly. I’m not sure if I agree with that as I honestly find the game rather beautiful. Especially if you compare it to earlier titles like Fallout 3 and even Fallout 4. The amount of color in the game is amazing. The game has a very appealing Skyrim-like feel to it with a lot of nature, hills and very dynamic terrain to explore.

Other Fallout games so far have felt kind of flat so Fallout 76 feels extremely refreshing to explore as a result. I very much have enjoyed all the vistas in the game so far and continue to sort of just get taken back with how good the game looks. That is when the lighting doesn’t glitch out or textures don’t load properly. Sometimes the game just doesn’t seem to know what to do with the lighting. Which is a shame as the game does look really good otherwise.

Sound-wise the game is pretty good as well. The soundtrack is amazing, with several great songs to listen to. The voice acting is generally good across the board as well. It’s a shame most of it is limited to holotapes and such, but it’s good enough to make me engaged in the game. Weapons sound pretty good as well and overall I can’t complain about the sound in the game.
Fallout 76 Sleep
Given Fallout 76 is an online game, you cannot wait or rest and skip time so you sleep in real time and heal up while doing so. Thankfully the game shows you in third person while you do so, much like many mods for Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 did.

Final Thoughts

As it stands, Fallout 76 is not the best game in the franchise. But is it the worst? I’m not really sure. The game is still awaiting private servers which may add more mod support. And patches keep fixing the worst issues of the game. But how much you’ll enjoy the game will definitely depend on your expectations. So if you expect a typical Fallout experience you may be pretty disappointed by Fallout 76.

But if you are willing to embrace it as a multiplayer Fallout game where you can bring some friends, share some Nuka Cola and explore a beautiful wasteland while listening to the Beach Boys, then I definitely recommend getting it. Definitely not at full price as it’s not worth $60, but definitely around $20-30 which is what the game seems to have dropped down to pretty quickly after launch. You can definitely go worse than Fallout 76.

SCORE
STORY: 6/10
GAMEPLAY: 7/10
GRAPHICS: 8/10
SOUND: 8/10


FINAL SCORE: 7/10