Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel
Description official descriptions
After the great war, the wasteland is inhabited by a wide variety of mutated species... And one force of order and justice: the Brotherhood of Steel. As a new initiate to the Brotherhood, you will undertake different missions to take on Raiders and such as you attempt to protect the fragile respawning of civilization... and discover the new threat to the west...
Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is essentially the combat portion of the original Fallout series, with a new campaign, graphical polish, a set of random encounters, and a world map. The emphasis is on squad tactics and tactical combat, though your characters will grow like in any RPG.
Spellings
- 異塵餘生戰略版:鋼鐵兄弟會 - Traditional Chinese spelling
- 辐射战略版:钢铁兄弟会 - Simplified Chinese spelling
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Credits (Windows version)
199 People (195 developers, 4 thanks) · View all
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 79% (based on 35 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 93 ratings with 10 reviews)
The Good
Overall, the combat system worked, the battles were interesting, and the "flavor' of the Fallout world was mostly maintained.
The Bad
The story puts a very different twist on the Fallout world. It doesn't break continuity with the original RPGs, but it changes directions radically. The BOS in the first game was heroic, in the second enigmatic but helpful, in the third fascist. It's a jarring change that wasn't necessary.
Although much is made of the ability to have Supermutants, Deathclaws, and Robots on your team, these are available so late in the game, and have such severe limitations, that it's not really practical to use them.
The SPECIAL system was designed for RPGs, and has some flaws for a tactical game. Reusing code by replacing Speech with Driving only made this worse.
Driving vehicles would have been a neat feature if it had worked, but between bugs and bad design decisions the only viable tactic is to bail out as soon as you enter a combat map. Even the missions that focus on recovering a vehicle are best approached by neutralizing all opposition before attempting to get the vehicle out.
The Bottom Line
Taken on its own, a decent but not great tactical game with a strategic layer and background story. Given the Fallout name, sorely disappointing in story and role-playing.
Windows · by weregamer (155) · 2003
A fun combination of RPG and strategy that is marred by a general lack of polish
The Good
The strategy and RPG elements of Fallout Tactics are top notch. It is possible to create just about any character or combination of characters you ever wanted to play either single player or multiplayer. The variety of play modes (Continuous Turn-Based, Squad Turn-Based, and Individual Turn-Based) allow you to try out a lot of different playing styles. Finally, the addition of vehicles and better traps (land mines, remote detonation devices) to the game was a great enhancement to an already fun combat system introduced in the RPGs.
The Bad
The Fallout series is known as much for its glitches and bugs as for its engrossing story and distinctive characters. Fallout Tactics is no exception. Unfortunately, random crashes and a lack of polish abound, giving me the impression that the game was released a month too early. Examples of the more glaring problems include: random crashes, misspelled dialogue, and making a mission unsolvable if you don't do objectives in the "correct" order (this happened to me in Junction City).
Finally, the opening movie and cutscenes in Fallout Tactics are not nearly as fun as the movies in the previous Fallout games. This may be a minor point, but it is a shame they didn't continue the great Fallout tradition of having excellent opening movies.
The Bottom Line
Fallout Tactics is an impressive blend of an RPG and turn-based squad warfare that is a fun single or multiplayer game despite its lack of polish.
Windows · by Droog (460) · 2001
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.
Windows · by Vaelor (400) · 2004
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
never played fallout, start with fallout tactics? | cow (333) | Dec 22, 2007 |
Trivia
Art
Fallout Tactics did NOT use any of the arts used in previous Fallout games. Interplay was unable to retrieve the archive of previous art on the backup tape. This caused quite a bit of problems for the developer as extra artists had to be hired to redo all the art from scratch.
Corrupt files
Following the tradition of "fatal bugs" that have plagued the Fallout series and which prompt you to get a patch right from the start, Fallout Tactics was initially released with some corrupt files in a batch of "bad" CDs that make it literally impossible to play. The only fix for this is to download a 85MB file from the Interplay's FT:BOS site and replace it following a series of precise instructions. That is in addition to the regular bug patches.
Development
MicroForte was contracted by 14 Degrees East to do Fallout Tactics. They caught Interplay's attention when they demoed a game featuring their isometric game engine. Interplay didn't like the game, but liked the engine well enough they suggested MicroForte to do Fallout Tactics instead.
Endings
There are four different endings, depending on your final choices. Destroy, send someone else, or submit? The last depends on how much karma you got.
Extras
Fallout Tactics had a special bonus mission CD that was available only by pre-ordering the game from Interplay or certain outlets (Amazon, etc).
German version
In the German version all blood and death animations were removed.
GOG release
In December 2013, Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics were given away for free on the download distribution platform GOG. This was the last month Interplay had the distribution rights for the games before they went to Bethesda. The games were pulled from GOG on January 01, 2014. They were readded to the catalogue with Bethesda as publisher on August 26, 2015.
Photoshop
If you try playing Fallout Tactics with Photoshop running, you'll be told Fallout Tactics cannot run "due to Photoshop's evil presence."
References
The "stinky meat platter" you find in various places throughout the game is probably a nod to Mahlon Smith's "StinkyMeat Project". As of 2001 it was available at http://www.thespark.com/science/stinkymeat/
References
- The game has many pop-culture references that mentions everything from Diablo (the game) and Everquest (the game) to the movies The Terminator, Die Hard, The Sixth Sense, The Space Race, Pitch Black (the character Riddick makes an appearance) and plenty of things in between.
- Morte from Planescape: Torment, does a little cameo in a special encounter. As you can see in the screenshots section.
Information also contributed by Kasey Chang, kbmb, Kyle Levesque, Zovni and Evolyzer
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Related Sites +
-
Duck and Cover
An extensive Fallout fan site with information on all the Fallout games and the Fallout Bible. -
Fallout Wastelands - The Vault Dweller's Survival Guide
An excellent unofficial fan site for the Fallout series. -
No Mutants Allowed
Real Fallout fans never die - they just get a little radioactive after a while! NMA is the most comprehensive unofficial Fallout series site on the internet. -
The Vault
Wiki based encyclopedia about all things Fallout.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Kartanym.
Windows Apps added by Koterminus.
Additional contributors: Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe, Kasey Chang, Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, Vaelor, LepricahnsGold, 6⅞ of Nine, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Evolyzer, Đarks!đy ✔.
Game added April 3, 2001. Last modified April 13, 2024.