post-nuclear *epic*, not adventure

Just as Final Fantasy influenced the way I selected games back in my console-playing days, Interplay's "Fallout" has to a great extent determined how I look at computer games. I believe it to be, essentially, one of the best computer role-playing games ever, second only to "Planescape: Torment," the unequivical best.

Fallout achieves this through its storyline, which is open-ended enough for freelancing and discovery but closed enough to make certain gamers aren't swamped by infinate options. Initially, your character is a member of a vault, a sort of massive nuclear bomb-shelter constructed to ward against the sort of nuclear war my parents worried about in the fifties and sixties. In the game, this war occured, and you're emerging an indeterminate amount of time later [I'm guessing between fifty and a hundred years, from info in the game] Your vault's water chip has malfunctioned, and you've been selected to go up to the blasted surface to find a new chip before the supply fails--something that will happen in 150 days [then it's game over!]. You emerge into a world of thieves, murderers, and desperate townsfolk struggling to eke a living from the desolate 'scape; you need a mixture of brains, brawn, and smooth-talkin' skills to make your way through to the end.

The interesting thing about this game's rpg interface is that while your character has certain base attributes [some of which can be improved, or perhaps all, I don't quite recall], the game revolves more around the *skills* you acquire and hone. You have a set of 15 or thereabouts skills, your proficiency at which is reflected by a percentage. Skills include "medical," "hand to hand," "energy weapons," and "repair"--based on a combination of your base attributes, your intelligence attribute, and whether or not you've selected the skill for specialization. You get experience points, as in most rpgs, for killing monsters and solving quests [about even in this game, which is refreshing], and at each level up you receive a number of skill points based on your intelligence attribute and a base number; each point is worth two percentage points in a specialized skill, one point in a non-specialized, and differeing ratios as you go over 100%. Thus, *intelligence* is the most important attribute in the game, not strength or endurance [which allow you to carry more & do more damage and have more hps & resist damage better, respectively]. Intelligence gives you more dialogue options, too; charisma is one of the game's better attributes beacuse it improves their reaction & grants more dialogue options. Thus, the game is weighted toward role-playing, and not hack-and-slash.

The graphics are decent, the sound likewise. Good enough to compliment the game, nothing too flashy. My one *complaint* with graphics was related to movement--in 'hand to hand' combat your character kicked or punched arbitrarily; you couldn't decide which it was, and it didn't seem to make a difference either way. It should've. As you can make 'called shots' in combat, which operated on a turn-based system, it seems a bit odd that one would "punch" an enemy in the leg... the repetition is otherwise to be expected in a game seeking to render a world populated by more than 12 people. I enjoyed the 'maximum blood' option critical-hit graphics--you can pump someone full of lead, or literally blow them away, or snipe them apart depending upon the weapon. Bloody!

The sound effects are all right, though a tad repetitive; guns don't always make the same sound when they fire, right? Maybe they do. And the weird 'electric guitar riff' that's made entering and leaving combat mode has got to be the most irritating function of any great game ever made--why? Why was it necessary? You knew we'd be going in and out of combat frequently, so why do it? God.

Mostly, though, I liked the way the game flowed. The npcs that join your party are way too weak & stupid [the ai breaks down big time here], but no more weak or stupid than that of the enemy. You just need to manage them correctly, keep them out of particularly tough battles, so they stay alive and don't start killing each other. They will, if you have them in your party at the end, probably die at the hands of the big bad guy. In a way it was very archetypal--there's this society underground, you're not altogether willingly forced to go search for its salvation by an old father-like figure, over the course of the search you meet people and form your own group, becoming a hero to everyone, such that when your mission is complete and you finally return to the Vault expecting peace and respite you discover that they either fear or idolize you; now the Vault Dweller and no longer a simple citizen you're turned out by the people you fought so hard to save, proving yet again that you can never return home.