A 10/10 experience all around.

If you come into this game with the mindset that it is an artistically liberal representation of the frustrations, dread, violence, and difficulties of a post nuclear wasteland, you will walk across the breadth of this irradiated dustbowl with a smile on your face, hidden under a grim and paranoid visage that comes with being a vagabond of the wastes. In other words, don't expect this game to hold your hand or be "fun" in the traditional sense. As a Gen-Z person coming into the game growing up off Minecraft and flash games, the many ways this game "poorly aged" became apparent very quickly while I started playing Fallout. For instance, trading multiple of one item in the barter menu (ie: bottlecaps, the currency) requires that you flick through another menu to specify how much of the item you want to offer. One by one. You have to press the up or down button to individually increase the value from 1, 2, 3, and so on. But then I suddenly figured out that I could just use the number keys. That moment of self discovery with just a, at first glance, poorly designed menu felt so rewarding and is a perfect microcosm of all the ways you'll slowly put the pieces of this game together. Fallout truly does not tell you much at all when it comes to navigating its many, many menus and systems but if you put into the time to learn, either through trial and error like I did, or by reading the manual the game comes with (yes, there is a digital copy that comes with the game), you'll find yourself quickly getting used to the otherwise archaic systems.

To touch on the combat, it's brilliant. I love tabletop/CRPG systems and I love the constant frustrations that come with it. I personally used the Jinxed trait in my playthrough, which makes all misses in combat have a 50% chance to be a "critical miss" instead, and this effect applies to everyone, including you. This can be as simple as accidentally hitting another target behind the one you were shooting at, to as devastating as having your entire weapon explode, the ladder most likely being enough of a tide-turner to get you killed. This, combined with the diceroll of combat itself (even pointblank shooting is never fully guaranteed to hit) meant that, even if you had a full combat build and played everything in your favor, there's a chance that you can be put in a bad situation anyways. While this might be bad game design to some, I think it perfectly embodies the actual feeling of combat in a post apocalypse. Guns are old-world tech, slowly or quickly deteriorating with time and use, or lack thereof, everything and everyone is prone to failure or making mistakes, and one slip-up can put you in the grave. Even if you stack as many odds as you can in your favor, there are no guarantees in this harsh reality. Your personal skills can't carry you forever and you learn to accept the inevitable, when or if it even happens. Completing a combat encounter against fierce enemies in Fallout creates a joyful relief like no other and I really cannot understate how good this combat is from an artistic perspective. It really sends home just how violent and chaotic this world is and how brutish, unfair, and to a certain extent, pointless it all is. It harkens back to how war never changes, how the violence that mankind perpetuates against one another is so inevitable and horrible.

Lastly, the characters and story. Magnificent. I won't speak much on it simply because I want you to experience it for yourself. Every line of dialogue is slightly uninteresting at worst to starkly beautiful at best. The final "boss" of the game may have the classic "convince the bad guy to stand down with a speech check" trope, but it's so hauntingly acted out and written that it sticks in your mind for days, even weeks after it all happens. And the ending is... well, it's the ending to Fallout 1. If you haven't had it spoiled for you, you really need to experience it for yourself.

All in all, this game isn't for everyone. But a game for everyone is a game for no one.

A 10/10 experience all around. If you come into this game with the mindset that it is an artistically liberal representation of the frustrations, dread, violence, and difficulties of a post nuclear wasteland, you will walk across the breadth of this irradiated dustbowl with a smile on your face, hidden under a grim and paranoid visage that comes with being a vagabond of the wastes. In other words, don't expect this game to hold your hand or be "fun" in the traditional sense. As a Gen-Z person coming into the game growing up off Minecraft and flash games, the many ways this game "poorly aged" became apparent very quickly while I started playing Fallout. For instance, trading multiple of one item in the barter menu (ie: bottlecaps, the currency) requires that you flick through another menu to specify how much of the item you want to offer. One by one. You have to press the up or down button to individually increase the value from 1, 2, 3, and so on. But then I suddenly figured out that I could just use the number keys. That moment of self discovery with just a, at first glance, poorly designed menu felt so rewarding and is a perfect microcosm of all the ways you'll slowly put the pieces of this game together. Fallout truly does not tell you much at all when it comes to navigating its many, many menus and systems but if you put into the time to learn, either through trial and error like I did, or by reading the manual the game comes with (yes, there is a digital copy that comes with the game), you'll find yourself quickly getting used to the otherwise archaic systems. To touch on the combat, it's brilliant. I love tabletop/CRPG systems and I love the constant frustrations that come with it. I personally used the Jinxed trait in my playthrough, which makes all misses in combat have a 50% chance to be a "critical miss" instead, and this effect applies to everyone, including you. This can be as simple as accidentally hitting another target behind the one you were shooting at, to as devastating as having your entire weapon explode, the ladder most likely being enough of a tide-turner to get you killed. This, combined with the diceroll of combat itself (even pointblank shooting is never fully guaranteed to hit) meant that, even if you had a full combat build and played everything in your favor, there's a chance that you can be put in a bad situation anyways. While this might be bad game design to some, I think it perfectly embodies the actual feeling of combat in a post apocalypse. Guns are old-world tech, slowly or quickly deteriorating with time and use, or lack thereof, everything and everyone is prone to failure or making mistakes, and one slip-up can put you in the grave. Even if you stack as many odds as you can in your favor, there are no guarantees in this harsh reality. Your personal skills can't carry you forever and you learn to accept the inevitable, when or if it even happens. Completing a combat encounter against fierce enemies in Fallout creates a joyful relief like no other and I really cannot understate how good this combat is from an artistic perspective. It really sends home just how violent and chaotic this world is and how brutish, unfair, and to a certain extent, pointless it all is. It harkens back to how war never changes, how the violence that mankind perpetuates against one another is so inevitable and horrible. Lastly, the characters and story. Magnificent. I won't speak much on it simply because I want you to experience it for yourself. Every line of dialogue is slightly uninteresting at worst to starkly beautiful at best. The final "boss" of the game may have the classic "convince the bad guy to stand down with a speech check" trope, but it's so hauntingly acted out and written that it sticks in your mind for days, even weeks after it all happens. And the ending is... well, it's the ending to Fallout 1. If you haven't had it spoiled for you, you really need to experience it for yourself. All in all, this game isn't for everyone. But a game for everyone is a game for no one.