Mark's Comments: I've been enjoying the Fallout
Tactics demo off and on for the last week, but one thing has struck
me about the game design, at least the little bit that the two
mission demo reveals. It seems to play very much like a hack and
slash RPG.
Why do I think this? The layout of the missions
is such that even though they're outdoors, the player is still
herded through a narrow path. To get to point D, you have to go
through points A, B, and C first, in other words. This is different
than the approach that Jagged Alliance and X-COM take, which offer
wide-open areas that players can run or creep through and approach
the enemy from many different directions. Not only are you shoehorned
down a narrow path in the Tactics demo, but at various points
there's a gang of enemies waiting. It's very much like a dungeon
stocked with monsters.
So is this a bad thing? Not really. It's just different
than we expected. It does raise some concerns, however. The AI
in the demo needs some work. You can shoot at one enemy and another
enemy several feet away apparently doesn't hear or react. I wonder
if the confined nature of the mission layout in part is designed
to overcome uninspired AI? It's easier to present an adequate
challenge to the player if you can force the player to approach
the enemies in a predictable order. The layout also mitigates
the need of the AI to do much in the way of patrolling and reacting.
The mission design also mimics a dungeon crawl in
the way the challenges pile up. Rather than a mission being comprised
of one battle, like a downed UFO fight in X-COM, for example,
in the demo the two missions consist of a series of small battles.
Like a hack and slash RPG, this tends to wear down the player's
party. Like a hack and slash RPG, the Tactics demo gives players
"healing potions" to instantly repair the damage.
My other concern with the demo has nothing to do
with the mission design. I'm a bit worried about the balance between
the game's real-time and turn-based modes. These two modes of
play offer a vastly different experience, not just within this
demo in particular, but in all games. Real-time can be quite exciting,
but it necessitates that the player give up a great deal of control,
even with the ability to pause and issue orders. In real-time
mode you're the director and not the lead actor. In turn-based
mode the gameplay is much more intimate. You move each character.
You aim for each character. You squeeze the trigger for each shot.
Each mode in Tactics seems to work well, but the
game design seems tilted toward the real-time mode in one important
way — the damage characters can take before being killed.
These fellas can really eat some lead before they keel over. This
makes sense in the real-time mode, because if one or two shots
dropped most characters, the battles would last just a few seconds
and would often be over before the player even had time to intercede.
In turn-based mode it's a bit disappointing, however, to spend
several turns creeping around to get good angles of attack on
the unsuspecting enemies and then watch them absorb bullets like
Jim Carrey in the final scene of The Mask.
I don't mean to sound too critical of what is after
all just a demo. I certainly enjoyed it. It's got that good, gritty
tactical feel, especially when you're sneaking your team around
to get them in place for a fire fight, and I'm intrigued by the
multiplayer possibilities that are promised. It's just a bit more
RPGish than I expected, and that's not a bad thing. It's just
a different thing.
Comments? Tell
us what you thought of the Fallout Tactics demo in our forum.
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us a click!
January 10, 2001
