Post apocalyptic wastelands. The futility of war. Bottlecaps. These are the ingredients of the popular and long running Fallout franchise. Based on the fears of the Cold War era for the future, Fallout is an absurd mix of futuristic technology, old-timey sensibilities, and dark humor. Its unique setting is now iconic among fans of open world R🐽PGs and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

It has had a long journey from fairly niche computer RPG to the global powerhouse it is today. The first game came out 20 years ago, and in that time there have been four main series games as well as several spinoffs and a chunk of DLC, produced by a total of five developers with different opinions on what makes a Fallout game. We've been abducted by aliens, thrown in the Pitt, faced off with a psychic, faced off w🐲ith the Reds (in virtual reality), and even delivered some mღail.

With so much to choose between, and each of the options🐻 requiring a not insignificant time co🍌mmitment, it can be hard to decide which games and DLCs are worth the investment. Or maybe you're a fan and just like lists of things.

Either way, here's a list ranking all the Fallout games from the worst to the best.

21 F༺allout: Brotherhood Of Steel

The last game in the Fallout franchise developed by the original developers, Interplay, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was an attempt to do something different with the franchise. Unfortunately, different doesn't always mean better. In this case, they tried to make a Fallout game using the engine they had previously used in the Dark Alliance games, giving us a game that was more hack-and-slash dungeon crawl than anything consider Fallout.

The game was widely criticized for being overly linear and repetitive, with many of the game's zones and missions feeling cut and pasted from previous ones. A planned sequel was canceled after poor sales, and in the end Interplay sold the rights to the Fallout IP.

20 Wasteland Workshop/Contraptions Wo♊rkshop

I'm putting these two Workshop DLCs for Fallout 4 together because they perform roughly the same purpose. Neither adds any story, quests, or new areas to the game. Both simply expand Fallout 4's workshop feature, adding a number of new world objects. Wasteland Workshop brought with it the ability to build arenas to force captured humans and creatures to fight. Contraptions Workshop added displays, elevators, and misce💖llaneous machinery.

There are those who really enjoyed Fallout 4's Workshop feature and were happy to see 🌌it expanded. But at five dollars a piece at launch the price hardly justifies the lack of new, substantial content. They did come with a few low-value achievements, thoug🎃h, for those hunters out there.

19 Dead Money 💫

A contentious bit of DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Money strips the Courier of all of his possessi♐ons, straps an explosive collar around his neck, and demands he explore the pre-war resort and casino of Sierra Madre. Fans complained that Sierra Madre was ugly and the gameplay was repetitive. There was a lack of enemy variety, as the only real enemy you had to fight were the Ghost People. There was also concerns about the difficulty; with all your equipment taken away, healing items were reduced to snacks and the odd stimpack.

The DLC is looked back on a little better as time passed, with fans appreciating the number of situations that required skill checks as opposed to outright combat and enjoying the story. Still, the linearity of the quest (enforced via collar) and the repetition of the same three of four 'dangers' throughout the whole mission rank this as one of the least enjoyable Fallout DLCs.

18 ꩵ 🌺 Operation: Anchorage

The first released Fallout 3 DLC, Operation: Anchorage saw the Lone Wanderer entering a virtual reality simulation of a famous event in the Fallout lore: the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from Communist Chinese forces. Like many of Bethesda's DLCs, they used it to experiment a little, drifting from the conservative Fallout formula to a more action-based style. Things such as weapon decay are no longer💯 an issue, corpses disappear instead of being lootable, and ammo and health 💧are replenished at supply stations.

Unfortunately, for such a critical part of Fallout's lore, the battle to liberate Anchorage just felt… underwhelming. The whole DLC was fairly ಞshort and consisted of linear missions with little variety.

The Gauss Rifle was pretty cool, though.

17 ไ ♈ Automatron

The first piece of DLC for Fallout 4, Automatron consists of a series of quests dur♋ing which you team up with the robot, Ada, to track down the Mechanist and save the Commonwealth ඣfrom his hordes of killer robots. Once the quests are beaten you unlock the ability to build and customize robots at your settlements.

Like the two Workshop add-ons already mentioned, the draw here is to give builders something new to play with, and at the very least this one had the decency to include a story (albeit a short and straightforward one). The kicker here was really the price tag. A short quest chain followed by the ability to build robotsꦍ hardly seems worth the $10 price of admission.

16 ✨ Fallout: Tactics

Developed by Micro Forte and released three years after Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics (full name Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, not to be confused with another game also called Brotherhood of Steel) is a departure from Fallout's roleplaying roots. Its focus was on combat and tactical strategy. Its combat syste🔯m featured three different turn-based combat modes.

Overall, the game was well received for what it was, a tactical combat game, but for someone looking for a true Fallout experience it 🥂hardly fits the bill. The game is all linear missions anꦫd there is very little if any roleplaying involved.

Interestingly, this game featured a multiplayer mode, during which each player controlled a squad of characters to face off ▨against the other players.

15 ꦦ Mothership Zeta

The Lone Wanderer has been put through a lot of stuff, but by far the most odd thing he has had to experience has got to be the time he got abducted by aliens. While investigating the ruins of an alien recon craft in Fallout 3, the playe♈r gets beamed aboard the alien mothership, Zeta, where they are kept as a prisoner along with all the other abductees from over the centuries. Of course, the player isn'꧟t just going to sit there as a prisoner, so they break free, form a team of time-displaced prisoners, take over the ship, and eventually get into some laser combat with other ships.

This is a☂ll very awesome, and the ship itself🌱 looked fantastic and sufficiently old-school spacey. Unfortunately, it got knocked pretty hard for release bugs, as well as repetitive corridor combat and largely linear mission design.

14 🐈 Nuka-World

Have you ever been curious as to what it would be like to run around a post-apocalyptic Disney Land? That's more or less the premise of the Fallout 4 DLC Nuka-World. In the Fallout world, the Nuka-Cola Corporation (purveyor of fine soft drinks) is so big they havℱe their own theme park, the namesake of this DLC🦄.

Players explore the theme park and find it in the hands of three gangs of raiders. Unlike other dealings with raiders in the game, players actually take command of these raiders and begin to send them to raid settlements throughout the Wasteland (including their own) while restoring power to the theme🐈 park. Basically, the opposite of everything you have tried to accomplish thus far.

Exploring the colorful corners of Nuka-World is a lot of fun, as is getting to play as a raider boss. Storytelling lacks a bit, though, and raiding does lose its luster after a while making you wish there was a little bit more meat🥂 to the content.

13 Honest Hearts 💙

Zion Canyon is untamed wilderness mostly lef🐻t unaffected by the War. The Courier makes his way the🀅re as part of an expedition and is attacked by tribal raiders. During his stay, he determines the fate of the once serene Zion.

Honest Hearts features one of the most interesting and striking locales of Fallout: New Vegas. It also features a storyline with some pretty heavy decision making that leads to eight different endings. No matter what path you take, though, the story is fairly short, which takes a lot of impact away from the deep themes of redemption and religious morality it was playing with. If it had been a few hours longer and given its characters more of a chance to shine it would have been 𒉰placed hꦇigher on the list. As it stands, it gets this far just based on shown potential alone.

12 🔴Vault-Tec Wo🌌rkshop

The popularity of the mobile app Fallout Shelter showed the folks at Bethesda how much players enjoyed getting to play Overseer and generally messing with the lives of Vault citizens. It should not have come as a surprise, then, when they announced a DLC for Fallout 4 that looked suspiciously like the mobile app.

Like the other Workshop add-ons, a big chunk of Vault-Tec Workshop was dedicated to adding new Settlement items, this time all related to the construction of a Vault. What makes this add-on unique is the questline that has play🌳ers building and maintaining a vault quite similar to the mobile app. At the end of the questline the player is appointed Overseer, from which point they can continue to enjoy tweaking the🔯 lives of their vault's inhabitants.