Fallout Brotherhood of Steel: Action RPGs At Their most Mediocre!
Story:
The story in this game is stupid. I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it. "You're a new recruit for the heroic Brotherhood of Steel sent on a test mission... now go find the other Paladins and you're in!". What's worse is that this weak storyline makes the rest of what happens in the game even more ridiculous: Suddenly, you wind up in this crazy plot involving mutants, raiders robbing small towns, double-crossers working for the Brotherhood... and none of it makes sense because there isn't a SINGLE attempt to explain why.
Gameplay:
It's pretty hard to screw up an action rpg. Diablo II perfected this in my opinion, and many other games have done a pretty good job of keeping it simple and fun. This game is not one of them.
For starters, you don't have stat points. You start the game with 3 characters. Each time you level up, the game gives your character some skill points to use as you see fit. I'd be okay with that, if it seemed like these skills actually DID anything, but I never noticed a difference except that my health number increased when I invested in the skill that gives you more health. This was something that pestered me; no matter what I chose to invest points into, I never noticed a difference in gameplay.
The game itself is fairly standard Action-RPG fair. The problem is that while this is fun for awhile, the game never gives you anything else to do. There aren't really any true sidequests, because the game just keeps throwing stuff at you like you're an idiot, and once you hit a certain point in each chapter, that's it; there's no going back to town.
Granted, it's a ton of fun to use a sledgehammer or flamethrower to cut a swath through a group of enemies. It's a lot of fun to sneak up on an enemy that has no idea you're there and blast him with a rocket launcher. Some of the quests are kinda fun too.The game itself doesn't look too bad either; most of the character models are pretty neat and the blood and explosions are pretty well-done for the way the game is viewed. You can freely rotate the camera, which most of the time doesn't really get in your way, and there are some basic "platforming" segments to break-up the run and gun monotony... it's just sad that they didn't take note of the things that were well done and attempt to do that with the rest of the game.
One more thing that pesters me is the humor and tone of this game. I like dark humor, which is something I've heard the Fallout series is big on. I played this game expecting a few chuckles that would make me feel guilty; what I got instead is a series of pee-jokes, senseless cursing, and boobies. LOTS. I'm 22, not 12. This offends me.
For starters on this subject, every female in the game is proportionally inaccurate and most of them are scantily clad; for example, the first female character you see upon starting the game looks a lot like Xena, if Xena decided to ditch the body armor and wear two stamps and some twine for an outfit. What possible purpose does this serve? I mean, did they SERIOUSLY think that would sell more games?
There are also a ton of bathroom jokes in the game... guards stopping to relieve themselves, peeing on each-other, and even at one point what can only be described as a "urine geyser". What could possibly possess a person to find this funny?
Sound:
The sound in the game is... okay. I'm a big fan of loud, brutal music, and the metal during boss fights was marginally acceptable to me. It seems odd to me, however, that there's no music played during calm scenes or when no enemies are present; however, even one enemy enters the screen and suddenly the sound becomes a raucous metal-fest.
The voice acting is marginally acceptable at best. Tony Jay graces us with his presence in a couple of roles, and Cree Summer voices Nadia; the rest of the actors aren't too bad, but they can do so much with what they're given, and unfortunately they weren't given much with this game. Nearly all the lines fall into "Sex or Profanity" driven, "Quest Giving" driven, or they're just hokey humor. That leaves pretty much nothing else to say. Your character has no real "spoken" lines, and only speaks when shouting during combat.
The sounds of gunfire and explosions sound fairly realistic, but truth-be-told get old really fast.
Control:
The control in this game, though very simple, is really good with the exception of the jump button, which is far too sensitive. I might even venture as far as to say that the controls are the best thing about this game. That's a little sad.
Each function in the game has one button attached to it, and you really never find yourself pressing one to do another. You have your attack, jump, action, switch weapon, use stimpak, lock-on, and special attack buttons, and you can run in all directions with the Left-stick. The right stick rotates the camera. My main problem with the controls is that the jump button seems to almost stick; practically every time I jumped, I jumped again when I landed behind or on the particular obstacle I was trying to get past. I tested this repeatedly on stable ground and found that I only jump once... draw your own conclusions on this one. Another issue is the fact that the lock-on in this game is ALMOST useless when facing multiple enemies. It switches to whatever enemy is closest to you, rather than giving you the ability to do it yourself.
Replay:
There's pretty much none to speak of. You unlock everything in the game with a single-playthrough, and though you get three new characters, what's the point? They all play the exact same and are exact clones of one-another, so if you've played one you've played them all. I suppose if you put a gun to your buddy's head you could convince him to go through the game in two-player mode, which might be fun... but otherwise, don't bother. On top of the 11 hours to beat the game, it took me another 35 minutes or so to check out all the unlockables and see how each secret character played for a few minutes.
Summary:
This game, at it's BEST is the most lukewarm addition to the genre, and at it's worst is a contender for one of the worst games ever made. It's fun to play for a little while and one of the unlockable characters is really cool, but that's about it. I just don't understand what they were thinking. If you stripped out all of the stuff I complained about above, you'd have a somewhat acceptable game. If they improved on those aspects, they'd have a good game. Instead, they ended up with a pile of trash solely because of ignorant things they put into the game in hopes that it would sell more.
All in all, this game was barely tolerable to play through once, though I MIGHT play through again with one of the secret characters. The only positive thing it really did for me was that it's definitely encouraged me to seek out the other games in the Fallout series; that's probably the greatest thing this game can claim.