The Fallout series on the PC contains two of the best RPGs of all-time as well as a surprisingly fun strategy game. Actually, with the exception of a 'Tactics' in its title, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel has the same subtitle as the PC strategy game (Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel). Is this done so that we can easily get into the right mindset for the console game? The Brotherhood of Steel is a small military organization you become involved with for portions of Fallout and Fallout 2; it's also your employer for Fallout Tactics. It's not particularly featured in Fallout: BoS despite what the title would have you believe. Actually, the story itself is fairly dull, in spite of the material it has to draw on. There are a few cameos from previous Fallout characters, and that alone likely makes this worth a rental for Fallout fans. Then again, playing this game may just sour your taste for Fallout. Brotherhood of Steel is essentially a clone of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, from the graphics to the gameplay and everything in between (they share the same engine). For some reason, however, the combat feels extremely clunky, the graphics are - in a word - bad, and the number of weapons and armo you have available to you seems extremely limited. The skill sets for each character are also pretty generic, and though playing through most action RPGs isn't entirely different with other characters, it becomes even less so in this game. Combat is slightly different from other games of this type in that you are able to hit every enemy in front of you when you execute a melee attack, as well as having access to guns. They don't really work as well as you might expect, however: a pull of a trigger will (in theory) lock on to an enemy and then you can happily tap attack until you've blasted them. Of course, if you keep holding lock-on and hitting attack, you will automatically cycle through and kill every enemy surrounding you, which takes any skill there might have been had otherwise. The game is of decent length but playing through is a chore, as you fight the same groups of radscorpions and bandits and mutants over and over again. The in-game dialogue is voiced well enough, and some of the conversations can be pretty funny. Then again, you have an excessively simplified combat system, exceptionally dull graphics, relentless fetch quests - it all comes together to provide a wholly unsatisfying experience. That's not to say it's completely without merit, as co-op can be fun for the sake of playing with someone else, and it's nice to see the Fallout universe have a bit of action. But if Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel does one thing really well, it's being the worse game in the Fallout series.
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