When you get down to brass tacks, Prime Video’s adaptation of Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic video game series perfectly captures the experience of playing a Fallout game. Sometimes to a fault.

Ella Purnell’s Lucy MacLean did the whole leaving the vault to explore the wasteland for the first time thing in Fallout season 1, and five episodes into season 2, and I’m certain there has never been a video game adaptation that’s felt so true to the spirit and heart of the gameplay it was adapting. Nor has it become so obvious Lucy and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) are still only a couple of hours into the main questline of the TV series.

[Ed. note: spoilers for Fallout season 2 episodes 4-5.]

Last season ended with Lucy teaming up with the Ghoul to bring her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), to justice as the truth of who he really was (a Vault-Tec employee trained to carry out the company’s evil experiments) came to light. But at the end of the season, Hank escaped to New Vegas, setting up the show’s second season.

Four hour-long episodes into season 2, Lucy and Ghoul have finally arrived at their destination of New Vegas, but not without falling into some early game shenanigan pits along the way.

For one thing, Lucy’s........

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