Fallout 4: Automatron

Score: 80%
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Action/RPG

Back to the Commonwealth:

Role-playing juggernaut Bethesda Softworks is known for supporting its games with some of the absolute best downloadable content money can buy. DLC can be a dubious subject when viewed through a certain prism, but when the quality and value is as high as what Bethesda puts out, it's hard to complain. All that being said, Fallout 4: Automatron requires an adjustment of expectations. As long as you know going in that it isn't the main event of this game's downloadable content cycle, it's an easy sell to anyone who needs an excuse to return to post-apocalypse Boston.

Villain of the Week:

Fallout 4: Automatron features a new questline, and a really entertaining one, at that. If you're level 20 or higher, you'll receive the call to new adventure in classic Fallout fashion: through a mysterious radio signal. Once you head out to help, you're simply left with the end of a calamitous gunfight, and one sole survivor: a robot named Ada. She comes bearing bad tidings; apart from the wanton slaughter of all those she deemed "friends," it seems as if the Mechanist has dispatched an army of robots to reign in terror over the Commonwealth. But hey, you're the savior/scourge of Beantown (depending on who you ask), and therefore up to the task of bringing him to his knees. And that involves turning his own creations against him.

Enhancing the Toolset:

Fallout 4 has a creative bent to it already, with its systems specifically dedicated towards not only the gathering and allocating of resources, but the construction and customization of entire settlements. Automatron expands the toolset at your disposal in one major way: you can now build robotic companions.

How do you build them? Well, much in the same way that you build other things: at a specific workbench, with components gathered elsewhere. Now you can harvest parts from other robot types for use in constructing your own implements of death and destruction. Enemy Protectrons, Assaultrons, Mister Handys, Sentry Bots, and Robobrains (the Mechanist's specialty) are ripe with parts that can be looted and retrofitted to fit your new Automatrons.

Value:

If you purchase Fallout 4: Automatron hoping for it to be on the same lines as The Pitt and Old World Blues, you're going in with the wrong expectations. This is much more a taste of things to come, and with the recent detailing of everything included with the Season Pass, it's easy to argue that there's a lot to look forward to. Automatron is $9.99 as of this writing, so while the questline and overall content offering is a bit on the scant side, it's not unreasonably priced. And it's good stuff, at that.

-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications
AKA Jon Carlos

Back to the Commonwealth:

Villain of the Week:

Enhancing the Toolset:

Value:

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