Fallout 2 Member Review for the PC

I first played this game in about 99 and I was instantly addicted to the post-apocolyptic setting. The enviornment is dark and the people aren't friendly. There's slavery, drug use, prostitution... all the good stuff in life ready and waiting for you to make good use of.

The whole point of the game is to venture out into the barren wastelands of the U.S. in order to find what is called the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, or, GECK. You are bringing this back for your failing village in order to get it up and thriving again. On the way though, you'll find tons of side quests to do, people to recruit, and moral dilemmas to encounter. I actually think that this game set the standard for the whole "choose between good and evil" ideal that has been put into many of todays games.

The story like I said before is awesome. Not so much because of the idea that you're just some guy trying to save his village, but because of all the things that you will go through along the way. There are moral decisions to be made in almost every situation and the fact that you can kill anybody is pretty damn cool. From the head gang leaders to just random little kids crossing the streets... anybody's a prospect. You gain a reputation after a while though so be careful what you do.

The combat system is kind of sketchy. Basically there's a little button in the bottom right corner that you click to go into combat mode. Once you're here any friendly characters will be outlined in green and any hostiles in red. You use action points to do things like walk and shoot at people. You can use an additional action point to make a precision attack on a particular part of a persons body, such as their eyes in order to blind them, but the chances of scoring a hit will be reduced. A skilled shooter with a sniper rifle and a high Perception attribute can make very good use of this however. For the most part the combat system is pretty good, except that sometimes it can get buggy. When you're in a huge city like New Reno, for example, there are tons of people walking around on the streets, and if you want to go into combat to fight one guy, you will have to wait for EVERYBODY everywhere to make their turns to move. Usually it goes pretty quick but it can be annoying and sometimes the combat system will flip out on you altogether and not even let you exit it because it thinks there is still somebody trying to kill you somewhere, when actually, it was just some guy you almost shot got upset and is trying to run away, but the game still considers him "hostile".

Character creation is one of the strongest points of the game. It is based off of the "S.P.E.C.I.A.L" set, which stands for strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. Unlike other RPG's though, EVERY stat is important in this game. If you go too low on anything you'll be sucking throughout the game. Too low strength means you can't use the biggest weapons, too low perception means you can't aim them... etc. It's really a very intricate system and pretty much all your charactes stats make a huge impact on the game, in one way or another.

One of the biggest problems with Fallout 2 is the bugs. There were so many damn bugs when this game came out and even now 10 years after it has been out, some still exist. Most of them have been fixed though so there shouldnt be anything too big that should stop you from playing the game completely. It's just annoying. Make sure you patch it.

Overall I'd definitely say this game is worth any RPG lover to play. It's definitely in my top 3 RPG's of all time. The bugs suck but I think so many things make up for it that it doesn't even matter. This is definitely one of those games that kept me up playing all night and I think all RPG lovers should at least give it a try.