Fallout 76

Fallout 76 is a game that has been quagmired in negativity from the word "Go", lacking the immersion of previous Fallouts by replacing all human NPCs with robots who dispense quests in the most sterile fashion imaginable, generally buggy design prone to frequent crashing, and preorder bonuses being fulfilled with much cheaper merchandise than was promised.  That, plus rampant and nearly-unchecked player cheating, security breaches in Bethesda's support system, an immensely overpriced in-game microtransaction system and a much-derided premium service that costs another $100 a year atop the already enormous price gouging present, have only worsened its image further, leading to it being known as one of the most cursed games of the modern era.   

But beyond the storm of corporate meddling, is there a worthwhile game to be found?  Well, I suppose that all hinges on how much you enjoyed Fallout 4.  76 is essentially that with a mediocre multiplayer element tacked on, letting you explore a vast world, complete story quests at your leisure and build your own settlements, to either ally with other players against the odds or get into turf wars with them (if you can find a group that's willing to play fair and not just resort to readily-available cheating tools).  Subsequent patches have also reintroduced some humanoid NPCs, improving the game's immersion factor, and the underlying storyline is decent if unremarkable, giving you something to stay motivated in the course of all your extra-curricular settlement building and player interaction.  However, it retains many of the same problems Fallout 4 had, too.  Nothing you do ever feels like it makes much of a significant change in the world, and it really doesn't, as it's only ever acknowledged by other players - usually at the barrel of a gun while they try to tear down your buildings in search of profit.  The crafting system itself is arbitrary and makes little sense, particularly as half the things you build provide no tangible benefit and the system itself lacks some very common-sense things you'd expect to be included.  There's a certain overhanging frustration in the fact that you can build laser turrets, water purifiers and nuclear reactors out of trash you find laying around a ruined office building, but still can't build a functional vehicle because the game's still running on a code base that's over two decades old at this point (and with their shareholders pulling the chain and demanding profits RIGHT NOW, it's unlikely they'll have the time or resources to adopt a new engine anytime soon).

76's premise is a good one - an open-world free-for-all where you can shape the wasteland to your will - but like Fallout 4 before it, the execution falls several steps short.  Fallout is a free-roaming RPG franchise beloved by fans for its immersive storytelling and design, and online open-world sandbox shooters are known for their fast-paced, yet strategic gameplay; when 76 takes a mediocre storyline and pastes a half-baked version of Fortnite on top of it, it just becomes a lesser version of two well-established genre staples that doesn't end up pleasing fans of either.  That, plus all of the aforementioned unsavory elements of its launch and the subsequent money-making scammery associated with it, make it a game I simply can't recommend to anyone.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios 

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Released: 2018

Platforms: Playstation 4, XBox One, PC

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

A spinoff rejected by fans of the PC series and ignored by console gamers who had no previous exposure to the franchise, Brotherhood of Steel is a Fallout game without a home.  But was there at least some merit to be found for the few that did play it, or is this one franchise offshoot that is heavily maligned for good reason?

Fallout is among the most highly-acclaimed of all CRPG franchises, with some even going so far as to credit it for reviving the genre with its emphasis on quests, world-building and gameplay that actually felt like a tabletop RPG and not just devolving into a mindless kill-fest as most RPGs before then were wont to do.  It found a new level of fame and attention in 2008 with Fallout 3, a revival of the franchise now under the helm of Bethesda Softworks; while the gameplay was now reworked to be more action-driven, Bethesda's talent for building huge open worlds and intriguing settings paid off, making it a game that found appeal among old Fallout fans and bringing many new ones on board too.

Among both old and new Fallout players, however, there is one game that is almost never spoken of - Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.  The only console-exclusive game in the franchise, which was famously released in a period where Interplay was in a financial crisis and putting out quickly-made cashin titles - in other words, the complete antithesis of Fallout, a game noted for the care and attention put into every facet of its design.  That was certainly evident in the game's reception, too - shunned by fans and given mediocre scores overall by reviewers, it sold an abismally low 120,000 copies across both platforms, making it the worst-selling game in the series and the lowest-rated Fallout game until 2018's Fallout 76.  Even Bethesda Softworks barely acknowledges its existence, only commenting to confirm that it is considered a non-canon entry due to many elements of its lore contradicting those of the series proper.  But is it really as bad as its reputation would have you believe?  I was intent to cut through the hyperbole and find out, so I went and picked up a used copy.

The first thing to note is that Brotherhood of Steel plays very unlike any other Fallout game.  Rather than being turn-based or even turning it into an open world action-RPG as the later games do, Brotherhood of Steel can more aptly be described as a "Diablo-like".  Playing in the Snowblind Engine (the same one used for the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance spinoff franchise), Brotherhood of Steel utilizes a top-down perspective and a rather simple real-time combat engine, with nearly all of the gameplay consisting of shooting approaching enemies or taking them out in close quarters with a melee weapon.  The player can also lock on to single enemies and from there can perform a quick dodge while locked on with the Triangle button, though as this also greatly slows their movement speed, its usefulness is dubious in melee combat.  And of course, numerous crates, boxes and barrels exist solely to be smashed open in order to find more ammunition, money and the occasional piece of equipment inside.

Second, RPG elements in the game are rather minimal on the whole.  There is an experience system in the game, and by defeating enemies and completing quests, the player earns "Perks" that give them small bonuses for future combats - from getting more health back from stimpaks to bonus HP to a slight boost in melee combat damage or critical hit chance.  Still, these really don't add a lot of variety to the game, as it is almost entirely focused around combat and chances to "role play" are relegated to doing sub-quests for a bit of extra resources.  Equipment upgrades are equally utilitarian, with armor and weapon upgrades becoming available in a strictly linear fashion with no opportunities to "sequence break" and even relatively few hidden secrets that may give the player an early advantage.  Probably because the game's short length (three overarching chapters, which are divided into a handful of sub-areas) and lack of free-roaming exploration simply don't allow much wiggle room.

There was at least an attempt made to give the experience some variety with its playable characters.  There are six in total - three to start and three more unlocked over the course of the game.  Cyrus is a stronger but slower character who can wield heavy weapons, Nadia is weaker but speedier and can dual-wield small arms, and Cain the Ghoul is the oddball of the group, being relatively average overall but having resistance to radiation - in fact, once he has a certain perk, coming in contact with radioactive hazards will actually heal him (a mechanic which conspicuously resurfaces in Bethesda's Fallout games).  Each also has a unique perk or two, though there isn't a huge amount of difference between them from a gameplay perspective.  The unlockable characters don't add much to this either, with two just being stronger variants on Cyrus and Nadia and the final being a nod to Fallout 1's protagonist (though as he is exceptionally powerful, he is only available on a second playthrough or later).

Some other trademarks of the series are conspicuously absent.  Ron Perlman's iconic narration is gone (replaced by Tony Jay) and the 1950's comic atmosphere is largely lost, with tunes of the era now replaced by ill-fitting hard rock and metal songs (including tracks by Skinlab and Slipknot) and the aesthetic overall bearing very little resemblance to the franchise proper, with the only tenuous tie being occasional load screen art or a snippet of an FMV ripped straight from the earlier Fallouts.  The closest it comes is the design of Jane, the game's first major villain, who is a lewder (and much crasser) caricature of Bettie Page, but even that feels like it was done just for cheap T&A rather than trying to match the setting.

"Crass" could also aptly describe the game as a whole, as it seems more intent on showing sleaze than building anything resembling a story or atmosphere.  Between near-constant appearances of women in skimpy clothes, a rather juvenile sense of humor, plentiful cursing and combat seemingly built around splattering foes as messily as possible than anything resembling mental engagement, it feels like a game meant to get cheap reaction and sales from kids whose ages have barely hit the double digits.  Given Interplay's finances at the time of its release, it probably was, too.

But for all of its faults, Brotherhood of Steel isn't a terrible game when judged on its own merits; it is at least a competently made top-down hack-and-slash with a few RPG elements beneath the surface, and it can provide a few hours of mindless entertainment, especially with two players working in tandem to clear it.  But the fact that it carries the name of a franchise that built its name on intricate lore, an immersive roleplaying experience and deceptively deep gameplay where one's choices actually had a tangible impact makes it a very disappointing end to Interplay's involvement with the franchise.  There is little wonder why Brotherhood of Steel failed to find an audience, as fans of the Fallout series and gamers who were fans of Diablo-style action-RPGs both had  better options available that didn't make them feel like they were being pandered to by cynical marketeers who were on the verge of losing their jobs.

Developer: Interplay Entertainment
Publisher: Interplay Entertainment
Platform: Playstation 2, Xbox
Released: 2004
Recommended Version:  Both versions seem to be identical, so just pick your platform of choice.

Fallout 2

Fallout 2 is the followup to the highly acclaimed 1997 PC classic, addressing some of the first game's shortcomings and bringing a massive amount of new content to the table.  But does Fallout 2 prove to be just as much of a successful role-playing experience, or is this the archetypal sequel that tries to do too much too quickly?

Released one year to the day after the first Fallout game, Fallout 2 was an archetypal sequel in many respects.  Still set on the west coast of a post-apocalyptic United States, it retained many of the familiar elements of its predecessor - mutated animals, random encounters, and numerous landmarks of the setting, as well as the same engine.  However, there was significantly more to see this time - the number of visitable locations on the map had nearly tripled compared to the original game's, and the amount of NPCs, quests and character dialog in the game had expanded nearly tenfold.  Indeed, almost every location the player can visit, rather than having one overarching quest and a handful of smaller ones, now has at least a half-dozen quests to complete, and not all are as easily broken into "good or evil" choices as in the first game.  One prime example of this is New Reno, where the player can ally with any of the four major crime families in the city (or none at all).  Others are more morally ambigious, such as helping Vault City force out the ghouls running a damaged and dangerous power plant in nearby Gecko, or repairing the plant and letting them maintain their independence.

Some other common complaints from the first game were addressed as well.  Recruitable NPCs now had customizable AI, with the player able to specify conditions for when to heal themselves and what types of weapons and tactics to use in a fight.  They could even now be equipped with different types of weapons and armor (up to and including power armor), making them viable even into the late stages of the game.  Weapon types are now more balanced, with Big Guns now being a viable (though still costly) choice and even Small Guns now having viable options in the later stages of the game.  Advanced in CGI also ensured that the few animated cutscenes in the game were now of much higher quality, with much less "plasticy" characters and environments and much smoother animation.  Some skills were given more of a practical use, as well - the formerly pointless Outdoorsman skill now aids with avoiding random encounters (allowing the player to skip them if they make a successful roll) and helps with finding rare Special Encounters that grant rare and powerful items.  Another example is the Skilled trait, rather than a fairly pointless (and minimal) boost to all skills, it now grants five extra skill points per level, and the longer wait between Perks is significantly less devastating for reasons detailed below.

Fallout 2 has more of a clearly defined progression to its story, with the player all but forced to go from one story-relevant area to the next in a linear fashion, lest they try to stray from it and encounter enemies much higher than their current level (and usually die).  Indeed, incremental equipment upgrades from town to town are all but necessary to survive the trip to the next for much of the first half of the game, and even then, an unlucky random encounter can put a character with a pistol in a matchup with enemies touting automatic shotguns, resulting in a game over.  As in the first game, frequent quicksaves and reloads are an integral part of the experience.

Despite this focus on balance in the early stages, the game puts much thought into higher-level play as well.  No longer is there a hard level cap at 24; instead, the player can theoretically gain as many levels as they want (up to the game's hardcoded time limit, at least) and the skill system has been tweaked to match.  The maximum for all skills is 300% now (up from 200), and at certain milestones, the cost increases - raising one point beyond 100% now costs two skill points, beyond 130% costs three, 150% costs four and so forth.  Powerful perks like Better Criticals, Slayer and Sniper now have substantially higher requirements as well.  Players can still become massively powerful, but these changes ensure that this remains an option best kept for the end of the game, and does not allow them to quickly max out their weapon skills and breeze through encounters as in the original Fallout.

One change to the game that remains universally controversial, however, is its overall mood.  While the original Fallout had an overall dark tone with a few tongue-in-cheek elements reminiscent of a comic book plot, Fallout 2 very much plays up the humor aspect of the franchise.  Frequent pop culture references creep into the dialog and the game as a whole, running the gamut from video game references to movie lines to parodies of celebrities like Mike Tyson, Bruce Lee and Tom Cruise.  Not to say that the game has no real atmosphere or interesting themes - it definitely does in its stronger moments - but elements like these mostly serve to make Fallout 2 a much sillier experience than the original game, particularly when it starts to break the fourth wall (such as providing the player with a magic 8-ball that provides in-game clues, or the game over screen mocking the player for not saving frequently enough).  It's an enormously fun game to experience and explore, but there are frequent instances where one gets the impression that Black Isle wasn't taking the experience all that seriously.

In the end, Fallout 2 is a standard but largely successful sequel, taking what made the original game great - its open-ended storytelling and dense design - and providing a lot more of it.  Some may find the humor and frequent pop culture references distracting, but for those who can roll with the punches, deal with some occasionally frustrating challenge, and laugh at the game in spite of itself, Fallout 2 is a lengthy and highly replayable quest that will keep you engrossed for many, many playthroughs.

Developer: Black Isle
Publisher: Interplay Entertainment
Platform: PC
Released:  1998
Recommended version: N/A

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is a game that met with much skepticism among long-time Fallout fans, with concerns that its shift in development teams and change to a more action-oriented engine would ruin the magic the first two games conveyed.  But did Bethesda do an admirable job trying to build a new game in the Fallout universe, or is this the archetypal killing blow to the series that so many feared?

Fallout 3 is certainly an odd case among video game development cycles, beginning its life under Black Isle at Interplay during a time when they were facing severe financial problems.  Eventually Interplay closed down Black Isle and sold off several of their popular IPs in an attempt to avert bankruptcy, with the Fallout license being purchased by Bethesda Softworks.  Rather than use the work already done on Interplay's Fallout 3, however, they controversially decided to scrap it all and create their own game from scratch using the Gamebryo engine (already used in their earlier games Morrowind and Oblivion) and with their own original plot and mechanics.  From there, virtually every move they made on Fallout 3 was heavily nitpicked and criticized by long-time series fans, with many dismissing it as another "dumbed-down game" ruined by a shift in developers well before it was even out (not aided by the lackluster reception of Fallout Tactics and the extremely mediocre console spinoff, Brotherhood of Steel).

However, Bethesda took things in stride, and even made some genuine efforts to address fan complaints and criticisms.  Rewrites were made to better accommodate their game to series lore (with the discrepant Super Mutant designs and behavior being explained, for example) and some elements of Fallout's design were worked into Fallout 3, such as having damaged or crippled limbs hinder the player and even a slight "turn-based" aspect in the VATS system.  The latter essentially lets the player stop the action temporarily to take aim at a specific enemy, allowing them to target their limbs with as many shots as their AP gauge allows.  AP slowly recharges over (real) time, though, so one can't simply abuse this system constantly to pick off every enemy they encounter with heads hots.  Finally, they secured the rights to "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" - the song originally intended to be used in Fallout 1's intro (which was ultimately replaced by "Maybe" in that game); both songs, as well as several other era-appropriate ones, prominently feature on this game's soundtrack, adding much to the game's feel.

Fallout 3 still clearly plays to Bethesda's strengths rather than Black Isle's, however.  Their skill in world design definitely shines through here, with the ruins of DC providing a sprawling, vast area to explore.  Venturing through subways, ruined stores and finding the various landmarks about the area lends much to the game's charm, as does some of the occasional humor seen throughout - entering a particular convenience store sets off a lengthy Rube Goldberg trap that eventually blasts the player with a shotgun, for example.  Also included are a crude weapon-crafting system (letting the player construct a poisonous dart gun and a device that throws junk at enemies for surprising damage, to name two) and they do actually manage to make the world feel like a desolate, bombed-out hellhole in a lot of ways.  Unlike the first two Fallout games, radiation is a very real danger in Fallout 3, with nearly every consumable the player encounters adding to their overall count and slowly weakening and killing them.  Clean food and water is scarce, mutated animals are everywhere and there is quite a lot of bleak atmosphere, with radio signals revealing messages from long-dead people caught in the bombing raids and desperately trying to save themselves and more than a few other bleak stories told through the game's text and audio logs.  The game's overall mood and tone is easily its strongest suit, even if it's not entirely in line with the Black Isle produced Fallout games.

On the other end of the coin, Bethesda's shortcomings are also evident in Fallout 3.  In a reversal from Oblivion, the main quest of the game is easily its strongest element from a writing perspective; it's essentially a family drama with the player's character frequently being tempted by evil as they seek out their father and attempt to complete his life's work.  The rest of the game's quests, however, are relatively forgettable and handed out by characters that aren't really given much in the way of depth or personality.  Some just come off as rather silly (such as having to find a clan of "vampires" or destroy an entire town for no satisfactory reason) while others are relatively mundane (the Nuka Cola collecting quest).  They also seem to have taken note of the karma system from the first two Fallouts and implemented in the most literal of senses here, with quests only really being defined as boolean good-or-evil choices with no real depth or problem-solving element to them - basically, you're either a paragon of virtue or evil for evil's sake, with no real nuance or option for a middle ground.  A pretty disappointing turn for a franchise that formerly defined itself on questlines that often required genuine detective work on the player's part, where the most "evil" option often wasn't just to shoot everybody they could and where even being a "good guy" could prove troublesome for you down the road.

Most of the DLC for Fallout 3 is pretty mediocre as well.  While one can argue that Broken Steel at least provides a more satisfying conclusion to the game than the stock game did, the rest just feel largely by-the-numbers and unnecessary, not really giving the player much more to do than a few more generic quests and stronger enemies to shoot at.  The one I found most enjoyable was Point Lookout, which had a nice, creepy swamp area to explore as well as a rather twisted sense of humor that, at its best points, felt like something from one of the earlier games' better questlines made manifest in a 3D engine.  The rest mostly just consist of relatively small, 2-3 hour quests that add little to the overarching story and don't really provide a lot for the player to do other than shoot things, which is just a bit of a letdown from a company that built itself on crafting huge RPG worlds with intricate lore and mechanics.

When all is said and done, Fallout 3 is a valiant first attempt at a Fallout game from Bethesda.  While they did show some trouble cutting their teeth on the dense lore and the franchise's dark sense of humor, they did at least make an attempt to capture the feel of Fallout as they put their own spin on things, playing to their strengths of world design and giving it a bleak, almost horror-esque atmosphere.  It honestly gave me hope for future games in the franchise as I thought they would take in in more fan suggestions and continue to expand the vast, bombed-out America the franchise was set in.  It's just a pity that they didn't keep going in that direction with Fallout 4, instead focusing more on throwing in countless ideas and gameplay elements with no real direction or integration between any of them...

Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Released:  2008
Recommended version:  Once again, I have to go with the PC versions, which add in modding capabilities.  This allows for an even more bleak and harsh survival experience, more fluidly animated characters and even letting you remove that ugly green smog that permeates the entirety of the game, letting you view the capital wasteland in its full splendor.

Fallout: New Vegas

Several members of Fallout's original development team return to the franchise for another go.  But do they manage to make New Vegas live up to the franchise's legacy, or has Bethesda's acquisition of the franchise taken it too far down a new path?

Fallout 3 was a divisive game among long-time fans of the series; the game began as "Project Van Buren" under the development of Black Isle, but when Interplay encountered financial problems in the early 2000s, the studio was shut down and the game was cancelled.  The Fallout IP was later bought out by Bethesda Softworks, who decided to develop their own version of Fallout 3, completely discarding all of the work and concept done for Van Buren.  Bethseda's version eventually came out in 2008, prompting heavy criticism from long-time fans on almost every front, but most especially changing its gameplay style to more closely match Elder Scrolls with its first-person perspective and real-time action, making it feel more like a shooter with some RPG elements on top than a full-fledged role-playing game.

From a personal standpoint, I felt that Bethesda did a solid job with Fallout 3; while I take issue with some elements of it as feeling out of place (particularly the virtual reality segment and the extremely silly Liberty Prime), I felt that they put in a strong effort trying to reconcile the game's setting and lore with fan expectations, even going out of their way to address some common criticisms with in-game dialog (such as the disparate designs of the Super Mutants and their take on the Brotherhood of Steel).  They also took advantage of the 3D perspective to create a convincingly bleak Washington DC devastated by nuclear bombs and under a mutant threat, with some excellent visuals and a vast, convoluted network of subway tunnels and ruined buildings to explore throughout.  They even attempted to recreate some of the series' sly, dark humor with elements like a seemingly idyllic community that gives way to something much darker, and an innocuous building whose entrance is rigged with an elaborate Rube Goldberg device that eventually triggers a shotgun trap to blast the player.  The player even had the option to complete most quests in numerous ways, which showed that Bethesda was at least trying to emulate the free-choice of the earlier Fallout games.  While they didn't completely succeed at making Fallout 3 live up to the franchise's legacy, one certainly could not say they weren't trying to.

New Vegas was later announced, being heavily touted among series fans for reuniting some of Fallout's original developers with the franchise and promising a more authentic Fallout experience.  Indeed, the setting was even moved back to the western end of the country, reincorporating some familiar settings and factions from earlier games (including the NCR and the familiar reclusive, technology-hoarding Brotherhood of Steel) and even reintroducing some concepts from the scrapped Van Buren version of Fallout 3 (such as Caesar's Legion).  The game also returned to an almost entirely open-ended style, giving the player a basic premise and storyline and letting them reach the end in almost any way they pleased.

In that way, New Vegas was very much a return to what drew people to Fallout in the first place - namely that it was an actual role-playing game.  The player was free to interact with NPCs and complete quests in any order and fashion they wished, and no matter what choices they made, all were equally valid.  The player could also ally with or make enemies of the numerous factions in the Mojave, each of which had their own motivations and quest lines to follow, and their choices in any given area and with any faction would unlock different ending scenes.  This, paired a vast number of minor quests to complete, NPCs to interact with and areas to explore, gives New Vegas the feel of a sprawling adventure.  The sheer amount of content New Vegas provides, as well as the fact that completing some quests will also close off opportunities for others, ensures that the player can only see a small fraction of what the Mojave has to offer in a single playthrough, lending the experience tremendous replay value.

The gameplay also returns to Fallout's style of design in some ways despite retaining Fallout 3's engine.  The player is given a selection of Traits as the game opens (giving them both advantages and drawbacks right out of the gate), and there is a much heavier emphasis on skill checks than there was in Fallout 3 - nearly every quest in the game has at least one dialog or option that can only be passed if a given skill is at a high enough level.  These generally allow the player to avoid a difficult fight or, should they choose to fight anyway, give them an advantage.  Should the player wish it, they can also choose the "Wild Wasteland" trait to unlock some sillier events (usually in the form of pop culture references) and give the game a bit more of an off-beat vibe a la Fallout 2.  There are some new options to provide a different gameplay experience as well, such as weapons that can be outfitted with modifications for a variety of benefits, a crafting system that allows for new types of equipment, stat-boosting "chems" and even new ammunition types (such as armor-piercing rounds and energy cells that do more damage at the cost of causing weapons to decay faster) to be created, and even a "hardcore mode" that makes healing crippled limbs more difficult and requires the player to periodically eat, sleep and drink or suffer stat penalties (and eventually die).

The game's writing also proves to be a strong point; as per Obsidian standards, it conveys a sly yet confident tone throughout, with well-written and complex characters as well as some surprisingly funny off-beat humor.  Even the add-on DLC missions show a surprising amount of effort in this regard, making every effort to expand upon the lore of the Mojave (and the Fallout franchise as a whole) and culminating in a showdown with one of the most well-realized and interesting rival characters in any video game, let alone an RPG.

The biggest shortcoming of New Vegas, however, is definitely its engine.  While I didn't mind the transition to a 3D action-based style of gameplay as much as some, the fact that Obsidian had to work with the same buggy, limited engine that Oblivion and Fallout 3 sported definitely hampers the experience in some ways.  In addition to the usual complement of awkward wall clips and enemies ragdolling in silly ways (sometimes rocketing into the air after taking a fatal blow or clipping into scenery, unable to attack or be attacked), the vast web of scripted quests, objectives and placed objects also ends up pushing the Gamebryo engine to its limits, frequently resulting in things like markers pointing to misleading locations or NPCs and objects simply disappearing, leaving some objectives unable to be completed.  Indeed, almost every quest in the game has at least one or two bugs associated with it, and while I personally didn't encounter any that made the game unwinnable, the fact that innocuous actions can sometimes render quests unable to be finished can result in a fair bit of having to load back earlier saves and repeat work already done.  Indeed, even the game itself seems to acknowledge this, frequently making auto-saves and giving the player a grand total of 1,000 save slots to utilize (which can quickly fill up one's hard drive if playing on the console versions).  Several patches have been released to fix the most egregious bugs, but even with all of these, New Vegas remains a notoriously volatile experience.

In spite of that, however, New Vegas provides a fantastic role-playing adventure, giving the player a tremendous amount of freedom to explore a vast, dense web of lore and interesting sights.  The strong writing also proves to be a great asset, highlighting Obsidian's talents at their best and ultimately leaving the player lamenting that, in spite of the sheer amount of content the game provides, they were prevented from including even more due to time constraints and engine limitations.  And that they may never get a crack at the series again as New Vegas ultimately fell short of Bethesda's lofty expectations for sales and review scores...

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 3, XBox 360, PC
Released: 2010
Recommended version: All versions are plagued by their own sets of bugs, glitches and crashes, but the PC version is the most stable in my experience.  It also allows for fan modifications (including several prominent bug fixes) and the use of console commands to bypass a plethora of glitches without having to redo entire quests, so that is the one I recommend.

Fallout

Interplay's return to Computer RPGs was lauded as a true role-playing experience, unlike the heavily combat-driven design of most others of the era.  But does it live up to the hype, or is it just another mindless shoot-the-monster simulator?

Intended at first to be a sequel to Interplay's 1988 hit Wasteland, Fallout eventually became its own IP when EA showed no intention of relinquishing the rights to that title.  Both titles do show a lot of similarities (taking place in a North American setting after a nuclear war), but Fallout ultimately took advantage of the technology of the era to create a more fleshed-out experience in every respect.

As its tagline implied, Fallout was intended from the get-go to be an actual role-playing game; rather than solving problems only with force, the player had a variety of options in almost every scenario, and all of them were equally valid.  For example, to resolve a kidnapping that happens early in the adventure, the player can take a stealthy approach to free the hostage, negotiate for her release, challenge the leader of the raiders to a one-on-one duel, or simply go in guns-blazing and wipe them all out.  One even had the option to go down a less savory route and join the raiders themselves, and the game treated all of these options as equally viable.  It is even possible, with some effort, to go through the entire game without your character killing anyone.

Supporting this, the game features a very complex character customization system, deeper than perhaps any other to that point.  The SPECIAL system gives the player seven stats - Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck - and a list of skills, three of which can be "tagged" for faster growth over the course of the game.  The player also has a choice of up to two Traits, which each carry their own advantages and drawbacks.  For example, Small Frame grants the player an extra point of Agility at the cost of significantly reducing their total carry weight, and Jinxed causes the player and everyone they encounter to get many more critical failures in combat.  The numerous combinations of skills and abilities available, as well as the gameplay styles afforded to each, lends Fallout some considerable replay value.

For every 3 levels the player gains, they also gain access to a list of "Perks" that grant them new abilities or enhance their existing ones.  Action Boy gives the player an extra AP for each combat turn, Bonus Rate of Fire reduces the AP cost of using guns (allowing the player to sneak in an extra shot or two per turn), and Fortune Finder will double the amount of money the player finds in chests and random encounters.  Unfortunately, these don't support the multiple gameplay styles nearly as well; many of them require a high stat or skill level as a prerequisite, and getting to that point with that skill/stat generally makes them redundant.  As a rule of thumb, only the combat skills are the ones that prove consistently useful here.

Where Fallout truly shines, however is in its writing.  A post-apocalyptic setting generally lends itself to a heavy mood and a bleak amosphere, and the same is true to a degree in Fallout.  However, it also possesses a more light-hearted tone in many respects as well, seemingly drawing some inspiration from 1950s-era science fiction and comic books to deliver some more outlandish elements (like giant animals and people mutated into more grotesque monsterish forms), as well as a wry sense of humor in many respects.  This is also punctuated by the occasional "talking head" NPC, who are given a fully-animated model and even some surprisingly decent voiceover with the aid of professional actors like Tony Jay, Jim Cummings and Richard Dean Anderson.  There is even a surprising amount of dialog with many NPCs in the game, as well as a large number of text logs and computer files to read that effectively offer a lot of insight into the world and its lore from the perspective of people who lived it firsthand.  This alone makes Fallout a much more compelling experience than many RPGs that fall back on the lazy "plot codices" that simply explain the events leading up to the current day in a dry Wiki-like format.

Despite a somewhat poorly-planned Perk system and some unbalanced gameplay elements, Fallout was (and remains) an important milestone for the genre. It proved to be instrumental in turning Computer RPGs away from being mindless monster mash-fests and truly putting the Role Playing aspect into them.  By giving the player numerous paths to complete each objective and a true sense of consequence for each choice they make, Fallout felt much more alive and dynamic than any CRPG before it, and it continues to be one of the finest examples of design to this day.  Its sequels may have surpassed it in many ways, but without such a strong foundation to build them on, we'd probably still be seeing a lot more mindless first-person monster bopping simulators.

Developer: Interplay Entertainment
Publisher: Interplay Entertainment
Platform: PC
Released: 1997
Recommended version: N/A

Fallout 4

Bethesda's latest entry in the Fallout series exhumes a lot of the storytelling and bleak atmosphere in favor of a much larger emphasis on action.  But does that work in the game's favor, or does it just end up becoming another dime-a-dozen shooter once all is said and done?

Fallout is a series with a long and convoluted history.  The first game was released on the PC in 1997 to the great acclaim of CRPG fans for its grim atmosphere, wry sense of humor and for conveying a true sense of immersion.  Each quest in the game had multiple roads to completion, allowing the players to approach them guns-blazing, use a more stealthy approach or even resolve things through diplomacy (it was possible - and even viable - to complete the game without firing a single shot), and the choice therein gave the game some considerable replay value.  A sequel followed two years later, greatly expanding the amount of content therein but also introducing a large amount of bugs and numerous pop-culture references, which some fans found distracting.  Nevertheless, Fallout 2 was another highly-acclaimed game, and the sheer amount of things to do and the choice the player has in executing them makes it a game that holds up remarkably well even today.  Then came the mediocre-to-terrible spinoffs (Tactics, Brotherhood of Steel) born of Interplay's financial troubles.  These same troubles would lead to Fallout 3's cancellation and the license being sold to Bethesda Softworks, who produced their own Fallout 3 completely independent of Interplay and Black Isle's work.  While Bethesda's Fallout 3 was a decent attempt at moving the series into 3D, it also felt lacking in much of the choice, sly humor and polish that made the first two Fallout games so great, though it did succeed in having a bleak atmosphere and telling a pretty good story in its own right.  A followup came two years later in Fallout: New Vegas, returning the reigns to its original developers and allowing them to create a sprawling, ambitious and almost completely open-ended adventure with multiple endings in much the same vein as the earliest games (and easily making it my favorite of the 3D Fallouts, as well as one of my favorite games of all time).  However, it failed to meet Bethesda's high standards and Obsidian was ousted from working on future Fallout games, leading to Fallout 4's development falling back to Bethesda's hands.

And that's where we are today.  Fallout 4 was Bethesda's second outing for the series, moving the setting to the Boston area and utilizing the power of current game systems to expand upon its gameplay, introducing new elements like a much more in-depth equipment crafting mode, town building and a new "radiant quest" system that, at least in theory, provides the player with randomized quest objectives to give each player a unique experience.  Which are all good ideas in theory, but for various reasons I'll get into further down, none of them really work on the level they intended them to.

One stark change is the game's handling of character creation and development.  While earlier games had you create a character, set their stats, pick a few skills and tweak your character build gradually over the course of the game via Perks, Fallout 4 opts for a route that is distinctly anti-roleplaying.  You do still tweak your stats at the outset, but when you gain a level now, you get a point to spend on either boosting a single stat, or to buy a perk tied to a single stat.  Having 2 or more Strength, for example, lets you purchase levels that grant bonuses to your melee weapon damage, while at least 4 Intelligence lets you buy points in Hacker, allowing you to hack into progressively more secure terminals.  However, unlike earlier Fallouts, you are given no ability to shape your stats as you please - every Perk now has a strict minimum level requirement, so if you want to take a risk, dump all your points into Lockpick and get into a high level area behind a Master rank lock early, too bad - you can't. You're forced to wait several more hours to reach Level 42 to buy that Perk, which adds an unpleasant feeling of restriction to a series that built itself on being almost entirely open and free-form.  It gets worse, though - owing to the game's uninspired quest design (more on this later), gaining levels generally just amounts to a lot of tedious grinding, further removing the experience from feeling anything like a Fallout game.

The combat in Fallout 4 is obviously where much of the development team's focus went, and it pays off on at least some level.  Battles in this game are much larger in scale than they ever were in Fallout 3 or New Vegas and enemy AI is much more complex, with quests often encompassing dozens of enemies at a time shooting at you, lobbing grenades or just bum-rushing you (in the case of less-intelligent creatures).  Similarly, the game has frequent "legendary" enemies, which serve as boss battles of a sort - they're generally larger and much tougher than their counterparts, and defeating them usually gives you a pretty substantial experience reward and a piece of rare equipment or two.  They only get more over-the-top as your level increases, as well - from twenty-foot Mirelurk Queens to Irradiated Deathclaws to enormous hordes of super mutants and even a new type of robotic enemy called "Assaultrons" who attack with a vicious barrage of lasers.  You really do have to make the best of your equipment and abilities to persist and make your way through the game, though it does frequently have the unfortunate effect of forcing you to stop and grind, or just avoid combat entirely, in order to complete many quests.  This overall makes the feel much less like a Fallout game and much more like a generic action title, which may satisfy many modern gamers, but probably won't appeal much to long-time series fans.

Combat aside, equipment crafting is easily the game's most interesting feature, allowing the player to collect various types of scrap materials in order to customize their weapons to suit their personal play style.  Almost every aspect of every type of weapon can be customized - barrels, stocks, expanded magazines, sights and so on can be changed out or upgraded, with each having their upsides and downsides (usually sacrificing power for firing speed or accuracy, or vice versa).  This, paired with the relative scarcity of some ammunition types, also encourages the player to utilize and customize many types of weapons throughout the game, with even the low-quality junker weapons frequently used by Raiders are handy in some situations; while they are all but useless against heavily armored enemies, ammo for them is extremely plentiful, making them ideal for fighting off weaker foes.  Armor and clothing can be customized in similar fashion, utilizing scrap materials to tweak them in various ways (usually in the form of adding lining to make your character more resistant to some types of damage).

Disappointingly, however, you still can't make or find vehicles of any kind to travel the wasteland more quickly.  The closest the game comes to that is in the Power Armors, which appear frequently throughout the game and have interchangable and upgradable parts that allow things like short-distance flight, enhanced radiation resistance, and even custom paint-jobs.  There are just as many options here as there were for weapons and armor, though I was ultimately reluctant to use them much; all Power Armors run on fusion cores, which are a scarce resource in the game and drain too quickly to ultimately prove very useful until late in the game when you'll probably have a large stockpile of them.

Further adding to the heavy customization element is a town building system, wherein numerous areas throughout the wasteland can be cleared of enemies, then set up as "bases" of sorts - generators can be constructed, guard towers can be set up to provide defense, and various buildings, shops and other amenities can be built, complete with setting up trade routes between each outpost.  Occasionally said outposts also fall under attack by raiders and rely on the player to come save them in a timely manner, lest the outpost be ruined and most of its inhabitants killed.  This proves to be an entertaining distraction for a time, but the novelty quickly wears off once you realize that there simply isn't much point to it.  Were this used to power up your character or advance the storyline in some way, a la Actraiser or Dark Cloud, it would be worth doing, but they ultimately went down neither route - there's no substantial story benefit to town building, and you just don't earn enough benefits from constructing trade routes and defending outposts to really make it worth doing.  Not to mention your villagers have a bad habit of arming themselves with your stashed equipment and power armors if you leave them within easy reach, so it can be quite a nuisance as well.  I'd also hoped that this would be used in a way that Fallout had never really explored before - namely reclaiming the wasteland by rebuilding strongholds of civilization and an armed militia to do so - but it doesn't ever really go that far either, despite a few clues throughout that it would.  Even if it did, though, there's little logical rhyme or reason for how power, defense and other elements work, so the whole thing just feels very slapped-on.  As an example, a guard tower provides a flat 2 defense and requires a settler to man it, regardless of how they're armed or armored, or you can just spend a few common resources to get a level 1 turret that provides 6 defense that doesn't even require power.  A simple water pump can be placed anywhere for a pittance and provides 3 water, and you can build any number of them, while a powered water pump requires that plus many more resources, a skill perk to be taken and a water source to place them in, yet only provides 20 water.  It also seems that no matter how much defense you set up, raiders will invade your camps and destroy them unless you drop whatever you're doing and intervene to help whenever a defense quest pops up on your HUD.  It all just feels underdeveloped, like they were trying to cash in on Minecraft and similar "builder" games while making no effort to integrate it into the experience in any interesting way.

Another large detriment to the game is the "radiant quest" system, where objectives, enemies and locations are randomized to a degree for each quest you're given.  Theoretically this would allow each player to have a unique experience, but with the way it's implemented, that's not really the case; there are only so many locations to visit, and with the minimal rewards and overall simplicity of the quests (usually just amounting to eliminating a particular enemy or retrieving an item from a location), it doesn't take long before the law of diminishing returns kicks in.  In fact, between that, the giant boss monsters, the sheer emphasis on powering up to survive battles and the randomized loot (using a Diablo-styled prefix and suffix system), it feels like they weren't even trying to make a proper Fallout game, but rather trying to shoehorn action-roguelike gameplay into the Fallout engine and make something more akin to the Borderlands franchise.

That aside, the major failing of Fallout 4 is just how dumbed down it feels in the storytelling department.  Rather than having a dense universe to explore full of interesting characters, a wryly grim atmosphere and creative lore, Fallout 4 doesn't seem engineered for anything beyond endless shoot-the-monster or collect-the-item quests.  This is nowhere more evident than in its dialog system, which no longer even allows the player to see the full text of the lines they'll be speaking; instead, we get the dumbed-down Mass Effect dialog wheel, simply having the player react in one of four ways to NPC's spoken lines (with a solid 95% of the choices having no tangible effect whatsoever).  This overall makes the game's main storyline feel very railroaded and ultimately gives the player no real feeling of choice, save for choosing which of three factions to align themselves with.  Which itself feels like a flat attempt to recreate the main storyline of Fallout: New Vegas while carrying over none of its strongly-written characters or interesting quests.

Oh, and just to drive the Mass Effect comparison home, they also have character romances, with the player able to romance NPCs of either gender.  But as in the other game, the consistently wooden dialog, flat acting and lack of any interesting arc or history for any of the characters ends up making these scenes just as forced and cringe-worthy as you'd imagine.  And yes, Fallout 2 mostly played the character romances/sex scenes for humor, but even that at least gave you a slightly more tangible and rewarding reason to pursue them than an arbitrary digital trophy and the approval of a bunch of eleven-year-olds on Xbox Live.

At the end of the day, Fallout 4 is the perfect example of a sequel that was designed by committee and suffers a sharp decline in quality as a result.  Gameplay-wise, it's a hodgepodge of ideas that just seem to be shoehorned in for marketability above all else, with no thought given to making them mesh together in any fun or rewarding way. "Minecraft is the most popular game of all time, put a town-building element in our game, quick!  Call of Duty and Battlefield let you customize weapons and those are big sellers, let's do that too!  Mass Effect had that dialog wheel and bisexual romance scenes that everyone liked, let's add that in!  Diablo and Torchlight and a zillion popular mobile games have legendary monsters and loot that gives you superpowers and scales with difficulty and people like that, add that in too!"  They also seemingly ignored the fact that the reason fans pick up a Fallout title is not to collect randomized loot and complete arbitrary quests just to "power up", but to follow an interesting storyline, uncover the lore of the universe and complete quests according to their own particular gameplay style, feeling like they're playing a part and accomplishing something in the world, for better or worse.  Too shallow to be an immersive RPG or sim and too brain-dead to be a memorable action experience for very long, Fallout 4 is a game with nothing fresh to see and no identity of its own, save perhaps for being the "I told you so" for what Fallout 1/2 fanboys claimed the franchise would become under Bethesda's watch.

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 4/Xbox One/PC
Released: 2015
Recommended version: As far as I know, all three versions are roughly equal in quality and all three even support player mods.  The PC version does still have the widest selection, though.