I heard so much hype about Fallout before playing it that I suppose I am incapable of offering anything resembling an unbiased opinion. Despite that, however, I agree that Fallout - what I've played of it so far - is an excellent RPG. The sheer depth and number of choices available is phenomenal, and even with the significant flaws in the system the game is challenging and intriguing. The story is a little difficult to follow, as it comes through in snippets here-and-there, and it's very easy to get distracted by exploring the huge areas you travel through and lose track of what you're -supposed- to be doing. And of course, the storyline suffers a little from the sheer number of methods you can use to take it on. But this game isn't meant to be an incredible work of prose, and it also isn't meant to be a replacement for a dedicated, creative GM in a pen-and-paper game. What it -does- do is provide for much more freedom than nearly any other game out there. And it does a great job. Nearly any character specialization is possible, and each will give you a different experience playing the game. If you want, you can even give your character a personality of sorts and play through the game adhering to a what-would-my-character-do fashion. In my opinion, this is the mark of a good computer RPG. My only real qualm with Fallout is the speed at which you progress through the game. Wandering through cities and towns takes a long time. A -long- time. There's no way to move faster than the character's running speed, and some of these places are big. And if you've already cleared out all the baddies in a cave network, or you know exactly where you're headed to in a city, well, you'll spend a lot of time holding down the mouse button. Combat, similarly, is rather ponderous. Clearing out the radiscorpion cave near the beginning of the game took me far too long. This is a pretty minor issue compared to the experience the rest of the game provides, but it's enough to knock a star off of the game's score - a way to turn up the walking speed a'la the old Sierra adventure games, and speed up combat animations, would be an incredibly welcome addition. That said, I'm going to do what everyone in the world has done before me and strongly suggest that anyone who likes non-Japanese RPGs (especially pen-and-paper ones) pick this game up and give it a try. Chances are, you won't regret it.
This game deserved far better sales than it got. Like Beyond Good and Evil, it is an excellent game with fairly standard gameplay, lots of character, an entertaining story, and a fantastic style all its own, but it never met with much monetary success. It's a crying shame. The gameplay is a lot like what would happen if you took the Legend of Zelda series (from OoT on) and made it so Link could jump on command. You get several additional abilities that you can map to the controller buttons (or keys, if you're stuck with the keyboard), and have to switch between to deal with different situations. Nothing really new here. The game's environment, however, is a breath of fresh air, and makes the game one of the few brilliantly original pieces of gaming made in the last twenty years. The gameplay doesn't get in the way of your exploration of the wonderfully insane worlds you come across, and that's all it needs. If you utterly loathe 3D platformers, you might give this a pass as it is likely to cause controller-throwing frustration. Failing that, however, you have no excuse to not BUY THIS GAME BUY IT NOW NOW NOW WHY AREN'T YOU CLICKING BUY INSTEAD OF READING THE REST OF THIS REVIEW.
