Best Fallout games – Your rundown of the greatest wasteland adventures

War, as they say, never changes, but the Fallout game series does all the time, depending on the direction the winds of game development are blowing. As the timeline and tone change, the only real throughline is the brutality of its post-apocalyptic wasteland. Each installment is a self-contained piece, only tangentially connected to other Fallout titles through shared themes and visuals.

You’d likely be surprised to find out that the full list of Fallout games doesn’t stretch to a full top 10. We decided to showcase some of the mods that are just downright better than most of the Fallout fare. As it stands, our list contains some of the best open-world games and best RPGs on the market. Read on for our definitive breakdown of the 10 best Fallout games.

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• Over its nearly three-decade history, the Fallout game series has changed its focus multiple times.
• The worst Fallout games suffer from excessive monetisation and struggle with tone.
• The core games vary in quality, but the titles with stronger RPG elements have more appeal.
• Some fan-made mod projects trump Bethesda’s own attempts.
• The best Fallout games focus on the West Coast and on a rich narrative.

Fallout Shelter (2015)

Available on: Android, iOS, PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4

In truth, Fallout Shelter has no business being on a list of the best Fallout games, but it remains playable today and is still worth discussing. Fallout Shelter is a free-to-play vault builder that is the base construction of XCOM Enemy Unknown by way of an idle game. 

Expand out your vault, populate it with faces from the wasteland, and send your dwellers out on missions to collect loot to build deeper underground. You can play through quests, but they’re dull, and mostly revolve around searching through buildings and waiting for fights to be over. 

Fallout Shelter exists because of monetisation. Think endless timers to skip with paid-for boosts. If we’re being generous, Fallout Shelter is a well-tuned critique of Vault-Tec’s greed, or an experiment in trying to find an overseer with the loosest wallet.

Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel (2001)

Available on: PC

Fallout Tactics was an interesting twist on the original Fallout formula, toning down the role-playing and focusing on tactical combat in a hostile wasteland. You play as Brotherhood of Steel exiles, fighting near Chicago as you contend with local raiders, scattered super mutants, and a crusading robotic army.

You control and lead a squad of soldiers across the Midwest, and have access to multiple modes of combat. You can engage in continuous turn-based gameplay as a squad, or let everyone take their turns by spending limited action points, similar to the base Fallout game. Although there was an obvious focus on combat over all else, it still followed the players’ actions with a karma meter and multiple endings, attempting to uphold the idea that the players’ choices still mattered.

Fallout 76 (2018)

Available on: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Fallout 76 is a game of two halves: the part that’s a Fallout game, and the part that’s online. You can treat the game as a single-player adventure up to a point as you piece together the mysteries of its different zones. After some backlash, Bethesda listened to player feedback and introduced NPCs to the wasteland, making it more than just an Appalachia-based Fallout FPS.

However, the online components completely change the feel. Not only is it strange to be summoning raid bosses in a Fallout game by launching tactical nukes, but players cavort about the world in whatever strange gear they’ve picked up from the Atom shop. It makes the place feel like it’s home to the brightest and weirdest raiders in the wasteland. It might look like a Fallout game, but thematically, it couldn’t be more dissonant.

Fallout 4 (2015)

Available on: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

The Commonwealth of Fallout 4 is probably the most enjoyable playground in the Fallout series: an open-world map spread across multiple biomes and a brightly coloured urban Bostonian jungle. The gameplay is undoubtedly the most polished of the Fallout shooters, and overall, it is probably the best-playing game on this list. 

However, in its attempt to be entertaining, it loses so much of what made the previous installments interesting. Roleplaying was heavily stripped down, giving you limited options to respond to any given situation, and the main story is as uninteresting as they come. 

The Nuka World DLC showcases how uninterested the game is in being anything other than a toy, letting your character randomly ally with a new faction of raiders and despoil the wasteland. Not for any reason other than your own fleeting joy, but if that’s all you want, Fallout 4 is waiting for you.

Old World Blues (2020)

Available on: PC (As a mod for Hearts of Iron 4)

If any game here is going to be the odd one out, it’s going to be Old World Blues. An ambitious full-conversion mod for Hearts of Iron 4, it transforms the map into a post-apocalyptic North America. The real-world nations have been replaced with ones either directly taken from the Fallout games or heavily inspired by any small piece of lore or connective tissue that the wide collection of modders could unearth.

The result is different from any other Fallout game. The grand strategy elements sync perfectly with a war-torn wasteland. Old World Blues stretches its game foundations to tell all sorts of stories across the map from different storytellers. From deciding the fate of the New California Republic to securing and exploring lost old-world science facilities, or even restarting communism in Canada, Old World Blues is a love letter to all Fallout games.

Fallout 3 (2008)

Available on: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Fallout 3 was the first ambitious leap for the series into the world of first-person, and although it sometimes loses grasp of the series’ foundations, it has a knack for atmosphere. The moment you leave the opening vault and step out into the wasteland is one of the best tone-setters in games, dropping you out into a harsh and hostile world with little direction.

It encourages you to take your time and explore, to get lost in the little things, and ideally, to forget about the main story for a while. The Capital Wasteland is lonely and immersive, not because it feels alive, but often because it feels dead, with the pockets of civilisation you come across rarely guaranteeing safety. It also makes an interesting attempt to adapt the turn-based combat of isometric games to a first-person space, giving us the VATS system that became core to the series.

Fallout London (2024)

Available on: PC (Requires Fallout 4)

Fallout London is a full-conversion mod that ports Fallout 4 to a new location and expands the mechanics as well. The limited dialogue options are removed, providing a proper list of interactions for any given conversation, alongside the addition of skill and ability checks that were removed from Fallout 4. It is, on the whole, more of an RPG than its base game.

Taking Fallout on its first excursion outside America has also proven to be an excellent choice, as London works exceedingly well as the setting for an urban-based adventure. Each area of the city presents its own challenges, and the factions add plenty of character to the setting. From the populist 5th Column to the power-armored knights of Camelot, Fallout London understands what it means to be a Fallout game. All for the low, low price of free.

Fallout 2 (1998)

Available on: PC, MacOS

The first sequel not only expanded the world of Fallout but also subverted it. Rather than just booting you out into a struggling wasteland again, you’re sent out into one that’s started to recover. Old locations have developed new civilisations, and now that the fight to survive has started to pass, you find there are just as many reasons for conflict.

Fallout 2 is both more lighthearted and more cynical than the original, establishing the facets of the Fallout tone that would continue to scrape against each other years later. With one hand, it asks you to navigate warring crime families and strange pseudo-scientologists, and with another, tells you that the wasteland’s monsters are nothing compared to the shadow of the American government. Successive games would struggle with Fallout 2’s lessons, but it still acts as the foundation for what came after.

Fallout A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game (1997)

Available On: PC, MacOS

The first Fallout game is, in many ways, the deepest. What little comedy Fallout has is decidedly dark. From the opening shot pulling out of recordings of old world war crimes to a destroyed future, Fallout immediately draws you in and then wastes no time throwing you out into a grim, hostile world.

The playable vault dweller you start as has as much context for the wasteland as you, and survival instincts are earned. The game is relentless, with a ticking clock in the background for you to save your vault before introducing ever more elaborate complications.

It also introduces talking down enemies from their grand plans, but does it better than any game that has come since. It’s not just about being good at talking; it’s about finding the right information for an argument and presenting it correctly. There is no hand-holding in Fallout’s wasteland, and it works to this day.

Fallout New Vegas

Available on: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

It can’t be overstated how much Obsidian Entertainment did with Fallout New Vegas, and in just 18 months, no less. The Mojave Desert is home to one of the best-written chapters of the Fallout franchise. It starts as a story about revenge that cascades into a tense ideological conflict between post-apocalyptic civilisations. It even improves on Fallout 3’s gameplay, expanding the skills system and making decisions matter more than ever.

This is even before discussing the main DLC, each one a different genre of story that ties its themes to moment-to-moment action in a way Obsidian couldn’t get away with in the main game. Where most other games on this list might struggle with one running motif, New Vegas sprints with multiple, and is without a doubt the best Fallout game.

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