Despite its high praise and commercial popularity, “Fallout 76” is a bland and broken mess failing to meet its praise by supplementing it with awkward multiplayer gameplay and total emptiness within its expansive world.

“Fallout 76” is a multiplayer open world, first person shooter created by Bethesda Studios, who has been praised radically for masterpieces such as the “Elder Scrolls” and “Dishonored” titles.

Unfortunately, after sinking ten hours into the game, it’s notable the Fallout franchise has suffered quite a bit.

After creating your own character, one could expect to collaborate with players around the world to take down the legendary monsters and mutants famous across the Fallout universe because of the side effects from nuclear radiation.

But in the end this legendary moment from the multiplayer experience fell completely short. The game’s server connection, or lack of, was a huge issue.

Having had disconnected from the game’s servers countless times when connecting to other players caused an unnecessary hassle.

Exploring the largest open world Bethesda has ever crafted was somewhat amazing, but an enormous amount of graphical bugs and glitches made my experience fall short.

The game is massive, but Bethesda’s exclusion of non-player characters made the world feel completely empty, despite its size. Because of these lack of characters, you can definitely expect the story to be unfulfilling and weak. Hint: it was, and the difficulty level is also just downright laughable.

The gameplay is satisfying at times when you are defending yourself from massive creatures with weaponry you’ve scavenged from around. But, Bethesda has completely butchered the VATS system, which is a time freezing system allowing you to pinpoint weaknesses in these mutant creatures and shoot them for critical bonuses. Removing these time freezes ultimately removes the satisfaction of killing these enemies.

The entry of things such as the food, water and radiation system made the game seem like too much of a hassle, even though Bethesda attempted to make a realistic simulation of nuclear fallout. Supplying yourself with food and water to survive became a chore after a few hours of gameplay.

The world of “Fallout 76” will leave you feeling completely empty when exploring its wasteland of a universe. The gameplay, while fun at sometimes, is completely overlooked due to its horrible graphics and painful multiplayer experience.

It seems Bethesda has put in no effort into actually crafting a marvelous open world game unlike its previous titles, such as “Fallout 4”, or “Fallout 3: New Vegas”. It’s actually an insult to the Fallout franchise, and if you want to play this game, expect yourself to have the lowest of all expectations.

1/5 stars