Graphics

Better than Baldur?

From the moment you look at it, you can see that a serious effort went into Tactics' new graphics engine. The artists must have been busting nuts trying to stamp out this much artwork into the game. Tactics features character models who face 8 ways and change appearance with every single item you add on or take off. They have skin tones, hair color and obviously gender. Then there are the enemies - humans, monster bugs and machines. Each is painstakingly detailed to look realistic, with that certain Fallout flair.

Hehe, I love the fight commentary

Thank the Brahmin? WTF

The game can be played in 16 or 32 bit color, at 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution. The jaggies around your characters and items are also removed, thanks to built-in anti-aliasing. How cool is that? Overall, the game looks very, very smooth. The wide variety of tiles keeps it from looking repetitive, locations are nicely designed and animation is quite decent. The animations lose some of their fluidity when in motion compared to 3D, but unlike 3D, models aren't stuck in shape. They can be dismembered, their blood splattered on the ground, mechanical parts strewn all over the place, etc.

There be snipers

Sniper duel

Wanna try nuke cola?

The whole graphical appeal of any Fallout game lies in its style. Fallout is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but doesn't have that hopeless feeling that you'd expect. We're not all doomed and not going to die. Rather, the Fallout games inject a fair bit of humor into the world - dark humor, but humor nontheless. It can get silly and campy at times (with numerous references to 1950's Cold War stupidity), but there is a rough edge to it all.

Ker-splat!

Oh yer gonna get a can o' wup ass

The graphics hold up their end of the bargain. Everything in Fallout is broken, destroyed or decaying. Even new villages with new housing are run-down and dirty. Yet the game is bright, and there is color throughout the world. The wasteland and villages might be brown, beige and grey, but there is a certain liveliness to it. That feeling makes the gloom and doom of an apocalyptic setting bearable, and even enjoyable. There is a certain charm to it, at the least.