Tag Archives: Fallout 1

Shady Sands Part 1: Fallout Journal

Introduction

In this second and, for now, final installment of my Fallout journal, I want to tell you about my trip to Shady Sands Part 1. As you saw in my first entry, I wanted to spice this series up by writing it in journal form. I’m not sure how well I succeeded then, but I feel like this entry raises the entertainment value some. Let me know if you agree.

150 days to get the water chip.

Shady Sands Part 1

5 December 2161 (Vault 13 Entrance): Ahead, I see a natural light. For the first time in my life, I’m looking at the outside world. It looks…

Hideous. I want to go home. Something inside…and the urgent message about the water chip on my Pip Boy 2000…urges me to ignore that feeling and go on.

12 December 2161 (The Wasteland/Shady Sands): After about a week of travel through the Wasteland, I pass an outpost. An adobe wall surrounds a peaceful looking village. “Welcome to Shady Sands,” a guard says. He introduces himself as Seth. “The town,” he continues, “other than radscorpions and raiders, have no problems.” The radscorpions menace their Brahmin and attacked one of the farmers. The raiders, on the other hand, attack mostly from the southeast. I thank Seth for the information and assure him I will come back to deal with the radscorpions. He tells me to visit their leader, Aradesh.

Before moving on, I talk to the other woman at the entrance. She introduces herself as Katarina. Concerned, she asks me to put my dagger away. She assures me that my instinct that this world is dangerous is correct, but Shady Sands is peaceful. When I sheath my dagger, she is willing to talk to me. She assures me that her old home, Vault 15, had a functioning water chip the last she knew. Even though she came from Vault 15, she doesn’t remember much about the world. Ian can help me with that. After the conversations, she suggests that I visit Aradesh.

The first person that I meet besides them tells me suspiciously that the last visitor to the town screwed the village. I assure him that I’m not like that. “Just stay out of trouble.” Okie dokie.

Radscorpion Cave

During the search for Ian, I find ammo and a book. The book talka about surviving the Wasteland. I’m thankful for the knowledge. When I get to Ian’s place, he tells me that he lived in The Hub. Like Katarina, he got injured, but not as badly. Now, he works as a wandering trader for the town since he’s one of the only ones who ever left the town. I ask him two favors. 1. Directions to The Hub and Junktown. 2. Help with the radscorpions. He tells me the directions and agrees to help for some caps. We go back to Seth, who takes us to the Radscorpion cave.

Ugh. Back in a cave already.

Ian and I make quick work of the 9 radscorpions. I’m thankful for his help and willingly pay his bounty. One of them poisons me. Where to find an antidote? Perhaps these tails will come in handy.

I bid farewell to Ian and go back to Razlo. Without the poison, he can’t make an antidote to heal me. Aha! The tails. Razlo makes the antidotes. Thank you, Shady Sands. I should rest.

13 December 2161 (Shady Sands Garden): I find another book and some rope. The books talks more about surviving in the Wasteland. It’s a long book and I need to rest again.

14 December 2161 (Shady Sands Garden): I chat with one of the farmers about their crops and how they grow them in the harsh conditions of the Wasteland. Alas, my time here is done for now. Off to Vault 15.

To be continued…

The Verdict

I hope you enjoyed Shady Sands Part 1. As I said, I tried to make this one more entertaining by including more personal details. I think I still have some way to go. But, it’s definitely an improvement. So, join us for a new segment on the page, Final Friday Fallout. Every last Friday of the month, I plan to continue the games until finishing them. As for next week, I start Fallout 2.

Since I’m playing a 25 year old game, I decided to use a blast from the past for my walkthrough.

Vault 13 Part 1: Fallout Journal

Introduction

After the release of the show, I wanted to celebrate the Fallout series for a week. Then, I realized that June was perfect for an entire month’s worth of Fallout. With that plan on paper, I worked to flesh it out more. As recently as two days ago, I came up with the idea to format this as a journal. Then, yesterday, I played through the introduction of the first Fallout game to tell you about Vault 13 Part 1.

War. War never changes.

What Makes Me SPECIAL?

Note: If you never played the Fallout games, they organized character stats into the acronym, SPECIAL. In the interest of time, I consulted a walkthrough for the game.

Strength: 5

Perception: 8

Endurance: 6

Charisma: 6

Intelligence: 8

Agility: 7

Luck: 7

Vault 13 Part 1

5 December 2161: The overseer came to see me today. He says that the control chip in the water purifier is faulty. We only have 4 or 5 months until we run out of clean water. He tells me that I am quite possibly the only hope for the Vault. They are sending me out to find another chip and save my fellow dwellers. He suggests Vault 15 as a first stop.

They lead me to the entrance. Only the vault door stands between me and whatever horrors await me on the surface. I check my supplies. 4 Stimpaks, a pistol, some ammunition, and a knife. Red lights flash all around me as a horn sounds. The gears of the vault door grind. It shifts backwards and then an arm attaches to pull it to the side.

I’m out.

But still in. They dug the entrance into a cave. After my eyes adjust, I see a skeleton. The poor guy left behind a knife and some more ammo. Well, he’s not going to need it anymore. Even with the extra ammo, I decide to conserve and pull out my knife in case of attack.

That attack comes quickly! And from all sides! Rats all around me bite and claw. With my trusty knife, though, I am become death. Destroyer of Rats. In a particularly harrowing battle, the little bastard darts all over the place, making it almost impossible to hit him. I finally kill him but not before he injures me quite severely. I conserved ammo, but now I need to use a Stimpak.

Into the Wasteland

After my epic battles with the rats, I figure it’s a good idea to take a rest before stumbling out into the Wasteland. I pause at the mouth of the cave, set up a make shift bed from the roo skeleton there, and lay down for a well deserved nap. Luckily, the rat families don’t come to avenge their dead. I both anticipate and dread what the Wasteland has in store for me.

To be continued….

The Verdict

I actually played through the rat cave twice because I never saved my first game and ended up getting killed by a pack of moles. Thankfully, I learned from that mistake and saved the second time around. That way, when I pick up the game again, I can start from the mouth of the cave. Stay tuned for more of my adventures in Fallout.

Since I’m playing a 25 year old game, I decided to use a blast from the past for my walkthrough.

Days of Future Past

(Editor’s Note: Look for the companion video coming soon!)

Few game series have captured my imagination in the way that the Fallout games did. Similar to the Diablo series, I had never played the first two games because of my lack of PC gaming experience. I simply heard good things about the third one. When I saw it for twenty dollars in the bargain bin, I did what I always do as a cheap gamer. I bought it.

I know what you’re thinking. Okay, I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking. Though I’ve tried, I have yet to perfect the talent of reading minds. Plus, I don’t know even how many of you are out there, so I couldn’t even hazard a guess. Except for you guys who are thinking, “I really want pizza and wings.” You guys are my people.

Let’s get back to the subject. If you have been paying attention to the website or podcast, you will be thinking that I often buy games, especially discounted games, and then they sit in the closet and suffer the fate of never being played. You will be pleasantly surprised to learn that did not happen in this case. Not initially, at least. I played through the game, hooked from the opening credits until–well, let’s wait on that. I have an article planned for next week specifically for Fallout . I will tell the rest of this story in that article. How’s that for a tease?

I’m not sure what about the story and world captivated me so much. I’m not usually one for post apocalyptic stories, unless it is zombies and even those are losing some of their appeal, but this one fascinated me. My obsession started as research for a novella that I am writing that takes place in a similar post nuclear America setting. What got me was the thought and creativity that went into creating a well constructed history for the games. The scope of that history added a new dimension to the game world and I developed an appreciation and admiration for the creators of that world.

Eventually, I moved on to other games, most notably Lego games, Just Dance, and other games that we could play as a family. Still, I never forgot about the games and especially the story. I kept going back to website after website to read timelines, alternate histories, fan fictions, and more. When I discovered that Steam offered both Fallout 1 and 2 plus Tactics, I went into full “shut up and take my money” mode. Given a chance to explore that world and history for myself, I bought all three. If you guessed that these games suffered the fate of countless (or 30, but rising, so essentially countless) other games in my Steam library and went unplayed, then give yourself a cookie. I still haven’t played Fallout 1 or 2. However, that is about to change. I want to do a video on whether or not the games are still fun as an entry point or if I should just stick with the third game and my quest to follow a walkthrough to fame and a fortune of bottle caps. This article will serve as a companion piece to that video. However, the video will focus more on whether Fallout 1 and 2 are still “good” games when compared with current games. I can use this article to focus more on the why or why not.

We all know what makes a good game for us. For instance if graphics and special effects are one of your main reasons to enjoy a game, then these games most likely not for you. Luckily for me, graphics are never a consideration when playing a game. Sure, we all like pretty pictures and impressive effects, but there’s a reason that I still play the original Tetris after all these years and it has nothing to do with bits or polygons. So, what makes a good game? As I’ve gotten older, story has become one of my primary reasons for playing a game. We have already established that the larger story of Fallout interests me, but is that story reflected in the earlier games?

Before focusing on that, though, let’s discuss the rest of the game. My main factor of whether to play a game is, not surprisingly, gameplay. How are the controls? This is especially important for PC games that use a keyboard and mouse for literally hundreds of button combinations. Fallout controls aren’t necessarily intuitive, but they are easy to figure out and learn. I imagine that when the game was released that it came with instructions. Games don’t really do that anymore because nobody ever reads them. Instead, then have a tutorial. Without instructions or a tutorial, I had to learn how to move and attack by myself. I used Google for some of the more troublesome of the PipBoy commands.

Closely related to gameplay, the lack of a linear quest line hurts the game by increasing the challenge unnecessarily. Not only did I spend the better part of my time in Vault 13 at the beginning of the game punching rats (not even with brass knuckles) instead of stabbing or shooting them because I didn’t know any of that was in my inventory. Now I have to search around and find a rope without any hints or clues? Ugh, post apocalyptic first world problems, amirite, Twitter?

I understand that discovery and adventure used to be the MO of these adventure type games, but I’m a spoiled old man gamer without much time to spend playing these games. I like that more recent games lead you by the nose with carrot quests and then you can choose to explore via side quests or just because you don’t want to blow up that person’s car right now.

While these traits might detract from the gameplay, they actually perversely add to the story. Undeniably the strength of the series, it is not as strong in Fallout 1 as the other two games, but it is still impressive for its time. Cinematics and voice acting both bring the world to life and kept me playing even though the rest of the game felt a bit lame.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the game is not as strong as the story. As far as that game itself, it is a bit slow in the beginning. All you do is kill the rats that I talked about earlier and then maybe kill some bigger rats without much indication that you should be doing anything else. I may have just been in WoW quest ignore mode, but once I got to Vault 15, I felt like the game just sort of abandoned me to die in the wasteland and have my corpse eaten by the descendants of the rats that I killed. “Hello, my name is Inigo Ratoya. You killed my father, starved to death while on a quest to save the people in your vault, and rotted to my preferred level of carrion. Prepare to be gnawed slowly over the next few months.” Not nearly as catchy, but still scary.

Maybe that is how the game is supposed to end. I haven’t looked at a walkthrough to confirm, but maybe you are just supposed to end up rat chow. If so, then this is the fastest that I have ever completed a game to 100%. Yay, me! On to the second game. Maybe I can beat that one even faster. Okay, okay, seriously, though, the game is quite confusing at first. Then again, I might just be an idiot. That isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

I want to play a game that will be challenging, but not too challenging. I like being able to pick “Easy” or “New Player” instead of “Insane”, “Inferno”, or “Nightmare” mode because then I don’t have to dedicate too much of my time to the game and the bosses can still present a challenge. Hey, I’m the Noob of All Trades! This game went a bit too far in the figure it out on your own for my tastes.

We come, at last, to graphics. It’s an older game, so I don’t expect great things from the graphics. As mentioned, the cinematics are cool. The actual game, though, is monochrome like Diablo, making it difficult to find any inspiration in pretty pictures while playing. Seriously, though, what is it with game designers and their aversion to using the whole rainbow? Hell, Gauntlet needed only 16 colors or whatever to make a bright and colorful play world and that world was dark, Man. Do you remember “Wizard needs food badly?” Just thinking about it now sends shivers down my spine.

Given everything about Fallout 1 (and to an extent Fallout 2) that I’ve experienced, I would not pick them up as a stand alone game. They look and feel impressive for their times, but times change and sometimes culture does not translate over that time change. While Fallout 2 looks to pick up immensely as far as story goes, I’m not sure how much it improves upon the formula in the first game. Independent of my enjoyment of the story and third game, I probably wouldn’t even bother with the first two games. However, I will stick with them and hope that the story can carry me through the warts. If not, well, we’ll always have Megaton.