Longtime readers are bored of me talking about the Fallout game series, but I’ve dipped my toes back in after binging the web series on Amazon, which was, remarkably, pretty good. While not sharing quite the expansive feeling the game series did, I thought the character development and careful attention to detail was done exceptionally well, and they nailed the tone of Fallout 4 really well. They’ve already committed to a sequel in the series, which is nice to hear.

I’d already been replaying Fallout 4 for a month or so, having grown tired of the repetitive nature of Starfield, and had grown tired of replaying the same levels in that over again. In a rare moment of clarity I figured I’d check to see if Fallout: New Vegas was available through Game Pass, for which I am paying, and I was surprised to see it was. Loading it up for the first time, it’s really clear that it was released in 2010: the graphics are pretty blocky, the lighting is junk, and it’s easy to see the limitations of the original platform. That being said, it took me about an hour to adjust to that regression, and now I’m enjoying the game. The base mechanics for the later games are there, so it’s a lot like making the jump from Fallout to Starfield, but backwards—the fundamental controls are present minus all the stuff they added later. Apparently this is the best of the whole series, according to the interwebs, so I’m in for a treat.

Apparently Starfield is supposed to get some sort of expansion pack later this year, which would be nice; I’d like to go back to that and do something different, having completed all but the last main quest. And I chortled to read that No Man’s Sky is getting another in a series of updates, which will make a supremely repetitive and boring game…a little less repetitive and boring? I’m shocked anyone is still playing that game.