Fallout Tactics - PC
Okay, so it's an old game but I've been playing it again recently so I thought I'd share my experience. For those who may not know, FT is the third game in the Fallout series. The first two games were RPGs with turn based combat in much the same way as Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment. Set in post nuclear USA, they have the feel of what they thought the future would be like in the 50s. In FT the theme is similar, but the emphasis is more on combat.
There are still plenty of RPG elements, but the big differences are that you can directly control everyone in your party (I don't think you could do that in 1 & 2), and the Continuous Turn Based mode. CTB mode is a way of playing the game in real-time whereby rather than spending an amount of action points each turn, a characters action points recharge at a certain rate and thus influence howw often they can act. It works fairly well, and you can switch between the modes at will, but I still prefer normal turn based as it allows a greater level of control.
You start the game as a recruit in the Brotherhood of Steel - a quasi religous military group trying to bring order to the wastes. You have been drafted in from one of the tribes, and for the first mission you and two other recruits have to take on a bandit camp with just a few crap weapons. As the game progresses you can pick up recruits to boost your team up to 6, who are interchangeable at your base. Further still and recruits of other races you encounter become available.
As you and your squad continue through the game you get experience and pick up better kit. This has the same effect as in Diablo - you're always wanting that better armour or weapon. Indeed, the game itself with its detailed world, beautiful 2d graphics and well rendered cutscenes is of Blizzard quality. It's highly satisfying to encounter a bandit raid in the desert - which once would have been extremely dangerous - and tear them apart with miniguns, high powered sniper rifles and lasers. And tear them apart you do - the death animations are particularly detailed and the more damage you do when you kill someone the gorier the animation is.
Fallout Tactics is a tough game. You'll be saving often, and you'll need several saves so you can backtrack if need be. This can be detrimental to the game sometimes - I've only ever completed Fallout, Fallout 2 and FT got the better of me. You seem to eventually get to a point where it doesn't matter how good your kit is, the enemy's kit is far better. Still, you can generally push on past a tricky encounter with perseverence and plenty of reloads.
All in all, as tactical games go this is very good. Not much different from its predecessors, but that's no real bad thing. If you enjoyed UFO or X-Com then you should enjoy this.
Fallout Tactics - PC
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