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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.

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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.

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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!

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I am certainly doing my part to waste time this spring. The Monday before I picked up my computer I snagged a copy of Fallout Tactics from Fred Meyers. An inordinate amount of my time has been sacrificed to complete this viscerally addictive game, to the point my college grades suffer.

Based on the (insert superlative here) Fallout series of RPG's, Fallout Tactics trods a new direction into the world of "squad-based" combat (since a squad is actually a ten to fifteen man unit-as opposed to six-it would be more appropriate to call it team-based combat). You are a Brotherhood recruit, the first line of defense against the degenerates of Mid-Western wastelands. You serve a faction of the Brotherhood sent on a reconnaissance mission over the Rockies... only to end up stuck in Chicago. No more. Much has been learned, and it is time to return to California.

Fallout Tactics arrives on three discs, and since I have the space and RAM to run everything off my hard drive I do not know when or if a transition between discs is needed to play. I suspect three discs are required to contain the quite impressive quality and quantity of sound which shake my sub woofer. Explosions reverberate. Rifles crack. Mysterious objects in the distance squeak and howl. Many areas feature creepy night-time desert wind sounds. And when one crawls through a subterranean bunker and hears the anguished cry of some inhuman thing in the darkness, one tends to feel unnerved. As a cherry on top, Fallout Tactics leans heavily on voice acting. The infamous actor of Full Metal Jacket's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman lends his Marine drawl to General Barnaky, your character's CO. Many other familiar voices will pop up.

Such characterizations seem to substitute the dialogue screens of the original RPG. Instead of picking witty conversation options, your character simply listens to an NPC-while subtitles present themselves in a tiny dialogue screen next to a green thumbnail still of the speaker. Such is why I must stress Fallout Tactics is not a role-playing game so much as it is a post-apocalyptic Syndicate. Elements of Interplay's Fallout scheme appear, but it is action and blood at heart, like any first-person shooter. And like British cyperpunk or cyborg-demon shoot `em ups, Tactics obeys a very linear story which moves, moves, MOVES PEOPLE! No side adventures to the Sierra Army Depot or Broken Hills. Every experience is an official Brotherhood mission related to the tale. Virtually all missions involve killing multiple someones... such is life in the Brotherhood.

Such life means house-to house fighting, bunker raids, sabotage missions, and mazes worthy of the most convoluted Doom or Quake level, only not in first-person. And if this sounds tedious after a while, fear not; for as Tactics declares, life in the Brotherhood has changed. Each level is increasingly difficult and destructive, as your enemies grow in numbers, firepower, and armor far greater than is available to your squad. Ammunition for the best weapons is scarce and by the time you collect a decent amount, the enemy has better armor and you have found a new weapon. Tactics never fails to keep the player on toes and practically falling out of chair.

Sometimes such challenges border on frustrations. Unlike the RPG's, one has the option of real-time play, where only the use of equipment is governed by action points which continuously regenerate. This is effectively real-time. It also effectively keeps you from laying back on the trigger of your Vindicator mini-gun ala Syndicate. While the enemy can't do the same to you, I always found victory through a superior rate of fire and a large magazine to be a particularly effective means against cyborgs. Ah, but this is tactics, not hitman, and Tactics allows your character to sneak, crouch and belly-crawl. Those of you used to the stand up fights of Fallout will die very quickly. As mentioned, even mere human enemies can frequently wipe your squad out with greater skill and power than you can hope to wield. I have spent as much as an hour attempting to advance six feet. Fallout Iwo Jima would be an accurate nickname for this game.

To help the uninitiated-or shall I say InitiatesI offer some handy tips.

1. Achieving rank in the Brotherhood is important. Rank allows you access to better gear and team members.

2.All ammuntion aside from 9x19mm is scarce. You will find very few shotgun shells or rifle rounds. Use submachine guns as much as possible in the first two or three missions. Especially save shotgun ammo for super-mutant and robot missions. Once you finish the first super mutant mission, 7.62mm will become abundant, and you will find fair amounts of .50 caliber and 5.56mm rounds.

3.Avoid close combat. Your team is stuck with weak leather armor until you first encounter robots. Most of your enemies will have higher hit points and armor class. I have had human enemies KICK my character to death even as I fired chaingun bursts into them at point blank range. Many of your enemies are so tough, they will actually run out of ammo and charge you before you can kill them. Super mutants and robots also have super tough critters charge you while their buddies fire. Automatic shotguns, especially the Pancor Jackhammer, will decimate close foes. BEWARE OF SCURRYBOTS!

4.Mass sniper rifle fire should be your choice of attack whenever possible. Always have an automatic shotgun or a Browning M2 in your other hand in case the enemy charges. If an enemy is entrenched but cannot detect you, lay mines and toss grenades to save ammo (and your life). Finally, if forced into close combat, use Browning M2s and automatic shotguns, or at least FN FALs and Steyr AUGs.

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I must say that Fallout 1 and 2 are my favorite RPGs ever. Due to their non-linearity, a storyline that is epic but not only that, it was done in a hugely customizable way. They give you a world, you create most of the story.

This is one thing I resent about Tactics: you are pushed in one direction and one direction only. Of course there are moments when you can choose from two missions, for which one to accomplish first, but in the end they all must get done. The last area is the only time you have a chance to make an affect on the ending, but the endings can be interesting especially if you're a fan of the series. If they don't make a new Fallout RPG in the future, I'll be extremely disappointed.

Those points aside it is a far-above average tactical, squad-based game at the time it came out and still good today. Your characters can be greatly customized. It can be nice to keep all them alive because newly recruited squad mates may not be as completely tailored to squad needs, but overall there's no need to fret as you can hire more. Just don't let the main character die or game over.

You create a main character with who is better in some base attributes than others, such as perception, strength, intelligence, etc. Your other squad members have these set by the computer. These factors determine how much weight you can carry, what size weapons you can use, how far you can shoot with accuracy, how well you can speak, how quickly you can level up skills etc etc. Through the game as you gain levels you can upgrade all your troops with their various weapon skills, explosives/trap skills, lockpicking, sneaking, and just about anything else you could hope for in an elite military force. Perks are also gained every few levels, which can definitely be fun to sift through and once you pick one, can really help you out.

Pretty much it is in the player's hands to determine what each character can do, how well he can do it, and overall create a kick ass tactical squadron. It is best to have a well-rounded squadron, with at least one guy that is pretty good at electronics, one at explosives, one at lockpicking, and like any good combat game you don't want all six snipers or all six heavy-gunners. It's great fun to mix it up, use various combinations of weapons to make yourself a liquid force.

Overall it made some very good spins in my CD-ROM.