Fallout

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.

The Good
A post-nuclear role-playing game!!! Well this is is almost perfect in my opinion. it's oozes style! First of all the story is original! with some of the best ending I have ever seen. The atmosphere in this game is extraordinary. also the graphics while outdated (VERY outdated) are still pleasant to the eye. CGI movies are just GREAT (even for today standards). But the main thing that makes this game fantastic is the gameplay- the gameplay is pure drug! i couldn't stop playing until i finished it! you have multiple endings (depends on your actions) - you can play a good guy and a bad guy(and it will change your KARMA). Interface is very easy to use. Good tactical combat system. Great black humor!!! The soundtrack is highly ambient and spooky. lots of conversations to do. and there's lots of gore(for all of the gore fans- you can do very messy things to human bodies!) and there aren't any goblins or orcs. it's definitely one of the most detailed CRPG yet.

The Bad
well not much but... Interaction with NPCs is a bit disappointing. low resolution (640X480). and tons of bugs! you must download the patch before playing!

The Bottom Line
Highly recommended CLASSIC. if you enjoy RPGs just get it. Buy it, kill for it, just get it.

The Good
It looks great, it sounds great, it plays great, and it doesn't have character classes. As far as I am concerned, computer games need not (and quite possibly can not) advance beyond the level of excellence this game offers. All things considered, this is one of the most involved (involving? whatever...) computer RPG/adventure games ever, as it actually enables the player to play any kind of character he wants. I mean, real people don't go around with "I'm a Mage, please stab me" tattooed on their foreheads (I hope), and they still manage to do their own stuff and whatnot and you know what I mean.

[Added later:] One thing I forgot to mention when originally writing this review is the excellent presentation. Right from the loading screen through the magnificent intro sequence to the [REMOVED] end (oops, almost slipped a spoiler) you get sucked into the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout. It's also very re-playable, as I found out when I recently purchased Fallout 2 and it came with the original. Depending on the PC you create and how you actually play the game, you're always finding out new stuff. (The truth apparently is out there.)

The Bad
This game is buggy. Bugs all over the shop. Ugly ones, to boot. Also, once your PC is strong enough, you can do stuff that screw some of the responses up, although I guess that really counts as a bug, too.

[Added later] All right, I now have a more recent version, and some of the more annoying bugs seem to have vanished, but you still sometimes have to try some things several times in slightly different ways to trigger the correct reactions. Of course, if I hadn't played Fallout before, I wouldn't have noticed the problems.

The Bottom Line
If you liked Baldur's Gate, you'll love this game (you never even have to change the CD). It has one of the best plots, settings, and overall feels I've ever come across in a computer game, and it's not too easy, either.

Get it.

[Added later] Hey, you don't actually have to like Baldur's Gate to love Fallout!