Fallout Tactics Review - PAGE 1

“The story of how we learned to make the bombs that made the whole world feel better.”

In other words, there was a big nuclear war and earth became a giant wasteland. Before the mushroom clouds started forming, giant vaults were created to house and protect technologies and important people from the inevitable apocalypse. When the radioactive dust settled, the people from the vaults formed the Brotherhood of Steel to bring order back to the lands. The brotherhood saved (conquered) the villages of the survivors including those who were horrendously mutated by the radiation left by the bombs. Technologies were secured and the super mutant armies were forced into retreat. The Brotherhood sent a large air expedition to dispatch the remaining super mutants but was caught in a disastrous storm. The survivors of the expedition formed a new Brotherhood of Steel to continue the doctrine of the brotherhood. You are an initiate of this newly formed arm of the brotherhood. You have enormous tasks to complete and should you fail, you will be left rotting in the wastelands.

Incorporating elements from X-Com, Jagged Alliance, and Baldur’s Gate, Fallout Tactics is a squad based action/strategy game that allows you to control a maximum number of six grunts. There are six races to choose from and these include humans, super mutants, ghouls, deathclaws, dogs, and robots. There are a total of twenty missions occurring on very large maps. Online play can support up to 18 people and there are two modes of game play.

Gameplay

To enforce the ideals of the brotherhood, the game can be played in two modes. There is the continuous turn based mode and this is basically playing the game in real time as the action points continuously regenerate. The other mode is turned based and you have the option of choosing either squad or individual turn based mode. Tactics is played in a third person isometric top down view similar to Crusader: No Remorse or X-Com. The maps are rather large in this game and this allows for different ways of approaching the objectives of the mission. There are lots of areas to explore and places to discover better items. Several random encounters have been planted into the world map. These are usually comical but some may provide you with valuable items. The missions are located in cities that span the world map. There are also several brotherhood outposts scattered throughout the map. You can do your shopping there for your supplies such as that minigun you’ve always wanted. There are merchants, mechanics, and other NPC’s for you to interact with such as stealing their precious items. This is a long game that requires about 50 to 60 hours of effort. Fortunately, there is a save option that allows you to save your game at any point in the game.

There are some RPG aspects to this strategy/action game. When you create your character, you are given an allotment of points to increase your character’s stats. It is unfortunate that you don’t know too much about the game during the creation of the character. If you made your character strength too low, you won’t be able to use that nice avenger cannon you ripped off from the ‘bot you fried. You would not be able to gain extra points to increase your statistics later on in the game. However, drugs can be found that can alter your statistics temporarily but beware, your character can be addicted to them. You are also allowed to add character traits. These traits are quite often a double-edged sword as there are both advantages and disadvantages. For example, the fast metabolism trait allows you to heal faster but your resistance to poison and radiation decreases. As you send your enemies to the tunnel with the white light at the end and successfully complete missions, your experience increases and your character can level up at certain experience intervals. When you level up, you are given additional skill points to allocate and depending on the level you are at, you will also be given the ability to choose a perk for your character. Perks are bonuses that can enhance your character’s skill or performance. There are about a hundred of perks to choose from and these will enhance your character’s skill or performance. For example, the ‘Drunken Master’ perk enhances your hand-to-hand combat skills when you are intoxicated. All you need now is a character model that looks like Jacky Chan and you’ll be set for some serious ass kicking. You can also shape your squaddies into the type of character you want them to be. For example, you can make ‘em into medics, mechanics, snipers, thieves, rangers, mechanics, and etc. As they say a “Jack of all trades is a master of none.”