Fallout: The Series season two review

 
    I found season two was a bit...meh. Like eating Sugar Bombs that are two hundred years old, you're getting a lot of rads but not very much in the way of nourishment. Before you begin clutching your Pre-War pearls, I should clarify that I am both a huge Fallout fan who has played all the main games as well as a guy who actively hates those outrage merchants that reflexively despise everything on the internet. 

    I came into the franchise with Fallout 3, became a huge fan, and have generally followed its efforts ever since. But I’m not mindlessly supportive either. I felt Fallout 4 was a step-down storytelling wise from Fallout 3 (let alone New Vegas) and that Fallout 76 started in a state that was absolutely missing the point of the franchise. Nevertheless, I loved season one and thought it was a fantastic introduction to the setting for newcomers..

    This is frustrating because I was super excited about them visiting New Vegas and the greater Mojave Wasteland after the teaser for it in the previous season’s finale. Unfortunately, there’s something to be said about being careful what you wish for. In this case, the attempt to write around the events of Fallout: New Vegas while paying homage to them proves to be a needle that the showrunners just can’t thread. More on that later.

    The premise is Lucy Maclean (Ella Purnell) and Cooper/The Ghou (Walter Goggins) are on the trail of Hank Maclean (Kyle MacLachlan), Lucy’s father and the mastermind behind Shady Sands’ destruction. Hank has a nefarious plan to use mind-control technology to build the kind of paradise that the vaults were intended to be (or so he claims).

    Maximus (Aaron Moten), meanwhile, is now a highly decorated Brotherhood of Steel paladin and preparing for his Chapter’s overthrow of the Commonwealth Elders. Norm (Moisés Arias) is meanwhile trapped in Vault 31, surrounded by cryogenically frozen middle managers from Vault-Tec and Chet (Dave Register) is unwillingly caring for his sorta-girlfriend, Steph’s (Annabelle O’Hagan), baby. Oh, and Mister House shows up (Raffi Silva, Justin Theroux).

    There are a lot of plots and eight episodes mean that we move around at lightning pace to deal with each of them. Unfortunately, the season just keeps adding new plotlines while not taking sufficiently long enough to develop its current plot. There’s the Great Khans, Caesar’s Legion, The Kings (now feral ghouls), a focus on who is behind Vault-Tec, what Cooper’s wife’s true motivations are, and how the US government is involved. No sooner does it introduce a new element to the show than we move on to introducing another one.

    The biggest problem with season two is lore bloat. The first season was perfectly enjoyable if you’d never experienced Fallout as a gamer (my wife is proof) but the second season I suspect must be damned near incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t played Fallout: New Vegas. It’s not terrible but I feel like they could have cut two subplots (probably Norm’s and Chet’s, entertaining as they may be) or at added another couple of episodes to develop the existing ones. Probably both.

    The show also feels like it’s in conversation with the online critics of its first season. A lot of the more controversial decisions of season one like Vault-Tec being behind the war, Mrs. Howard being evil, and the death of the NCR are all walked back. But this happening didn’t feel organic. It also does its best not to provide any answers as to what happened at Hoover Dam or the Courier’s existence, which is a bit like ignoring who won WW2 in the Fifties, A lot of beloved franchise elements are also treated for laughs that don’t really work like the Brotherhood of Steel chapters feeling like they belong on Rick and Morty.

    Season Two isn’t bad, at least if we’re measuring whether I’m entertained. I was, mostly. I loved things like finally getting to see Pre-War Canada and now think that would be the perfect place for the next Fallout game. I also felt the acting of all the leads and recreation of Vegas was well done. I think Caesar's Legion was well realized if terribly underused. Sadly, everything else was a bit too exaggerated and comical. Will I watch season three? Yes. However, I hope they dial everything down and focus on the things that matter most: the characters and their journey.

7/10 

Fallout: A Tale of Mutation review

    FALLOUT: A TALE OF MUTATION by Erwan Lafleuriel is a book available on Kindle Unlimited that details the creation of the first four Fallout games (no real information on Fallout 76 or the series, which is a shame). This is basically a book discussing how each game came to be and some general discussion about their themes as well as world-building. It's nothing that hardcore fans wouldn't already be familiar with.

    The premise of the book is that it details the origins of Fallout as a proposed sequel to Wasteland by Tim Cain before going off and becoming its own thing. It details such stories as how Brian Fargo came up with the idea of a retrofuturistic 1950s style for the Pre-War Era, how Tim Cain got so many big name Hollywood actors to do the voice work for the bare minimum required by their unions, and how the game was a smashing success despite not being a major priority for Interplay at the time.

    The book doesn't just follow the production development of Fallout, though, but also the sequels. It moves effortlessly to the development of Fallout 2 and how the game's story development was passed on to Chris Avellone and others who explain their reasoning for some of the game's controversial choices. It talks about the behind-the-scenes that eventually led to the game franchise being acquired by Bethesda too.

    Erwan Lafleuriel isn't shy about his editorializing during the book, showing his clear preference for the original two games while referring to what he thinks about as plot holes in both Fallout 3 as well as Fallout 4 (especially Fallout 4). Nevertheless, he doesn't go into pure hate either and I find that made all the difference for me in the book.

    If I have any complaint about the book, it's the fact that it's a little light on content regarding the games themselves and the latter half of the book goes over the various factions and concepts in the series like Super Mutants. This is more of an encyclopedia entry for the setting than something than sharing the origins of the game. Still, I enjoyed the section on themes and discussing the music that have become iconic to the series both in terms of original as well as 1950s tunes.

    Overall, Fallout: A Tale of Mutation is a very enjoyable book and I think fans of the franchise will very much enjoy it. Fallout is a fantastic video game franchise and the world it's created deserves this kind of scholarly analysis. Could it have gone deeper? Yes, but that doesn't mean it's not worth picking it up.

8/10

Available here

The Guy in the Corgi Shirt 1#: Fallout the Series

 

Exactly what the title says. I really enjoyed Fallout: The Series and here's a video where I discuss it with fellow post-apocalypse author Eric Malikyte. I think the two of us provide a pretty unique perspective on the show from people who make these kind of stories for a living. As a note, "The Guy in the Corgi Shirt" is my Youtube persona.

Review - Fallout: 76 - Six Years Later

 
    FALLOUT 76 is a game that both frustrates me as well as invites me in. Six years ago, I was one of the early adopters of the video game and it was one of the worst experiences of my gaming career. The world was lifeless, empty, lacking in any real stakes, and most of all felt unfinished. Fallout 76 was set in my home state of West Virginia where I lived fifteen years and yet somehow managed to not only fail to capture any of the places' uniqueness but didn't really have any of the kind of hilarious dark humor that it's just begging to have applied.

    Part of the problem was the idea that Fallout 76 would be a playground for players rather than a single player campaign. The idea was that they would interact with one another, be vendors, and create their own fun. Never has a video company more misread what fans wanted from their games since the introduction of Diablo to cellphones in lieu of announcing a new game. Basically, the fans of Fallout wanted to shoot guns and do quests. The wildly divergent leveling and equipment also meant PVP was terrible too.

    It didn't help the excuse for a single player campaign wasn't exactly inspired either. Basically, some genetic experiments have turned bats into dragons. Yes, they're called Scorchbeasts but they're dragons and even incorporate the programming from Skyrim. These dragons are also necromancers spreading a Resident Evil-style plague that turns people into zombies. The "Scorched" are basically feral ghouls who can use guns and want to kill all other life in the Virginia Commonwealth. Then the world. It's a painfully generic plot that somehow makes dragonslaying boring.

    But how does the game stand up six years later? The game has been patched, patched, and patched again with sixteen seasons having been released. A new season is released roughly every three months and they've added NPCs, new regions, hundreds of quests, new equipment, as well as personalized Vault dwellings that the player character can customize to their heart's content. 

    The changes to Fallout 76 can't be understated but can be summarized in a very simple statement: the game is fun to play now. The addition of NPCs is just the beginning of the reforms but adds a personal touch to the setting that was previously lacking. You actually have people to protect in the Foundation Settlers, Crater Raiders, Whitespring Refuge, and the actual living Brotherhood of Steel. The Appalachian Wasteland is no longer so empty and you have reasons to carry out the various quests you're given other than boredom.

    There's also some good new locations added to the setting with Nuka World providing some fun local color to the otherwise dingy coal mine areas. We finally get to meet the Overseer in person and she provides some extra places to craft weapons, armor, and materials while encouraging you to seek out inoculations for the new residents of Appalachia. That's not even getting into the Expeditions system that allows you to visit The Pitt (from Fallout 3) and a New Vegas inspired Atlantic City.

    The game has improved in some ways but not in others. The existence of the Vault dwellings (acquired during a quest) provides a nice solution to the hobo-like camps that most players are stuck with. I'd much rather exist in a nice, cool and enjoyable Vault room to store all of my crafting stations and decorations. However, most of the material is locked behind either the Atomic Shop or acquired in-universe plans that limit what you can build. The VATS system still is essentially nonexistent and best ignored.

    The introduction of NPCs to talk to also allows your character to voicelessly respond with snark, psychopathic glee, or unexpected characterization like a fanatical loyalty to Vault-Tec. There's even skill checks like the fact I managed to persuade a Raider to take the vaccine against Scorchdom by pointing out various science facts that convince her I know what I'm talking about. These are all welcome and I hope Bethesda will keep adding these things.

    The game has an unlimited leveling system where you cap your existing SPECIAL stats at 15 but get new perk cards every five levels. This allows you to experiment with more builds and also gradually build up your character into exactly what you want them to be. The fact you can't do this instantly is also something that's designed to keep you playing. Leveling enough is fast enough, though, especially if you are part of the multiplayer events.

    Do I have any complaints? Well, yes, the game is still a live service slot machine designed to take as much money from the player as possible. You have to belong to Xbox Live to play, which is a monthly subscription, and yet there's an additional subscription you can subscribe to in order to get in-game bonuses like the NCR Ranger Armor. The main quest is also the most boring one of them all. My biggest annoyance is you can't acquire repair kits save in the Atomic Shop, which is again designed to take your money but you can earn the points in-game, at least.

    In conclusion, Fallout 76 is now a game that's worth picking up if you're on Steam or Console. If you have Amazon Prime, you can acquire a copy of the game for free because they're being given away as part of the Fallout: The Series promotion. It's available on Playstation but I note that Bethesda is very much on Team X.

Available here

Fallout: The Series Season One review

 

*plays Atom Bomb by The Five Stars*

    I love Fallout to an unhealthy degree. Seriously, I had a Fallout wallet for years. My wife got me a Fallout themed Xbox as a birthday present. I've loved Fallout since Fallout 3, like many fans, but have also played the original Interplay games. I can tell you the secrets of the Vaults, who three fictional Presidents were, and why you should never eat Iguana on a Stick. So, I am THE target audience for Fallout: The Series. Mind you, I'm also going to be one of those annoyingly hard to please people that notices everything wrong too.

    So is it fantastic? Or an atomic bomb? Well, much like the games themselves, it has a little of both but is closer to Fallout: New Vegas versus Fallout 76. It is something that my wife, who is only familiar with Fallout through what she can see over my shoulder, enjoyed very much and probably benefited from someone to tell her little details about but is perfectly accessible to a newcomer. Indeed, what I think people are most likely to complain about is going to be from hardcore fans who are going to be upset about some lore changes-probably unreasonably so but fan is short for fanatic for a reason.

    The premise for the franchise is that it is an alternate 23rd century where the world was nuked two hundred years ago. Technology is more advanced in some ways with power armor and robots on one-hand but black and white televisions on the other. The nuclear war that happened has still not been recovered from, if such a thing were possible, and it remains a mixture of Mad Max and Sixties science fiction movies. This is already a thing super-Fallout fans will be annoyed by as some fans insist the Earth would rebuild and only Bethesda Games is keeping it stuck in ruins.

    The story follows three protagonists with the first being the Ghoul/Cooper (Walter Goggins), who is a survivor of the Great War and a former Hollywood cowboy. The years have not been kind to him and he's gone from being a singing good guy cowboy to a murderous Spaghetti Western one. The second is Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), the daughter of Vault 33's Overseer (Kyle MacLachlan), who is setting up for her arranged marriage with a stranger from Vault 32. Finally, there is Maximus (Aaron Moten), who is a new recruit to the Brotherhood of Steel and a survivor of the sacking of Shady Sands.

    I'm disinclined to spoil any of this show because it's such a wonderful road trip that involves so many Easter Eggs, callbacks, plot twists, and surprises. We get a longstanding mystery from the franchise resolved as well as the plugging of a plot hole that has existed since Fallout 2 (why are Vault-Tec experimenting on people after the apocalypse when all of that data would be seemingly irrelevant?). We also get nods to all of the games ranging from the first ("Our water chip is busted") to New Vegas and the Commonwealth.

    The GOAT (Greatest of All Time) for this series is definitely Lucy and I hereby dub her "Vault Girl" as her official nickname for inclusion among such luminaries as the Vault Dweller, Courier, and Lone Wanderer. She is naive without being stupid, kind without being insipid, and believable in her journey to becoming a survivor. She never quite sheds her Good Karma Pacifist Run playthrough ideology and is all the more lovable for it. Cooper is almost as entertaining and utters an immortal line about how, no matter how important your goal is, you will always be sidetracked from it in the Wasteland. Maximus, by contrast, is...okay. This is no fault of the actor but he seems to be a lot more naive than Lucy in some ways with none of her excuse.

    The show manages to achieve a fun balance between world-building, characterization, plot, and humor. The humor, especially, works well by exploiting Fallout's peculiar tone of zany over-the-top violence with an alternate 1950s wholesomeness. Poor Lucy will be splattered with blood many times in this show and never quite lose her perky can-do attitude for example. She needs to definitely put a few more points into her Speech score, though. Fans of the Fallout soundtracks will note a lot of the songs get use in the show and it is all the better for it. They can also afford actual Johnny Cash tunes this time around too.

    The show makes the correct choice to embrace the absolute ridiculousness of Fallout's retro-future aesthetic with appearances by a Mr. Handy, the 1950s dinner decor of the Vaults, green DOS computers, and how the fact PipBoys geo-tracking works exactly like they do in the games. We don't see as many robots or mutants as we might have in the games but I suppose even the show's extensive budget had to draw the line somewhere.

    There's been some confusion over an error in the show's timeline, though. One that some fans believed resulted in New Vegas being rendered non-canonical. The developers have already come out and said this is not the case and the show makes many-many references to the game, so its extra strange but some people presumably need a reason to complain. Fans of NCR will also be upset with some of the developments in-universe but, well, War never changes. Oh and I was upset they didn't get Ron Pearlman to do a voice over. Those are my only complaints.

    I can't wait for Season Two.

Available here

The Outer Worlds review

    Country roads, take me home, to a place--oh wait, wrong game. Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. Ah, yes, that's much better. Outer Worlds is one of the three games I've been looking forward to with the others being Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Basically, the video game industry has all but killed my love of gaming with some recent disasters that seem utterly determined to remove anything resembling storytelling and nuance from the genre. I don't know what happened that caused so many developers to come down so hard on games as artistry but they've done an amazing job of squeezing it out from the medium.

I liked his original Doc Brown look even more.

    If you'll forgive a short rant: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Fallout 76, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the increasingly theme park Assassins Creed games just left me feeling cold. Those are also games that I bothered to play. Ghost Recon Wildlands may have been a generic game but it at least had a plot that involved politics of some kind unlike Breakpoint. I didn't go in expecting the Outer Worlds to be the redemption of video games as a medium but that's what I got.

    The premise of the game is you are one of a generation ship's colonists, similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda, that have been frozen for decades. Awakened by an eccentric scientist, Phineas Wells, you are asked to help him free the other colonists that need a special collection of chemicals to waken them all up safely. I can't help but wonder if the premise is a bit of a jab at Fallout 4 but virtually the entire game feels like an extended "this is how you should have done it" to Bethesda. Frankly, while, I defended Fallout 4, this is well-deserved.

    It's difficult to describe what the plot is after this because you have an incredible amount of freedom post-awakening. You can turn in the scientist who freed you by the second hub and immediately go to work for the evil megacorporations that you've seen can't run a salted tuna factory without killing people. You can kill all of the NPCs, utterly derail the plot, and betray every faction you've aligned with multiple times until everyone hates you.

Its a beautiful system.

    The game world is a beautifully rendered, vaguely comedic retro-future that resembles a 1930s-esque vision of the future with corporate rulership mixed with Flash Gordon aesthetics. If I had to give an explanation of what it looks like, imagine Bioshock: Infinite's Columbia with none of the racism and all of the corruption but set it in space instead of the atmosphere. Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky didn't adopt a retro-future feel for the original Fallout games (that's more a Fallout 3 thing) but they take that here and run with it. It's like Firefly's Western feel updated by about thirty years.

    Each of the locations are well-done with lots of quirky townsfolk, fun little missions, and humor. There's a bit of a Borderlands 2 feel to the place with everyone some manner of idiot or insane but that makes sense since that was strongly influenced by Fallout. The maps are a bit cramped with none of the other games wandering and everything over the next hill but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Your character can also be a complete jackass with some incredibly witty dialogue from the protagonist. The fact they're a silent protagonist does little to take away from amusing they are.

The secret ingredient of saltuna is...people! No, not really.

    The Companions are quite well done with most of them resembling off-brand versions of the Serenity crew mixed-and-matched. You travel with a Vicar, a mechanic, a space pirate, and a couple of other fun characters that certainly liven up the game. There's no romance option in the game and I feel that's a shame. My favorite character is easily Parvati, the sweet as pie mechanic who is socially awkward to the point of being unable to even speak in the presence of her crush.

    What surprises me is that the game is as relentlessly political as it is. The corporations running the Halcyon system are horrifically bad at it. They cut corners on basic survival matters, deny scientiffic facts, and attempt to misuse the local religions to keep the masses quiet. They're also incompetant at running things so that the entirety of the colony project is on the verge of mass starvation. Not because they're being evil. No, it's worse than that. The fundamental problem is the skills of making money are different from caring for people. Charismatic slogans and victim blaming do not solve the problem. If anyone has read any of my books, no points for guessing what I think of these views.

I love The Unreliable.

    Gameplay-wise, this is basically Fallout: New Vegas with shooting and looting as well as skills plus perks. Given that Bethesda did away with all the RPG elements of their RPG shooter series, it's kind of ironic that this is basically an idealized version of the RPG-shooter that many fans initially complained about with Fallout 3. Given Fallout: New Vegas was awesome, though, I have no complaints. I also appreciate they've just completely done away with hacking and lockpicking minigames. If you have a high-enough skill for it, you can do it. If not, then you have to find another way around it.

    This is a game you have to take a slow and methodical approach to. The quests aren't easily marked and the game doesn't hand hold you to find them. A lot of people have speed-run through the game and missed hours of content. Overall, I think the game is about 15 to 30 hours long if you vary between a main-quester and completitionist. This is a smaller game than I'd hoped but it's got more content than may be initially apparent if you do bother to ask around and do every little bit. 

    In conclusion, The Outer Worlds is an incredibly fun game and extremely good. I'm not going to give it a 10 out of 10, though, because it feels pretty small for an interstellar game. The tight budget constraints and development time meant this is a AA game rather than a AAA game. That's not a bad thing and I got more than my money's worth. I just hope they do a bunch of lengthy DLC expansions and have a bigger sequel. This is a great single-player experience and its relatively modest size means I wouldn't mind buying a lot more in its style.

9/10

Fallout 76 review

"War...war is constantly getting dumber."

    I am a huge Fallout fan. I was brought into the series by Fallout 3 and mesmerized by its dark as well as haunting vision of a post-apocalypse Washington D.C. This led me to check out the original isometric games, which I also loved. Later, I would enjoy Fallout: New Vegas and it would become my 3rd favorite video game of all time after Skyrim and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Unfortunately, my opinion of Fallout 4 was more mixed. I felt like the game was dumbed down with large story holes, too much focus on settlements, and a change to gunplay over a mix of it with skill use.

Fallout 76 is a very pretty game.

    Despite this, I still enjoyed Fallout 4 and was looking forward to Fallout 76. I'm a resident of West Virginia and could recognize some of the locations which were in the game's trailer. I also liked the idea of reversing the timeline from 200 years after the war to 25 years after the war. Much of the complaining on No Mutants Allowed boils down to, "They should have rebuilt the United States after that time and everything from the Pre-War Era should have turned to dust." I don't necessarily agree with this but I don't disagree with it either.

    So, how is the game? Well, it's terrible. It's extremely difficult to screw up a game that is already a tried and tested formula but they somehow managed to do it. I'm actually going to include some positives about the game because everyone else has gone into the negatives of the game. However, it needs to be spelled out this game is BROKEN. It is worse than Skyrim and Fallout 4 by far and I have encountered more bugs playing it (after 3 massive patches) than I have in the entirety of my gaming experience combined.

Here's a short list of the ones I've had through my first six hours of gaming:

* Quests not starting until reloads.
* Frozen indestructible enemies.
* Invisible enemies.
* Restarting in different places than I where I left the character in the game.
* The game not saving itself where I left it.
* Free-floating characters.
* Lag.
* Clipping.
* Characters not uploading as they should (sometimes missing beards before they pop on).
* Characters not having any clothes or equipment.
* The highlight option for the main menu not working for half of the commands.

    It's ironic that this isn't the worst mess of a game I've played this week because at least Fallout 76 plays. My Assassins Creed: Odyssey DLC was purchased, uploaded, and bought but doesn't ever show the option to play it. I'm disgusted with the gaming industry whenever they turn out something that hasn't been properly playtested or (in this game's case) I dare say not even finished. I mean Skyrim and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines were both buggy but this is a whole new level.

The West Virginia landmarks are often places I know.

    The game also has other major flaws in the fact there's nothing really to do in the game but kill and do a LITTLE exploring. They've wholesale imported the settlement system from Fallout 4, despite most people hating it, but that doesn't work for a multiplayer game. You can't permanently keep your settlements and other players can dismantle them.

    So, really an entire portion of this game is completely pointless and hard as hell to do. PVP is also not well-designed since you have to challenge them to a duel by shooting them and have them shoot you back (with minimal damage) like you're slapping gloves. So all PVP is one-on-one duels and have no option for ambushes or battles. That doesn't even get into the biggest flaws of the game which are the lack of NPCs and the combat.

    The lack of NPCs is the craziest element of this game and I wonder who drank the Rad-infested water to come up with this idea. For whatever reason, there's only robot and terminal quest-givers in the game. It massively cuts down on the enjoyment of the game since I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be rebuilding the United States FOR given there's no people inhabiting this Wasteland. Quests lose whatever urgency they might have had without people depending on you even in a fictional context.

I'm annoyed Vault 76 isn't a hub.

    The game is also weirdly depressing as it has all the world-building of previous Fallout games with a Brotherhood of Steel faction, the Responders faction, a new branch of the Enclave, and the Order of Mysteries. However, all of these orders have been wiped out by the Scorched weeks beforehand. It's depressing that not only do you not get to interact with any of these interesting factions but the mostly-empty world is full of endless tragedy with no triumph.

    Combat is iffy as due to being a multiplayer always online game, you can't pause it for V.A.T.S that more or less means that shooting is completely different for people like myself. It's more like auto-aiming now and not nearly as effective. This has led me to do something I've never done before and pursue a melee build. My Resident has been moving across the Wasteland, slaughtering Scorched with a multi-purpose ax like Jason Voorhees rather than using guns. I'm not sure if that's a feature or not given it's because I didn't trust the gunplay.

    The enemy variety is a mixed bag. On one hand, there's too many Scorched in the game and they're a poor substitute for Raiders. Scorched are basically Feral Ghouls who use guns and melee weapons so they're not anything new to the franchise. The fact they're zombies created by radiation dragons (due to reusing Skyrim assets) gives them a awesome origin, though. The fact is I'd much prefer actual Raider clans to the group. Zombies are the most overused enemy in fiction and giving them guns doesn't make them less overused since we already had the undead in Fallout. On the plus side, we do have a lot more animals that included things like giant toads as well as the Molemen. The thing is, when there's no other humans alive, I'm confused why I'm shooting at the industrial miners.

Molemen!

    There's some of the old Fallout magic in the game that is still fun as hell when you're wandering around West Virginia, listening to old tunes, and exploring ruins of the Pre-War World. One of the best moments of the game for me was, ironically, just traveling across the New River Gorge Bridge. The crumbling massive creation was an environmental puzzle that I loved soaking up. Poking around the ruins of the Old World and figuring out what went on reminded me of Fallout 3 at times, which remains my favorite of the games. West Virginia is absolutely beautiful and feels more "realistic" (authentic?) at 25 years after the apocalypse versus 200+. Chernobyl is overgrown with forests and there's more than a few nods in that direction.

    The main quest is decent, if underdeveloped, and the fact I wanted to complete it and devote the hours to it means that they must have been doing something right. The radiation dragons and their zombie plague have to be wiped out. Fine, that makes sense. The fact the Overseer is directing you to do it is also a decent-enough quest even if you never meet with her directly. I like the dramatic irony of the Overseer, who never gets a name, being fanatically devoted to Vault-Tec while being
fundamentally a good person (as well as blind to how evil they are).

Boom.

    The biggest positives I can say about the game is the long-popular modded-in survival elements work really well with the game. Caps are extremely rare in the game (even more so with Fast Travel eating them up), food spoils if left in your backpack, you need to regularly eat and drink, plus there's a shortage of ammunition as well. It really is important to boil your water, cook your food, and have recipes to survive. You have to work for your gear in this game and I find that to be a very interesting way of playing even if it is something PC gamers have been experimenting with for years.

    I'm kind of iffy about the fact you can launch nuclear weapons in this game. Much of the Fallout series is about the horrors of nuclear war even if it's in a silly coating. The fact you can and are encouraged to use nuclear weapons against the Scorched feels like it's missing the point. On the other hand, Liberty Prime uses nukes and I had this same objection with blowing up the Institute. War, I suppose, never changes.

    In conclusion, I am torn about my rating for this game because I keep wanting to play it and have a lot of fun with it but feel like it has removed so very much about what I do love about the game. The game is doubly frustrating because if they had just put NPCs in the game and copied the elements of other mutliplayer games then it'd probably be one of my favorites this year. As such, it doesn't feel like a good Fallout hame or a good Destiny clone (which it was clearly trying to be). This game is salvageable, though, and I hope Bethesda doesn't just abandon it. Give it The Taken King treatment and make it the game it deserves to be.

4.5/10

The Moral Ambiguity of Fallout 4: Nuka World

    I've mentioned my absolute love for Nuka World before and that remains to be the case. It's an absolutely beautiful spectacle and blows the main game out of the water but it's also something which has been controversial for the fact it favors an "evil" playthrough. Indeed, there are only a handful of quests which do not require working with complete scum. However, it is that very need to work with the deplorable and blunt their efforts which makes an intriguing path for those who don't simply want to have their Sole Survivor crack and go Raider.

    The premise is the Sole Survivor is invited to a sick gladiatorial game under the guise of rescuing someone's family, only to kill the leader of the Nuka World bandits in single combat before being declared their new leader. It is all very Chronicles of Riddick. The game then encourages the Sole Survivor to go along with this, help the Raiders reclaim Nuka World then proceed to start settling the Commonwealth with outposts.  

Heavy is the head which wears the Overboss helmet.

    There doesn't appear to be much moral ambiguity to the Nuka World Raiders. The three gangs assembled by Raider Overboss Colter found the (apparently) peaceful traders of Nuka World. They proceeded to attack the town, take it over, and then turned it into their party palace. Colter further vilified himself by creating the Gauntlet, which is nothing more than an arena for witnessing the murder of innocents. The Nuka World Raiders keep slaves, one of the surest signs of evil in the Fallout universe, and are parasites on the Commonwealth if they build settlements. Surely, it is an evil decision to side with them.

    I'm not so sure.

    One of the interesting things I've discussed about Fallout 4 is there's no actual villain to the story. The Institute is, at worst, guilty of amorality in the pursuit of science and a refusal to acknowledge the sentience of their creations. They are paranoid and ill-informed about the surface world, using that to justify murder and replacement. The Brotherhood of Steel plans genocide against a sentient race but justifies it in the name of the fact they are not human and very likely capable of wiping humanity out. The Minutemen are good but incompetent while the Railroad is mono-focused on one issue. All of the groups are influenced by the Sole Survivor and changed by their relationship with him.

    In the case of Nuka World's Raiders, the DLC does something which I have long argued was necessary in the Bethesda Fallout games: it humanizes its Raiders. In the original Fallout games and New Vegas, raiding is an action rather than a state of being. Tribals, gangs, and organizations raid but they have motivations for doing so. The Great Khans are a culture, for example, who just so happens to have a tradition of stealing from outsiders to sustain themselves like so many historical peoples.

Nisha isn't a nice person. Could you guess?

    Bethesda's games have lagged a bit behind this with the majority of Raiders in Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland being a bunch of cannibals who attack you on sight. They are so numerous, its very possible they outnumber the actual settlers of the land and have possibly depopulated the region of major settlements but for Megaton and Rivet City.

    Fallout 4 was less extreme but still had Raiders exist in bandit camps that murdered anyone who approached. It also had terminals talking about their hopes, dreams, and aspirations as well as relationship to other Raider gangs. It also had the Gunners and Forged as a Vault-born pair of gangs which were primarily mercenaries but had become as Raiders.

   Nuka World's Raiders are divided into three individual gangs with the Disciples, Operators, and the Pack. The Disciples are the most overtly violent, surrounding their base in the viscera of the dead with prisoners kept imprisoned for torture. The Operators are the most mercenary, existing solely for the purpose of making money and being no better or worse than the Triggermen in Goodneighbor. The Pack, by contrast, is the most alien as they act more like original series tribals with odd traditions and an alien morality.

    Over these three gangs but under you is Porter Gage, who is an individual who has an interesting story. A farmer, he witnessed his family and friends repeatedly robbed by Raiders with no attempt to fight them. Switching to become a caraveneer, he soon found the state similar. Too proud to submit to thievery, he eventually decided to become a Raider himself. He has a simple philosophy based on a binary principle: you either take or are taken from. This sounds simplistic and self-justifying except the Sole Survivor is a Raider.

You see, Overboss, they can be reasonable. For a price.

    You kill and you loot your enemies' bodies as well as homes. Now, of course, the primary difference is the nature of your targets. Much as Dexter Morgan is the serial killer who kills serial killers, so is the Sole Survivor a Raider who kills Raiders. Sometimes, this is in self-defense but just as often, the protagonists seek out Raider Dens so they can be slaughtered for caps or goods.
  
    Certainly, when fired upon, the instinct of the gamer is to send his or her character barging in to slaughter their attackers rather than retreat. That is the nature of the game and one of the criticisms who favored pacifist playthroughs in the original game. Even the saintliest Sole Survivor is a mercenary for one faction or the other and ends up attacking locations where children live (The Prydwen or Institute).

    Still, none of the three gangs of Nuka World share the Sole Survivor's scruples. Missions for them can involve murder and mayhem depending on how you choose to play them. You will be offered missions which could very well turn whole towns against you. However, it is interesting to note you can actually play the entirety of the game without hurting any innocents. You can refuse Radiant quests to harm the innocent and only take the ones against groups you are enemies with like Super Mutants, Gunners, or (in my case) the Brotherhood of Steel. You can also buy the land and crops which will sustain the settlements which are necessary to keep your new kingdom in Nuka World going.

Maybe you can free them as Overboss. Eventually.

    But why would the Sole Survivor do this? Why would they not simply massacre every single one of the Raiders in Nuka World and liberate the enslaved traders therein? Well, the answer may well be they're trying NOT to act like a Raider. As Overboss, the Sole Survivor can potentially blunt or redirect the Raiders underneath him as well as achieve peace.

    They don't have to sentence all of the gangs to execution like Judge Dredd. By providing the Nuka World Raiders with the various theme park zones to loot or use as they see fit as well as settlements to keep them happy in chems, they can actually avoid simply eradicating them. You can avoid war never changing by introducing something foreign to the setting: peace and compromise. It's Gray and Gray Morality because you're capitulating to scumbags. None of the Nuka World Raiders is a model of good citizenship with Gage probably the nicest one of the bunch and he's a ruthless killer. Nevertheless, governments in real life make these kind of deals all the time.

The Pack are neither good nor evil. Just animals.

    The Raiders can also be used as a force against the other Raiders, Gunners, Super Mutants, and enemy factions in the setting. The Minutemen are grossly outgunned and even if you're backing them up with a major faction like the Institute or Brotherhood, its destined to be a bloody slog. The Radiant quests show the Nuka World Raiders aren't afraid of fighting any of them, though, and can be bodies on the ground for retaking the Commonwealth.

    As long as they're paid. Indeed, while their leaders are all monsters, the average Raider is simple in his wants and desires. They want to be fed and have lots of chems. With Nuka World and their settlements, they have the Commonwealth version of the sweet life. Even so, you're not going to be able to make peace with all of the Raiders and one third of their ranks will end up being slaughtered by you anyway. If one were going for the least malevolent option, it would be best to have the Pack and Operators as your allies while the Disciples are your enemies. At least then you avoid having serial killers in your employ.

You killed him and took his stuff.

     All of this would be pure speculation on my part if not for the fact this is a valid route detailed in the DLC with your Sole Survivor entirely capable of putting down or nay-saying the more violent quests of their allies. They can acquire territory with words or caps. You can be the peace-maker and the negotiator of the Raiders rather than the brute.

    You can get away with it, too, because the Raiders aren't animals and mostly just want to enjoy wealth and drugs like most criminals. You can also be less than morally ambiguous and just murder or intimidate the Commonwealth's settlements into compliance. You have the option of being evil in Nuka World but what is "good" is very nebulous as another pile of bodies is a questionable triumph for justice--even when it's as odious as a group as the one you're now in-charge of.

    Interestingly, the theme of making peace and compromises is one which is carried throughout each of the Zones. In Kiddie Kingdom, the best case scenario is to convince Oswald and his army of ghouls to move on so you can take over. You take over his land which he is bothering no one on, in order to give to Raiders but ultimately do him a favor. Dry Rock Gulch is a place where the robots are willing, even desperate, to serve as long as you play to their biases. Cito the Ape-Man can be convinced to share his territory with the Raiders, which works out fine because Cito is a hardass who won't have a problem keeping the Raiders in line. It'll also allow him regular human contact for the first time in decades. Galactic Zone? Okay, there's nothing wrong with Galactic Zone but some malfunctioning robots but diplomacy is still the preferred way of getting things done in this game.

Peace means Oswald has to give up his home.

     There's a price for your actions if you choose to play peacemaker just like making a treaty with the Brotherhood of Steel and NCR results in the firing of Ambassador Dennis Crocker. In this case, while the Minutemen might be willing to go along with a General who has decided to cede territory to Raiders (since they'd otherwise not exist without him), idealistic Preston Garvey loses all trust in his closest friend. The kind of realpolitic of making peace with monsters is unforgivable even at its softest. You lose him as a Companion and from then on, he is merely a cold business associate.

    The question is why would you want to? Why go to all this trouble for the bandits of Nuka World when you've killed so many for less? For me, I think it's a good roleplaying opportunity. I didn't play the Minutemen or Railroad ending because I thought the grayness of Fallout 4's main quest demanded a more cynical ending. It's why I went with the "cover-up" ending of Far Harbor. The Sole Survivor bends over backwards for these Raiders simply because he doesn't HAVE to kill them like so many others. A peace treaty between Nuka World, the Institute, and the Minutemen in my gameworld is an ugly uncertain thing but it's perhaps the best the Sole Survivor could manage. Who am I to gainsay them after they've suffered so much?

What would Cappy? Kill everyone, probably.

      Then again, perhaps the best option for Nuka World is to simply slaughter all of the Raiders and give back the territory to their victims. Nuka World will remain a mostly-hostile place full of monsters and horrors but you can, at least, turn the power back on. The Commonwealth will remain a safer place in the objective sense even if you don't have Raiders at your back to help you against the threats which assail it. Perhaps peace and keeping your followers happy comes at too high a price. Certainly, Preston Garvey agrees with the belief the Nuka Worlders deserve nothing but death and if you meet him after you've joined them then he will only become your friend if you turn on your brethren to slaughter them.

    Despite my words, Nuka World is not set up to be an ambiguous situation. The Raiders are awful people, through and through, while the traders are noble victims who do nothing wrong except under extreme duress. Even Harvey lures you to your doom only because he's witnessed the murder of friends. Yet, after playing a game of slaughtering hundreds if not thousands of people, I couldn't help but wonder at the fact Nuka World is the only time I can actually find a peaceful solution.

[QUOTE="CerberusGate, post: 4181982, member: 97288"]I don't as well; he's not devolved into Someguy's level of facetious trolling (i.e brings up a point and devolves into childish insults not offensive enough to be banned while defending said point) and has remained mostly reasonable in his posts though he admittedly slipped up (but at least has the decency to apologise for said slip ups).[/QUOTE]

I am sorry for some of the things I've said today. I really posted all night and day so I guess I had a LOT of pent-up passion from when the Bethesda forums moved.

[QUOTE="CerberusGate, post: 4181982, member: 97288"]I don't as well; he's not devolved into Someguy's level of facetious trolling (i.e brings up a point and devolves into childish insults not offensive enough to be banned while defending said point) and has remained mostly reasonable in his posts though he admittedly slipped up (but at least has the decency to apologise for said slip ups).[/QUOTE]

I am sorry for some of the things I've said today. I really posted all night and day so I guess I had a LOT of pent-up passion from when the Bethesda forums moved.

Fallout 4: Nuka World DLC review

    I've never shared my post-apocalypse plan. It's to take a car, journey to Disneyland and take it over. Alternatively, I will journey to Brazil and live on a plantation where I will grow the ingredients necessary to create Coca Cola. If this is a peculiarly specific plan for Armageddon, I should note that if you somehow merged Disneyland and Coca-Cola then I never would have left as a child. I would have run away from my parents and lived in Colaland's sewers along with the other feral children.

Why save the world when you can rule it?

    As you can imagine, Nuka World is a kind of weird drill into my brain from the good people at Bethesda. I love Disneyland even if the reality is an overcrowded place you never have enough money to fully enjoy. I also love Coca-Cola even if it is so sugary sweet that my poor diabetic family genetics will never be able to live off of as I've always dreamed possible. I don't think anyone else necessarily had as high a hope for this DLC as I did but I may have unfairly put expectations on this due to my desire. Does it live up to it? No, unfortunately, not. However, it's still pretty damn entertaining.

My wife wouldn't want me living here. Maybe I could commute.

    The premise is the Sole Survivor finds the abandoned tram system to the Pre-War equivalent of the Magic Kingdom (which is in Massachusetts of all places). Along the way, he discovers the place is controlled by three allied gangs of raiders and their Overboss. Stumbling into a bravery test, the Sole Survivor kills the Overboss and in proper Necromonger fashion is named their new leader (mostly due to their second-in-command's endorsement).

The Overboss. Invincible to all but the dreaded squirt gun.

    There's two ways of proceeding from this point with the first being to ally with the raiders and take over the theme park sections they don't control. The second is to wipe out all of the raiders and liberate the settlement for its population of slaves. The DLC is geared strongly toward the former, which will throw some players for a loop as Fallout 4 was notorious for "forcing" you to play a hero.

    Indeed, the climax of Nuka World's "Evil" path is having you lead an army of raiders into the Commonwealth to assault its settlements. Which, if you've been playing the traditional way, means that you'll very likely be attacking your own settlements.

I love the skeleton who died happy in this pic.

    This is probably not going to be the path which roleplayers will enjoy but there's actually a story to be told here. The Sole Survivor as the man who had been forced repeatedly to compromise his morals for the sake of an ungrateful wasteland only to eventually snap and turn on his former loved ones. Certainly, there's a temptation to simply unleash the anger and rage of a very disappointing finale for the main game and simply enjoy the easy pleasures of being Lord Humungus. I've wanted to be a Raider since the beginning of the Fallout series and I finally have the chance even if it didn't fit with my current build.

Alas, I can afford everything in the Disney Marketplace!

    Still, I would have appreciated Nuka World if it had been far lower level and available as a place to journey to from the very beginning. It's eaisly the best "evil" settlement and as memorable as Paradise Falls from Fallout 3. If you choose to play the role of the Overboss, you even get a memorable scene where Preston Garvey is horrified by your actions and turns against you. It's the most emotion he ever displays in the game. Sadly, we don't have reactions from Piper, Valentine, Strong, and Cait who seem like they'd have opinions on your new vocation.

A wonderful brother-sister pair of raiders.

    The DLC's raider gangs are well-detailed with the Disciples, the Pack, and the Operators. The Disciples are a group of cannibal amazons, the Pack are animal worshiping feral humans, and cultured rich kids who'd decided it was better to steal than work for a living after being cut off. I decided to side with the Operators up until the point I decided to eliminate them from the park. I kind of regret we didn't get a "good" or at least neutral gang of raiders because I hated turning against them despite each group being complete scum. They're fun scum, though, which is what's important.

Blood worms are the worst.

      Nuka Cola the product is notably something which has been built up from Fallout 3 and is now a major part of the backstory despite being only a minor part of the setting. It is the equivalent of Cola Cola as well as the Disney corporation in the setting's backstory.

    Its ubiquitous presence in the setting means I was genuinely interested in finding out the history of the product and getting a bunch of Nuka Cola swag. Indeed, I'm hoping Bethesda puts out some Nuka Cola shirts because I want one. I also was very excited about painting my power armor in fire engine Nuka Cola red. If you find this a little strange then you should know how much fun it looks. We even get a return of Nuka Cola's biggest fan from Fallout 3 in Sierra Petrovita.

These raiders have personality. Evil awful personalities.

    I do think there's an over-focus on combat in the DLC. Even if you eliminate all of the gang boss leaders, this just results in all of the raiders in the park becoming hostile. I would have appreciated more options to deal with them. It would have been cool to do something like A Fistful of Dollars or the Sith Academy in Knights of the Old Republic where you play the various factions against one another until they're weak enough to completely eliminate.

      On the plus side, there's a "peaceful" path through dealing with the Raiders and Commonwealth's settlers which I found to be surprising. You can be a moral Raider who pays for land and good with caps. Unfortunately, there's no option for freeing the slaves or persuading the Raiders to devote their efforts to less monstrous acts. Even so, there's a lot of fun little sidequests like meeting with a bunch of Hubologists who are even more insane than their predecessors in Fallout 2 and the mythical founder of Nuka Cola who is living like Walt Disney's urban legend underneath the park. It says something about how much I enjoyed this setting that I wish it had been its own game.

Slaves. The gift which keeps giving.

     Like the Magic Kingdom, Nuka World has multiple "worlds" with a Futureworld, Wild West World, Coca Cola Land, and a mountain made of fizz. Each of these have different sorts of enemies and plenty of games which can be experienced. Like the best of Bethesda's creations, each land has an extensive Pre-War history to explore as well. Honestly, I loved the Wild West world the most since it involved rounding up Giddy-up Buttercups and being addressed as the Silver Shroud if you're wearing the costume.

    There are flaws in this DLC like the fact it's about twenty minutes long if you're playing a purely good-guy raider who would never associate with a morally ambiguous faction. Likewise, the Raiders are a trifle underdeveloped. They have personalities, themes, and major characters but no real side-quests or conversation options. There's a lot of places they could have expanded on the history of the gangs as well. Lore breaks like Enclave armor in a display case are also annoying. On the other hand, it's probably the single most fun DLC I've played from Bethesda and rivals Old World Blues for the amount of enjoyment I derived.

     In conclusion, Nuka World is an amazing DLC and I wish there was more of it. I think its also suitably grim and dark despite its whimsical atmosphere. I think this is probably the best DLC which Bethesda has put out since Mothership Zeta.

10/10 (in terms of fun)
9/10 (in terms of playability)

Fallout 4: Far Harbor review

    All Hail Atom! Atom is life! For when he is split, he unleashes immense power in every direction for which has created this irradiated world! *Ahem* Sorry, I got the opportunity to join the Children of the Atom cult which I have always felt was one of the best elements of Fallout 3 (as well as criminally underused). I likened them to the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud from the original Wasteland and consider them quintessentially Fallout despite not having been incorporated into the setting until Bethesda got a hold of them.

A lovely little radioactive town on the coast.

    Honestly, the lack of Atom content was one of my biggest disappointments about Fallout 4 after its awful dialogue system plus the changes to the skill tree. Okay, it wasn't even in my top five biggest disappointments but it was in the top fifteen. Making the Children of the Atom one of the major factions of Far Harbor wins definite points with me and it is one of the reasons I'm playing this DLC at all.

    Disturbingly, after finishing Fallout 4, I discovered I didn't really have any desire to continue. The game was a 10/10 but it felt like it was finished after the Institute took over/was destroyed with no real reason for the Sole Survivor to continue his wandering. Unlike the Lone Wanderer, the Sole Survivor never really felt like a scourge of evil and struck me as the sort of guy who'd settle down. Maybe because the game encouraged me to buy a dozen houses for him and his polyamorous companions.

The fog is beautiful and deadly. Amazing effect.

    The premise of the DLC is Nick Valentine, your lovable noir detective robot buddy, has been contacted by an old friend whose daughter has gone missing. Kasumi has had vivid dreams of being experimented on and believes herself to be a Synth. Journeying to the real-life island of Bar Harbor, now known as Far Harbor due to the B-sign wearing away, the Sole Survivor discovers an island irradiated by a permanent fog. Worse, the island is divided between three hostile factions ready to tear each other apart.

    In a very real way, Far Harbor is miniature version of the main game with the options of trying to achieve peace between the three factions or eliminating those factions which you don't like. There's the Synth-populated Accadia, the aforementioned Children of Atom, and the Harbormen who are simple fishermen in an unclean world. The developers at Bethesda outdo themselves as all of these factions have a history not only of inhabiting the island but also interacting with one another.

Mirelurks really fit the setting.

The Harbormen have inhabited the island the longest but the radiation on the island has gotten to the point they can't survive there without specialized equipment from Accadia. The Children of the Atom, by contrast, thrive in radiation but are run by a power-mad religious cultist. Accadia just wants to be accepted by humans but the Harbormen (good) loathe androids while the Cult of Atom (evil) accepts them.

    As in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4, you have the option of traveling to each of the factions and learning what they're about. Really, I'm actually kind of disappointed with how entertaining each faction is because I can't help but think this could have been made into a full-blown game. They could have done Fallout 4: Far Harbor and sold it in stores since it would have been pretty damn good. There's great NPCs, dialogue, writing, and some genuine moral dilemmas about the ends justifying the means.

     The island is also populated with a large number of new monsters, including walking carp and hermit crabs which carry buses on their back. There's a definite fishing theme to the monsters and that works well for Fallout.

     The scaling is akin to Point Lookout in that a lot of the monsters have ridiculous damage reduction designed solely to make it so end-game content users can have a challenge. It's not quite as bad where Swamp Folk and Punga Tribals were shrugging off things which would obliterate Super Mutants but it's still noticeable.

    The island is also populated with a large number of new monsters, including walking carp and hermit crabs which carry buses on their back. The scaling is akin to Point Lookout in that a lot of the monsters have ridiculous damage reduction designed solely to make it so end-game content users can have a challenge. It's not quite as bad where Swamp Folk and Punga Tribals were shrugging off things which would obliterate Super Mutants but it's still damn noticeable.

Can you find the secrets of the mist?

    Far Harbor Island is notably the largest landmass ever produced for an expansion pack, another reason why I wish they'd just made it into its own separate game. Much like The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine, there's a point where Expansions really should just be video games in their own right as sequels have a right to be released as is.

    The setting is beautiful with the radioactive fogs actually dangerous and the beautiful forests being spooky in a way which is reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's writings. It is a Gothic New England island that is home to all manner of horrors and creatures which our hero may deal with. Indeed, the fogs invoke Stephen King's The Mist very well with every corner potentially holding some other sort of horror.
 
    Character-wise I think the Far Harbor residents and Dima are the most interesting. The Far Harbor folk really do invoke a fishing village in the future, trying to stubbornly cling to a life they long ago left behind. Dima, by contrast, is a prototype of the same model as Nick Valentine but re-envisioned as a kind of Synth messiah who rejects the Railroad's practice of brainwashing Synths into believing they're human. The interactions between Dima and Nick are quite good, which makes me glad I brought him to Far Harbor. I also love the Longshoreman, who is perhaps what happens when you have a player character who survives until old age--too badass to die.

A really fun little Vault.

    I'm also pleased to say Far Harbor does what no other expansion has done and includes a Vault. Vault 118 contains a parlor room mystery where the Sole Survivor must solve a murder committed by one of the 200-year-old robots living inside the luxury accommodations present.

     It's a hilarious and somewhat tragic story as Vault 118 is one of the few successful Vaults but it preserved a bunch of rich jerks. On the other hand, they're a bunch of entertaining narcissistic jerks and I think the entire thing is meant to make fun of the Sierra Madre adventure in Fallout: New Vegas: Dead Money. All of the actors and drama are here but they stumble over each other trying to be terrifying.

     Overall, I think this is probably one of the best expansions Fallout has ever produced but there is one major flaw. In the middle of the game there's an extremely annoying puzzle which feels like something out of Minecraft rather than Fallout. You have to move blocks around and build little machines to fight off attacking robots rather than fight them yourself. It's incredibly boring, frustratingly irritating, and takes far too long. Worse, it's essential to the plot and can't be skipped. I have to remove a point from the game for it. Otherwise, this is an amazing little game and I recommend it to all Fallout 4 players.

9/10