Fallout Tactics

Other products by Vivendi Universal

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000059O8B
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 16, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,760 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
The Fallout series of role-playing games is known for its epic post-apocalyptic story line and deep combat system, in that order. Fallout Tactics turns the tables by focusing almost exclusively on a series of complex missions that are loosely wrapped in a plot. The focus is on combat, but Fallout Tactics stays true to its RPG roots.

You create your own character with the RPG system from the previous Fallout games. The basics should be familiar to RPG fans: assign numbers to attributes, such as strength, perception, and dexterity, which help determine values for skills such as medic, sneak, repair, and big guns. Fun quirks such as fast shot, finesse, and bloody mess make your character unique. Once your character is complete, you're assigned your first mission. There's no need for a strong, personal plot device to get the game going: you're in the army now.

Instead of the one-man-against-the-wasteland story of Fallout and Fallout 2, Tactics sets you up as a junior squad leader in an expeditionary force of the Brotherhood of Steel. The Brotherhood is a no-nonsense group of soldiers that has managed to thrive in the nuked American landscape by maintaining strict control over its technological superiority. Your group split off from the main group and headed east in huge dirigibles, only to crash-land near Chicago. Trading technology and protection for food and recruits, the Brotherhood soon finds itself taking on the role of feudal overlord. You and your squad tackle increasingly difficult missions for the Brotherhood. Each successful mission lets you improve your character and squadmates by way of accumulated experience, weapons, equipment, and vehicles.

The word "tactics" didn't get into the title of this game by mistake. Characters can sneak into position, lay down covering fire, set up ambushes, lie prone in a sniper hide, and do just about anything else a real soldier can do. You'll need to use these abilities in order to complete the game's tough single-player campaign, or against human squad leaders in the included multiplayer mode. You can set the game to play in the strict turn-based mode familiar to Fallout veterans, or can play in "continuous turn-based," which is essentially the real-time strategy mode seen in games such as Baldur's Gate. The developers should get a medal for allowing gamers to switch between turn-based and real-time anytime.

Between battles, your characters wander the wasteland in search of quests, barter for items, and interact with nonplayer characters whose reactions depend on the squad's reputation. It's enough to keep role-playing aficionados entertained, and action fans won't want to miss it. Note that Fallout Tactics is just as profane and violent as the other games in the series, and isn't for kids. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Crisp graphics with great animation
• A truly beautiful combat system
• A decent story links the missions together and lets players get to know their characters

Cons:

• Very challenging
• Plot is nowhere near as complex as those in Fallout and Fallout 2.

Manufacturer's Description
Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is the ultimate in squad-based, third-person tactical combat. Set in the award-winning Fallout universe, players join in the Brotherhood of Steel as they travel through 20 tactical missions, attempting to overcome a powerful new enemy. Players will work toward developing their squads' specialized skills and improve their stats as they utilize squad-based skirmish techniques to survive battles. In multiplayer mode, 36 characters can be onscreen at one time with up to 18 gamers playing at once.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, November 5, 2003

By	Yossarian (Durham, NC USA) - See all my reviews

Fallout Tactics is a great, great game. I loved Fallout and Fallout 2 (as well as their early predecessor, Wasteland) but I was leery of this game because of reports it lacked the intricate plot of the first few games. While that is technically true, in the sense that your main character is not necessarily the focal point, the game is just as complex and challenging. You simply need to recast your focus as leading a squad rather than being an individual. In the earlier games you could recruit NPCs, in this game, you finally get to run them. Your main character matters only in the sense that if they die, they game ends. Otherwise for all practical purposes you have 6+ main characters; you level them up, pick their various stats and perks, and control them. No longer need you fret that your NPC will randomly start using grenades in a hallway or gun down your other NPCs in an attempt to shoot something beyond them (this can still happen, but it'll be your fault). This makes Tactics a real draw to me, because now you can develop 6 or more (you can swap characters in and out of your squad at bases, so you can really have as many characters as you want) different characters at the same time, rather than one game at a time with the earlier Fallouts.

The missions are mostly fighting, but not entirely.. there are often NPCs to talk to, items to recover, things and people to protect, and other objectives. The Fallout games were 75% talking and bartering, 25% fighting, while these are 75% fighting, 25% talking and bartering. And Tactics is still obviously grounded in the same warped sense of humor as the others; the many random encounters are hilarious, and the comments people make even while fighting can be both grotesque and hilarious at the same time (one raider I shot in the leg to slow down his retreat started stumbling along while mumbling "...bone so white..").

Fallout Tactics is probably most accurately described as Post-Apocalypse XCom, because most of the time you're on missions with your squad. I loved XCom too, but Tactics has better graphics, more interactive environments, a much wider array of skills and equipment, and that scathing sense of humor. It also has many vehicles you can use in missions and travel around the world map in, including armored Hummers and army tanks. Here are just some of the many different tactics you can employ:

1) Make a character crawl on their stomach in Sneak mode past a pair of sentries to put a proximity mine on a bridge to blow up reinforcements when the fight actually starts.
2) Fire away merrily from inside your speeding hummer, running over anyone who gets in the way.
3) Target attacks at victims' eyes or legs or other body areas for increased damage or status effects from broken limbs, dropped weapons, etc.
4) Lob grenades over walls or into doorways while shooting in through windows.
5) Sneak up on sleeping enemies and use pointy knives or spears to avoid alerting the entire camp.
6) Dodge from tree to tree in a city park trading fire with people on the roofs, in nearby buildings, or running around in the streets.
7) Perform combat first aid with field packs and doctor's bags while ducking incoming sniper fire.
8) Use your Repair skills and tool kits to repair your damage tank or robot PC.
9) Play as mutants, robots, ghouls, or even deathclaws in addition to humans.

In short, you can do almost anything..the game rewards curiosity and experimentation. If you liked the Fallout games, you'll like this one. If you haven't, this is a great introduction.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tactics is a worthy addition to the Fallout Universe, April 19, 2001

By	B. Edwards (NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Honestly, I'm pretty surprised by some of the reviews people are leaving here. This game is so absorbing and engrossing that I've had a lot of trouble looking away from my computer.

Please note that this game is not Fallout 3. A lot of people seem to be having trouble realizing that. A common complaint people have been leaving is that this game isn't like the first two Fallout games. Of course it's not. It says on the box that the game is "tactical squad based combat." It's not a RPG game likes its predecessors, and reading the box before buying the game would inform you of that. Secondly, some people complained way back that Fallout 2 was too much like the first Fallout, and complained that you couldn't control other members of your combat party. Fallout Tactics gives you full command of a six person elite killing squad, and is a completely different game that Fallout 2. Isn't that what people wanted?

But I digress back to issue at hand. Fallout Tactics is a marathon of 20 military missions that span the radiated wasteland between Chicago and Denver. You begin as a meager tribal initiate in the Brotherhood of Steel. Your task is simple: sucessfully complete each mission presented to you by your superior officers. As you move from mission to mission, 1)your military rank within the Brotherhood increases, 2)you acquire more potent and powerful arms and ammunition, 3)the number and skill of the recruit pool(used to fill your squad) increases, and 4) you come to face to face with one deadly enemy after another.

You are given a variety of options in combat, all of which cannot be listed because it would take forever. Among the noteworthy: you can set traps and mines to take out enemies; you can kneel or lie on the ground, decreasing your chances of being hit and improving the success of the sneak skill; you can climb towers and rooftops to attack enemies on the ground; you can drive vehicles and run over anyone that gets in your way; having control of all six members of your party allows you to flank enemies, or flush them out into open space, or use snipers to provide outside cover for big guns specialists etc. The list goes on.

The type of missions that the Brotherhood sends you on cover a broad range of military operations: you infiltrate bunkers to assassinate leaders; you must move cargo trucks through enemy filled towns; you must find stranded and wounded fellow Brotherhood members and evacuate them to safety; you must destroy power generators in a major city; you must rescue captured civilians, etc.

Now the issue of gameplay. You can fight in either tradional or continuous turn based combat. Traditional works in the same manner as the other Fallout games, where each character has a alloted number of action points to be used before his/her turn is up. Continuous turn based combat is lunacy - pray your strong enough to not get slaughtered. While I agree that the AI could be a little better, you can easily compensate by turning the difficulty level up. And please note that some enemies - such as animals and Super Mutants - are meant to be unintelligent. That's part of their character. And despite what some other people wrote in reviews, I consistently face enemies that duck behind sandbags or obstacles when fired upon. And I repeatedly encounter enemies that will move to help fellow enemies that are being fired upon.

Fallout Tactics is an incredible squad-based combat game, where the gamer controls the Perks and skills of every member of his party. If you liked the combat aspects of the first two Fallout games, you will have a lot of trouble putting this game down. The missions are long, complicated and can be completed in a variety of ways (you can use stealth, evasive tactics, or just plain load your guns and shoot at anything that moves). This is a terrific game. Highly recommended.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bigger, better, a wee less fun, July 7, 2001

By	themule33 "themule33" (Salem, Oregon) - See all my reviews

Fallout Tactics puts the gamer in the shoes of a shakey young recruit hoping to make his or her mark in the baddest... military outfit imaginable: the Brotherhood of Steel. Players of the first two Fallout games will immediately recognize that paramilitary organization as the same folks who had the cool power armor and hyped-up weaponry which helped them survive the post-apocolyptic wasteland envisioned by Interscope in the first two games. In this game, the player does not have to fret over communication and thieving skills (as in the previous Fallouts) and instead must construct a character that kills well. That is what separates Tactics from the other Fallouts. That has its positive and negative angles.

Fallout (1 and 2) are splendid; infinitely replayable; luscious in texture and mood; mean, horny, wild, and believable. Tactics intends the player to enter that same wasteland (middle America after a nuclear war) and basically kill for the cause of Brotherhood supremacy. Every mission is outlined. Every objective is clear-cut. Everything is less ambiguous; and hence a bit less fun.

The hoot about Fallout 1 and 2 was that you could do whatever the heck you wanted. Fallout Tactics is straight-forward, almost to a fault. However, that said, it is a glorious game visually, and a clear signal that Interscope is aiming the Fallout label towards greater heights. Fallout is amazing. Fallout 2 is even better. Fallout Tactics is the same world, but a different game, and reassures the gaming public that the designers have not yet run short of ideas.

The best advice I can give is to NOT buy the strategy manual. I heard it was impossible to complete the game without reading hints and whatnot. Bogus. With patience and perseverence, you can attain the rank of General (your name) and lead your squad to victory... And help maintain the survival of humanity on the rock once known as Earth. It really is a [great] game.

By the way, the actor that plays "Red Forman" from That 70s Show plays a commander in the game, and you have to hear it!