What DID you like about FOT?

I

IOError

First time out of the vault
Howdy. :) The idea for this thread and its relative (What did you NOT like about FO 1 & 2?) have both been kind of rattling around in my head for a while, and I'm quite interested in what people have to say.

In the case of FOT, a great many of the people on these forums dislike or outright hate FOT. (And not without cause, either) It is not a game that the FO fanbase fell over themselves worshipping. Personally I liked it a great deal, but that's because I thoroughly enjoy tactical games and frankly beggars can't be choosers sometimes. I detest the almost complete lack of roleplaying in the FO series' bastard child, but hey what can you do. I had fun and didn't regret the purchase. But, a great many people did NOT have fun and DID regret the purchase. So, my question is what did you LIKE about FOT? In particular, I'm asking those people who disliked or hated FOT. What in the game was good? Had to be something, right? Even crap games usually have something nice in them, even if it's just a musical score that you liked or something equally minor.

I'm not a fair case because I actually enjoyed the game, despite feeling that it needed at LEAST another six months back on the initial drawing board and some hefty Q&A. (And that's from a fan) I know I really enjoyed the organization featured in the game, I mean who HASN'T wanted to be a part of the BOS in some Fallout game? I'm also a serious fan of their basic political outlook, heh. The action, although heavily repetitive by the end of the game, was very enjoyable and sometimes very exciting, at least until the robots showed up. So that's a plus in my book, the game was well paced in terms of combat. I think the enemies were well chosen, and well fleshed out. Players certainly got a lot of variety over the length of the game, starting with Raiders, going to Super Mutants, and ending up with Robots, all of whom required different tactics and different weapon loadouts. (Admittedly, the fact that you got BLOCKS of variety for mission after mission was a drawback)

But, what did you honestly like about FOT? Anything at all? ;)
 
i think its a good squad action game but doesn't exactly fit the fallout mould. yes, it has flaws in it but i still think that its not complete shit.
 
I know I'm never going to fully forgive them for the ridiculous tactics players were forced to use. :D I mean all throughout Vault 0 I basically walked my squad around in line so that everybody stood straight up in the open and fired in concentrated volleys at each targets. I mean what am I, the f'ing (Napoleonic-era) Coldstream Guards or a supposedly technologically and tactically advanced military force?! :D Popping in and out of cover was, all too frequently, NOT a legitimate tactic in the game.

Sadly you can, to a certain extent, say much the same about the XCom & JA games. More's the pity. There's work left to be done in the genre, that's for sure.

Errr... I'm drifting heavily away from my original question. Somebody please drag my white ass back to the topic. :D Good stuff about FOT, GOOD STUFF!
 
Having played quite a number of games and having been in QA myself, I do take a more clinical look at things. It doesn't come as a surprise to me that people would expect a game at least faithful to the setting and history of a setting put forth before yet improved upon in presentation, in particular after the burns various large fandoms have had to endure in the name of Franco-American greed and poor business ethic.

Having said that, it is precisely why I find it hard to find much good about Fallout Tactics. In theory, nothing should be poor about a work of art, yet this one shoots for mediocrity and succeeds with a lobotomy as there are parts that don't work and are never intended to be fixed. This was never intended to be a "full-scale game", but rather a quick cashing in on the Fallout trademark.

I have seen far better strategy genre games, including X-COM 1&2, Jagged Alliance and Jagged Alliance 2. Jagged Alliance had a fun multiplayer that had balance of some sort without requiring players to invent rulesets. So in terms of a game in the strategy genre, FOT kind of falls flat.

Then there's the fact of aspects in the setting being misplaced because apparently MicroForté was given a list of monsters, NPCs, and, but not the full setting nor backstory. It looked like the whole excuse was that it's in a completely different area and with different factions is because the creators of the spin-off really didn't know what the setting was about before they went to work. So I can't say anything nice about the setting other than yeah, it looks like a great Predator-inspired suit of armor and they can make a nice set of scratched metal and rust skins. Yeah, in discussing the setting, I make congratulations about the art of all things, and that's only when you take it out of context. The level designs and enemy placements felt amateurish at best.

About the best I could honestly say about Fallout Tactics is that there ARE worse games out there. From an artistic standpoint, that is a fallacy as no piece should be 'better' or 'worse', but this title was hardly treated like a work of art. More like toilet paper, according to Dan Levin. :)
 
It was fun for a while...but the supermutants and ghouls and deathclaws allmost ruined the fun...
 
Well, for one thing the character development as it is basically the same from FO1 & 2 (duh!) and I also liked some... uhm, other bits here and there.
 
I don't think I can say I really liked anything about it alot. I mean, it had some elements which are pretty standard for this kind of tactical strategy games which weren't bad as such. But not noteworthy either.
It just didn't add up to a good game, and then some really bad things ruined it completely. I didn't even get to the Super Mutants, Ghouls or Deathclaws.

It's not a good squad action(?) game. I am not a hardcore Fallout fan, and I like games like JA and Silent Storm, and FOT wasn't good.
 
Claw said:
I don't think I can say I really liked anything about it alot.
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Tsk tsk. Please read the title, you're making the mistake I did a few posts ago of concentrating on the negative. The topic is about the positive. As such, pointing out the (glaring) flaws in FOT is pretty off-topic. Just like if somebody went into the "what's bad about FO" topic and sang its praises. Totally ignores the point, we KNOW FO 1 & 2 rule and FOT was disliked and in some cases hated.
 
IOError said:
Tsk tsk. Please read the title, you're making the mistake I did a few posts ago of concentrating on the negative. The topic is about the positive.
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I'm afraid you'll probably just get begrudging liking of elements only when they are taken out of context.

As such, pointing out the (glaring) flaws in FOT is pretty off-topic. Just like if somebody went into the "what's bad about FO" topic and sang its praises. Totally ignores the point, we KNOW FO 1 & 2 rule and FOT was disliked and in some cases hated.
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Well, when you remove what is bad, what's left? Not much, in FOT's case.

After that, it goes solely into personal preference and opinions, which would only be lexically to the person themselves. I am sure someone likes the "kewl minigun particle effects" to use a phrase from Feargus, but aside from the editor that other games also feature the game would have no replay value. "Kewl minigun particle effects" would be about what you would get, unless the person didn't pay attention to the setting and construction of the game.
 
Like Claw and Rosh said, I found the game to be terribly mediocre. The best thing it had going for it was the SPECIAL system, which made leveling squadmates fun. At the same time, though, SPECIAL was intended for roleplaying, and what point is there in using a roleplaying system when all of your squadmates combined are specialized in anything you could need?
 
What was good?

It had the SPECIAL system and I liked some of the artwork, although tactically, it was useless. Preoria had a good feeling for example, but no exciting combat.

However, the best thing about FOT from my perspective, is that it has an editor for a setting I like (although they completely lost the point in the game) which is actually simple enough for a computer illiterate person like me to use.

They could have made it much better without too much extra effort, and with speech and RPG elements, the game would not be half bad. (why can't they release the source code for someone to fix?) But as a squad based combat game, it's very mediocre indeed.

Therefore, anyone who doesn't hate FOT should get modding and replenish my dose of Fallout. I am not the best at game balance myself, but I'll try sometime, maybe with some help.
 
Phil the Nuke-Cola Dude said:
I liked shooting supermutants in the groin with a sniper rifle.
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I LOVED it when a super mutie blew himself up with a rocket launcher.

What Can I say about FOT?

GOOD:
Graphics:
-The death animations are awesome.

Gameplay:
-If you don't consider it a fallout game, it's actually pretty fun for its own genre.
-It comes with a map editor, which is considerate.
-I like real-time combat a lot more than turn-based. So having the choice of both is a big plus.

BAD:
Graphics:
-completely missed the mark when it came to recreating that Fallout look.
-It's kind of slow for a 2D game.

Gameplay:
-Vehicles are fun, but running over enemies is unrealistically difficult.
-It's not an rpg, so half of the skills and a couple of primary stats in the special system are useless.
-It's not Fallout 3
-The map editor comes with that assramming legal clause in it with makes all your fan-made maps belong to Micro Forte despite the fact that they most likely didn't get any free maps out of it anyway.
-The map editor it clunky and very cumbersome to use. If they were going to release FOT with it then they should have taken a hint from blizzard when it comes to map editors. (For example. you can't just paint desert terrain, you have to lay each and every tile.)
-It just doesn't "look" Fallouty. For example, the menus have exposed resistors and such, which conflict with the style of the 1950's to make everything fancy. In FO 1&2, the menus were rusted metal which must have looked very shiny and 1950's when it was new.

Plot:
-If you want a list of all the things they didn't do their homework on, just look through the nema forums.
-It's not Fallout 3

Music:
-While atmospheric on it's own level, it really kills the Fallout feel.

That's all I can think about it off of the top of my head right now.
 
Pretty good points there, but I have to disagree a little on one point. The death animations are good, excepting those when someone is melted by an energy gun (i.e. plasma rifle, which btw looks horrible compared to that in FO1 & 2). It looks like they're some deflating balloons. Bleah...
 
I don't think I ever saw the energy deaths. By the time I started using energy weapons, I was fighting robots.
 
Calculon00 said:
-The death animations are awesome.
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The "Dances to the rhythm of lead" death for the Supermuties was the best part of the game.
Other than that, and the inclusion of the special character system, there were only really other minor things that I liked. The ability to crouch/prone, for instance, would have been good (if slightly unnecessary) in the RPGs.
 
I was a newcomer to the fallout series and FOT introduced me to the series, i still haven't played either FO1 or 2, but am getting them shorty. What was good about not playing the other games is that i didn't feel any sense of let down or disappointment when playing the game. I enjoyed most of the game and thought it very polished and well designed.

Best things about it:
- Best system for modifying characters and levelling, SPECIAL
- Quite realistic damage characteristics for the most part
- Nice range of weapons, character styles, enemies
- Great graphics and awesome attention to detail for the environments

Gripes
- Fighting robots.... to me robots don't have enough personality to actually care about killing.. you can dislike raiders for their differences in ideology and bastardness, ghouls for the grossness, and mutants for their disgusting nature.. robots have no personality... i felt really let down when i came up to the robots
- hand to hand/melee isn't powerful enough when it should be that you can kill in one or two turns
- all guns look the same

On the whole though,i found it enjoyable

Mutie
 
ive just started playing tactics but so far im loving it. im partial to shooter gaming anyways. a bit of a pain having to always stim npc's though......
 
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