During this fall season of games, many different new titles have come out bringing fresh experiences and sequels to our beloved series, adding to possibly a golden trilogy or series of games that stay with us forever. But nowadays, it seems like most of these games contain different glitches and have boring gameplay that ruin the experience and frustrates gamers. This can possibly lead gamers to not playing the game anymore and making the game feel more like something you either HAVE to get through, or just another thing you wasted your money on.. Fallout 76 unfortunately checks the box with both.

Fallout 76 was released on November 14, 2018 by Bethesda Game Studios, with a few early access sessions for pre orders from a few weeks before, lasting anywhere from two to nine hours long, giving those who spent more on the game longer time to play and access to not just an early build of the game, but the entirety of it. Not only did these people get to play the full game, but their progression carried over to the full release when it came out.

During these early access sessions, gamers noticed a large amount of glitches and game-breaking bugs that were often encountered through the game world- falling through the map, invisible quest items, etc. These glitches found in the early access builds were thought to be temporary and were supposed to be gone by the time the full release had come around.

Instead, gamers who expected higher craftsmanship from a triple A studio got a snagged up mess, with the same glitches found in the beta carrying over to the full release, and even some new mishaps, because of the increased amount of players on one server. Servers would often crash and players randomly disconnected, unable to rejoin their friends in the middle of playing.

Not only was the server experiencing some of the worst issues that have been seen from a Bethesda title, the fans that bought the Power Armor edition, a $200 collectors edition coming with a plastic life-sized replica of a power armor helmet from the game, felt cheated out of their purchase. One of the items included with the set was a small canvas bag printed with an in-game company. However, when fans got their hands on the bag, it was instead replaced by a cheaper, effectively useless nylon bag. When fans outbroke to Bethesda on Twitter, Bethesda initially responded by compensating a measly amount of in-game paid currency, equating to about $5 in real currency.

Fans really boiled over after this announcement, with some going as far as starting to file formal lawsuits towards Bethesda, suing them for selling something that was falsely advertised. Recently however, Bethesda has announced plans to ship out proper canvas bags to those who bought the edition.

Even with some of these issues being resolved, like the bags or the bugs and glitches being remedied, the gameplay itself is just straight up boring and empty, rarely encountering players and feeling lonely without proper human characters crafted by the devs in the game.

Not only that, but the lore itself and the story just feels missing, with only devoted players finding the true lore within holotapes, instead of interacting with the world like it should be. The only life you really would encounter would be the hostile creatures that try and kill you, and the occasional player.

Not only that, but the world  feels TOO big and empty, there isn’t much to see or explore, and when there is somewhere to explore, it’s just full of junk most of the time.

Overall, I’d say Fallout 76 is a glitchy, boring nightmare that has dipped itself into more and more controversy as time goes by since it’s release, with an increasing amount of people starting to leave the game behind for newer and better titles suited to them and their playstyles. To Bethesda, I’d say that the online experiment has tragically failed; stick to single player.