Fallout

The Good
Fallout is routinely considered one of the finest RPGs ever produced, and has garnered a rabid cult following since its release in late 1997. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are a great many good qualities to detail.

The world of Fallout is a beautifully-done satire of 1950s-era fears of nuclear holocaust. It is a bleak, harsh vision of what the people of that time thought that the future would be like, and what would happen when the bombs fell and ruined civilization. As such, the style of the game is heavily influenced by 1950s art and architecture. Computers are massive terminals running on tape and vacuum tubes. Cars have the distinct look of 1950s models. Magazine ads, public service announcements, and so on all have the distinct '50s-Americana flavor. Yet, there is a healthy dose of dark humor and irony running through the setting, not the least of which being that the player, obviously playing the game well after the 1950s, can smile at an extrapolation of the legitimate fears of a generation.

Perhaps the key characteristic of Fallout, though, is that, unlike a large number of RPGs, it remembers that the “R” and “P” stand for role-playing. To that end, Fallout provides ample opportunity for the player to not only create a role for himself/herself in the game world, but to make meaningful choices in the context of that world. The SPECIAL system -- a fortunate byproduct of the loss of the GURPS license due to Steven Jackson Games' issues with the game's violent content – stands as one of the most versatile and useful character creation systems ever devised. Players assign points to each of the seven core abilities (such as Strength, Intelligence, etc.), which affect how the character interacts with the world in accordance with standard RPG conventions. The scores also affect different skills (such as Lockpick, Doctor, and so on), three of which the player can choose to “tag,” or specialize in. The player also has the ability to choose two “traits,” special characteristics that bestow some advantage upon the character with a trade-off. For example, “Fast Shot” allows the character to attack more quickly, but at the expense of being unable to make targeted shots. The character creation system, then, allows the player to truly create a character suited to their style of play, whether that be “quick, glib sniper” or “big brawler with the IQ of a four-year-old.”

Of course, several RPGs allow for intricate character creation, then fail to actually make any of that hard work on the part of the player significant in any way. Fortunately, Fallout does not suffer from such a problem, as not only the style of character but also the player's actions in the world affect the way that NPCs react to him. Did you off the leader of one wasteland town? Then the criminal element in the next town over will have heard of you and wish to employ your services. Is your character so stupid that he can barely form coherent sentences? The sheriff that was so eager to ask for your help in bringing that criminal element to justice will no longer even speak with you. Do you get some sort of perverse enjoyment out of bashing orphaned children in the groin with a sledgehammer? The town will turn on you and try to drive your twisted self out of town. There are myriad instances of being able to play the game and complete it in many different ways. Pretty much any type of character can complete the game in its own way, providing a different play experience each time.

The combat system is, in this reviewer's opinion, one of the finest ever crafted in any RPG, period. The decision to go with a purely turn-based system in the days when games such as Diablo were all the rage was, quite frankly, a great decision. Combat feels more strategic and unfolds at a slower pace (but this is not a bad thing; quite the contrary, in fact). Combat takes place on a hex-grid on the game map. Every combatant has a number of Action Points with which to perform actions during his or her turn. Every action has an AP cost, and once the character's AP are depleted, their turn is over. Moving, for example, costs one AP per hex moved, while firing a Desert Eagle pistol costs five AP for a single shot. Perks (special abilities gained through raising experience levels) can modify these AP costs. Furthermore, characters can make “targeted shots” for one AP more, choosing to try to attack an opponent's head, legs, and even groin (who didn't at least smile in juvenile glee the first time they realized that you could target an opponent's groin?). These attacks have a lower likelihood of connecting, but with a payoff: higher potential for critical damage or injury, such as blindness or crippled limbs. The system feels very tactical, and builds off of the abilities of the character and the player's decisions instead of proficiency in twitch gaming.

The Bad
Despite its numerous good qualities, however, Fallout does have its blemishes. By far the most irritating thing about Fallout is the way NPC party members are handled. The system for managing NPC companions -- or rather the lack thereof -- is extremely poor. The player can only instruct companions in very basic ways, such as “draw your best weapon in the next fight” or “stay close to me.” Though party members can technically carry equipment, they must be bartered with in order for the player to actually get the item back. (Well, you could always steal the item back from them, but if you get caught they will turn on you and try to kill you.) The NPCs themselves are pretty much useless, especially in the latter half of the game when the player has good enough equipment to take out an army. They do not grow in power, and they will often do stupid things such as shoot the PC more often than the enemy or block movement by obliviously standing in a doorway for five minutes. They effectively become little more than cannon fodder for randomly-encountered squads of super mutants. (Most of these problems with companions were remedied in Fallout 2, however.)

The only other negative of which to speak is the “unfinished” nature of the game. There are numerous quests that are either broken or unimplemented, though characters in-game will still mention them or even give them to you. This is, again, especially problematic in the later stages of the game. Additionally, some of the elements of the game that were included are glitchy or do not work as they are supposed to.

These problems, however, are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, and do not seriously detract from the overall experience.

A note: Fallout can be very finicky on newer machines running Windows XP or Vista. Any problems encountered are usually pretty easy to remedy, but are still annoying nonetheless.

The Bottom Line
Atmosphere, gameplay, and above all else, freedom to play however you want. There are a scant few games that can readily claim that they have all of these things in abundance, but Fallout is part of that echelon of games. Despite its relatively minor flaws, Fallout delivers a unique role-playing experience that truly justifies its status as a classic and cult favorite.

The Good
I am generally not very fond of CRPGs, or RPGs in general for that matter. I have always held the firm, conservative belief that RPGs should be limited to fantasy (AD&D) and CRPG to hack'n'slash (Eye of the Beholder 2). I know it's lame, but that's the way I always thought. That is, before I played Fallout.

To tell the truth, I never knew of this game (well, maybe by name) before a friend of mine urged me to play it late in the year 2000, about three years after it came out. I was definitely not disappointed. Fallout is an extremely unique game that has much going for it, with good reason:

• Fallout's game engine is, basically, very advanced. Utilizing a decent SVGA resolution along with some clever palette optimization techniques the game is able to draw an extremely detailed playfield. While not absolutely visually astounding, the engine does the job very well and puts out a fairly smooth framerate without sacrificing quality. Good thing.
• The atmosphere in this game is superb. It is difficult to say which supports which, the story or the atmosphere, but the two work in tandem to create one of the most realistic and frightening experiences I've ever had the pleasure to play. I recall one of the reviewers complaining about the lack of colour in the game (something along the lines of "nature will survive") - that's fair enough, but I believe that the uncolourful graphics in Fallout corrolate much better with its plot, and one also has to consider that the world you move about in Fallout is referred to as The Wilderness. The graphic artists did an excellent job of conveying an appropriate image of the outside world, as I would have imagined it had Fallout been a book. The dreary, for lack of a better word, visual design in Fallout contributes to the atmosphere tremendously. The lack of many visual stimuli actually contributes to the game.
• Aside from the outside world, the visual design in Fallout is incredible. The effort that went into the various structural types (desert village, vault, city, sewer etc.) is evident every step of the way. Everything looks exactly as it should - shattered cities bombed back into the stoneage; the high-tech, metallic look of the vaults; the claustrophobic, eerie Necropolis; the old, decaying Cathedral. This point cannot be overemphasized, as the contribution of proper visual design to the overall atmosphere in a game is simply something that cannot be described in words.
• The storyline in this game is worthy of a decent novel. While it won't earn its author a literary prize, it is definitely worth noting that depsite the seemingly banal nature of the story (post-nuclear world, mutants roaming about), the execution of the story in the game is - despite being partially linear - extremely rewarding.
• The three primary characters are well-rounded, plus the ability to generate your own character provide for a varied gameplay - where in one you run around beating people into a bloody pulp, in the other you must rely on charisma and quick fingers to get what you need. The amound of personality traits and special abilities is seemingly limitless, and the radically diverse nature of the various perks is truely genius (my personal being Bloody Mess - it's funny as hell). The effect each and every one of your character qualities will have be detrimental to the process of the game.
• Fallout is one of those games, one of a select few, whose introduction sequence leaves me with a feeling of DAMN!!!. It has one of the most memorable intros I've seen in my whole life - funny at first, profound and amazingly touching later. I will easily place Fallout's introduction sequence right up there with the likes of Dune 2, Reunion, The 7th Guest and Star Control 2. Trust me; coming from me, that means a lot.
• Where it actually features it, Fallout enjoys excellent background music. Unfortunately these tracks are fairly scarce, usually limited to an eerie tune playing in the background; however, as already said - whenever there is music in Fallout, it is definitely worth hearing.
• The ending sequence (though not the ending itself) in Fallout is absolutely magnificent, giving you an account of what you have done and what the ramifications are. The ability to play the game as either a good or evil person also makes it a lot more interesting.
• Fallout is littered with injokes (did you know the Brahmin sometimes utter "Moo, I say"?) that add a lot of flavour to the game; for example, if your character is lucky, you just might run into a crashed alien ships during your travels, where you will find (a) an alien weapon (literally, a Death Ray), and (b) make note of this: a picture of Elvis!

And in summation, I will only say this: Fallout is one hell of a game.

The Bad
Despite its greatness, Fallout is not without its flaws.

To begin with, it is basically a very difficult game, at least in the beginning. You'll have to be extremely careful not to run into too many fights at first, simply because you might not make it out alive. This changes over time, but the Super Mutants towards the end of the game will still give you a major run for your money.

More importantly, the interface in Fallout is not very intuitive; it makes a lot of sense basically, but the learning curve is extremely steep. I had my brother (who finished the game before I even got around to playing it) to give me a kickstart (in the ass), but it still took a good few hours to get used to it. Occasionally, due to loads or whatnot, I still make stupid mistakes using it, that quite frankly should not occur. I wouldn't call the interface cumbersome, but there's definitely room for improvement.

The NPCs are spectacularly... useless. Ian will do all the work for you at first, or should I say, you're as good as dead without him. Towards the middle of the game, however, he becomes a bloody neusance (constantly shooting you in the back etc.) and not much help, and in about two thirds of the game the only justification to keeping him around is as a human baggage (or cannon fodder). The NPC AI in Fallout is extremely handicapped, and it is quite unfortunate.

Another major drawback is that some of the parts in Fallout are very trial-and-error based, for example: The Glow. It took me three tries to get the damn thing right, and I still didn't go as deep as possible into the complex. The military base also took some work, as you will have to find a way to move about the troops without making too much rockus (five Super Mutant Guards with SMGs are not to be trifled with, even when fully armored and with the best weapons). Getting the damn Powered Armor working also took quite a while. This is unfortunate, because it puts an unnecessary and unwarranted blemish on what could've otherwise been nearly flawless gameplay.

Last but not lesat, your nemesis, The Master, is not a very good character IMO. To begin with, it looks like it was taken directly out of Phantasmagoria 2 - it even sounds the same. Second, it's damn near invincible (I couldn't kill it no matter how hard I try; I hear other people managed though). I also gave it about 30 tries and still couldn't convince the bloody thing that I was right. I had to blow up the entire cathedral, which was an incredibly bothersome ordeal. This basically makes the actual ending of the game very unsatisfying, at least for me. I feel the same way towards how the designers chose to end the game (won't spoil it for those who haven't played it yet though).

The Bottom Line
A spectacular game that gave me a new taste for CRPG. Depsite some flaws, it is an overall extraordinary experience that I recommend to any computer game lover.

The Good
The second half of 1990's saw many great role-playing games, but three of them have the special status of franchise-starters and reformers in the genre: Diablo, Baldur's Gate, and Fallout. The first succeeded because of simplification; the second thanks to intense study of traditional material. Fallout, on the other hand, relies pretty much on one template only: Interplay's own groundbreaking Wasteland, of which it is a clear spiritual follower. It is therefore even more remarkable that this game managed to gain considerable popularity even in mainstream cycles despite being both non-traditional and hardcore at the same time. It adapted the revolutionary spirit of Wasteland to contemporary sensibilities, and the results are singularly impressive, to say the least.

Like its predecessor, Fallout opts for a flexible approach to role-playing. Character creation system leads you through a thicket of main attributes, skills, and perks, but these are not bound by classes, races, or any other comparable category. Darklands was certainly even more realistic in its depth and complexity while trying to avoid as many genre conventions as possible. But it is the genius of Fallout that makes it simple to play, yet hard to master; it never sacrifices pure fun and instant playability for its sophisticated system.

The most notable breakthrough of this system - and a further important step towards a more inclusive understanding of role-playing - is its greater openness to actions that do not necessarily pertain to combat. For years, role-playing games have been mostly about getting better at killing enemies. Social interaction was added to some games, but nowhere does it become such an integral part of the gameplay as in Fallout. According to this game, "role-playing" means that you make choices and form your behavior according to your own views, or at least according to what you have in mind at that particular moment. Fallout lets you decide everywhere, in any situation. You can kill every person you see in the game. Much more importantly: you can complete the entire game without killing a single creature. I don't think there was ever another RPG that let you do that.

Character development thus gains a whole new meaning: indeed, you are developing a real character rather than just somebody who can kill monsters faster. It's not only about getting the best weapon: it's also about surviving in a situation where you don't have that weapon - or, rather, where you decide you want to complete the game without ever using that weapon. It's about making your character what you want them to be. Feel like bullying people and solve problems with brute force? Fine, then create a physically strong idiot and hope no enemy is too tough for him. More inclined towards diplomacy? Make your character a cunning fellow who can talk his way out of every situation, but don't cry if he gets bitten by sewer rats. Be a doctor or a hacker, or don't be anything in particular - just be yourself, go with the flow.

In case you are inclined towards more traditional RPG activities, fear not: Fallout delivers plenty of that as well. There are quests and sub quests to tackle, dangerous dungeons to traverse, and all sorts of creatures to vanquish. There are diverse weapon specializations, items to collect, and many opportunities to fight and pillage to your heart's content. The game's turn-based combat system works exceptionally well in spite of a few shortcomings, and is very in-depth, including features such as differentiated body part damage; calculations of distance, attributes of combatants and weapon ratings allowing to express every action in percentages of success; action points that determine the amount of actions per turn, leading to vast tactical possibilities, and so on.

Of course, the system alone wouldn't be enough to provide hours upon hours of gourmet RPG fun - you also need a world to which this system could be properly applied. I think this is where Fallout truly triumphs over Darklands: it has realism in common, abstract categories (be violent, be kind, be sneaky, etc.), but it marries this realism to a perfectly satisfying game world, with unique locations, characters and situations rather than just copies of the same town and clones of the same pilgrims and wandering monks. In other words, it achieves perfect balance between player-created and scripted content, between free-form playing and attachment to existing material.

In fact, the world of Fallout is a real beauty, and I'm positive that was a big factor in its rise to popularity: you can be easily immersed into the game without even beginning to understand the extent of its system's complexity. Just start playing and feel the game's intense atmosphere. And Fallout does not use cheap means in order to impress: it achieves the effect by paying a lot of attention to visual detail, creating an instantly recognizable, memorable stylistic environment.

Wasteland stood out with its unusual (for video games of the time) preference for a post-apocalyptic setting when most RPGs were medieval fantasies. But technology wasn't powerful enough then to really bring out that difference in a tangible, sensual way. Fallout, on the other hand, is a piece of moody art almost as much as it is a great role-playing game. Behind mutants, obscene cultists, and Nuka-Cola hide serious speculations about the future, manifested in the game's artistic amalgamation of World War II themes, nostalgic American culture of the 1950's, and cold, bleak high-tech elements. Fallout sets its unique tone right away with one of the best introduction sequences I've seen in a video game.

The Bad
No game is perfect. The original release of Fallout was quite buggy, with some broken quests and erratic NPC behavior problems. Later patches corrected many of the issues, but a completely smooth experience is not guaranteed. In particular, your companions display weird logical thinking more often than not, and their AI is questionable at best. They would regularly damage you in combat and do idiotic things such as using rocket launchers in cramped quarters etc. They are also not particularly talkative or significant for plot-related situations.

I don't quite see why they had to take away the player's control over those companions. It would be understandable in a game with fast-paced, real-time combat like Ultima VII, but turn-based battles call for micro-management, and Fallout only allows it for the protagonist. This leads to further lack of attachment to the rest of your party, compelling you to dismiss your crew and fight solo - which, under the conditions of slow, tactical combat, is not always particularly thrilling.

The Bottom Line
Fallout is a game that will survive, not matter how many others are forgotten. It will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of mediocrity and oblivion, to tell us and show us how to make a great RPG. This game should be put on a pedestal and taught to developers in special schools.