THE TOP 10 NON-ADVENTURE GAMES OF ALL TIME – Welcome to Just Adventure + – Articles — Part 2

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THE TOP 10 NON-ADVENTURE GAMES OF ALL TIME

Article by Agustín Cordes and Michal Necasek

October 3, 2003

1. Fallout – Black Isle Studios/Interplay, 1997-1998

For the purposes of this list, we consider Fallout and Fallout 2 to be one game. Their gameplay is nearly identical and most of what can be said about one game holds true for the other. Fallout is a post-apocalyptic RPG with isometric view, taking place on the West Coast of the US, several decades after the end of WWIII. Most of the country is a wasteland, but a number of people survived in underground vaults and are emerging to re-colonize the land. There are only isolated city-states and the wasteland is a dangerous place, with mutated critters, robbers, bandits, savages, aliens and other assorted enemies. In both games your goal is to overthrow a plot to destroy the world (as if nuclear war wasn’t enough). How you do that is entirely up to you – Fallout is very nonlinear, and although there is a “natural” path to follow, nothing will force you to do so. You can play as a man or a woman, you can be a good guy or a bad guy, you can use your intelligence, blast everything to bits or choose a stealthy approach. A very wide variety of weapons is available, from knives and spears to laser and plasma rifles. The combat is purely turn-based, hence there is no need for fast fingers. You can have several NPCs in your party, though you can’t control them during fights. The non-linearity and multitude of possible approaches and solutions make Fallout a highly replayable game, and every time you play Fallout you will find something you missed last time. Together with a healthy dose of humor, this is a winning combination.