One of the greatest RPGs of all-time.
It’s been over 9 years since I first played Fallout, and I recently had a chance to play it all over again. Many of today’s big RPGs, both on the PC and console, still pale in comparison to this legend.
Fallout takes place in southern California 80 years after a nuclear holocaust. Your character’s ancestors were lucky enough to make it to a large underground fallout shelter known as a Vault 13. These Vaults were designed to house their occupants for 200 years so they could repopulate the Earth. Now the Vault’s “water chip” has broken, and a new one is needed to supply the Vault with fresh water. The Vault’s leader has given you the task of finding a replacement water chip. To do this, you will need to leave the Vault that you were born in, and venture into an unknown nuclear wasteland.
GAME PLAY
Fallout is an isometric turn based RPG. As soon as you leave the Vault, the world is wide open for you to explore. The only restriction you have is that you need to find a replacement water chip within 150 days, or the Vault’s water supply will run out.
Along the way you’ll find peaceful settlements, ruined cities, trade hubs, and other Vaults. You’ll battle raiders, mutants, radioactive animals, and many other types of enemies. There are many types of weapons to find, and character skills to use.
Fallout doesn’t restrict character development to classes. Instead it’s based on skills. You can create a melee brawler, a sharpshooter, a negotiator, or a blend of them all. In fact, one of the better skills in the game is the speech skill. At high levels this will allow you to open new dialog options, and even convince NPCs that your view is right.
The only downside to this skill-based system is that some skills are more useful than others. For example, the small guns skill (pistols, SMGs, rifles) is better than big guns (rocket launcher, chain-gun, flame-thrower) because small guns are readily available at the start of the game. By the time you get a chain gun, your skill in small guns makes you much more deadly with them.
The same applies for non-combat skills. There isn’t much point to first aid since it only heals a few points at a time. You’re much better off with using stim-packs to heal. But these are minor flaws in the grand scope of how open-ended character development is.
You’ll also find many NPCs to join your party, but you can’t control any of them in battle. As a result, they tend to get killed a lot. Therefore you’ll usually find it’s easier to go it alone. No raise the dead in Fallout. Take too many hits, and “your life ends in the wasteland.”
Combat flows well, and allows for a great deal of strategy. The only downside is that you sometimes will enter combat unexpectedly as you can’t see enemies inside buildings until you have entered them. This allows hostile enemies to almost always get the first hit in when you enter rooms.
GRAPHICS
Fallout’s graphics have become dated over time. Since they’re sprite based, they tend to look pixilated at higher resolutions. However, what Fallout lacks in graphics, it makes up for with style. Style that’s lacking in a lot of modern RPGs. Fallout’s art is based on the 1950’s style “world of tomorrow” media. It’s a perfect contrast to the post-nuclear wasteland that the game takes place in.
Everything from ruined cars, buildings, and even Pipboy all echo this fantastic art style. You’re constantly reminded of this ruined civilization, and how bleak the world is. This helps pull you into the game, and further enhances the experience.
SOUND
The sounds in Fallout have actually held up pretty well over the years. The music is fantastic, and helps set the mood for this post-nuclear world. The sound effects are a little bland, especially when it comes to combat sounds. But they’re not bad by any stretch of the imagination, and even help add a little light-heartedness to the game. The voice-overs are also very well done, even by today’s standards.
VALUE
Like most RPGs, this is Fallout’s strong point. There’s a ton of things to see and do, and situations can turn out differently based on what skills are used. In nearly every situation there are at least two or three solutions. The ability to go anywhere in the world right from the start allows for a great deal of character freedom.
You only have a couple main goals in the game, and they can be accomplished (or failed) in several different ways. Several different endings also encourage you to play through the game more than once.
Fallout is one of the best games ever made. If you’re an RPG fan, and have never played Fallout, you owe it to yourself to try it. In many ways, it is still light-years beyond anything being released on consoles or the PC today. The fact that it’s held up so well overtime, and that Fallout 3 is one of the most anticipated sequels of all-time, is proof enough that Fallout has it’s place among the greatest games in history.