I don't think the games necessarily got worse. I think the difference was within my own self.
Between January and June, I happily worked my way through Far Cry 6, the Mass Effect trilogy, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Days Gone. Even back then, I would have conceded that some of those titles weren't necessarily the best-written or -produced games, but damn it, I had fun playing them anyway.
Then I downloaded Fallout 3. I enjoyed Fallout 4 and New Vegas, even the widely reviled Fallout 76, but I absolutely hated Fallout 3. The missions all seemed pointless, and for an open-world game, way too much time was spent running around in poorly lit D.C. Metro tunnels. The NPCs were all forgettable and the gameplay mechanics felt dated. I played through to the end, because I'm nothing if not a completionist, but it was an overall unenjoyable experience.
And then last June, I started playing the critically acclaimed Bioshock series of games (Bioshock, Bioshock II, and Bioshock Infinity). I hated them. Far from the open-world format of many games I enjoy, playing Bioshock felt like running an endless gauntlet through a series of tubes, with little or no rest or diversion, and practically no direct human contact (NPCs were to a person all enemies to be shot or otherwise dispatched of as quickly as possible). As some point, after I, II, and about 80% of Infinity, I just quit. I couldn't find any motivation to even open the game back up, much less jump back in and continue to play.
It's hard to convincingly argue that Fallout 3 and the Bioshock games are objectively worse than, say, Far Cry 6 and Days Gone. The difference in my experience probably has much more to do with my own state of mind than the quality of the games. The games didn't change - I must have changed.
For a while, I went back to Fallout 76, picking the game back up where I had left off after the final mission and "beating" the game a year ago. I just roamed around the map for a while, my high-level character nearly indestructible, taking on the Daily Challenges and Group Events the developers came up with to keep people playing. It was fun enough - certainly more fun than completing Bioshock Infinity - but ultimately seemed pointless. What's the point when there's no longer any story or plot? It just seemed like putting oneself in harm's way for no apparent reason.
But I then went back to Fallout 4, another game I've already played through at least three or four times, again picking back up as a high-level character after my last completion. To my surprise, I was still able to find some locations and side missions that I had somehow missed on all my previous playthroughs or had totally forgotten altogether. Replaying 4 was more fun than 76 and certainly better than Bioshock Infinity, so I decided to take yet another run through the Fallout 4 Commonwealth.
First, though, I rolled up my sleeves and went back and finished Bioshock Infinity, because I'm nothing if not a completionist.
I read somewhere, probably a Reddit forum, that playing Fallout 4 in "survival mode" makes the game a whole different experience. The game has several different degree-of-difficult settings, or modes - Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and then Survival, the most difficult level of all. In Survival, enemies are 200% stronger, meaning most can kill your character with a single gunshot (sort of like real life). Health recovery after an injury is much, much slower, meaning that during a fight, one often has to retreat and hide somewhere until the Health Bar fully recovers. Fast travel is turned off, and as a result if you want to go somewhere, you have to get there the old-fashioned way by walking. And most significantly, game saving is not allowed, or at least greatly restricted. The only way to save your progress is to find a bed somewhere and sleep for at least an hour. And even then, if you try to beat the system by sleeping too often, your character comes down with one of various diseases, inhibiting your game performance.
It is indeed a whole different experience. You become extremely risk-adverse, as almost any encounter has at least a 50% or better chance of killing your character, and losing whatever experience you gained since your last save/sleep. You really have to plan out every fight, playing much more of a stealth/sniper game than in the regular Fallout 4 gameplay. And there's no reason to be a hero - in survival mode, if you see some NPCs under attack and calling for help, you're better off just ignoring them and moving on instead of charging in to the rescue with guns blazing. Your goal is to survive, not necessarily thrive, and what were those guys thinking when entering an old "abandoned" building (or whatever) anyway? Besides, whatever enemies are in the area are focused on them, and you can sneak away more easily.
If your ethics find those kinds of actions objectionable, then survival mode may not be for you.
On paper, the challenges of survival mode don't sound like something that I would enjoy. Why make a game harder just for the sake of difficulty? But in survival, the game becomes vastly more immersive. You have to always be paying attention, as any chance encounter can be fatal and ruin your day. By walking everywhere, you become so much more intimately familiar with the landscape and locations, and the relational distances and directions between them. It all becomes, in a very palpable way, to feel real. It's the most fun I've had with a Fallout game since I started playing in 2017.
All the walking and avoiding game-advancing missions slows the game down incredibly though. According to Steam, I've put over 400 hours into the game since reloading and I haven't even completed The Glowing Sea mission and met Virgil yet. I doubt I'll ever complete the game in survival mode, and will have to eventually overcome my completionist tendencies and move on to something else.
But at least I'm not in goddamn Rapture anymore fighting Bioshock foes.
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