Fakenews website Screenrant lies about Fallout

When I visit and revisit old games, I'm becoming more bitter by every passing moment, how far modern gaming industry has fallen.

 

Screen rant have always been shit tbh.
Also are you sure this isn't just a troll to get People like us to go "Well shit! They are the worst!"
It seems obvious it's bait, I mean they put New Vegas as 3rd.
I wouldn't even be surprised if the writer doesn't even like Fallout that much and was just given it as an assignment. He seems more invested in Fortnite and Pokémon and this was probably just a throwaway article just to get People angry.

My advice is to ignore it. A lot of nerd sites are just the worst anyway, they gain more from getting massive headlines than anything. I don't know if I can blame the writer here, they just did a quick buck article they probably didn't even want to do.

 

The moment they put 4 as a better game then 1, 2 and NV, you know they are baiting... It really on the nose.
Also, this kinda proves that Screen Rant is beginning to lose viewers and just doing it for the money. Which is kinda pathetic that they have to sunk this low for this.

In my opinion, this article should be ignored as the worthless trash it is.

 

More proof that video game ''''''''journalism'''''''' has become utterly and absolutely irrelevant. At least with the new content creators like ramblelime showing the classical Fallouts their much deserved appreciation are showing up left and right, just in time for me personally to retire bit-by-bit from fulfilling my role as a glittering gem of hatred

Not to mention that this guys also happened to review Fallout 1.5: Resurrection and Nevada, which allows for more attention to Fallout 2's modding scene. Very welcome especially with that recent Fallout Frontier mess.
He also sets himself apart from most Fallout content creators with how being rather fair and proper he is in his reviews. I'm quite sure he would be a welcome member of NMA if he's not already.

 

@ramblelime

 

Noice. Welcome to the club, brother.

 

Oh fuuuuuuuuuuck. I know people are allowed their own opinions and stuff and I try to respect that but..... MMMMF. This one is just really hard to swallow.

When I saw 1 and 2 ranked worst, I just fucking knew what number 1 was gonna be. And sure enough, there it is.
Man, this series is just not viewed as an RPG series anymore. If the next Fallout game is a linear rail shooter with a brutish Russian bad guy and an emphasis on QTE segments, it'll be this guy's new #1.

 

Just to be clear since it seems like no one has pointed it out yet - this is a clickbait article that is literally just based around sales numbers, the order of Fallout games ithe order of sales. Had 76 sold better, it'd be at the top of this list. Which is silly, but this isn't some really well thought out piece of criticism, its just a shitty listicle based around an "objective" metric.

 

I think Games Journalism as a proffesion gets shat on way too much because of stuff like this, as @Hardboiled Android already pointed out, first of all this is a clickbait article.

Secondly game rankings or "How good is this game" articles tend to be shit in general because, y'know, they're inherently opinions. This opinion is a particularly horrific one, but I could point out just as many flaws in RPG Codex's RPG Ranking list.

Articles which either talk about issues in the wider industry are generally good, as are ones that analyse games from certain frameworks.

The only problem is when they're asked to write an article about a game's quality, or put a number on it, or rank it compared to other games, because people tend to view game's journalists as definitive authorities when really, they're just gamers who get paid to write articles about games and the gaming industry. The problem is more that the memeified "Rate this game out of 10, if it's less than 8 we'll remove ads from your site" or "Rank these games in a list" articles tend to be what's expected, rather than what's best.

I'd be willing to bet most would rather just write an analysis of a game than they would slap a number on it and make the metacritic rating go up.

 

Ol' reliable "if it's popular it must be good".

 

There's no point in getting upset about this anymore.
As I said, they probably got one of the few People who probably doesn't care that much about the Fallout franchise to make the list.
I have no doubt that Fallout 4 is his favourite, it is the most polished of all the games, even through we can all admit that the games aren't known for their polish.
It also does add some new stuff to play around with. I do think Fallout 4 does it's crafting system better than most other games, it's easy to use and can add a lot of customisation. The big problem is that the end result is usually lackluster compared to what you have in your head.

 

The author is more interested in gunplay then roleplay. That was terrible I am sorry.

 

Reminder that the articles are bad on purpose in order to farm your clicks.

 

Agreed, but I'm still going to blame the writer, in addition to the apparatus that produced them.

 

The problem with these shit clickbait titles is that some people will take it seriously and start parrot what it says. What about some person that wants to try out the series, but then reads and hears from a bunch of people that the first two games are "outdated" or "turn based combat is bad", and that causes them to never try out the first two games?

The writer doesn't have to like the first two games, but they also doesn't have to write bullshit like "you can skip these games" or "the combat and graphics are outdated". They can just claim they don't like turn based combat, but people can give the games a try if they are into that type of combat.

 

Though it’s obvious this guy never played the original games, it seems he doesn’t even have passing knowledge of Fallout 2.

The first game in the series to do so, apparently.

Though it isn’t necessarily common knowledge (for those who haven’t played it), it is possible to modify some weapons in 2.

He seems to imply that both Fallout 1 and 2 are set in Southern California and have Vault Dweller player characters, making no mention of the Chosen One.

 

Hmm, I'm not entirely sure about that. Granted, I've never saw a single article coming from these sites in particular, but that's most likely because I never even clicked on any of these links in the first place.

Still, I'd like to point out that the only real flaws with RPG Codex's list in particular is mostly because, last time I checked

(1) they didn't have a trustworthy, unexploitable, and consistent voting-ranking system, not to mention they're still split on whether or not people who haven't even played the game should be able vote, or should it be registered members-only, or if the registered members accounts should be X-years old, etc etc, and
(2) there are so many factors when talking about RPGs in particular, even video games in general, that trying to assign specific titles to a number just won't do the job at all. Just as you mentioned, it's most preferable to simply write an analysis of a game, telling people what the game actually is rather than what people think of the game, instead of simply slap a number on a title and calling it a day. This is especially true for RPGs, with its myriad of subgenres and people having different taste and perception of what RPGs are, and the Codex of all places is where this rings true, so making a list and letting people voting would just be a waste of time.

There's also a factor of those votes being made just to meme something, but since I only vaguely remember when the Codex was doing it and where, or maybe I even remembered it wrong, I won't put this as an actual reasoning for now.

But the difference between the Codex's case and this articles, however clickbaity they may be, we can't really deny that the number of people who genuinely believe that sales number and popularity is a sign of quality, is GIGANTIC now, can we? Repeat a lie enough times that it became the truth and all that jazz, in this case repeat a drivel enough times, having it repeated by just enough amount of people, that it became a fact of life. Despite the flaws of RPG Codex's list, there's actually still a merit in those rankings. If we ignore the placement for a second, and instead focus on what the Codex actually has to say about the game, and you can get good reasoning as to why X is better than Y, even if you won't immediately agree with them, provided you skim through the shitposts and memes that is. But when you try to do the same with these garbage articles, ignore their rankings for a second and read through their reasoning, all you get is something vaguely related to the games, instead of what the game actually is. Like the sales figure as Hardboiled Android mentioned. Okay, they tells us that people like Fallout 4 more than Fallout New Vegas based on the numbers of copies sold, it seems. But they have zero things to say about what Fallout 4 actually is, what Fallout New Vegas is, what their relation to one another that justifies the ranking of Fallout 4 above Fallout New Vegas. In case of this article, the writer briefly speaks about each and every game, but only speaks of what it is on the surface, and speaks of what's seemingly the most prominent features that makes people go and play it instead of the others. They don't speak of the deeper, more important stuff like how in Fallout 4 they completely removed the skills from the SPECIAL-Skills-Perks&Traits triage of Fallout RPG mechanics, and how the dialogue system has been petrified into only 4 dialogue choices all the time, how that affected the way the game plays, and why that means Fallout 4 is the best Fallout in the grander scheme of the franchise. And saying Fallout 1&2 are "The Worst" because they are "different from the modern games" is just garbage reasoning, through and through, and it doesn't justify the ranking in any way.

I know those kinds of analysis are better done in its own individual articles like you said, but at the very least mentioning all those important stuff briefly while elaborating as to why one iteration is better than the other is the bare minimum for any rankings at all. The Codex not only do all that, in case of their Top 101 PC RPGs they get multiple users chiming in to say something about the game, letting readers to crosscheck and cross-reference to get deeper idea of what the game being talked about actually is. Compared to the Screenrant's; Fallout 1&2 are "The Worst", why? "Because they are different." What does being different has anything to do with being "The Worst"? I mean, I just somehow gets into a circular reasoning, but reading their 'long version' of the reasoning, they still didn't tell me anything. "They are point-n-click and turn-based cRPG, their gameplay and visuals are outdated" how? You can't even say this when they are not first-person/third-person hybrid that plays as action-shooter, and they are presented in top-down isometric cavalier oblique layout. The aforementioned statement holds some value, provided they are comparing Fallout 1&2 to similar cRPGs. But they weren't. Sadly, a lot of people would 'get it', because a simple glance at a screenshot and knowing they're made in 1997-1998, these people will immediately jumps into conclusion and move on.

 

The hilarity of claiming people should play Fallout 1 and 2 for the lore only and then play the Bethesda Fallouts is the fact the Bethesda Fallouts buttfuck the lore so hard that a lot of the lore established in the first two games is not the same as the Bethesda Fallouts.

And of course, another of these people that claim that Fallout 3 introduces the old factions to a new generation. It just introduces their names, and that is it. The East Coast versions of the West Coast factions that are in Fallout 3 might as well be in name only given how little they resemble their West Coast counterparts.