Abandoned theme parks are popular settings in games these days (see BioShock and virtually any appearance by The Joker) because they’re one of the only places where you can put a whole lot of diverse and interesting over-the-top spectacles right next to each other. That’s in full effect in Fallout 4’s

Loading

“ I was never in one location long enough for it to become monotonous.

Loading

“ Nuka-World is much less developed as a roleplaying game and not nearly up to the level of Far Harbor.

Loading

“ You’re sent back to the Commonwealth to do what a raider does: attack and subjugate settlements.

Loading

“ It’s just nice to have something else to do with settlements.

Our arrival in Nuka-World is as abrupt and forced, quickly funneling you into a tough arena battle with a raider boss. I found it tough, anyway – I showed up with a level 30 character, which is the minimum level at which the Nuka-World radio signal appears on your Pip-Boy, so I struggled a bit to stay alive long enough to whittle him down in the straightforward process of disabling his shields and then whacking him with everything you’ve got. Of course, if you were to roll in at level 80 or whatever, you’ll likely swat him aside like a bug - such is the nature of Fallout’s generally appreciated lack of level scaling. If you want to be challenged, don’t bring a Fat Man to a gunfight.Simplistically, killing the old boss crowns you the new boss, even though the raider gangs you’re now in charge of have no idea who you are or what you want. Like much of the story that happens to justify your actions here, it doesn’t matter.They also feel different because each park has its own distinct flavor of enemy types. A few of the inhabitants are brand new, but most are buffed-up creative reskins of existing enemies. Feral ghouls in clown makeup, flying ant swarms, deathclaws crossed with crocodiles, an army of especially nasty Nuka-branded robot variants, and some subterranean critters as well. They’re often surprising in ways that Fallout 4 fights have never been, and sometimes they’re extremely tough (again, I was level 30) but not insurmountable fights.And of course, there are also a lot of collection quests to drive more than 20 hours of exploration, combat, and looting. A tempting suit of high-end power armor in a display case entices you to find dozens of Star Cores that power Nuka-World’s main computer system. The recipe behind Nuka Cola itself (a reference to Coca Cola’s notoriously closely guarded formula) is unlockable by finding enough secrets. This park is densely packed with those rewards.It’s less generous with new items. There’s a smattering of new loot around Nuka-World, including the three raider gangs’ gaudy armor types and various full-costume suits (like the sexy astronaut in the promo art) that can be found on mannequins, but the most interesting are some new grenade types (one, for instance, summons wild animals) that unlock after you’ve cleared all the parks. Until then most of the useful new items are a ton of potent new Nuka Cola flavors you can craft at a mixing station, including varieties with huge health bonuses, stat boosts, anti-rad effects, and more. That makes picking up regular sodas feel more useful and valuable, though considering each bottle weighs a full pound there’s a cost associated with carrying these as opposed to the rarer meds they substitute for.Besides which, the choice of which gang or gangs you want to favor seems all but entirely cosmetic. There’s no big philosophical conflict between them to make you want to pick one over the other - they’re just three different flavors of violent psychopath. In hindsight, I wish I’d gone with the Disciples or the Operators because the Pack’s leader suffers from an annoying audio issue where dogs fighting near his throne drown out pretty much every word of his dialogue.I wasn’t all that impressed by the new companion either. Gage is introduced as treacherous by nature, in that he helped you overthrow the previous boss and installed you in the spot, and there’s much discussion of whether he’d do the same to you if it suited him. But I wouldn’t have known it for all of his boot-kissing and apparent lack of agenda. His generically gruff voice acting and backstory are fine but not terribly memorable. I will, however, always laugh when I think of how his eyepatch disappeared after changing his outfit a few times to reveal a fully functional eye (he's a fake!) and that time he got hit by a roller coaster car and was dragged a quarter mile down the track.When I did find a few valid targets, the fights (or negotiations, threats, and bribery if you’re trying to be the world’s first pacifist raider) are an interesting novelty the first couple of times for the goofy antics that the AI gets up to when it fights itself, but limited if you’ve ever set up your own battles with console commands. I do love how aggressive the raiders are once they’ve set up shop – they’ll take potshots at virtually anything that happens by, including Brotherhood Vertibirds. My rate of fiery wrecks has gone through the roof since taking over a settlement.Running a raider base involves a few unique mechanics because raiders hate farming. Instead, you have to subjugate other nearby settlements to send food and water your way, which is a thematically appropriate but ultimately no less repetitive spin on settlement development. You can also build a lot of raider-themed decorations that definitely make them look the part.Once you’re back in the Commonwealth there are a few reasons to return to the park: the gangs there will continually deliver free loot to pickup spots in each attraction, and every so often you can fight a beefy character who comes through the gauntlet to challenge you for leadership. It’s a little unfortunate that the park is so quickly completely pacified, but at least those collectibles give some motivation to wander the grounds and see the sights after order is restored.