Shellcore

Automatron is the first piece of DLC for Fallout 4. This retails for £10.00 in my local game, so that is what I will base my score against. Automatron is basically a new quest line with the end game of confronting the Machinist. The DLC also introduces robot crafting elements and the ability to have new robot companions. The quest line portion of the DLC lasts a couple of hours and is quite a good ride to be honest. There are a couple of new locations all seamlessly fit into the existing Fallout map. You will be fighting mostly against robots and a new faction which I will not spoil. Both of these adversaries offer unique loot and fighting patterns which was the best thing for me about this experience. On completion of the main quest, a new radiant quest is made available. The quest is well made, comes with plenty of new items and weapons and has a great branching storyline at the end. The robot crafting element is half weapon mod and half pokemon. At the beginning of the quest storyline, you are given a robot workbench to build your own creations. New blueprints can be attained by defeating enemy robots in battle and collecting the parts they drop. The amount of combinations has a lot of potential. My current robot companion is far more combat ready than any of the base game characters. They do, however, lack personality and expanded back story missions. This DLC is short, but sweet. The new weapons I am still using on my main character, along with the robot companion. The downsides are the length of the main storyline which is over too soon, and the fact that all robot blueprints can be unlocked on completion of the story, therefore rendering the radiant quest pointless aside from xp grinding. If you would like more Fallout, I recommend this. However, it will only last one sitting, unless you really like robots.

This is the second piece of DLC for Fallout 4. Compared to Automatron this second dose of content is a lot smaller, however the price reflects this. My score reflects the expected amount and delivery of what I expected. This package contains a lot of extra items to customise your settlements. If this is an attractive part of the Fallout 4 experience for you, then this DLC is essential. There are new lighting items, an excellent generator (which will save you lots of room, time and hassle) and other traps, building materials and neon signs. If none of this appeals, what is left is the creature traps and the arena functionality. The traps work by placing them in your settlement, waiting a few days and opening the traps when the door is closed. That's that. Arena work by allocating settlers to one of two pads and then watch the ensuing battle. Fighting against creatures involves one pad for the humanoid character in an enclosed ring with a creature inside a trap. It all sounds relatively simple, except it isn't. This is why I docked the games points. The system is fiddly, the AI is frustrating and after getting one arena fight to work, I was relieved to leave this portion of the game, never to return. On attaining the trophy, only 0.1% of other players had achieved the same. I read this as, 0.1% could be bothered to get it to work as intended. What I would have liked to have seen would have been extra things to do in the settlements. Give a wider variety of jobs, make allocating settlers easier, have a quick view of what each settler was doing with drop down menu's to change jobs on the fly. As it stands, the additional items and traps are welcome, but the arena is infuriating.