5) Fallout 76

I’m guessing that Fallout 76 not being dead last in my ranking will make some of you immediately consider this list divorced from reality. The MMO-lite, known more for its jank than literally any quest or writing, was a game nobody wanted. The second that it leaked, Fallout 76 was controversial. Even now, years later, the game is a weird, buggy mess. Last I saw, players were bemoaning that they had been damned into a perpetual daylight, reverse vampires who missed the nighttime.

Still. Sorry, Ink Spots, setting the world on fire is fun. And I know this because I’ve played Fallout 76. It’s a game in which players roleplay cannibals and horrify other players by hunting them down and eating them. It’s where Fallout fans go to build vicious traps for one another. Fallout 76 is where players will roleplay Raiders, do crimes, and then hold executions from which they’re not allowed to come back. Bethesda isn’t writing memorable stories? That’s fine. The players are the NPCs now, and they’re helping everyone else out.

Fallout 76 doesn’t deserve to be the worst Fallout game. It is instead, perhaps, the most inspirational and most underestimated Fallout game.