Fallout

The Good
Nearly everything about this game was perfect. The story, while at times disjointed, fitted into the excellence of the piece. Relief was another recurring theme. Turn-based combat, plain old pixels, and other "low-end" deals allowed for a polishing of surfaces as opposed to experimentation. Really, this was not a throwback, it was a restoration. I'm not to hyped-up on the polygon buzz when high resolution bitmaps appear (although Halflife would change my mind: excellent polygon usage).

Interesting was the (suspiciously) Wasteland-like text-visual fusion present. I suspect that I may be in an outstanding category, but I honestly believed that Fallout was more text-based than graphic. Even though the little green text box was that, little, it still listed, with detail that would rival any bureaucrat's, it is mighty. I liked that, duh, otherwise I wouldn't rave about it.

Lest I forget, the non-linear plot was great. I have hated almost every RPG, except for the likes of Darkland and the more recent Baldur's Gate.

The best aspect, though, which was missing in Fallout 2, was the atmosphere. Fallout managed to appeal to almost all my post-nuclear fantasy, like a dark, gritty, diabolical spagetti-western. I really think I missed out on the cold war, considering my nascent state during its final years; at least mutally assured destruction is exciting, right (I had to see Dr. Strangelove twice before I realized that it was funny, not a thriller)? Anyway, the Post-Apocalyptic Romantic story appealed to me, and it was spooky, too: the evocative music sounds, the graphics look, and the story was, like a nuclear wasteland should: cold, harsh, new, and anciet; the post-Shiva dance. There were cowboys and crooks, caravans, civilization-perserving survivalists, roving mutants, and, best of all, a world-destroying cult. And, not to forget, the sadly misguided antagonsist (hell, I felt sympathy, after my disgust). The Glow sequence epitomized this granduer. The glow is the game's high point: it was the place of revelation, for there one learns of the flash and demise.

The Bad
There was little that detracted from this game. The game seems to be somewhat on the "short" side, even though it has a near minimum of 20 hour play time. The map as a whole is small: despite the details, there are few locations when compared to the standard cart RPG. Also, although the game allows for player decision in almost everything, this usually favors the "good-guy" outcome; a player can choose the "bad" options, but the changes to the story are cosmetic, at least until the Final Judgment sequence after completion. The lack of background animations left a dry feeling sometimes, although this is very difficult to accomplish. Fallout's cousin, Baldur's Gate, while not doing a great job with background animation, pleased me in that the water actually moved, unlike Fallout's photographic feel.

The Bottom Line
This is one of the greatest ever, from any genre. Don't doubt it would keep anyone up late (but not as bad as, say, civilization or its latest incarnation Alpha Centauri). It is a truely well-done, restorative game that brings back the best of the old school RPG. Not only is it mechanically ideal, but perfectly presented.

The Good
As a psuedo sequel to Wasteland, it had all the trappings of a great game. Deep plot, complex characters and the ending gave you an idea of the true consequenses of your actions. The main quest was decent, but did not force it down your throat, allowing you to enjoy all the little nuisances of the story including all the side quests.

The Bad
That said, I was a little letdown on how easy the ending was. You became too powerful for the game by the end. But this is a minor quibble on an otherwise great game.

The Bottom Line
Think Damnation Alley the movie, but not as cheesy and missing George Prepard.

The Good
Replayable, decent plot with sense of urgency, good setting, focus on role-playing, deep but uncomplicated statistic system, entertaining despite serious flaws.

The Bad
Riddled with bugs (even after a patch), half-finished feel with many incomplete areas and storylines, drastically imbalanced (towards "Easy"), many useless paths of statistic development.

The Bottom Line
Way back in 1999, I played a little game called Fallout 2. It was a blast- one of the best RPGs I've ever played. The kind of game where the first thing you want to do after finishing is go back to the start and do it all again. I played through it two or three times, until I felt I had seen all it had to offer, then made a mental note to track down the original someday. "Someday" was a long time coming. You know how it is- you get busy and things get put off. It was 2007- Fallout's tenth anniversary- before I finally got around to snagging a copy off eBay. In the meantime Fallout had been idolized, emulated, enthused about, and raised to the level of RPG classic. It is a frequent- nay, expected- presence on various "Best of All Time" lists.

Now I've played it, and... I'm surprised at how mediocre it is.

I'm sure anyone reading this will know the plot, but just in case, it goes something like this: Pretty much the entire world has been turned into an irradiated wasteland after a full-scale nuclear war. A handful of human settlements survive- most in huge underground cities called "Vaults", sealed off completely from the outside world. You were born and have been living in one such vault, Vault 13. For all of your life, the vault has been a peaceful and reasonably happy home, but now something has gone terribly wrong. The circuit board that controls the vault's water recycler is broken. They can't fix it, don't have a spare, and will run out of water in five months. The only option is to send someone out into the wasteland to track down another vault and find a new chip. Guess who drew the short straw?

Fallout is a great game in a lot of ways. The setting is well-executed- gritty, dirty, and anarchic, just like you'd expect a post-nuclear world would be. Even in later areas, the professional fighters carry knives and spears frequently, because there just aren't enough guns in the world to go around. That's brilliant. Much more significantly, the focus on dialogue and diplomacy over combat must have been revolutionary in it's time. Just like the sequel, I played it twice consecutively, and might eventually go at it a third time.

On the other hand, though, I'm often surprised at how thin it's spread. In fact, I'd say it has the worst coding and nuts-and-bolts design of any game I've ever played and liked. Subplots peter out or stop entirely. NPCs mention things that don't exist in-game, or don't exist as described (Killian is especially bad with this). Scripts misfire, breaking quests. Important NPCs vanish due to weird bugs. Quests that are referred to- in at least two cases, even appearing on the quest list- don't exist or don't seem to be completable. Cities are full of empty buildings and generic NPCs. Several areas are blatantly half-finished. If this game were released today, even with the RPG market in the state it is today, it would be lambasted by critics, derided on the internet, and flop mightily on the shelves- frankly, it's "beta in a box".

There are much deeper issues, too. Although in many ways the best-executed part of the game, the overarching plot is drastically overrated. The water-chip quest is really just a McGuffin to motivate you on from town to town, resolving the troubles of the populace along the way. The plot that develops later is just plain old you vs. the bad guys, with a hint of mad-scientist. With slight modifications, I've seen it before. Numerous times. The ending IS ingenious, but it can't obscure the mundanity preceding.

The stat system is a huge flaw. I won't knock the developers for that, because I don't think it's their fault. Fallout was originally supposed to use an electronic adaptation of Steve Jackson Games' pen-and-paper GURPS system. Somewhere along the way, though- by accounts I've heard, rather close to release- Interplay and SJG had a falling-out, and instead the developers cooked up a homebrew system called SPECIAL.

SPECIAL is pretty simple- at game start, you choose cosmetic details- age, name, sex- then distribute 35 points among seven statistics that each have a range of 1-10. These statistic values determine characteristics such as hit points and carry weight, and the starting values of your skills. Skills are on a percentile scale, each calculated from one or two statistics using a different formula. You choose three "Tag Skills"- things you do especially well. Lastly, you choose up to two traits. Traits confer powerful extra benefits, but are typically double-edged. Gifted, for example, gives you 7 bonus statistic points but your skills will be less developed. Finesse gives you less damage on standard attacks but more on critical hits, and so on.

Once the game starts, you increase your abilities by gaining experience levels. At each new level, you get more hit points and more skill points. Skill points are spent to increase your skills- one skill point for one percentage point in a given skill. You can go above 100%, but you get diminishing returns. To your Tag Skills you get a 20% bonus at start, and they also increase twice as fast- one skill point equals two percentage points in the skill. Also, every third level you get a bonus ability called a perk, some of which are very powerful.

All pretty good- simple to understand yet with an appealing complexity. The problem is, it's radically imbalanced. Without giving stuff away, once you know the game you can draw up a quick list of "must have" tags, stat values, and traits, and use that to coast through 90% of the game with any other reasonable values you wish. Many skills are useless- Big Guns pales next to Energy Weapons. First Aid is useless due to the abundance of stimpaks. Doctor is useful only when you get hit with a crippling critical, which hasn't happened to me yet. Outdoorsman is a joke. Traps only show up in one area. Sneak is nearly useless next to fast-talking and an occasional disguise.

Monty Hall also makes his presence known- after getting finished with the third town, you have more money than you know what to do with, and after completing a certain major side-quest, you'll never need cash again.

Yet bizarrely, I still love it. That's not some half-baked internet equivocation- It really is the most enjoyable game I've played all year. (Except for a Fallout 2 replay, heh.) I'm at a loss for explanations. I guess the elusive "fun factor" really is hard to define.

I will defend Fallout as worth playing, but I'm unconvinced it deserves the title "classic". If you ask me, the sequel- often derided as inferior- is actually a much better game. It's more solid, more developed, better written, and significantly less half-baked. As I write this Fallout 3 is in development, from a different studio known for a much different design philosophy. The fanboys, as fanboys are want to do, are prophesying doom- a lousy game that disgraces the Fallout name. Maybe they're right. Maybe not. We'll find out when the game comes out. But after hearing the entire gaming community enthuse, and then seeing what they're enthusing about firsthand, Fallout is frankly almost a disgrace to it's own name. The emperor is... well, no, not REALLY stark naked, but dressed like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.