Fallout

I just finished watching the pretty good T.V. adaptation of the game and was inspired to start up a new game of the original. Fallout was the first thing I ever bought on eBay back in ’98. The box smelled like cigar smoke, but the game didn’t stink at all.

In retrospect, it’s not quite as good as I remembered. There are just a few to many fiddly “puzzles” where you are supposed to try using random objects on the environment to get past obstacles. There are no clues. You just have to know to “use radio on computer” or whatever.

Otherwise, everything else is great. I love the turn-based combat, the skills, and character interactions. The game is relatively short, especially when compared with the 3-D open-world sequels. We need more digestible length games these days.

I played a modded version of the game using a patch called Fallout Fixt. Most of the enhancements were not noticeable to me, but there were a couple things that I later realized weren’t in the original game. Most importantly you can tell your followers to move out of the way if they are blocking a doorway. This doesn’t work on recruited help from the Brotherhood and can end up making the game unwinnable. This is because the mod allows the Brotherhood knights to join you inside the mutant military base, which wasn’t designed for companions to fit alongside you.

I ended up playing all the way through the game and got all the good endings except for killing the Khans off. I’m tempted to fire up Fallout 2 now, but I should probably hold off. Skald comes out in a month.