Fallout Tactics - need scathing review

[Hawkwing74]

Gentlemen,
I'm having a discussion with an individual about the differences between Fallout:Tactics and Fallout/Fallout2. I suppose some of you here have been angered enough to write vitriolic reviews of the piece of shit that is Fallout:Tactics.

If anyone can link me to such a review I would be grateful.

I go to pcgamereview.com and get a bunch of "This game rocks!!" crap. I myself used to have a review there but I think the bastards deleted it. Also, I haven't played the game in at least 2 years so I forgot a few of the reasons why I hated the game.

I do remember bugs, no storyline, no RPG elements, and drudgery...

 

[Psilon]

Don't forget "Browning M2 = t3h ub4r". Strangely Australian cuisine (e.g., meat pie floater, Yellow Nuka-Cola). More bugs (e.g., useless Sniper perk, random encounters calculated per frame). Gas-powered vehicles. Fascist BOS splinter groups. And who could fail to mention the hairy talking Deathclaws?

Playable, but not Fallout, and not great either.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Okay, let's see if I can remember it all:

• Pointless Worldmap: The world map in the game is pointless for a number of reasons. You can't find new locations on your own, you have to be TOLD about them before they appear. Even then, there's no purpose in going back and visiting those old locations because nothing ever changes in them once you leave. You can't even do missed side quests in them once you've completed a mission and left. This isn't even a CRPG thing, as Jagged Alliance 2 had a VERY useful world map.
  
• Useless skills: Other than the gun skills and the doctor skills, the skills were pretty useless. Sneak didn't work well at all, and Lockpick didn't serve any purpose other than finding a few extra treats. If there was a locked door in the game for the mission, you HAD to find that key. Science was only used once that I remember, and it really didn't make the mission that much easier. Melee really only worked well with Sneak, but since Sneak sucked ass - write it off.
  
  Use of skills could have made the game much more tactical instead of just RUN N' GUN.
  
• No care with the setting: Blatant errors, including gas powered vehicles and working oil refineries. The inclusion of a super vault that acts as a hub where there's no evidence of such a huge concept in the first two games. Talking Deathclaws that appear 40 years too early and in the wrong part of the country. No Fallout style T-51b style power armors or combat armor which is odd considering those are the two types of armor the BOS use.
  
• Failed to compare to previous squad tactical games: Where's the destructable terrain like X-Com and JA2 had? Where's the climbing and wall scaling? Why is that chain link fence blocking my guys from where they need to be when I could just climb it or blow it up in previous squad tacticals?
  
  Because of this, many, many of the maps were funnel maps, forcing you on a linear point A to point B style shoot 'em up. You have to go where you're funnelled. JA@ allowed you to enter where you wanted to enter the location and progress how you wanted to progress through that location.
  
• Many bugs: Including 10 perks that don't work correctly even after the final patch. Turn based play totally botches mission timers like the ones in Preoria. Numerous crashes.

That's not all of them, but really, it wasn't that good a game at all.

 

[Hawkwing74]

Thank you, that's exactly what I needed.

 

[EEVIAC]

What was that Russian review you once mentioned, Saint? The one that said Fallout Tactics was akin to child-rape. That might be what Hawkwing is looking for.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

It's been too many years since that, EEVIAC. All I remember about it is that it was in Russian and said FOT was nearly as bad as child rape.

However, there were more issues with FOT that I can remember such as:

• Vehicles were pointless: There wasn't much point in using the vehicles from map to map because the only time you could use one is if the map allowed a vehicle to be used. In those cases, the vehicle was given to the player at the start of the map anyway. So, not only did the vehicles botch the setting itself, but the vehicles were also poorly implimented and just didn't have any "Cool Factor" about them.
  
• Totally stupid missions: Take, for example, Saint Louis, where the point of the mission is to rescue the BOS paladins from the supermutant encampment. You're given an APC to do this, but nothing else. You're running around in metal and leather armor and you save a bunch of BOS Paladins who just happen to have all the best equipment. Think this earns you some power armor? Well, think again. You can't get it from the dead paladins, nor is any given to you once you succeed. So, even though you actually can get the job done with very little armor compared to the paladins, you're still not deserving the power armor. Huh?
  
  There's a lot of things like that. You're often put in the BOS's MOST TRUSTED DUDES category, with no support at all from the BOS, even though you're apparently the first string starters of the bunch.
  
• Lame ass quartermaster stuff: This ties in with the above. The BOS really doesn't give you anything during the game. You have to buy it all from the BOS, even though these are the guys making new power armors and such. Once you run out of a type of bullets, you're hosed for ammo if all you intend to do is buy it. These guys can make power armors, so why am I only limited to 500 rounds of 7.62MM ammo from them? Especially when they make me BUY it from them!
  
  This system gets even more ludicrious when you discover that the BOS won't buy vehicles from you.
  
• Two words: Beast lords: Okay, this is supposedly Fallout, yet you have wacky people who can control animals with their minds. Perhaps that wouldn't be so bad, but they also live in a dungeon under a graveyard. Not something you'd expect to see outside a fantasy setting, is it?

Of course, there's more, but that's for another time.

 

[Nightjed]

yeah i hated the quatermaster thing as well, shotguns shells were rarer than water, also you didnt even have an easy option to carry arround all the loot you had to scavenge to buy from the quartermaster, there was also the fact that there was no reason at all the switch guys during the game, all the high level dudes had randombly selected perks and placed skillpoints making them useless and as you got more and more levels you guys got more and more alike, but the thing i hated the most was that at some point the enemies get very powerful weapons (usually when you meet the supermutants) which utimately limits your options to just burst first or die.

However i did enjoy the initial missions where you guys were actually different because of the low level and you had to chose and use your weapons carefully.

 

[Hawkwing74]

I agree with the above 2 posts, I enjoyed the game the most at the beginning and by the end I was weeping for the pain to end.

I think the worst part was when I realized I couldn't use my tank in later missions.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I dunno, I guess I found it non-horrible. I played it through a second time a month ago or so for kicks, and it was okay as long as you didn't take it too seriously and took frequent breaks. Playing it through again after having complained about it mightily the first time, a few inconsistencies did make a bit of sense. If you just remember that you're one of the tribals they drafted, the crappy treatment you get (profiteering quartermasters, dangerous assignments against invariably better-equipped foes, etc.) does make a bit more sense. The key word is expendable, why risk a paladin when some ambitious initiate is just dying to prove himself. Other than that you did get treated with a fair amount of respect, though, which doesn't quite jive with that explanation. A few nice words from the General is cheaper than bullets maybe?

Some things were a bit off. Like that St. Louis mission, they really should have thought that one through better. They did explain it a bit that General Barnaky trusted you and wanted you on the rescue mission, but that was easy to miss. And when I looked at the bodies at St. Louis, most of the dead BOS guys were wearing metal and leather armor; even with Dagger Squad at the final mission, most of them had metal armor; I think the leader was wearing power armor and that's it. It was mostly squad commanders who got the power armor, probably original BOS guys. There shouldn't have been so many guys at the bases in it, though, it did kind of give you the idea, "Why aren't these assholes killing the beastmen?" And then you find out in one mission that the guys guarding a town you cleaned up earlier had their power armor stolen. They send you, most likely a knight at that point, to clean the place out and then send the paladins out for guard duty? I mean, okay, you're just one of the lowly (expendable) tribal recruits and they probably prefer risking your life instead of the original BOS guys, but come on.

Bug wise, it wasn't that bad with the last patch. The only truly annoying thing other than broken perks was how burst fire was pretty much guaranteed to hit everyone but the guy you're shooting at 0%. Anyone with an M2, just forget it. They'll shred your squad guaranteed if you don't kill them first. I also found it annoying how energy weapons' animations were so slow that it suddenly became impossible to ambush anyone if you could just kill them with one round of concentrated fire like you could with small arms. They'd just shoot back at you while your lasers were flying through the air.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I got up to the city where you get the little 2 seater buggy. Got bored. Found the movie files on the CD, watched all three alternate endings and uninstalled. The missions were just far too long for me to be bothered completing them.

 

[Nightjed]

burst fire was pretty much guaranteed to hit everyone but the guy you're shooting at 0%

there was a bug where if someone had 0% to hit and tried to burst fire he would ALWAYS hit someone "near" the original target, if you send guys alone they usually never get hit since the AI loves shooting with 0% hit ratings, of course getting smutants to 0% is pretty hard since the big weapons have more range and are almost as accurate as the sniper rifle (i never understood this change).

Anyone with an M2, just forget it. They'll shred your squad guaranteed if you don't kill them first

specially because like 60% of the monsters you find in the whole game use M2s

I also found it annoying how energy weapons' animations were so slow that it suddenly became impossible to ambush anyone if you could just kill them with one round of concentrated fire like you could with small arms. They'd just shoot back at you while your lasers were flying through the air.

well, energy weapons werent that useful except for penetrating the robots, but since you guys would get cremated after 1 enemy attack by the last few levels, you "need" to kill first and the only way to kill first is to close range burst with either the energy minigun or a shotgun with AP or EMP shells

 

[Anonymous]

I got up to the city where you get the little 2 seater buggy. Got bored. Found the movie files on the CD, watched all three alternate endings and uninstalled. The missions were just far too long for me to be bothered completing them.

I did the same thing with NWN, why cant people be bothered to make their games atleast playable anymore? Especially when they charge out the ass for them..

 

[Raymondo]

Yeah but it's still no excuse for piracy. I'm just pointing this out since some people seem to think it is. Which pisses me off, why the hell do people think developers owe them something?

 

[Nightjed]

considering how much crap companies make us eat all day with ads and freaking anoying comercials in radio, tv, cars with speakers and more, yeah they do owe us something for the waste of time
(and dont forget to add the debt for all those hyped but not so good games ppl bought thinking they were the best thing ever but only played it for 2 days, and of course the whole "we can patch it later" debt, AND the whole "lets add 60 different types of copy protections that warez groups will crack in 5 minutes but that will surely cause trouble to 40% of our legal customers" debt, AAAAND the whole "who said anything about support ?" atari style debt)
i dont want to defend warez but the companies are not innocent kittens either.

 

[Raymondo]

Hey I'm not saying developers/publishers are innocent, I'm just pointing out that you (pirates, warerz, etc) have no right to take, steal, people's creations because you think you have 'some' right to it. I’m not pointing fingers at who should and shouldn’t get what I’m just saying just because something was made indented for you doesn’t mean you have the right to steal that product because you don’t think you’re getting what you deserve.

No one forced you to download whatever game, you did that all on your own, now take the consequences like a man and stop blaming other people for your actions.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, I didnt download, I bought NWN. $60 for a worthless manual, a map that works better as a napkin and 3 paper sleeved CDs... And then the game is dogshit too, with a bunch of lame design decisions and then the bad 3rd edition rule implementation, which I got it for, marketed as 'the ultimate D&D PC game, lets you play 3rd edition with friends'.

So what i'm saying, why charge so much if all you do is make some bullshit game. Go to Valusoft, nubs.

 

[Shevek]

I think what bothered me most about Fallout Tactics was the massive amounts of potential wasted. The game had a better advancement system than JA2 and looked better to boot. Post Apoc JA2 with SPECIAL advancement would have been great. If they would have abandoned the whole Brotherhood thing, tried to stick a bit closer to the continuity, put in some environment destruction (cutting fences, blowing open doors, etc) and, if they couldnt come up with something else decent, just structured the story as a massive JA2 rip (protect small area of towns/vaults/villages from powerful band of bandits by assembling a squad of wasteland warriors) I would have been a good bit more pleased.

 

[Nightjed]

the SPECIAL advancement seems to be designed for creating "jacks of all trades" for solo games, not specialized "must party" characters, i dont think its the right system for a squad based game.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Yeah, I agree with that. SPECIAL kind of fell flat when it came to party members because there was no reason not to specialize. All I ended up doing for everyone was pump their main gun skill and sneak. Not much point in rounding them out even if the other skills were largely useless.

 

[Shevek]

That's the game failing, not the system. Sure, some skills should have been removed, improved or merged since this was a combat centric game but, with the proper level cap and skill points per level, I think a squad based SPECIAL title has lots of potential. There is nothing wrong with specialization in these kinda games, btw, there should just be many viable specialization paths or templates.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, I agree with that. SPECIAL kind of fell flat when it came to party members because there was no reason not to specialize. All I ended up doing for everyone was pump their main gun skill and sneak. Not much point in rounding them out even if the other skills were largely useless.

That's pretty much any party based game, though. Why have two characters develop Bluff in ToEE, for example.

 

[kenney bounces]

Well you could just focus on a few simple points :

- Fallout 2 was a heavily quest based rpg with lots of humor, fun, character development, and places to explore.

- FoT was a hack and slash version, with considerably ignorable quests, no humor, little fun, uninteresting character development, and almost no places to explore. It's hack and slash, turn based style.

 

[Human Shield]

It's hack and slash, turn based style.

You mean hybrid crap style?

 

[Anonymous]

Why do people always use Fallout 2 as the only example of the RPG Fallouts? I've never understood that, not only is the first one better, it's the start of the series...

 

[kenney bounces]

Hmm...fallout 1 was good. It was also more balanced than 2.

However, what lacked in fallout1 was the humor that was in fallout2. Fallout2 seemed to have much more humor. It made me laugh quite a few times as i went through the game. I guess that's mostly subjective.
Perhaps why most remember it as "the rpg" was because it contained many elements...humor, sex, action, twisted stories. Pretty much everything, and suprisingly did pretty well in every aspect.
The first one was more balanced combat wise, had a good story, and was overall - a really good rpg. Just like many good rpgs out there, they all had a good combat system, a great storyline, and was overall, really great.

To most, the second was more memorable due to the diversity of content. That's perhaps why it's referred to constantly as "the rpg"? I'm making guesses here. If you have a better explanation as to why it's constantly referred to as what it is, i'll be happy to listen. =)