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A 1997 role-playing game in a post-apocalyptic setting in an imaginary California in the year 2161 onwards, after its devastation by a nuclear war between China and the USA in 2077. It adopts the 1950s' angst of nuclear destruction and ideas of the future as its style. A spiritual successor of the 1988 videogame Wasteland. I enjoyed the gameplay, the turn-based combat, the hexagon movement pattern, the atmosphere, the story, the background music, the dialogues, the writing, the quests, the character stats/skills/perks/traits. At first I was afraid about time limit (150 days for the first main quest) but even with hoarding & selling items, exploring everything, etc. I finished it in about 60 days. The game could do better with more unique/different models. One can't tell the companions or foes apart. The models partially dictate what weapons they are allowed to use. The game lacks some quality of life features. Such as: • Ability to remap keys • Exchanging items with companions (workaround is bartering and stealing) • Tell Dogmeat to stay instead of following (keeping your companions alive is a very frustrating task) • Inability to push your companions (I swear, I yelled at times when they blocked me in a corner AGAIN) Fixable through (unmaintained/outdated) community patches but I decided against them in favour of gameplay authenticity. The digital releases on Steam and GOG adopted the European version 1.2 with a high-resolution patch. A 121 pages long manual and a game controls reference card. The European version had the children removed which can be reimplemented with this patch: https://www.moddb.com/games/fallout/downloads/fallout-1-child-patch I learnt that the game has unimplemented quests which also cause the inability to get the good ending for "The Hub" and the "Followers of the Apocalypse" unless one edits save files or installs (unmaintained/outdated) community patches. Fun and the flaws can be looked over. Rating: 3/4
Bee Simulator is an exploration and adventure game with collectathon and mini-game elements. Its story involves a beehive from the point of view of single honeybee controlled by the player. The game has educational value and serves it in an un-forced fashion - even the cutscenes are skippable. The texts needed more proofreading, though. > Gameplay The main game consists of flying around, collecting pollen, exploring the surroundings while completing the story. Different areas and types of "challenges" (mini-games) get unlocked while following the main quest. Completing the "feats" (achievements) is the other part of the game, it consists of filling the "glossary" (lexicon), succeeding in all mini-games, and finishing all sidequests. The achievements are on the easier side but two are missable if one continues the main quest before completing available side quests first which is very annoying in such a type of game. Earned "knowledge" points can be used to unlock 3D-models in the lexicon and cosmetic options for the main character. > Controls The controls are optimised for consoles. Most annoying is that remapped keys won't be reflected in tutorials, UIs, and menus. A "reset to default" option is missing. Many menus require a click to make the mouse cursor appear. At least the in-game controls are good. > Graphics The visuals are beautiful but limited. Again, optimised for consoles. The drawing distance is low, even on "Ultra" settings which is really annoying as the game encourages to collect rare flowers in quick succession but often that's unachievable because one cannot see where the next one is flying blindly around. Entities such as challenge markers also pop-up when close only. The general level of detail drops incredibly fast at small distances too. > Audio Some beautiful tracks in the music and the sound effects are nice. > Summary A fun, beautiful, and interesting game but with noticable flaws.