 Overview
World War Three has come and gone with the
attendant nuclear holocaust, and life is rough. Stop me if you've heard this before ...
anyway, a generation or two has passed with everyone living in underground vaults when a
crisis strikes your particular vault; the water purification system has broken down and
they need someone -- nudge, nudge -- to go find a replacement. Assuming that the
radioactive world outside your door does not contain a friendly Wal-Mart, you pack up a
gun, a knife, some flares, and head out to Mad Max your way to finding salvation for your
friends and family back in Vault #13.
While Fallout certainly offers almost nothing novel in
terms of storyline, it does have some interesting points. Unfortunately, being turn-based
and rather short, it falls somewhere in the "OK, but nothing to write home
about" category. It fails to live up to the graphical sophistication of the Crusader series, which predates Fallout by two
years, and it fails to capture the excitement of Diablo's
real-time combat, or Ultima Online's role playing
possibilities.
Gameplay
Fallout employs a basic point-and-click interface that is
somewhat cumbersome to manage in combat situations and can easily lead to your character
choosing to look at the guy he should be stabbing, rather than using that movement point
to stab him. The main actions your character can undertake vary depending on the
situation, but they are usually a combination of moving, looking, talking and attacking.
If you've ever played any of the old text adventure games, you'll
feel right at home in Fallout -- there's a kind of retro RPG feeling to the game;
the only problem is that the packaging and promos for Fallout tout it as
competition for the current crop of RPG/adventure games. Maybe it's just me, but even when
I encounter an overwhelming force to fight in a turn-based game, it just fails to get my
pulse pounding.
The biggest challenge in Fallout is not finding your way
around the world -- even after a nuclear war and the rise of a supposedly savage
dog-eat-dog "society," the folks you run into while walking around the world of Fallout
are much more helpful and friendly than most of the people I pass on the street or stand
in line with at the grocery story these days.
What is tough, however, is simply
surviving the combat situations. From packs of rats right outside your front door at the
outset, to giant radioactive scorpions whose venom takes your hit points down (until you
figure out to cut off a stinger and take it to a nearby doctor who can make you an
antidote), to the various thugs that for some reason the game repeatedly forces you to
confront and kill, there are plenty of ways to die. In fact, it seems that your character
is constantly putting him- or herself into bad situations, sometimes needlessly. Maybe all
those years cooped up in the vault made you anti-social ...
One cool aspect of Fallout is its attempt to really make
itself an RPG. There are extensive opportunities to talk with NPCs, many people you run
into will trade items with you, and there is a definite structure to the world of Fallout
-- it
is not just level upon level of new monsters or bad guys to kill. While all of this is
somewhat refreshing, it is nothing new in the RPG realm, but rather a return to the more
pure RPG. There is also nothing veiled or difficult in communicating and trading with the
NPCs -- just make sure you click through everything you can say to each character and
make sure that you trade some of the shinier weapons for a few staples (like flares and
rope) so that you don't stock up on firepower in lieu of the necessities required of an
Indiana Jones/Mad Max type of adventurer.
 Graphics
The graphics in Fallout are OK, but no one would call them
stunning (aside from a PR person or two). I am reminded of the later Ultima
titles, or the more recent likes of Postal
-- the
graphics are clear enough, good colors, decent environments, but after seeing tons of
games that constantly attempt to boggle the mind and the eye with innovations (Diablo's
wondrous caverns, Quake's true 3D, Tomb Raider's silky cinematics, Crusader's
intricate environment, etc.), Fallout just can't measure up. Again, it is an
attempt to place substance over style (and admirable pursuit these days), but the
substance here is just so much Zork eons after the basics of gaming have
necessitated new approaches and a more stylish look. Fallout in this sense is a
victim of the times.
Audio
The very best part of Fallout is the opening sequence in
which a great old 40's record plays to a newsreel of the events that led up to the world
war. After that, the audio is adequate, but nothing more -- no real attempts at anything
environmental or sophisticated, just the basic necessities.
Controls
Basic mouse controls cover everything in the game, but as
mentioned above, the navigation between combat, movement and other actions is not always
as smooth as it might have been. Still, after a couple hours of playing you'll get used to
most of the basics. And besides, it's turn-based, so there's no real urgent need to master
the intricacies right away, at least so long as you remember to save often between nests
of Radscorpions.
System Requirements
DOS/PC version: Pentium-90, 32 MB RAM, 2X CD-ROM drive,
SVGA (VESA-compliant), SoundBlaster-compatible sound card
Windows 95 version: Pentium-90, 16 MB RAM, DirectX 3.0a or
5.0, 2X CD-ROM drive, SVGA, DirectSound-compatible sound card. Some people have reported
success running on lower-speed machines (486/66 and up), but Interplay does not officially
support less than a P90.
Mac version: PowerMac with 16000k free memory, CD-ROM
drive, System 7.1.2 or higher, and a variety of extensions (included on the
CD)
All versions require 10+ MB of hard drive space and a
mouse.
 Bottom Line
Fallout is a decent game, and will certainly appeal to
adventure-minded gamers who dislike the trend toward entirely puzzle-based games or who
want a break from the fast-paced shoot-'em-ups wrapped around one quest or another. Be
warned, though, that if you have been immersed in the likes of Diablo or Tomb
Raider, Fallout will seem slow and clunky compared to the more modern adventure
titles. I think it falls closest to the old text adventure games, but with more modern
updates in terms of graphics, animations, etc. In the end, you still want to grab a
notepad so that as you explore the caves or towns you can jot down E-E-N-N-E-S-S-S-W-W or
other such instructions to mark your way back to the guy you need to barter with for a
rope, so you can go back to the cave and get the lantern so you can ... well, you get the
idea. All in all, Fallout's not bad, it's just fair. 77 out of 100 for a decent RPG
where you can indeed actually advance your character and choose one of many paths through
the story.
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