Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel

The Good
Let's see, I think one of the real good things you can say about this game is that it really manages to capture the Fallout feel. It doesn't feel like a forced spin-off, and it plays like a legitimate member of the family. The cursing is there, the black humor is there, the wasteland is there, essentially everything is back and it is all good. The wastelands are now seen under a higher resolution engine which gives much more detail to the gruesome post-apocalyptic cities and towns, and it's shady cast of characters who now come in much more varieties and colors with newer music and great sounds. Clearly the npc interaction is not as important as in previous games, so that aspect of the game is somewhat toned down, but what little there is, makes you feel like you are "in there" just like in the previous games.

The game has a well laid pace, and a balanced learning curve which slowly introduces each aspect of the game as missions go by. And whenever you do play a mission the battles can get really exciting when your squad faces hordes of enemies and you are forced to think of different ways in which to deploy your squad members. The amount of options and control you can have over your squad is quite impressive, especially under ITB, and it gives you a feeling of real satisfaction when you take out a bunker with the combined forces of a pincer attack or luring your enemies to a cleverly made ambush with the consequently gory results. This is not really new, since such things have been seen since the days of X-Com and Jagged Alliance, but the scale of the battles have never been like this, and the detail and destruction never looked better. The rpg element is quite fun to toy around with, since it makes it possible to get those seemingly stupid perks and options you never did before afraid of wasting exp. Now, you can have a fully thief-like character without worries, since you can complement it with a war machine-like character anytime.

As far as I'm concerned the game is immersive, fun, has a nice story (with several endings) and is an engrossing post-apocalyptic experience. Really a worthy addition to the Fallout series.

The Bad
Well for starters it's buggy. I think this is a tired subject since everybody knows how the industry treats the games nowadays (release it when it's profitable to do so and patch it up later) but really the Q&A boys at Interplay deserve a kick in the balls for this one. Even after the final 1.27 patch the game is prone to occasional crashes and slowdowns, heck I ran the thing on a 550 Mhertz CPU with 194 megs of ram and a Geforce2 MX and the thing kept giving me choppy scrolling and animations whenever things got a little crowded...It really pisses me off how they treated this game.

But well, moving on, the only big gripes I have with the game design-wise, is the fact that it doesn't really take advantage of all the features it boasts. Sure, you can have mutants, robots and ghouls in your squad. But you can be nothing but a human. Sure, you can use vehicles around the map, but not so in 90% of the missions. Sure, the game throws some subquests and bonus thingies at you every now and then, but the game is completely linear and your behavior doesn't have a lasting impact on the game (I really hated that you didn't have a rundown of how you affected each town and location based on your actions like in the originals), etc., etc.. See what I mean? The game has all the stuff to propell it to stardom, but makes no use of most of them, essentially falling short of what it could have been. Also the game has a serious lack of variety. I know the combat is good and all, but every mission can be summed under one type: assault. Go that place, kill every enemy, achieve objective, return home. There are variations thrown into that, but that's as far as it goes. You won't find any espionage mission, any ambush mission, nothing, zip, nada. Plus I really hated it that you can't return to a mission location and see what changes have occurred due to your actions, all that's different in the towns is the corpses lying around.

Since we are in the "bad" I should mention that the bundled editor is nice and all, but really misses the point. It is cool to have a powerful editing tool available, but if in order to use it you have to make a part-time job out of it then it ceases to be fun. Only the hardcore "mod-ers" will dig into this feature and the rest of us will have to learn C++ and enough programming lingo to become John Carmack the 2nd in order to fulfill the time-honored tradition of crafting a level based on our local mall.

The Bottom Line
Fallout:Tactics is a good game, it is worthy, engrossing, with lots of neat features and a great sense of style. However, a series of crappy design decisions prevent it from attaining the gaming Nirvana the previous Fallouts have and make it look like the black sheep of the family. But make no mistake, it is IN the family, and that means a lot.

The Good
If I'd picked up Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel off the shelf having never heard about the Fallout series, I would have enjoyed it immensely. The game is fast-paced, with smooth, attractive graphics, great sound effects and ambient background audio, a huge range of weapons, armors, and items, and of course the endlessly configurable Fallout SPECIAL game system, which is so involved that it makes AD&D character generation look like a third grade multiple choice math test in comparison. I could have had a great time blasting away muties and evil robots if I didn't have preset expectations. However....

The Bad
... that wasn't the case for me. I, like most people who have played this game, was an avid Fallout addict long prior to the release of Tactics, and, like most Fallout fans, was seriously let down by this sequel. The heavy emphasis on pure all-out combat, the distinct lack of RPG interaction or dialog, the paper-thin storyline and the shift away from Fallout's traditional turn-based combat leaves Tactics a real let-down for Fallout addicts and RPG fans alike. Furthermore, there seems little serious emphasis on "Tactics" whatsoever - "Fallout Assault" might have been a more apt title, since most missions are significantly easier accomplished by charging in miniguns blazing than actually utilizing any type of combat strategy.

The Bottom Line
When I bought this game, I played it for an hour or so, then put it aside in disgust. It seemed like a betrayal to the Fallout name. Months later, I dusted it off and played it again, this time trying to appreciate it on its own merits, not as a sequel to Fallout 1 & 2. And you know what? I loved it. Fallout Tactics really is an enjoyable, playable game for what it is. So long as you remember that it's not supposed to be Fallout 3, or even an RPG at all for that matter, you can have some really good fun with this one.

The Good
I don't care if Fallout Tactics isn't Fallouty.

I don't care that Fallout Tactics isn't an RPG.

Most people seem to care a great deal about those two areas. Fallout Tactics is a squad-based strategy game set in the Fallout universe. It takes place between the first and second games, but takes place in the Midwest rather than the West Coast. While not an RPG, FT does use the SPECIAL attribute system and the other RPG devices used in the Fallout games. At times, FT feels like it could be an RPG, with your squad acting as a party, but the linear design and lack of conversation options will remind you that this is a combat centered game.

FT supports three modes of gameplay. A turn-based mode similar to the original games, a squad turn-based mode (where all your members move then the enemies move), and a real-time mode called the continuous turn-based mode. Each method has its advantages, the turn-based mode allows for complete control over your squad while the real-time mode makes for white knuckle game playing.

There are 20 primary missions in FT and they show some variation early on in the game. One mission has your squad escorting a supply vehicle down a sniper alley, another one has you defending a town. The best mission involves a series of hostage rescues which must be carried out covertly or the enemies will sound an alarm.

Fallout Tactics preserves the wide range of weaponry and armor, it favors combat centered characters, although you'll want a medic along most missions. They also have a number of vehicles. Sadly, only a few levels actually allow for vehicle use, usually they only help in getting around the map faster.

The Bad
I loved the early part of the game and disliked the end. At the beginning, you can only withstand a few hits. Caution and stealth are rewarded, once you get towards the end of the game, your characters are basically tanks. Enough shots will kill them, but it's rare. Level design reflects this too. Early missions are varied, later missions are all about combat. Early missions seem to have more avenues towards completion, but end levels are extraordinarily linear. My biggest complaint is that missions never deviate from what is stated in the briefing. Some games (Tie Fighter comes to mind) had missions that varied wildly from the briefing, you had to use your best judgment and play it by ear, not here.

Squad members are personalized by portraits, but don't have any personality. At least in the earlier Fallout games they used floating text to communicate. Because they aren't personalized, it really doesn't matter which ones you pick. Even the nonhuman characters that open up don't matter. Mech Commander, flawed as it was, personalized the characters with animated faces and messages. Also, while in turn-based mode, you have complete control, there is no control in real-time. Fallout 2 had a customizable combat option of members of your party, I wished that I could have told Jax to stop hitting me with the damn Uzi. Also it would have been nice if they had the initiative to heal themselves or switch weapons if they ran out of ammo.

RANTS

Bandaging isn't funny! Performing first aid a lot does NOT turn people into mummies.

Enough with the random encounters! I would have loved to have adjusted the frequency of random encounters.

Four endings is nice, but getting the best ending is so hard I consider it a major bug!

WORST MANUAL EVER! Fallout games should at least have kick ass manuals. This one sucked. Cheaply made, lacks vital information, and has many typos (as the in-game text has too). "Levle 9"?

SPECIAL NOTE- The game has a tough guy option that gets rid of in-mission saves in return for much more experience. While missions are very long, I can see using this option for all the extra xp BUT this game tends to crash so keep that in mind if you choose that option.

The Bottom Line
Bottom line, Fallout Tactics is mostly good, and well worth the $20 I paid for it. It isn't an RPG, but were you pissed when LucasArts released Dark Forces instead of another X-Wing game?

Oh, get the latest patch (God help you if you need the 80 meg one) the game will still be buggy, but at least it's playable.