I wasn't actually a huge fan of The Outer Worlds, didn't really click for me. I mean, yeah, it's got a lot of similar elements to the Fallout series, but it's got some important stuff missing that's part of what makes Fallout interesting for me. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't Fallout for me...kinda felt like I was slogging through the thing.

• Not much to stumble on in the world outside the cities. Fallout tended to work by having one constantly "stumble across" things in the world, kinda kept up a seamless flow of new things happening. I'll add that I think that the lack of this is part of what some people didn't like with Starfield -- one can run into things when jumping into a system, but feels more artificial and "gamey".

• It's technically open-world, but there's little reason to backtrack. I played it in mostly linear fashion.

• The perks are a big part of Fallout for me, the interesting character-building. You can choose neat things that interact and substantially change how one plays. The Outer Worlds perks are nearly all minor stat tweaks.

• Aside from the handful of science weapons, most of the weapons in The Outer Worlds play in pretty much the same way, aren't that memorable. Maybe one gets a slight buff relative to the other. Not a lot of interesting characteristics or story around them the way there is, say, Ratslayer.

• I realize that this is subjective, but Fallout has historically had moments that the designers made impressive and memorable to me, where one said "wow" the first time through. For me, some were Liberty Prime being activated and the subsequent mission in Fallout 3, maybe the Brotherhood of Steel airships arriving in Fallout 4, or the godrays shining through the gratings at ArcJet Systems in the A Call To Arms mission. There wasn't really a point where The Outer Worlds did that for me. Everything felt more-or-less like what I'd expect in the runup to the mission, didn't really have "wow" moments.

There were some things that I liked about The Outer Worlds relative to the Fallout series:

• I found it to be pretty stable and bug-free. Fallout has improved recently, and if one counts it, Starfield was quite good, but historically, the whole series has often had a lot of bugs, especially at release.

• There were story-altering choices. Not quite as much as Fallout: New Vegas, but more than, say, Fallout 76.