Fallout Fallout series retrospective

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Hardcore Gaming 101 hosts Maciej Miszczyk's reviews of all 10 Fallout games: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/fallout/fallout.htm

Spoiler

Fallout 3 is good for what it is.

 

[typical user]

Fallout 1: Great narrative but very small, limited game but first in the series and using unique mechanics absent in sequels.
Fallout 2: Good narrative, overused Easter-eggs, packed with content and much more detailed locations, improved combat, all in all great successor.
Fallout Tactics: A mix between Jagged Alliance 2 and Fallout 2, with servicable story but lore-inconsistent.
Fallout 3: Oblivion with guns, ugly graphics with overused bloom effect to mask it, bad combat and balance, terrible narrative and under-bashed by gaming community. It is hardly a Fallout as it offers different atmosphere and is nothing more than a theme-park which can't decide whether it wants to be an FPS or RPG.
New Vegas: Good narrative but not as good as Fallout 2, still plagued with bad graphical design, horrific animations and frustrating combat but these things can be somehow fixed with mods. Great RPG, not bad Fallout, mediocre game, dragged down with Gamebryo Engine.
Fallout 4: I have installed over 100 mods which balance things out, improve and optimize graphics to get consistent 50 fps in dense areas, added more interesting weapons and generally fixed everything I could but the story makes no sense and provides no motivation to keep on playing and still this game is plagued with un-balanced braindead decisions or stuff beyond fixing like settlements or boring areas to explore. Bethesda has settled on making FPS, taking RP aspect out of RPG. Pick Far Cry if you want open world FPS. Fallout 4 doesn't deserve it's name and that is the only thing which keeps it tied to the series.

TL;DR: I want Requiem for Fallout 4 and I want it now.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Bethesda's latest post-apoc game isn't as moddable as Skyrim etc., is it?

 

[Tito Anic]

Hardcore Gaming 101

Fallout 4: I have installed over 100 mods which balance things out, improve and optimize graphics to get consistent 50 fps in dense areas, added more interesting weapons and generally fixed everything I could but the story makes no sense and provides no motivation to keep on playing and still this game is plagued with un-balanced braindead decisions or stuff beyond fixing like settlements or boring areas to explore. Bethesda has settled on making FPS, taking RP aspect out of RPG. Pick Far Cry if you want open world FPS. Fallout 4 doesn't deserve it's name and that is the only thing which keeps it tied to the series.

You liked F1, F2, FNV and after seeing F3 you played F4?

 

[typical user]

Well Skyrim was improvement over Fallout 3, didn't expect that Bethesda has run out of ideas and would publish crap like this plus it had great campaign which got me hyped. Still have to beat it 6 times though.

 

[Dux]

I've always wondered how Obsidian really felt about their luck of making a Fallout game worthy of its name, yet being stuck with the fucking blight that is Gamebryo. New Vegas is good and all but just think what it could have been with another engine - that isn't Unity. Even if the game is atmospheric and immersive, there's no getting around the fact that everyone you come across are stiff mannequins with rubber faces who periodically says "Hey" to someone in the vicinity.

Whatever, man. We have Fallout 4. It has deathclaws, power armor and vaults, so it's clearly Fallout and all the Fallout we need.

 

[BobtheTree]

Because what the world really needs right now is yet another Fallout retrospective.

 

[Tito Anic]

Because what the world really needs right now is yet another Fallout retrospective.

it is not that bad

Among Fallout fans, there are two conflicting ideas about what Fallout actually is. To many players, Fallout is about exploring the post-apocalyptic wasteland, shooting raiders and participating in conflicts which will shape the future of the world (or rather what remains of it). Others will say it's not enough - for them, Fallout is a game about difficult choices, complex mechanics and extreme non-linearity.

Unfortunately, the early XXI century and the decline in popularity of traditional cRPGs that came with it weren't kind towards the series and after the third game was cancelled and a few unsuccessful spin-offs were released, Interplay had to sell their intellectual property. A few years later, the franchise was, depending on how you look at it, either rescued or destroyed by Bethesda with their take on the series which brought in millions of new fans but also strayed far from the rules which governed the design of the first two titles.

 

[Wayward Son]

Agreed with most of what he said, excepting praising the resource management in F3 and its story.
Also did not read the Fallout Shelter part.

 

[AetherVagrant]

I've always wondered how Obsidian really felt about their luck of making a Fallout game worthy of its name, yet being stuck with the fucking blight that is Gamebryo. New Vegas is good and all but just think what it could have been with another engine - that isn't Unity. Even if the game is atmospheric and immersive, there's no getting around the fact that everyone you come across are stiff mannequins with rubber faces who periodically says "Hey" to someone in the vicinity.

Whatever, man. We have Fallout 4. It has deathclaws, power armor and vaults, so it's clearly Fallout and all the Fallout we need.

Shit new vegas in Unity could've been just fine

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I was kind of excited for Fallout 4 with the prospect of modding it to hell to make it playable, but... procedurally generated, perpetually re-spawing areas designed to provide 1000+ hours for the player? This does not sound good, my brothers. Not. At. All.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Hardcore 101 are bros, will read this, although there's probably bound to be some minor heresies from a codexer's perspective.

 

[Jacob]

from their forum

I'm playing Fallout 4 at the moment and having a lot of fun and I say that as someone who not only loves the original 2 but replayed them at the start of the year, so they're fresh in my memory. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I find it honestly pretty odd that you cut Fallout 3 some slack but are hard on 4 even though 4 is pretty much better than 3 in every way, the color palette is more colorful (3 was part of that 7th gen trend of monochrome color palettes) the gunplay is more fun and the writing and storyline, while not up to par with New Vegas, is still a lot better than 3.

And I'm also pretty sick of this trend of bashing modern games for the sake of bashing modern games, I mean the original Fallout is almost 20 years old, Fallout 4 came out last year, of course they're radically different styles of game, what do you expect? that doesn't make 4 bad.

For one thing the art design in Fallout 4 is top notch, almost everything has been redesigned to look like it has more real functionality while still retaining the retro futuristic style, this is most obvious in the Vaults, which is super cool, on top of that I love finding the various stat boosting magazines just to see the art on the covers, Bethesda hired some real talent in the art department for this game.

This kind of comes down to the main difference between current and classic gaming, the original Fallouts like a lot of classic games rely a lot on your imagination, on stuff like music and other subtle details (like the excellent interface design you mention) to create the tone and paint the picture in your mind of the game's world in ways the graphics alone could not, there's nothing wrong with that but there's also something to be said for being thrust into an immersive fully 3D world with the impressive quality of current gen graphics (it's pretty amazing to play one of these Bethesda open world games with graphics of this caliber)

This is not to say 4 bereft of criticisms, but it really irritates me how so many people look at the glass half empty when it comes to modern games, I don't see how someone could not have at least some fun with Fallout 4.

 

[Jrpgfan]

"the original Fallouts like a lot of classic games rely a lot on your imagination"

It's quite the opposite for me. You need a lot of imagination to do any sort of roleplaying on Fallout 4.

Graphics on first fallouts are perfectly fine and the game presents a much more believable and coherent world than those bethesda abominations due to much better writing and world building.

 

[Beastro]

"the original Fallouts like a lot of classic games rely a lot on your imagination"

Yes, Beths Fallouts where tiny "towns" of half a dozen people surrounding a small plot of corn with a couple brahmin leaves nothing to the imagination.

 

[Trias_Betrayed]

I agree that FO4 sucks, I also agree that it sucks less than FO3 but that doesn't mean much of anything

 

[The Decline]

Hardcore 101 are bros, will read this, although there's probably bound to be some minor heresies from a codexer's perspective.

They're infested with closet SJWs.

 

[laclongquan]

The tragedy of Fallout Tactics is that it was, and still is, being judged as the sequel to Fallout 2 and 1. So it get the shaft.

Judging it as the next game after Jagged Alliance 2 and oh my god it's a great game. Fucking hell! We only have FT after playing JA2 to death for years. It's only until Silent Storm that we have the next proper squadbased, turnbased, tactical, troopmanagement, environment destruction, RPG. After S2, S3, and H&S, it's zip~

 

[Xathrodox86]

Well Skyrim was improvement over Fallout 3, didn't expect that Bethesda has run out of ideas and would publish crap like this plus it had great campaign which got me hyped. Still have to beat it 6 times though.

I'm not a huge fan of Skyrim, but this game is much, much better than Fallout 3, which literally put me to sleep. After the initial shock of seeing the open, post apocalyptic world for the first time, you realise how shitty the actual story is. And story is kinda, sorta important in an RPG.

I still can't believe that Bethesda managed to fuck up Fallout 4 even more.

 

[Tito Anic]

The tragedy of Fallout Tactics is that it was, and still is, being judged as the sequel to Fallout 2 and 1. So it get the shaft.

Judging it as the next game after Jagged Alliance 2 and oh my god it's a great game. Fucking hell! We only have FT after playing JA2 to death for years. It's only until Silent Storm that we have the next proper squadbased, turnbased, tactical, troopmanagement, environment destruction, RPG. After S2, S3, and H&S, it's zip~

 

[pippin]

Tactics is entertaining.

 

[janjetina]

There are no "10 Fallout games". There is Fallout, Fallout 2 and maybe (YMMV) Tictacs and New Vegas.

 

[Jaesun]

There is only Fallout and Fallout 2. Unless someone ports New Vegas to the Fallout 2 engine...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

There are no "10 Fallout games". There is Fallout, Fallout 2 and maybe (YMMV) Tictacs and New Vegas.

Fallout Tictacs was a glorious game.

 

[Mustawd]

Unless someone ports New Vegas to the Fallout 2 engine...

Spoiler