Fallout Tactics- What's wrong with it-

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welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
I know, there are a lot of you thinking, "Hey, WTF Welsh, we've had this discussion before."

Yes, we have. However, I have recently heard this issue come up again

"I played Fallout, Fallout 2 AND Fallout Tactics (I even started work on a mod for it) and all I've gotten out of these FOT is bad arguments is "we don't like hairy deathclaws"

So what is it about Fallout Tactics that bites the big monkey penis like a $5 whore.
 
Fallout Tactics would be a great game if it didn't have "Fallout" in the title. FT is well...too much of a tactic game. They took everything fallout out of it. I remember, when i first played it, I was quite astonished - that's not Fallout. Missions lack the spirit of previous Fallout games. There's something else : everyone was waiting for FALLOUT 3 - RPG, not some strategy-rpg game.

:silly: Bah...
 
The thing is though, SPIT, is Fallout Tactics was never trying to be an RPG. Its a squad-based tactical game. I quite enjoyed it, though it didn't have nearly the amount of replay value or options the original Fallout 1 and 2 had.

The game would have been exponentially better if they didn't remove the speech skill. Half the fun of Fallout was the great conversations you had with Talking Heads.

Alot of people also had gripes with the setting, with "real guns akimbo!" or whatever, but I personally enjoyed running around with an AK-47 and an M16A1. Notice how the M16A1 wasn't an M16A2 or an M4... it actually fit in pretty well with the Fallout setting but people bashed it anyways.

And the atmosphere wasn't all retro-50's and alot of people say that means its not Fallout, but for some reason, it still felt Fallout-y to me, even if it had working vehicles and hairy death claws. I think fanboys just like to complain, is all.
 
Cheesy design. Not good cheesy - bad cheesy. Boring gameplay. Annoying music. Slow, crappy engine. Sloppy programming (trust me on this). Waste of disk space (not really a big deal, but very aggravating).

It amuses me how some state that FOT is still "fallout-y". How can it be "fallout-y" when it's obviously not?
 
Well, though I consider myself a heavy-duty Fallout fan, I'm not as anal retentive as some out there in the aspect that for me first and foremost Fallout is set in a Post Apocolyptic setting, not a specifically post apocolyptic 50s-scape. I like the game, but I don't like it to the point where I analyze every holodisk and memorize them so I can recite history and correct people when they get something mixed up in the game.

Even if it doesn't have all the references to the '50s, FOT still feels like the Fallout universe to me, but I guess thats just my opinion. It had alot of the elements of Fallout, we had one, a bombed out wasteland, two the Brotherhood of Steel, three the whole SPECIAL system (except speech, which was a big dissapointment I admit), four it had Pipboy, five it just had the dark atmosphere I was used to albiet with a face lift in graphics (kind of).

I think though, like someone said above, that the main reason people were dissapointed with it was that its not Fallout 3. Like countless other Fallout fans, I'm perplexed that they didn't just make Fallout 3 when the market was hot for it instead of making a tactical game.

But I bet everyone will agree with me here: Fallout Tactics is not nearly as atrocious of a mutilation of the Fallout name as the upcoming Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel game...

...Of course I'm going to get BOS though, because I was going to get BG, then I heard of Hunter, which was more of a setting I liked, then before Hunter came out plans for BOS were released, so I've been waiting for a while to get my arcade-shooter-game Fallout.
 
flatlinedeath666 said:
FOT still feels like the Fallout universe to me, but I guess thats just my opinion. It had alot of the elements of Fallout, we had one, a bombed out wasteland, two the Brotherhood of Steel, three the whole SPECIAL system (except speech, which was a big dissapointment I admit), four it had Pipboy, five it just had the dark atmosphere I was used to albiet with a face lift in graphics (kind of).
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised what kind of crap anyone can make while remaining faithful to the features above.

I think though, like someone said above, that the main reason people were dissapointed with it was that its not Fallout 3. Like countless other Fallout fans, I'm perplexed that they didn't just make Fallout 3 when the market was hot for it instead of making a tactical game.
Click to expand...

This viewpoint is a convenient excuse not to admit FOT's obvious flaws as a stand-alone game.
 
I disagree (and most of you probably know that already). I tend to think that the setting of Fallout Tactics is largely the same setting as in Fallout and Fallout 2 except for some anomalies and anachronisms like the hairy deathclaws and the modern weaponry. They don't bother me much since I don't feel like these 'details' harm the overall atmosphere of the game in a serious way: the atmosphere is true to Fallout, denying that is total crap: there's ghouls, supermutants, raiders, Power Armour, the desolate wasteland, brahmin, Stimpaks, the SPECIAL system, Nuka-Cola and so on. All the elements of the Fallout world are present (well, if you have all the sprites of course :lol: ). Anyway, the problem for most fans seems to be the storyline. The Brotherhood Saga. Vault 0. The humanoid robots. I can understand that. And I can't say anything pro Fallout Tactics when it comes to that. Fallout Tactics just isn't true to the original storyline and therefore some elements in the setting aren't either. Hm. The only thing I can say about that is that these things don't really bother me as much as they do some. Fallout 2 made mistakes too.

The rest, I'll sum up: the o so slow engine, the o so many bugs (although the 1.27 version seems pretty okay to me), the kind of tiresome robot missions in the endgame, the lack of Speech.

However, you must also never forget that Fallout Tactics was never intended to be a RPG, it was never meant to be Fallout 3. It was a squad-based tactical game from the very beginning. It's all about combat, not about talking your way through the wasteland.

Fallout Tactics did of course improve on some levels: the stances were great, the sentry mode too, weapon, armour and ammo development was very well balanced (unless you used cheats), some skills became more interesting than ever in the Fallout world (Sneak, Throwing).

Ah well. I enjoyed it so far.
 
Wepons are imbalanced as hell, especially when most will unerringly gravitate towards a few.

The bugs were another point, with about 4 perks that don't work but are coded into the game enough to be picked. In fact, many still can't get the game to work at all.

Multiplayer was ass unless you used custom rules, mainly because the games on GameSpy went into drug-filled imbalances. Anything over a couple of K turned into a real cheesefest.

The setting was extremely butchered, especially when they put things into FOT that raised doubts if they even knew what the Great War was. Talking DeathClaws, BeastLords, etc.

Then there's the fact that better squad-based tactical games have been around for longer, ones with a lot more replay.
 
I hated the enemies. Beastlords? are you kidding me? What the fuck is a Reaver? Robots were pretty bad for an ultimate enemy... but nothing compares to the final Boss.... a defenseless brain in a jar. Wow.
 
Roshambo said:
Wepons are imbalanced as hell, especially when most will unerringly gravitate towards a few.
Click to expand...

Thats too true of Fallout Tactics. There were too many weapons that weren't different enough from each other and several that were noticeably better then the others. And ammo for all the weapons was pretty plentiful so players weren't really penalized or handicapped for using the uber-weapons.

And the beast lords were extemely lame.

Boom bugs?

That aside though I had fun playing the game, and some levels had a really cool feel to them.

My biggest gripe with the game was how fucking hard it was in real time in the beginning. You can't hit shit because you've got low skills and the computer can outmanuever you and stuff because well, its a computer and can see EVERYTHING while you've got to keep your group together if you want to see anything, but I liked to play it in turn-based, though it had absolutely no replay value.

There were some cool custom missions out there, though, like that one recreation of Quartz from Wasteland.
 
Boom bugs weren’t that bad but the beast lords were rather far fetched. Despite this there were some nice beasties introduced in FOT. Wasps, cock roaches and geckos (big lizards) were nice additions. Maybe off topic but I think Fallout 2 lacked creativity in this area.

I agree that the deathclaws were wrong. Maybe not so much for their hairiness but more for their speech capability. Fallout 2 had speaking deathclaws but these were the result of experimentation at the Navarro base. Speaking deathclaws should have stopped there. Personally, I missed the mean primal deathclaws from FO1. I mean they were rare, scary and damn difficult to take out unless you were really advanced in the game.


Reavers… Weren’t they basically just a band of raiders in Tactics? I thought they were a nice addition. The only real problem I had here was that they all seemed to be wielding energy weapons. Shouldn't they be hard to come by?

The weapon system was as people have mentioned unbalanced, too much way to easy. This is a post apoc world and such equipment especially when it comes to energy weapons and the likes should be extremely rare. But I rather liked the fact that an M16 was there, the AK as well. Maybe it would have been better if you couldn’t get as many as you were able too.

Not meant to be an RPG, Tactics wasn't that bad a tactical squad based game. Ok, so I have played better games in that genre but it was still ok.
 
welsh said:
I know, there are a lot of you thinking, "Hey, WTF Welsh, we've had this discussion before."

Yes, we have. However, I have recently heard this issue come up again

"I played Fallout, Fallout 2 AND Fallout Tactics (I even started work on a mod for it) and all I've gotten out of these FOT is bad arguments is "we don't like hairy deathclaws"

So what is it about Fallout Tactics that bites the big monkey penis like a $5 whore.
Click to expand...

Well since you're using MY quote there. :P I guess I should reply to.


Fallout Tactics was a good and fun game, that I rather enjoyed... when taken at face value.

What was wrong with it?
*decides to nitpick FOT to prove I'm not biased*

Linearity.
The console-ish "unlock-a-race" feature. (what is this pokemon?)
Despite the fact there were almost 100 weapons, there were only about 10 useful ones.
A few canon breaks that I write up to revisionist history (and therefore not pertenent to the canon aspect)
A few anomalies (hairy deathclaws) that can be marked up to regional differences.
Anti climatic ending.
Final stages weren't very dynamic, and in some cases were too easy and boring.
Weak storyline.
Too much focus on too many things, raiders... beastlords... mutants... reavers... and robots oh my.
Tended to be built around assault games, as opposed to more tactical play.
Explosives were a joke.
Vehicles were too limited in use.
Too many weak or useless perks added.
AI was weak and easy to take down.

All I can think of off the top of my head...

As I said before, a person should look at a game for what it is, not what they want from it. 8) It leads to less disappointment.

And for the record, the only arguments I've ever seen firsthand were about hairy deathclaws and other breaks of "canon", which is what gave me my opinion. :wink:
 
Darque said:
Well since you're using MY quote there. :P I guess I should reply to.
.....

Fallout Tactics was a good and fun game, that I rather enjoyed... when taken at face value.

All I can think of off the top of my head...

As I said before, a person should look at a game for what it is, not what they want from it. 8) It leads to less disappointment.

And for the record, the only arguments I've ever seen firsthand were about hairy deathclaws and other breaks of "canon", which is what gave me my opinion. :wink:
Click to expand...

Thanks Darque, and yes it was your thought on Interplay that gave this thread it's birth. I posted, there, on earlier discussions on this topic. But I thought it would be good to go back and look at it again. Perhaps update the list with a link to this thread.

However, I am curious to see what the Mods have done to the game to make it better. Thanks for your thoughts and, if they have not yet been extended, welcome to NMA.
 
Thanks for the welcome :)

I wish the circumstances leading to my arrival had been more cheerful though :(

*beats a few interplay execs with a stick* <<-- Hey I can dream right? :wink:
 
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