Posted September 16, 2009
Fallout is a game which for me brings back many fond memories to me. My personal favourite is me and my mate sneaking onto his brothers saved game when we were about 10, walking into the necropolis and bricking it when we saw a group of ghouls ahead; running from the room when the WOOSH of turn based combat began. You may laugh now that we were absolutely petrified at the sight of these low scale rotting corpses with games such as FEAR and… Uh… Okay, just FEAR… and just the first one, but back then it was the most terrifying thing ever (after dark troopers on Dark Forces).
I’m not saying that Fallout will petrify now as it did back then, but unlike many other games you played as a sparkly eyed youth (or not so sparkly eyed, whatever youth you were) it holds that captivating thing that makes you want to go back again and again.
Replaying it these many years later I started to actually understand the story, came across the various data tapes, had learned about the cold war (albeit from Spitting Image, Doctor Who, and being raised in a [Old] Labour household) that you start to get completely sucked into the games setting. It’s a theme that’s run through the entire series, mixed in among the dark humour (which is like if the Monkey Island team had grown up on the League of Gentlemen) you’ll come across serious moments (this is in Fallout 3, but is a good example of what the flip I’m on about, you’ll come across a medical camp and diary entries from a nurse who was helping victims of the atomic war, it’s so sad when the rest of the game is chock full of jokes about 50’s intelligence on atomic warfare).
The first time you play it, just follow the starting phase, go to vault 15, visit shady sands, then… well, do what the hell you like. Maybe this is why I loved morrowind and oblivion so much, yes, you may go out and find the water chip (annoyingly you do have to because of the time limit), but before you do that, talk to everyone, wander aimlessly around the map, happening upon a strange base with lots of mutants that instantly blow you to little pieces. Kill raiders, Join Raiders, Save Killian, Kill Killian, Act like a complete rat dastard, Become the saviour of the wasteland, Finally, if, like me, you can’t move on to the next town until you’ve done EVERYTHING in THIS ONE, pull up a walkthrough to see just how much there is to do. I still even go back to it nowadays, even with Fallout 3 out there (which I don’t understand why people hate it so much, it’s a worthy successor, anyway…).
The darn game even lets you continue after finishing the main quest, allowing you to go back and do all the many sub quests out there, even then there’s a character editor knocking about the net (FALCHE, I think) so you can mess about with all the perks.
I may, I will say, be blinded by the child within who tried to tell the Brotherhood Paladin to let him in because he’d been to the glow and got “a huge dose of radiation poisoning” (it was worth a shot), but if you love RPGs and want a different setting to a carbon copy of middle earth, try this. Dark humour and 50’s nostalgia abound.
I’ll leave you with the following (edited) quote that this game left me with…
“So, what shall it be? Will you play Fallout? Or will you die here? Play! Die! Play! Die!”
I’m not saying that Fallout will petrify now as it did back then, but unlike many other games you played as a sparkly eyed youth (or not so sparkly eyed, whatever youth you were) it holds that captivating thing that makes you want to go back again and again.
Replaying it these many years later I started to actually understand the story, came across the various data tapes, had learned about the cold war (albeit from Spitting Image, Doctor Who, and being raised in a [Old] Labour household) that you start to get completely sucked into the games setting. It’s a theme that’s run through the entire series, mixed in among the dark humour (which is like if the Monkey Island team had grown up on the League of Gentlemen) you’ll come across serious moments (this is in Fallout 3, but is a good example of what the flip I’m on about, you’ll come across a medical camp and diary entries from a nurse who was helping victims of the atomic war, it’s so sad when the rest of the game is chock full of jokes about 50’s intelligence on atomic warfare).
The first time you play it, just follow the starting phase, go to vault 15, visit shady sands, then… well, do what the hell you like. Maybe this is why I loved morrowind and oblivion so much, yes, you may go out and find the water chip (annoyingly you do have to because of the time limit), but before you do that, talk to everyone, wander aimlessly around the map, happening upon a strange base with lots of mutants that instantly blow you to little pieces. Kill raiders, Join Raiders, Save Killian, Kill Killian, Act like a complete rat dastard, Become the saviour of the wasteland, Finally, if, like me, you can’t move on to the next town until you’ve done EVERYTHING in THIS ONE, pull up a walkthrough to see just how much there is to do. I still even go back to it nowadays, even with Fallout 3 out there (which I don’t understand why people hate it so much, it’s a worthy successor, anyway…).
The darn game even lets you continue after finishing the main quest, allowing you to go back and do all the many sub quests out there, even then there’s a character editor knocking about the net (FALCHE, I think) so you can mess about with all the perks.
I may, I will say, be blinded by the child within who tried to tell the Brotherhood Paladin to let him in because he’d been to the glow and got “a huge dose of radiation poisoning” (it was worth a shot), but if you love RPGs and want a different setting to a carbon copy of middle earth, try this. Dark humour and 50’s nostalgia abound.
I’ll leave you with the following (edited) quote that this game left me with…
“So, what shall it be? Will you play Fallout? Or will you die here? Play! Die! Play! Die!”