Who blogs here:
Erik spends his night and weekends saving worlds, slaying beasts and organizing mismatch shapes into straight lines. While First-person shooters (FPS),
survival horror and platformers are some of his favorite, there are no genre of game he won't play. From PC to PSP, Xbox to Wii. Erik is just as passionate
with playing games as he is talking about them.
J.R. is the sorta-completionist gamer. He almost always completes the main story arc in all games he plays, but seldom plays the "gamer's game" to complete everything. He'll never get all 120 stars or fight Emerald Weapon, but he will save the day. His favorite genres are RPG, Action/Adventure, Platformer, and MMO. He doesn't like fighting games and is rather picky about FPSs.
Ted has been hooked on gaming since the birth of the Atari 2600, when high fantasy adventure consisted of maneuvering a colored square through a castle maze while dodging pesky dragons that looked like 2D seahorses with beaks and wacky bats that took great pleasure in stealing your keys. To this day, while he enjoys platformers, first-person shooters and puzzlers, he is most passionate about RPGs and any other games which weave great stories into the overall experience.
Amethyst, a gamer that giggles at calling herself a gamer because she fits none of the glamorous stereotypes of female gamers, has been gaming since her father brought home the sparkly new Nintendo Entertainment System back in '89. Up until then she had dabbled with the Atari at a cousin's, but it was Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt and pounding with her hands on the Power Pad in World Class Track Meet that sealed her fate. Despite a three year stint that she doesn't talk about, she has been playing video games and other nerdly activities with enthusiasm. She enjoys puzzlers, RPGs, MMORPGs, certain shooters/fighters, platformers, magic carpet rides and um, mechanical pencil sharpeners. She hates, despite a couple of exceptions, racing games and sports games. Amethyst is married to Erik and is friends with J.R. and Ted.
Fallout from Fallout 1.
chillzilla
| 5/01/2008 10:04 am |
Game On
The recent previews and screenshots of Fallout 3 have got me excited for the game's release. The problem is that the game doesn't come out for awhile. I decided to use this "waiting" period to get caught up on Fallout's history. On Friday, I loaded up the first game and ventured out as a Vault Dweller from Vault 13.
On Sunday I watched the ending credits. I had beaten the game, but I had played it wrong. Maybe "wrong" is the wrong word. I didn't play it through the way I imagine it was intended on somebody's first play-through. Nope, "wrong" was the correct word.
To explain in detail my actions would be to spoil the game for others. I will do my best to leave details vague. The game is good, so I don't want to ruin the experience for would-be players, even if the game is 11 years old.
While the game is non-linear, there still is an order to things. It is possible to skip over missions, items & even whole towns (never did visit the Boneyard), but the game does nudge you to finish the main quest. I apparently decided to skip half the game.
There is a point where a leader of one group asks you to take out a gang of mutants that have been bothering them. As I approached my assigned targets, one of the mutants started to talk to me. My choices in dialog got me captured and taken to the mutants base. I started to notice that the game had gotten a lot harder then it had been, but yet my escape didn't seem unattainable. Through many save files and reloading I was able to make my escape and in the process I unknowingly finished a major story plot.
After having trouble figuring out my next mission, I consulted a game walk-through. This is when I got the shock that I had skipped half the game with only one important task left to do. I had a choice, go back to a previous save and lose the awesome feat I had just accomplished or attempt to keep going. Since I'm play Fallout to get up-to-date with the franchise, I chose the latter.
On Sunday, I loaded up the game and headed to my final task. What amazes me about Fallout (and what I hope to find in the second and third games) is how you can find a diplomatic solution to everything. Also, that you steal everything from everyone that isn't nailed down. My "steal" skill was up so high that I didn't have to fight anyone who had an item I needed. I just had to sneak up behind them and take it. With my low fighting skills, I found this method to be the best. Of course, all good things must come to an end.
I only had one task left to do, but every time I tried to accomplish it I would get attacked by two mutants who could kill me in one turn. I could see my final goal and yet I could do nothing to stop getting attacked. I tried to approach the problem differently, but it seemed that the only way I was going to make this work was to take out these two overpowered enemies. (or am I underpowered.)
The interesting thing about being able to save whenever you want to is that you can save only when good things happen. If something bad happens, you just reload. This became my attack strategy. If I did damage to the mutants, I would save. If they killed me, I would reload. The outcomes were always random so there was bound to be a chance that they would miss. Thankfully, I had stolen their health items prior to the fight so they couldn't heal themselves. I probably died and reloaded over 60 times, but eventually, I did win.
This isn't the first time I've used the "save game" tactic. That is how I got a lot of money in Leisure Suit Larry and how I beat one of the bosses in Jedi Outcast. I believe I even did that in my final fight in Doom II the first time. Do you do this? What games have you done this in? Do you consider it cheating?
All in all, I feel pretty good about beating the game in a way I probably shouldn't have. Fallout 1 is a great game in that it allowed me the freedom to play it like that, but I'm also sure that had I played it more linearly I would have found those moments enjoyable as well. Now onto Fallout 2.
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