Written by Jeff Buckland, 1/21/2004
Played on:
Xbox
There sure has been a big mess of drama revolving around Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, as many gamers feel that Interplay is sacrificing a possibly great game for what they are sure will wind up being a mediocre title. As you may have heard Interplay has cancelled Fallout 3 and laid off the developers of the series, Black Isle Studios. This was at least partly, if not wholly, caused because Interplay couldn't afford to develop that as well as F:BOS at the same time. So now that it's here, is Brotherhood of Steel good enough to make it worth the loss of one of the best development teams PC gaming had? The sad answer is: "not really".
This game does for the Fallout series what Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance did for the Baldur's Gate series - and it's no coincidence that those games were published by Interplay as well. It serves up an action/RPG style of gameplay that focuses more on the action than anything else - it's a little like the Diablo games but with better graphics and a more console-friendly interface.
F:BOS is controlled almost the exact same way as BG:DA, but with a few changes. Many of the buttons are the same, and the left analog stick will control your character while the right stick rotates the camera as before. There is no mana bar in this game, though, and the right trigger instead allows you to lock on to enemies with any guns you might have equipped. This is pretty important here, as the game has a bigger focus on ranged weapons than BG:DA.
The controls are nice and solid, and though just about every button on the controller is used, the game's surprisingly easy to get into. It's this accessibility that made BG:DA so easy to pick up and get hooked on, and that same quality is present here. The inclusion of crouching is pretty useless, and having to move your thumb to the d-pad to toggle ducking is a hassle. Either way, it's only actually required once in a while.
The lack of a block button affects combat quite a bit more than what I first expected. This turns the game into a festival of mashed buttons, and even though the targeting system helps mitigate this a tad, it still feels like there aren't many tactics you can use to win. All you can do is pick the best weapon and pummel the A button until you've killed all the monsters in a blind rage. It was fun for a while, but not long.
Few can deny the interesting style of art present in the Fallout series, and most of the spirit of that style made it into this title. The post-apocalypse wasteland is crawling with mutant people and animals, various bandits and vagabonds, and plenty of deserted homes, warehouses, and other nastier areas.
The real problem is simply that one can only do so much with this kind of environment. It's difficult to create art that looks good but depicts something that's intentionally ugly - F:BOS only really pulls this effect off in a certain few areas. Even though there are a decent number of special effects in this game, including the good-looking water from BG:DA, it just doesn't have that much of an impact here. On top of this, the game engine is now more than a couple of years old, and with no obvious enhancements, it hasn't kept up well with the competition.
The characters and monsters generally look good, although you'll notice that you can't ever really get close up to many of them. The player characters and NPCs that you converse with are the only ones that are shown close-up, and the characters have a touch of a comic style to them. It really doesn't match that well with the rest of the game in this reviewer's opinion.
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel start out just like one might expect, and many of the standard RPG and action game stereotypes are here. You start off with a small fight, then get sent on a quest to kill mutated bugs and rats. From there, you will get access to a bit of cash and loot as well as a new quest that really kicks off the game's storyline. It's not the most original, but the formula does work. We also get to play in a two-player cooperative mode, although I'd love to see something other than D&D Heroes that supports four players at once - even if that many people all trying to play at once on a single screen turns into a huge mess of yelling and fighting.
