Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

Up until now the Fallout series (based in post WWIII Earth, with obvious and severe radioactive influence) has been driven by a turn based, RPG style of game mechanic, one which was both exceptionally open ended and very compelling. BoS, however, takes a more straightforward approach, offering only a linear story and real time action. The game starts you as an apprentice for the Brotherhood of Steel and immediately sets you off in a quest to find one of their parties. You'll go through the usual Ц a semi-abandoned town, a vault, a ghoul city and the like, but all of these are rendered out in a somewhat impressive 3D fashion. While not astounding to the eye, the game certainly looks a lot better than its predecessors, and all of the levels feel like they're part of the Fallout world. The characters, too, feel like a part of the world (especially since one of the initial 3 playable characters is a ghoul) and the deeper into the game you get, the more familiar it becomes -- despite the varied presentation.

The RPG elements are still partially intact, allowing you to level up at a decent rate and pick from a reasonably lengthy list of character traits and attributes as you do. These are your typical Fallout abilities, including the ability to heal by occupying pools of radioactive waste in the case of the ghoul character, and your typical weapons, health, armour and dodge stats for everyone else. There are - of course - also a wide variety of weapons at your disposal, from bats with nails in them to homemade rifles and shotguns, to energy and plasma weaponry. You'll be able to carry as many weapons and armour pieces as you want, but you can only have 3 weapons in queue at any one time, meaning that if you don't like your current weapon choices (which you can rotate through with the hit of a button) you'll have to pause to select different ones. Having said that, considering how many weapons you'll end up carrying around, this is a great time saving feature since scrolling through more than three weapons in the middle of a firefight likely won't be beneficial for your character's health.

In the event that you do pass on (for whatever reason) you'll be able to load at any of the fairly frequent save points (assuming, of course, that you did opt to save your game) which are never sparser than one per loading area. The game does load quite often, but considering how large most of the areas are it's nothing too extreme (though load times are perhaps a bit on the long side). While the vastness of the levels and their graphical and audible prowess is at the very least on par (the sound effects are pretty varied and all well done, though some of the voice acting could use a bit of work) the music Ц or more precisely lack thereof Ц leaves a lot to be desired. You'll hear a heavy metal riff during a boss battle or immediately following your death, but that's about it and the game suffers noticeably from it. No custom soundtrack support is understandable in a linear shooter (though it would be a nice touch) but no soundtrack at all is just a poor decision.

While some of the voice acting does need work, most of it is pretty good and if you don't mind enduring a lot of text, you'll get to know the character associated with those voices pretty well. It's not as bad as many games, but the RPG elements in the conversations are certainly evident, if not really ever as important as they should be. Often no matter what you say you'll end up with the same result, making the feedback choices more of a nicety than useful necessity. This is where BoS start to drop off a bit.

Deus Ex 2 suffered from a disease which found the game "more accessible to the general gaming population" if you will, and in making that game so it lost a lot of its Deus Ex edge. I won't say that BoS lost its Fallout edge because it's more straightforward and geared at a larger gaming population than the previous games may have been, but it certainly was more limiting than I would have hoped or expected. It almost feels like a dumbed down game of a much greater value, and if you've played Hunter: The Reckoning you've pretty much played this game as well. That's not to say it isn't enjoyable Ц it is. It's just not as in-depth and immersive (or as original) as a fan of the Fallout series might hope.

The multiplayer options take shape in co-op form, allowing you and one friend to go at the single player "campaign" if you will, together. The cool part here is that if you start a new game with someone who's never picked the game up (you can't resume a single player game with a second player, you have to start over) you can still load your character from your single player game, meaning you can start your co-op game with a character whose level and abilities are so ridiculously high you'll manage to get to your former game position in no time. While there's no 4 player co-op like in Hunter, playing through with a pal is pretty enjoyable, though more repetitive since you'll likely spend more time button mashing and less time reading.