Good tactics is unnecessary when it’s six versus one
Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel puts you in a typical Fallout post-apocalyptic wasteland. But unlike other Fallouts, this game focuses on combat and removes role-playing to a large extent.
You lead a team of up to six, recruiting members between battles, and each member with his or her own stats such as perception, luck, charisma, etc. To complement their skills, you arm them with weapons such as rifles, knives and machine pistols. You send them out to missions to kill enemies such as raiders, supermutants and other Fallout creatures.
The game requires you to think of your approach strategy. You could use a long-ranged rifle and shoot your enemies, but did you take cover? Do you want to go prone? Or perhaps you are up for wanton destruction and just wanna command your team to eliminate your enemies with no strategy?
The game allows you to choose between playing it real-time or turn-based. The former can be rather difficult to play because you will have to manage a whole squad. Oftentimes, you’ll have problems keeping track of what every member is doing and suddenly you’ll see them down on health or just taking hits because you didn’t tell them to attack. Rather, it is better to play this game in its turn-based mode, which confers more order and predictability to the game.
You can choose the difficulty of the game to suit your skill level. Although at lower difficulties, the AI definitely shows its linearity and lack of imagination. The AI sometimes would just do stupid things such as charge at you when he’s facing six versus one. After a while, you learn all their antics and things become predictable.
Each mission takes quite a while to complete as maps are big and combat is slow. Easier missions can take 30 minutes while harder missions can take several hours. Difficulty also affects how long the game lasts.
The GOG version of the game, offered free once, runs well on the netbook. The default resolution of this game, 800×600 pixels, will run on most netbooks. But because modern screens are not four-by-three in ratio, you will need to modify settings in your graphics drivers so that it won’t stretch the image.
Like
Many hours of entertainment for turn-based fans
Dislike
Real-time mode doesn’t work well
Verdict
It runs well on a netbook and plays excellent.
Gameplay: Excellent!
Graphics smoothness: Great!
Work needed to get game to play: Minimal (GOG version)
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