 Overview
Fans of Interplay’s excellent RPG, Fallout, will be pleased as punch with
the next installation in the series, aptly titled Fallout 2. Though the game was
seemingly pushed out the door before all the bugs were worked out (I’ll get to that
in a moment), this is a very worthy installment in the blossoming Fallout legacy.
Those of you who are not familiar with the original game may want to start with Richard
Law’s Fallout review.
In Fallout 2, you play the Chosen One, descendant of the
Vault Dweller from the original game. Your ancestor, after having saved the world, was
unceremoniously exiled from Vault 13, spending the remaining years of his life in the
small tribal village of Arroyo. 80 years later, with treasured Vault 13 relics in hand,
you venture forth into the Great Unknown (a.k.a. post-apocalyptic Northern California) in
search of the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.), your only hope for making a
habitable environment out of the desolate wasteland your people call home.
Fallout 2 is much broader in scope and storyline than
was its predecessor. There is much more to see and do in this game. Best of all, the
much-maligned time limit from Fallout is absent. You can spend as much time
exploring the desert wasteland as you like. Furthermore, while Fallout was fairly
linear in plot and quest arrangement, Fallout 2 is a great deal more open-ended.
I can remember being a little frustrated playing Fallout when I did not visit
areas or accomplish tasks in the expected order. Occasionally, this meant that I had to
repeat steps or backtrack and do things “properly” in order to move forward in
the game. Because many of the areas, adventures and characters have nothing at all to do
with fulfilling your main mission, you could play Fallout 2 for quite a while,
exploring nooks and crannies, and never get very far in the main quest. This is not to say
that the main objective is obscured or terribly difficult, just that there’s plenty
else going on to keep you pleasantly occupied or happily diverted.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
If you’ve played Fallout, you’ll instantly
feel at home in Fallout 2. Its gameplay and interface are nearly identical to the
original, with a few little tweaks. These include: better interaction with the NPCs in
your party (you can now give them armor and control their behavior more closely) and the
ability to combine some items (for instance, add a scope to your new rifle). There are
also many new perks and abilities (even a Kama Sutra perk!). One of the more useful and
fun additions is the car that you can repair and drive between destinations, greatly
reducing your travel time in the game world.
Fallout 2 seems a little darker in personality than the
original. It also has many more cultural references and items, which are great fun to
discover. Among the items/characters you might run across are a boxer named Evan Holyfeld,
a robot that attacks while saying “I’m sorry, Dave,” and a box of Cheezy
Poofs. In Fallout 2, you can do some bizarre (and entertaining) things. You can
get married and pimp out your wife (you heard that right), visit a prostitute (you’ll
have three varieties of condoms to choose from), get addicted to drugs, etc. Parents
should be warned: Fallout 2 is intended for adults. Besides the adult situations
mentioned above and the graphic violence, your ears might start burning due to some very
adult language. One of the game characters even used the word c*%*sucker (which
didn’t offend me personally, but there you are). The game settings can be changed to
tone down the language and violence, but this game will never be confused with Barbie
Story Maker.
 The shipped version of Fallout 2 has some bugs which can be frustrating at times.
None of them are game-crashing or quest-ending problems, but for instance, you might use
an item and still see it in your inventory (though you cannot use it again). You might
acquire the car and have certain game characters think you are not alone (game logic seems
to equate owning the car with having companions). Or you might run away from monsters,
close a door behind you (effectively escaping), and not be able to turn off combat mode.
These are, as I said, not a big deal; just a wee bit of unnecessary tarnish on an
excellent product. Having said that, there is a patch available (ftp://ftp1.interplay.com/pub/patches/f2patch.exe)
to address some of these issues. But it will wipe out your saved games, so if you’ve
already started playing the game, you’re out of luck -- unless you want to start
over.
Graphics
Built on the same engine as Fallout, Fallout 2
will look very familiar to those who have played the original. As the graphics were of
excellent design and implementation in Fallout, so are they here. There are some
little upgrades to the lighting effects and some death animations that outgross those in
the original game (quite a feat), but the developers at Black Isle smartly refrained from
altering their successful graphics engine in any fundamental way.
Audio
As with the graphics, the audio is very similar to that in Fallout.
There is some nice new music, however. Especially noticeable are the “tribal”
accents in the music played in and around Arroyo Village. The sound engineers did a
commendable job of matching the music and effects with the environments throughout the
game.
System Requirements
Required: Windows 95/98, Pentium 90 or faster,
16 MB RAM, 30 MB available hard drive space, DirectX certified SCGA card,
DirectX-certified sound card, 4X or faster CD-ROM drive, Windows 95/98/NT SP3, 100%
Microsoft-compatible mouse.
Recommended: Pentium 120 or faster, 32 MB RAM, 150
MB hard disk space.
Documentation
Very well done. A detailed game guide steps you through
character creation, gives you the background story, and explains in depth the game
interface, character perks, and most of the important items you will find. The only thing
that seemed lacking was some sort of map of the world, as Black Isle did for Baldur’s Gate. Maybe
they thought it would give too much away ...
 Bottom Line
If you played and enjoyed Fallout, Fallout
2 is a must-have. If you were lukewarm about the original, you may want to give it a
shot anyway, because the game world is greatly expanded. For those who have not played Fallout,
I would say try the original first. You’ll get more enjoyment out of Fallout 2
knowing the history of the series, although you certainly need not play the original to
play or enjoy this sequel. One final caveat: if you buy Fallout 2, patch it
before you play or suffer the consequences. Despite its glitches, Fallout 2 is
good enough to earn a score of 89 from this reviewer -- 92 if you patch it before
playing.
Review Posted On 23 April 1999.
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