Fallout (PC) - Review

I got Fallout 3 from my wife as an early Christmas present. After arriving at the first town in the game, I decided to stop where I was and go back to the originals to make sure I didn't miss any inside jokes. Fallout has such a rich and engrossing back story, plus a love for self-reference, that I felt like I'd be missing out in the new game if I didn't go back and remind myself of what the first two were like. After about three solid days, I've once again saved Vault 13 and broken up the scourge of the mutant armies. This is my first full play through in almost 10 years. How has the game held up? Let me tell you...

If you don't know already, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic, retro-future game. It was created by Interplay in 1997 and is generally seen as a spiritual successor to an earlier game from EA called Wasteland. A nuclear war in 2077 has ravaged the planet, but pockets of civilization live on. Some people escaped altogether by living in underground shelters called vaults. The main character you play is from one of those vaults. You create your character RPG style, modifying stats, picking skills, and traits. At which point you're thrust out into the world to look for a water purifying chip for your home vault.

Played in a 3D isometric view on a hexagonal based map, the game is for all intents and purposes in realtime except in combat mode. It's played entirely with the mouse. The game is open ended to the point that you can conceivably defeat the last boss in the first few minute of play. Similarly, you could wander around the desert for 13 game years and never achieve any of the goals set for you. You can talk to everyone or shoot everyone on sight. Your choices aren't necessarily unlimited, but they're certainly varied. There are consequences to your actions in the form of the karma system, which causes you to be viewed positively or negatively by other characters, which can effect the dialogue choices you have with them or whether they'll pull a gun on you the moment they see you. Unlike most games with such good/evil systems, it's possible to complete the entire game killing everyone and everything you encounter. It's easier to play smart and use your words, though.

Most goals in the game can be achieved in several ways. If someone has something you need, for instance, you might be able to bargain with them for it, challenge them to a duel for it, shoot them out right and take it, pick pocket it from them, pick a dialogue choice (if your intelligence is high enough) that gets them to just hand it over, etc. The game has many sidequests and stray missions here and there that can be solved either with brute force, trickery, diplomacy, or all three. There are several alternate endings possible based on the choices you make, which causes the sidequests you take to feel more meaningful.

Combat is turn based and strategic, carried out with an assortment of guns, hand to hand weapons, or simple fists. After combat is initiated and it's your turn, you have a limited number of action points to spend on walking, shooting, reloading, or just readying yourself for an attack. You use those up, then your enemies take a shot. This back and forth style allows you to think about your moves before you make them, weigh the pros and cons of shooting or running away, and makes the game feel more like a refined chess game with guns than a simple first person shooter.

One of the best aspects of Fallout is the game environment, which is a 1950s futurist vision of the future, complete with ray guns, tube based computers, dome headed robots, art deco architecture, etc. It's an alternate future where technology developed faster after World War II than in our own world, while the cultural icons stayed frozen in time. The opening sequence, complete with a classic song from the 1940s, "Maybe" by the Inkspots, sets the scene in a fantastically ominous way. In this post-bomb world, where the bottle cap is the legal currency, there are an eclectic mix of mutants, ghouls, gigantic insects, Mad Max-style gangsters, farmers, religious cults, peasants, rangers, businessmen, gamblers, and street vendors.

Fallout does have a couple of annoying problems. First and foremost, the inventory system can be tedious. If you have collected a lot of items, you can wear out your hand clicking the down arrow to scroll through the list to find what you're looking for. Similarly, if you find a few thousand bottle caps you'll have to spend a fair amount of time moving them into your inventory 999 caps at a time because that's the limit on the number of things you can add to your inventory at once. Another problem I ran into frequently was getting stuck in rooms thanks to my NPCs. You don't control the sidekick you pick up along the way, and they have the bad habit of standing doorways you need to get through. About the only way to move them is to run further into the room and hope they follow to clear a path. There is also an issue with one of the great features of the game. Namely that the non-linear nature of the story can sometimes work against you. If you don't pay close attention to everything the characters say, you might miss a quest and find yourself wandering the wasteland for a few weeks before you get back on track. I can't say anything about my biggest gripe of all because it would ruin the plot. I'll say that one part of the ending always effects me emotionally. It's a kick in the stomach.

If you have never played Fallout, now would be a good time to do so. Before you tackle the new game I'd recommend getting back to the roots of the series. I had fun leading my ragtag band of misfits around the wasteland protecting the innocent and slaughtering the evil. I saw things I'm pretty sure I missed on my original playthrough because of that whole varied ways of achieving the same goal thing. The game takes time, but it will feel like time well spent when you get those cutscenes telling how your actions impacted the environment. If you like to grind levels in an RPG, this is a game well suited to you. If you like guns, blood and guts exploding everywhere, off color humor, and general chaos, then you should enjoy this game as well. Fallout covers a great many genres quite well. Pick it up today off Amazon or eBay. Try to find one of those dual packs with Fallout 2 in it if you can.

Speaking of Fallout 2, that's what it's now on to. I got quite a ways into this game back in the day and never finished for some reason. I'm hoping this time will be the charm. I'll come back to tell you all about it if I finish.