Fallout 76 Review: 4 Ups & 7 Downs

Downs...

7. The Performance Is Terrible

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's ever played a Bethesda game before, but yes, Fallout 76 is an utter disaster as far as its performance is concerned.

You can practically hear the developer's long-utilised Creation engine creaking as it tries to make the game run half-way acceptably, and if you thought Fallout 4 was rough, those issues are only exacerbated when you factor in online functionality.

The game's lack of a pause button due to the persistent open world means that, when the game takes 3-5 seconds to load the map, you're vulnerable to being attacked. That's to say nothing of the fact that no AAA game should actually be releasing without the ability to load maps and menus consistently within half-a-second.

Other issues are myriad: loading screens last well over a minute, the frame-rate can drop into the teens while doing something as a simple as reloading a gun, the draw-distance is laughable - to the point I saw a blue blob morph into a building over the course of about 20 seconds - and crashes are shockingly frequent.

Major performance issues have been noted by players across all platforms, and the result is by far the most infuriatingly troubled project Bethesda has ever dared to release and charge money for. It feels like an early access game, not a £50 retail title.