Computer Games: |
Fallout |
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Interplay
Role-Playing Game
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I have to say, it's been a while since I don't play a PC RPG, and it's been even longer since I don't play one this good. Take Diablo's birds-eye view third-person perspective, give it a post-nuclear atmosphere and game setting, a clean and customizable character creation system with a lot of room for advancement, a good plot, and you get Fallout. In this game you play the hero, who is given the mission to save his/her Vault, which water chip has stopped working, by finding a replacement. Otherwise his/her people will surely die of thirst. So the hero sets into the unknown outside world in his/her quest for the water chip, after being locked down in that Vault for so much time. |
Visuals |
The game's feel draws you into the screwed up world in which the Earth became after a nuclear world war. Providing incredible contrast to the outside world is the clean and organized Vault 13 in which you begin the game. Ranging from hi-tech vaults to new desert colonies and graveyards which were cities before (it's also got LA!), the variety in landscapes is rich in detail and graphic quality. It looks as if the artists were told by the programmers to make the player thirsty after 10 minutes of play, since I myself had to stand up in frequent intervals and go to the kitchen and get some water. I almost even looked over my kitchen counter for a water chip. The civilians in the towns could have used better variety in graphics, though, since there is only one sprite per gender per armor, plus the special characters themselves. For example, in every city you'll find the same male-with-plate-mail sprite, the same female citizen sprite, etc. On the plus side, the interface between your character and the other story characters is presented in a nice CG movie sequence with them talking to you as you ask them questions and make conversation. The enemy sprites are also pretty limited, as there is only one per enemy, for example, if you engage 10 ghouls, they all look the same. As far as RPG's go, this has always been like this, but the fewer and rather limited types or kinds of enemies in Fallout makes this small detail stand out more. |
Music and Sounds |
The music in Fallout is nothing great. It is mostly all atmospheric, windy-wastelands-type music, but it accomplishes what it is there for: to draw the player into the feel and atmosphere of the game. The sounds are nothing spectacular, either. Sounds include a variety of loud gunshots, grunts when fighting in close-quarers, and the occasional explosion from grenades and missiles. |
Merits |
The character creation and development over the course of the game deserves much praise, though. At the beginning of the game you can choose to make 3 of your 20 or so skills primary skills, which results in those abilities getting better faster. You can also choose up to 3 optional traits which give you both advantages and disadvantages. For example, one of them lets you fire a gun for less action points, a good thing for the gun fanatic, but at the same time it does not let you make aimed shots, a bad thing for eye-shot lovers like me. Through the course of the game, you gain experience and eventually you go up in levels. At level up, you are given 15 skill points to distribute among your skills, and every three levels you get to choose a perk, a kind of super-hero ability. There is also a rating for Karma, allowing you to be as good or evil or in between as you want. There are countless small plots and side quests in this incredibly nonlinear game, and every subplot and the puzzles it brings have several solutions, allowing the player to be creative, sometimes giving characters with high charisma options not available to less charismatic characters, which impressed me. |
Flaws |
No game is ever perfect, but the reason I did not give Fallout a rating of 5 heavenly-light bulbs is because of all the bugs it has. Some of these are more serious than others. There are too many to talk about them here, but I'll give you an example of a serious bug and an example of a not-so-serious one. The serious bug is more a lack of attention to the world they created by the programmers. There is a city called Junktown in which there is a big crime boss named Gizmo. Being a nonlinear game, there is a subplot where you can join the good guys of Junktown on a big fight to take down Gizmo, and a big chance that you will have to resort to kill him. Well, I did kill him, but afterwards the townspeople are still scared of him, and frequently keep reminding you to "Watch out for Gizmo and his cronies". What are they afraid of now, his ghost? Who you gonna call? An example of a less serious bug follows. There is a limit of how much stuff you can carry, and the NPC characters that accompany you have it too. There are 2 ways of giving them stuff: stealing from them and bartering with them, but only one way to get things from them: stealing. Well, stealing takes into consideration that if you try to give stuff to someone who is carrying too much weight, you won't be able to, but bartering doesn't. So after I learned this I just gave all my heavy weapons and armor to Ian and whenever I wanna switch weapons I just steal them from him before a battle! Finally, for me this game's fatal flaw is that you cannot control the other party members, you can only give orders to your character. And the AI controlling the other characters is, well, very dumb. The greatest challenge in the game, or so I've been told, is surviving the big battles near the end with the dog alive. I found it very frustrating when I spent all my cash buying ammo for Tycho's Combat Shotgun, only to find him put the Shotgun away, draw a spear, and throw himself into the claws of a pack of hungry Deathclaws 100% sure that he would exterminate them with just his spear. And finally... the game is too short! But do not let this rather long flaws column discourage you, Fallout is the best RPG out there in the market right now.
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