I’ll never forget the screaming. We'd just locked down checkpoint C, a three-storey townhouse in a wartorn village, and the six of us had taken up positions guarding all windows and entry points, waiting for the counterattack. First a pregnant silence, then a racket of assault rifle bullets and panicked shouts. We were repelling them. The timer had almost expired. Then a squadmate threw a speculative incendiary grenade at a doorway, and the screaming started. The area was being contested, and the insurgent contesting it had just been set alight. The round ended with six of us watching in mute horror as he crawled, wailing, through the fire, into the hallway where he eventually expired. 

This unscripted moment from one of Insurgency Sandstorm's eight-player co-op matches against waves of AI forces really does speak of its qualities. Not just of the eerily convincing soundscapes it conjures, full of dialogue and terrifying reverberations, and not just of the inherent tension to its control point-based modes. It also demonstrates an ability to convey the ugliness and horror of modern military combat, without the need for overwrought scripted sequences as with Battlefield and Call of Duty. Not bad for a series that started life as a Half-Life 2 mod.

Sandstorm is equally brilliant as a co-op or competitive multiplayer game, offering competent large-scale 16v16 fights with vehicles but really excelling at tighter encounters on chokepoint-heavy maps with fewer combatants. The exact nature of the conflict you're fighting and dying for is non-specific but the reference points span Black Hawk Down to Zero Dark Thirty via The Hurt Locker—in other words, a patchwork of post-millennium war in the Middle East. Among the men in bomb vests sprinting at you and the RPG fire, what stands out in particular is that no one's playing the hero. 

Instead, every player-controlled and AI soldier sounds terrified. They shout out when they spot an enemy, when they need to reload, or when an objective state has changed, but they never sound like they're relishing the fight like Call of Duty's psychopathic operatives do. They're bricking it, like any sensible person would do. I'd love to see the inner workings of Insurgency: Sandstorm's code so that I could understand how developers New World Interactive manage to trigger appropriate canned dialogue at just the right junctures. That said, they've probably got their hands full, what with this game releasing, so walking an imbecile through their complex systems maybe isn't the most sensible use of their time. 

Nevertheless, the game's unusually articulate soldiers have plenty of provocation to sound terrified in a given match, treated as they are to very few lulls in the action and bombarded by surprise attacks. Co-op consists of a series of checkpoint captures, in sequence, while AI attack each one in waves. Competitive modes, meanwhile, range from Hardpoint-like power struggles to traditional two or three point control scenarios. There's no attempt to reinvent the wheel that's turned at the centre of modern military online shooters, nor any great imperative to do so. Insurgency: Sandstorm just gets on with doing the fundamentals brilliantly.

Weapon behaviour takes a bit of getting used to, mind you. There's no extra layer of visual or sonic feedback for successfully shooting an opponent, so you're sometimes at a loss as to whether your long-range shots connected or not. The active reload mechanic is also sure to catch the new player out at least a dozen times, but these are concessions to realism that Insurgency Sandstorm absolutely convinces you are worth making. 

Eventually the absence of hit confirmations becomes something to actively enjoy, just like those moments you remember to lean around a corner and hit your mark. Here, more than anywhere except arguably ArmA, you can take tremendous pride in playing like a professional soldier and forgetting about K:D ratios.

If nits must be picked, it's the vehicles that stick out for their rough and ready implementation. I've had some great moments in the gunner seat of a converted pickup, true, but the vehicle handling itself and the extent to which map design actually accommodates them just isn't quite there. There's the lightest touch of jankiness reminding you this isn't a triple-A shooter, but it's only with vehicles that you feel the experience actually suffers for it.

Even with those creases, I haven't played a multiplayer shooter as exciting as this for ages, and I'll be coaxing friends into its co-op mode for months to come. I'll also try—and occasionally fail—to describe just how good it sounds from moment to moment to anyone who'll listen. See you at checkpoint C.

Update: This review has been updated to reflect the maximum co-op player count of eight, and that bullets do not self-replenish.

Dontnod announced via Twitter today that Life is Strange 2 episode 2 will be released on January 24, 2019.

"Life is Strange 2 got off to a strong start, but the best is yet to come. Episode 2 is going to be a great moment for this season,” said Jon Brooke, co-head of studio at Square Enix External Studios. “Previous seasons have both had a point that was just, ‘that moment’, that captivated fans from all over the world, and we feel like this will be the one for Life is Strange 2."

Along with the announcement, Dontnod released a live-action trailer (embedded below) featuring Gonzalo Martin, the voice-actor of Sean Diaz. The short trailer might seem familiar to those who have played the first episode, and after it, there's a brief glimpse into what adventures await the Diaz brothers.

"Sean and Daniel Diaz continue their journey into the winter months. As the two brothers struggle against the cold, Daniel gets increasingly ill. Sean decides that they must take the risk and make their way to their distant grandparent’s house to recover and seek shelter."Life is Strange 2 follows Sean and Daniel Diaz as they flee their home in Arcadia Bay after a tragic, supernatural accident. Pip gave her spoiler-free take on the first episode back in September and, while she didn't like the sketching mini-game, she said that it was a "confident opening episode with protagonists it’s easy to root for."

Shenmue is a game with a reputation—both good and bad. It was, for a while, the most expensive videogame ever made. It sold less than Sega expected, and may have contributed to the sad death of the Dreamcast. To some it's an idiosyncratic, highly ambitious masterpiece. To others it's slow, boring, and barely playable. And, until this 2018 re-release, the only way to play the first game was on a Dreamcast. Or an emulator, I suppose, but it was mostly a miserable experience, with graphical glitches and poor performance.

Of those two camps, I'm of the opinion that, for all its faults, Shenmue is a masterpiece. A singular game with a bold vision, and one of the most powerfully atmospheric things I've ever played—blocky geometry, weird controls, and all. Replaying it this year, at 4K with anti-aliasing and some neat bloom lighting effects, I felt the same way I did the first time I first booted it up. I was swept up in the melodramatic martial arts adventure of Ryo Hazuki, and beguiled by the game's vision of Japan in the '80s.

A remake might have been nice, but I'm happy with the fact that, in the remaster, it looks just like it did on Dreamcast—albeit a little sharper around the edges. Well, smoother if you count the AA. Yokosuka is as captivating as ever: a beautiful, quiet, often gloomy slice of suburban Japan, with overcast skies, sleepy backstreets, and wintry weather. It's the perfect backdrop for the game's melancholy storyline of hopeless revenge and unrequited love.

One of the most refreshing things about playing Shenmue today is how wilfully, glacially paced it is. This is an incredibly slow game, and part of the reason why so many critics bounce off it. But it's a perfect fit for the life of a teenager stuck in a small town, and when you're not chasing your father's killer, there's something magical about how mundane life can be. Shopping at the convenience store. Talking to the neighbours. Feeding the cat. Shenmue is happy to just let you be, and not enough games allow that these days.

I also love how familiar you become with the setting over time, and how it begins to feel like home. Because every NPC in the game has a routine, you start to become aware of peoples' lives. A person might go to a certain restaurant for lunch every day, or a shopkeeper will catch the bus home after pulling the shutters down on his store. This creates an incredible sense of place and community, and the feeling that this world exists without you. It's remarkable how such an old game can create this sensation, and so strongly.

The second game is fine. I don't love it, but it's worth playing in preparation for Shenmue III. The sequel loses something in its increased scale, replacing the relatively small area of Yokosuka with the sprawling mass of Hong Kong—and other parts of China besides. But the first game works as a standalone experience, I think, and is worth buying this collection for. I won't be getting rid of the Dreamcast that's sat dutifully under my TV for the past decade, but now whenever I want to replay Shenmue (and that's often), I'm glad I can just fire it up on Steam now.

Despite the perpetual winter, Frostpunk couldn't be described as festive, but thanks to the free update, A Christmas Carol, the gloomy survival management game’s Endless mode is getting a little speck of hope in the form of a new holiday quest and a massive Christmas tree. 

It’s not a surprise that Frostpunk identifies with Dickens. Its frozen industrial city is an analogue for Victorian London, full of factories and poverty, while the themes of crappy working conditions and the poor treatment of the working class crop up in the difficult decisions you have to make when running your struggling haven. 

The update introduces a new quest in Endless mode, where survivors will approach you in the hope that you’ll preserve Christmas for the next generation by hosting a big communal meal and distributing presents. I know that if I was facing a miserable (but probably brief) life in a frozen wasteland at the end of the world, a present would cheer me right up. Unfortunately, given the era, it would probably just be a hoop. The Victorians had rubbish toys. 

It wouldn’t be Frostpunk without something to balance out the cheer, of course, so you’ll have to weigh the costs of having a party and plonking down a lovely Christmas tree with the benefit to morale. A celebration might go down well at first, but everyone will be a lot less chipper when they realise they've scoffed the last of the food. 

A Christmas Carol is free and out now.

Some people will argue the 'Soulslike' label needs to die. They'll tell you it's overused, hackneyed and that there are other catch-all terms to describe hybrid ARPGs, which don't rely on comparison, even when it's the best fit. I think these people are wrong. Ashen, a low-fantasy action role-player developed by A44 and published by Annapurna Interactive, closely echoes many of the ideas and systems found in From Software's Dark Souls series. It knows exactly who its audience is, and, for all intents and purposes, is a Soulslike game. And it's a bloody good one. 

In place of Estus Flasks, for example, Ashen gives players sap-filled Crimson Gourds that deliver health boosts in limited supply. In the absence of Souls, Ashen trades in Scoria—a currency farmed from fallen enemies that helps facilitate progression. As is law in Miyazaki's nightmare-scapes, accumulated Scoria is lost upon death, and can only be regained in your immediate next life. Likewise, resting at Ritual Stones replenishes vitality, à la Dark Souls bonfires, at the expense of reinstating fallen foes within the world. Ashen's enemies are tough, its bosses are blockbuster, and its gorgeous handcrafted world is littered with ambiguous lore and odd but charming NPCs. 

So similar to the Soulsborne series is Ashen, in fact, that these comparisons will inevitably attract or avert players from the outset. This reflects the polarising nature of this style of game, but, by setting out its stall with precision and conviction, Ashen never does so shamelessly. Moreover, Ashen leaves little room for learning curves during its relatively modest 20-ish hours runtime. But I reckon it's all the better for it.  

In the wake of the game's titular 'Ashen' rebirth, Ashen paints a familiar tale of Light versus Dark, which ultimately boils down to: All the goodies in the world want the light to survive, and all the baddies want it extinguished. The overworld is often described as the 'twilight plains', while its cavernous, beastie-infested dungeons are, by nature, drab and packed with terrors.     

This juxtaposition of themes is best defined by Ashen's world itself, which regularly switches from sprawling open world to claustrophobic grotto during the game's scores of tabulated quests. Early doors, I found myself fumbling around a wooded area named the Restless Knoll, which was cluttering with spear-wielding enemies. Paired with an AI-controlled NPC named Jokell, I let him engage two foes at the foot of a hill, before I swung back around and got the drop from above. 

We cleaned house on this occasion, but, after dying down the line and re-trying this same battle plan against this same cluster of enemies, I took a different route to the summit of the peak and was ambushed by a group of angry shield-bearing bearded men. Fortunately, Jokell dispatched his aggressors in time to batter the beardies and revive my sorry ass, but the whole ordeal was a lesson in how unforgiving Ashen's world can be—and how quickly you can find yourself in hot water. It can at times feel a wee bit on-rails, but the epochal, chop-and-change character of its quests help ease the world's occasional linearity. 

Minutes after that debacle, Jokell became my torch-bearing wingman as we plumbed the depths of a Tomb of the Giants-style dungeon, brimming with traps, interminable winding corridors and, obviously, shadow monsters. It's in these moments that Ashen's stamina-based combat comes into its own. 

In any fight, understanding the lay of the land is crucial, and whereas conflicts out in the field can be judged in advance, battles indoors often unfold in tight, dimly-lit areas. Different weapons have different stamina demands, and shrewd use of light and heavy attacks is essential for survival. Do you steam in with an RMB double-handed axe smash and hope for the best, or do you offload a flurry of LMB light-attacks and quickly Shift dodge your way to success? Judge well or die hard, my friend.   

And speaking of friends, Ashen's passive co-op system is wonderful. AI companions offer sidequests and will often tag along for the journey, while real-world players let you band together for specific missions and part ways whenever you so choose. You can always go your own way if you like, but I'd always recommend against it because a) I'm a shitebag and b) every time I went it alone, I wound up crying for a buddy's help anyway after a new wave of misadventure. 

Once you've tied down an NPC, you can invite them back to your centralised HQ in Vagrant's Rest, where they'll duly offer new key items, crafting options, lore snippets and other world-related quirks I won't spoil here. Despite the obvious Firelink Shrine/Majula nod, I got some serious Suikoden castle vibes from the search and recruit nature of Ashen's settlement—which is no bad thing. 

To say Ashen borrows liberally from From Software's Soulsborne series is an understatement, but it in many ways necessitates the 'Soulslike' label. Yes, Ashen echoes the core mechanics of Dark Souls, but it does so which such finesse that it hardly matters. Its passive co-op features offer new insights into the genre, and the variety of its beautiful world is an absolute joy. 

After writing about the latest update for the excellent Morrowind: Rebirth mod yesterday, the allure of the best Elder Scrolls game was strong. But I can’t just reinstall Morrowind; at the very least I need to spend a couple of days finding more mods, like Morrowind Enhanced Textures. It might not have a flashy name, but it sure is pretty. 

HD texture mods often look strange and out of place, especially in older games like Morrowind, but this appears to be one of the exceptions. Don’t expect it to suddenly look as good as new, but there are places where it looks not far off Skyrim. The character models still look goofy as heck, but that’s The Elder Scrolls for you. 

The technique used to enhance the textures is called Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks (ESRGAN), and gosh people need to do a better job of naming things. It’s an AI upscaling method that generates realistic textures without the artifacts that you get from plain old Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks.

Modder DassiD says they made several passes with the tool and upscaled the textures by four times Morrowind’s original resolution. They’ve included some comparison screenshots on Nexus, where you can also download the mod. It looks impressive, though it’s worth noting that a few other mods have been used in the screenshots to make them look even lovelier. 

EVE Online’s latest update takes place around an ice dwarf. It’s a chilly wee rock like our good pal, Pluto. Operation Permafrost is EVE’s holiday event and, in typical EVE fashion, involves taking on a job from a mysterious employer, fighting mercenaries, disrupting a company’s operations and taking part in corporate wars. It’s space—there’s no room for festive cheer. 

Players can do some work for a secret third party, visiting the polar region of an ice dwarf to disrupt ORE Frostline’s operations and fight with Mordu’s Legion. The update boasts some new visual enhancements, and you’ll be able to get a good look at them by flying closer to the surface of a planet and flitting around asteroids. 

If you want to participate in the event, you can do so via The Agency in the Neocom menu. You’ll get given challenges that, upon completion, reward Agency points that can be spent on new rewards like Permafrost skins, boosters, cerebral accelerators and blueprints for new modules. 

The war declaration system also got an update recently, and you’ll be able to experience these changes without participating in the holiday event. The war declaration overhaul will span multiple updates across the next few months, with the first, out now, introducing war eligibility. Alliances or corporations will need to be eligible before declaring war or having a war declared against them, a system that is tied to structure ownership. CCP hopes the changes will make corporations in high-security space safer because they’ll only be in danger from war if they’ve constructed specific buildings in space. Check out the war declaration blog post.

EVE's also been dolling out free login rewards this month, which ends on December 28. Just hopping into the game will net you free stuff, while upgrading from Alpha to Omega membership will unlock even more. 

You’ll be able to work for your mysterious benefactor and unlock limited-time rewards through January 2. 

Geneshift is a fast-paced game, a top-down GTA-inspired battle royale where the rounds only last for two minutes. Yup, that's quick, and if you're quick too you can grab the game for free. Geneshift is currently free on Steam, and if you download it in the next 48 hours, you can keep it forever.

The battle royale mode for Geneshift began as something as a joke, but since the community seemed to love the idea it grew into a full-fledged game mode. Despite the two-minute timer, it's still got everything you'd expect from a battle royale, complete with dropping into the map, hunting for gear, speeding around in vehicles, and shooting the hell out of each other. It all just happens really fast.

And hey, if you try it and like it, you can still purchase the Complete Edition to support the developer, which "includes a full singleplayer campaign, online co-op, 5 extra PvP game modes, cosmetic unlocks, quality of life improvements and more!" It'll be 30% off for the next two days, so even though you're spending money you're still getting a bargain.

The free-to-keep deal for Geneshift ends December 19, at 10 am PST, so get a move-on.

The first time I played Cultist Simulator my character died pretty quickly. The singleplayer narrative card game from developer Weather Factory doesn't have a proper tutorial so I had very little idea what was going on, what most of the cards did, or what I was meant to be doing with them. Unless you want to google a bunch of guides first (and there weren't many back when I played it), the only knowledge of how to play comes from a bit of flavor text on the cards, a little experimentation, and a lot of trial and error.

This probably doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, and it's not really a format I'd recommend for most games—losing and having to start over from the beginning without knowing or understanding why is usually a frustration, not a selling point. But Cultist Simulator is the rare game (I'd throw Crusader Kings 2 into this category) where it's still immensely fun to play, and lose, without really knowing what the hell is happening or what went wrong. Plus, over the course of each game, I'd always get a little bit further, last a little longer, and learn a bit more.

Most importantly, in each game I played I'd get a glimpse of just how much more there was to learn. Maybe just before I perished, I'd meet a character I'd never seen before, or I'd come into possession of a mysterious new item, or discover a new location card. This meant each time I failed and died and watched my lovely collection of cards turn to ash, I'd feel eager to immediately dive back in, intrigued by the new possibilities I'd seen in the last game, ravenous to discover those new cards again and uncover their meaning and purpose. It's a dark, murky, mysterious game, and that mystery goes on and on, even dozens of hours later.

And Cultist Simulator is a surprisingly long game, too. As my desktop grew more and more cluttered with cards, and as I used them to found cults, to attract followers, to send them on expeditions and gather relics, as I grew in power and wealth and was drawn deeper into the twisted story, I'd always figure I was close to the end. Close to whatever approximated winning. And then another mystery would appear, another layer to the madness would appear to wrestle with.

What Cultist Simulator simulates best is the feeling of having an obsession, or even just having a deep interest or a hobby you love more than anything else. Strip away the mysterious cult business and it's a time management game, as you attempt to balance work, money, health, and recreation. And as in real life, you can feel your attention being dragged away from your day-to-day routine and into what you're really passionate about. You stay up too late, you don't make it to work on time, you get in trouble with the boss, and your health might even start to decline as you get more and more obsessed. (Though hopefully in real life you don't get so distracted that you wind up having to hurriedly poison a nosy detective and store his corpse in your closet.)

Even now there's still quite a bit about Cultist Simulator I don't completely understand, but for me that's all part of the fun. There are plenty of games that take hours to master, but it's rare to find one that can throw you an unexpected curve dozens of hours in. I'm not a Lovecraft fan, and I don't typically play card games (aside from a little app-based poker), but I fell heavily for Cultist Simulator. It became something of an obsession, you could say.

Since its release it's gotten not just DLC but some additional gameplay tweaks, including less reliance on RNG, which should alleviate some mid-game frustration when trying to acquire certain items. There's more coming in the future, too, though it's safe to safe I probably won't understand that, either.

This ambitious Fallout: New Vegas total conversion was, remarkably, seven years in the making. Developed by Rick Hukkanen and Brandan Lee, with the help of dozens of volunteers, the mod is set 20 years after the events of Fallout 2, making it much closer story-wise to the original Interplay series than the Bethesda/Obsidian games. It features new locations, 48 quests, full voice acting, and 13 endings. And best of all, it’s totally free. You can download New California from ModDB, and for most people, installing it is as simple as unzipping the contents into your game directory. 

Like any good Fallout game, it begins with a narrator lamenting that, yes, war never changes. Over newsreel footage of nuclear bomb tests a man gives a rousing speech, like some jingoistic military commander addressing his troops. But then we see that, in fact, he’s a ‘vault-ball’ coach getting his team ready for a big game. In the mod you play as a resident of Vault 18, which we learn is located high in California’s San Bernardino mountain range, and you just happen to be the Vault 18 Patriots’ star player. You’re a jock, basically, which is different from most vault dweller origin stories. 

One of the first choices you make is in the middle of a vault-ball match. A player charges at you, and how you deal with him dictates whether your character will be a soldier or scientist. This changes some things in the story ahead and offers two contrasting play styles, providing some replay value. It’s a brilliantly organic way of shaping your character, although you do get to set SPECIAL stats with the familiar Vigor Tester. There are a lot of alternate paths related to stats and speech checks in New California, so it’s worth thinking carefully about how you want to play it.

Good sport

The prologue takes place entirely in Vault 18, which is grander than some of the other shelters we’ve seen in the series. At its heart is a giant atrium from which each ‘district’ branches off – including a vault-ball stadium, admin offices, residential apartments and more. It’s a dramatic place, and you can spend more than hour here if you’re thorough, talking to fellow residents, completing quests and, of course, filling your pockets with junk. There are some fun low-stakes quests in the prologue designed to introduce the characters and set the mood, which is a nice way of drawing you into the setting. 

Exploring Vault 18, talking to the huge number of named, fully voiced characters, I forgot I was playing a fan-made mod. This is genuinely as good as anything in the main game, except for a few minor NPCs whose voices are clearly being performed by amateurs. The framerate also takes a massive hit in the atrium, but this is something the creators are aware of and will address in a future patch. The fact that something like this is even being patched at all is impressive, and shows how dedicated the devs are. There’s a lot more going on here in terms of environment size and clutter, so if you have an old PC you might run into some problems, even if New Vegas runs fine. 

Later, a violent civil war breaks out in Vault 18. A cell of Enclave calling itself the Patriots goes to war with the local security forces, and you end up trapped in the middle of it. It’s revealed that Bragg, the leader of the Enclave forces, is your vault-ball coach, and you can decide whether to join or fight against him. Whichever path you choose, the escape from Vault 18 plays out in a bunch of different ways. I sided with the Enclave the first time and was horrified to see them coldly butchering the people I’d gotten to know in the prologue. Then, when you leave the place behind, you find yourself in the dusty mountains of California during a golden sunset.

Taking sides

The vault escape mission is well designed, although I did have problems with events not triggering and characters attacking me for seemingly no reason. I mean, as far as I know. There’s a lot of reactivity here, and I could have been wearing the clothes of a rival faction without realising. Even so, it’s much more entertaining than the similar introduction in Fallout 3, and I still occasionally had to pinch myself as a reminder that this was a mod I was playing. When you emerge from the vault you find yourself in a forested valley and make your way towards the town of Pinehaven, which is where your adventure in New California really gets going. 

Another war has broken out topside, this time between the Enclave and the New California Republic. You get a taste of this when you emerge from the vault and see explosions on the horizon and vertibirds fighting in the sky. Then, to make matters worse, you’re kidnapped by a gang of raiders and end up imprisoned in a cave network beneath their base populated by pale, creepy cannibals called the Voiceless. Their spokesman, Mevil, delights in the fact that you might be their next meal, forcing you to charm your way off the menu. Charisma, I came to discover, was an important stat to have in New California. 

In the space of a few hours you go from star vault-ball player to food for a tribe of cave-dwelling flesh-eaters. But like anything in Fallout, there are several ways to get out of the caves and get your revenge on your captors. I won’t go into too much detail, but my method of escape involved rallying a small army of Voiceless to help me defeat… something. Something big and scary and extremely unpleasant. There’s a lot of combat in New California, but also a huge number of speech checks depending on your actions, stats and other factors, which enhances the RPG side of the mod.

There’s an enormous amount of variety in this thing. The missions, characters, locations and everything else feel hand-crafted and bespoke. It reuses some assets from New Vegas, naturally, but there are way more custom-made textures, models, and sounds here than I ever expected to see from a mod. To the point where calling this a mod, or even a total conversion, kinda feels like a disservice. It’s a game in its own right, and almost on par with Obsidian’s own expansions. 

But when one problem is solved in New California, another is waiting to take its place. A vertibird crash leaves you stranded in the desert, on the remains of an old highway, and you end up in the middle of another battle. This time you have a little help from an NCR ranger called Vargas, however, and spend some time with her fighting along the highway and dodging nuclear mortar shells. Bethesda’s creaky Fallout engine doesn’t handle these war scenes that well, but the design of the setpieces is pretty dramatic. The creators have squeezed some chaotic, cinematic stuff out of this old tech, even if the framerate judders under the weight of it all occasionally.

Big city

If you survive the highway battle you’ll make it to another of the game’s big hubs, Union City. This isn’t quite as packed with stuff to do as the cities in the main Fallout games, but it’s an interesting enough place to explore. Later you’ll venture out into the wilderness and encounter a tribal community who live in ramshackle village called Xiabula. It has access to fresh water that Union City needs, and you have yet more options in how you get it for the city. There are more quests than most people will finish in New California, although I would have liked some more rewarding exploration. There isn’t much to find on the map if you stray away from the path set by the creators. 

New California is a remarkable achievement, and one of the most confident and professional mods I’ve ever played. I didn’t think I’d ever go back to the 3D Fallout games after playing them to death, but this made them exciting again. Longtime Fallout fans will also appreciate the attention to detail when it comes to the story, as this is arguably more respectful of the series’ lore than what Bethesda and even Obsidian came up with in their games. It isn’t canon, of course, but makes its own mark on the mythology in some interesting ways, particularly in exploring the motivations of the sinister Enclave.