Fallout 76 got off to a very rocky start back in 2018, but it’s certainly improved. There have been a whole host of expansions, and people absolutely are playing it. But should you? If you’re wondering whether Fallout 76 is worth playing in 2024, here’s the answer.
Is Fallout 76 Worth Playing in 2024?
Fallout 76 is worth playing if you can get it cheap or free, but it still falls short of being the best Fallout experience. You’ll get much more out of it if you can get some other players involved, as the multiplayer chaos that entails can be kind of fun. But unless you crave multiplayer Fallout, you’re better off with Fallout 4 or Fallout: New Vegas.
What’s Good About Fallout 76?
I’ll start on a positive note. There are certainly positive things about Fallout 76. It has a huge open world to roam, and it has all the retro-futuristic trappings of prior Fallout games, as well as energy weapons, weird monsters, vaults and so on. And the world has got bigger with several expansions, which, unlike The Elder Scrolls Online, are absolutely free.
Another neat feature is that you can build your own base and add in machines to sell the items you collect. So, while you’re wandering around the wasteland, caps could be piling up at home. That’s in-game currency, I should add – you can’t make real money playing Fallout 76.
If you get to team up with some friends and stick together, there’s plenty of scope for multiplayer shenanigans, taking on the wasteland’s worst together. And unlike the single-player Fallout 4, you’ll have someone to show your ridiculous costumes to.
Related: Fallout Season 1: Power Armor, Explained
What’s Bad About Fallout 76?
Unfortunately, for me, at least, Fallout 76’s negatives outweigh its positives. Even with all those expansions, it feels like a shallow experience compared to previous Fallouts, especially as far as quests go.
Since there are other players around, the VATS system no longer slows down the world, which makes kills less satisfying. And speaking of the world, while every single location isn’t exposed, you’ve got a detailed map, which takes a lot of the fun out of exploring. I got a kick out of disabling the hud and wandering around, but I still kept asking myself why I wasn’t just playing Fallout 4.
Still, there’s base-building, right? That should be fun. It can be, and some of the bases in Fallout 76 are amazing. But a lot of the cool stuff is locked away, often requiring you to grind to unlock it (more so than resource gathering in Fallout 4), and the game’s not short on microtransactions, either. There’s even a Fallout 1st subscription service, “a premium membership that enhances the Fallout 76 experience.”
Basically, it feels like a very middling multiplayer game with a Fallout skin applied as an afterthought. However, even though I’m bitter that we haven’t got a single-player Fallout game in nearly ten years, I have to give credit to Bethesda for improving on the original release and not just ditching it (the money probably helps). Atlantic City is a neat addition, but it’s still, well, Fallout 76.
But is it worth buying at full price? Absolutely not. If you can get it dirt cheap or have Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus Extra, by all means, take it for a spin. And if you temper your expectations, you may get a kick out of it. This article aside, I dive back in every now and again (especially when a new expansion comes out), but it never holds my attention for long.
So, the answer to whether Fallout 76 is worth playing in 2024 is that it’s worth trying, but it’s still a sub-par experience compared to the rest of the franchise.
