Fallout 76 Battle Royale (aka Nuclear Winter) should not work. It shouldn’t work because when Fallout 76 launched, it was a glitchy, tedious mess. It is much less so nowadays, having been treated to almost a year’s patch –up work, but even so, Bethesda’s recent track record of releasing new content has been sketchy at best.

But the BR mode seems oddly fitting, and, as a player who tends to avoid the genre due to its long load times vs (due to my lack of skill) short game time, I enjoyed my time in the game.

I think this is due to the fact that Fallout is by design, a looter-based game, and adding the BR mode twist (by the clever use of Vault 51 and the associated lore) did not feel as big a leap away from the core experience, as say adding it to Battlefield 5. You HAVE to find guns in the adventure mode. You HAVE to find armour and supplies to keep yourself alive – the same cannot be said for other games that have adopted BR as their saving plea.

Yes, it is still clunky. Yes, it is still glitch; but the world is there, ripe for killing, as is the leveling system (that cleverly allows further exploration of the lobby vault upon leveling up), the guns, the perks and the power-ups. Fallout BR feels almost a natural progression, and whereas at first, I thought I’d hate it…I like it. I like it a lot.

Fallout BR could be good. It could be very good. If Bethesda gets it running smoothly, while not challenging the likes of PUBG or Apex, it could well provide Fallout fans with their preferred go-to mode.