Fallout 4: Contraptions Workshop Reviews
Contraptions Workshop seems tailor-made for YouTube or Twitch, a delightfully conceived tool for showing off the creative genius of dedicated and inventive craftspeople to online audiences. It certainly succeeds in that ambition. Building any effective automation requires experimentation and rewards practice, creating a real sense of progression that's surprising for a game with no new mission or story content.
This is filler, pure and simple. This is contractual obligation padding out a Season Pass. It isn't terrible, it isn't offensive, but it isn't much fun either. The greatest value of this DLC won't come from actually playing it, but in watching some YouTube physics wizard design the perfect Brahmin slaughter house, or a machine that automatically launches bowling balls at a captive Raider. This is DLC designed to manufacture ten-second .webm files. If you're not absolutely crazy about the settlement building aspect of the game (or trying to build an online empire of clickable content), this is a hard pass.
The conduit doesn’t look that great when it goes vertical, but having a wire here and there connecting floors looks much better than before and it’s a welcome change.
Overall, if you don’t ever use the workshop mode and don’t care about achievements then don’t buy Contraptions. If you want some extra time to kill in Fallout 4 and/or you enjoy building in the workshop mode then Contraptions is way worth the mere five dollars it’s priced at. If you managed to get this through the season pass when it was only $30 or even the new $50 price it’s definitely worth trying this new piece of DLC. Contraptions is a step up from the disappointing Wasteland Workshop DLC and is enjoyable for the first hour or two playing with it but it still doesn’t blow anyone away.
Fallout 4: Contraptions Workshop could have been an acceptable DLC if the work wasn’t so strenuous. It’s great to see everything in motion, but simply not worth the effort. I understand that Bethesda can’t crack out great story DLC every second and have to cater to every players needs, but this is an insignificant step in making settlements great again.