Fallout

Fallout is a hell of a game.

Released in 1997 by the now defunct Interplay, and developed by the now defunct Black Isle Studios (key members of which formed the now defunct Troika Games), Fallout takes place in California in the bleak aftermath of a nuclear holocaust brought on by a war between the U.S. and China. Civilization has basically crumbled, with few crops to grow, most of the water undrinkable, and most technology scavenged from the wreckage of the old world. Cows only come in the two-headed variety now, and bottle caps and barter are the only monies.
A lucky few completely escaped the devastation by retreating to the safety of self-sustaining underground vaults built in the decades preceding the war, and you begin the game as a member of Vault 13. Oblivious to what has become of the outside world, most of the older vault dwellers want it to remain that way. The vault has fallen on hard times, however--specifically, a chip that controls the purification of the vault's entire water supply has malfunctioned, leaving only 180 days of fresh water remaining. You, as the young protagonist, have been tasked with finding a new chip somehow, since no one remembers how the damned things work anymore. There is more going on than you first realize however, and the story takes you further away from the vault, and into the middle of a plot which could destroy the human race once and for all.

Fallout is first and foremost, a role playing game. Character creation involves spending points to shape your characters Abilities (strength, agility, intelligence, etc.) and Skills (Sneaking, Science, First Aid, etc.), and choosing Traits or Perks, which act as quirks that set your character apart—usually on a tit-for-tat basis. Finesse, for example, means you do less damage overall, but are more likely to deliver critical hits during combat. My personal favorite, Bloody Mess, does nothing more than ensure that anything you kill will die in the bloodiest, most explosive manner possible.

If all this clicking sounds too boring, you can choose from three pre-made characters which represent some general archetypes available-- a not-so-bright burly man-person, a fast but fragile lady thief, and a charismatic haggler fella. These work fine, but I should point out that if you do make a character from scratch, read the manual, or find an FAQ online. I tend to do neither, so I ended up with a character that wasn't particularly great at anything (7 strength was my highest trait, before getting the power armor), which sucked balls toward the end of the game. You can offset poor ability choices by throwing a lot of points into compatible skills, but if you “tag” the wrong skills (basically you can specialize in three different skills and get a 20% boost in those particular skills at the beginning of the game), you will feel like the biggest dummy later on, when you realize you can't change anything, and you don't earn more points to raise your abilities, because you didn't read the manual. There are also drugs available that will temporarily boost Strength and Intelligence and such, but using them too often will result in addiction, which is no way to live. It says a lot for the quality of the game that I still had a great time playing it, and it even gave me a cool way of beating the game with my shitty character, so the whole experience didn't feel like a waste of time.

The battles in Fallout take place in the various locations you find yourself traveling to, or in random encounters on the large map while moving about in the vast distances between towns and other landmarks. Your weapon skills and abilities like Strength, Perception, Agility, and even Luck play a key part in how things go down during battle, so don't be a dumbass like me and not boost your Perception a little, as that has a lot to do with how Initiative plays out during a fight, as well as ranged (read: most worthwhile) weapons. Also, don't put too much stock in the small weapons category—you don't see some of the cooler weapons for a while, so it may seem really important during the early game, but I would throw some points or at least “tag” the heavy or energy weapons depending on your characters strength, or else you'll be a large man in a mech suit holding a water-pistol at the end of the game, and everyone will laugh at you.

In terms of visuals, Fallout is an old game, and so runs at a lower resolution (640 x 480) than what most people are probably used to, but the graphics are detailed enough so that I never had a problem telling what was going. In fact, I would say the game looks really good in terms of how well it evokes the mood and theme of the Fallout universe. The game has a cohesive sense of style, from the buildings and props, to the interface, evoking the feel of a post apocalyptic landscape as seen through the lens of early 20th century science fiction themes, down to the intro music and the sarcastically cheerful pip-boy, the game's mascot. The death animations were more visceral and satisfying than pretty much anything I've seen in recent memory. The audio is also excellent. I'm no audiophile, but the music was nicely sparse and ambient, and the voice acting was excellent throughout the entire experience. Every scrap of dialog was elaborate and well written, with some really wonderful NPC conversations, and I finished the game feeling like a lot of mysteries were left unsolved, or even unknown to me. It didn't help that my character wasn't very bright—while he could have been worse—like an invalid, I suppose, most of his dialog options were pretty blunt. Still, it's obvious a lot of work went into giving you the option to solve things in a way that was compatible with the sort of character you chose, and while on my first play through I pretty much shot and stabbed my way through almost everything, while occasionally (I'm not kidding) saying only “Duh” or “Uh” in certain conversation trees, you could definitely sneak, charm, or bluff your way around most of the game's obstacles if you have the right skills and attributes.

I will admit that I suck at games in general, and so I played Fallout on the Wimpy setting, and still found some of the boss encounters to be so frustrating I actually laughed and shed angry tears at some of the boss fights, particularly the last one-- and I was actually looking for cheat codes at one point when after firing 12 rockets into an super-mutant-lieutenant-boss, with almost no critical hits, the bastard was still standing. Fortunately super mutants have bunks and lockers and shower rooms in this one place, so I had no problem raiding their stashes for more ammo and drugs. Speaking of the last boss, and indeed, the entire Cathedral part of the game at the end is crazy tough—I wasn't manly enough to storm in and take out all the super mutants (who suddenly seemed way tougher than before), and I didn't have the book learnin' the pick or hack, or the people skills to talk my way through either. I spent a few hours trying again and again to beat the final boss, “The Master”, a crazy mess of human and machine parts, through shear force, but he kept spawning mutants behind me, so I would either kill him and die at the hands of a mutants, or a random critical hit from him would cut me in half in one go. So, I switched out my armor for a priests robe and ran around “Incognito” for a while, until I found a room with two super mutants, a nuclear warhead, and a control console. My idiot took out the mutants fine, but was too dumb to do anything with the controls. At this point I was about to give up, as I had exhausted all my options, when I decided to try this mysterious key I had been toting around for a while—and wouldn't you know, it armed the warhead, and suddenly I had four minutes to tear ass out of their before everything went to shit. And so I beat the game! I won't spoil the ending, but it was short and sweet, and makes me really interested in playing Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics (The Brotherhood of Steal is one of the coolest groups in the game). This is definitely one of the best RPG's I've ever played, so yeah, give it a try.