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Fallout was one of the first big isometric CRPGs from the Interplay/Black Isle guys and paved the way for many of the classics that followed. Even if it was at some point considered the spiritual successor to 1988's 'Wasteland', it surpassed its inspiration in every way. It's also no accident that it became one of the biggest IPs of today and I'm glad that Bethesda picked it up when they did.
Even though it became somewhat different over the years, I think the core of what makes it so popular today was already present in this first title: a very unique post-apocalyptic world in an unconventional 1950s Americana retro-future with quirky humor. Absurd while still managing to feel grounded. It's Mad Max coupled with space age design sensibilities. A lot of iconic elements, namely the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute system and perks, the limb targeting, the vaults, the pip-boy, the power armors, the bottle-caps, the dog companion... They really hit the nail on the head with the world building and it's all fully developed here.
The RPG system was based on GURPS as oppose to the 2nd edition D&D (AD&D) that was used on future Black Isle's CRPGs. The combat is also turn-based rather than the real-time with pause of the later isometrics. Unlike 'Wasteland' or the JRPGs of the time, the turn-base mechanic is that of a tactics game. In other words, you have action points that you can spend to move around in a hexagonal grid, but outside of combat it's real time.
Tim Cain and Chris Taylor created a very unique character system that emphasizes build freedom and creativity; really fun to play if you know what you're doing but very much flawed and easily exploited. There are a lot of ways to screw up your character without realizing, but that was on par with other RPG systems of the time. The real flaw in the system comes in the implementation of certain skills and their usefulness. Skills such as Science and Repair have very little opportunities of being used, while other skills are completely necessary and overpowered. Small Guns make up for something like 80% of your available guns and are the only available guns in the early to mid game. They won't do you any good in the late game though, so it's better to switch to big/energy guns at that point. It's almost like it was designed to be a progression system, but you won't know that when you start the game the first time and put all your points into big/energy and can't really progress. There's a lot of trial and error involved.
This trial and error philosophy seems to be present in other areas of the game as well. There are a lot of failure states that you can't avoid without previous knowledge, including quests and even game ending scenarios, in which you are required to load a previous save. Not to mention the time limit mechanic that you'll probably succumb to in your first try. This is not entirely a criticism, the game was designed with that in mind and there's a lot of replayability that comes from that. It also feels like there's more at stake knowing that your actions (or lack thereof) have consequences. My problem comes when the failure states are not communicated very well. Like when you choose a dialogue option that gives you a result you had no intention of acquiring. Of course, at that ancient time called the '90s, you were expected to save often and on multiple slots but I'd argue that there are more elegant ways of implementing this philosophy of game design. If you don't know that you're breaking something, and even after you break it you don't know what you broke or did that was wrong, it feels more like an oversight than purposeful design.
Some of these issues were later addressed on Fallout 2 and some were made worse. Regardless, this is by all means a flawed but great game, a gem in the rough, an unlicked cub as they say. When it's good, it's very good. When it's bad, it's frustrating but worthwhile. I started this game many times over the years, never going so far as beating it, mostly due to frustration or burn-out, but I always had it on my mind to return... and did, multiple times. Now that i finally beat it, it feels like an accomplishment. Few games do that, and that makes this one great.
(This review was first written on Steam -- 8 June, 2024.)
Even though it became somewhat different over the years, I think the core of what makes it so popular today was already present in this first title: a very unique post-apocalyptic world in an unconventional 1950s Americana retro-future with quirky humor. Absurd while still managing to feel grounded. It's Mad Max coupled with space age design sensibilities. A lot of iconic elements, namely the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute system and perks, the limb targeting, the vaults, the pip-boy, the power armors, the bottle-caps, the dog companion... They really hit the nail on the head with the world building and it's all fully developed here.
The RPG system was based on GURPS as oppose to the 2nd edition D&D (AD&D) that was used on future Black Isle's CRPGs. The combat is also turn-based rather than the real-time with pause of the later isometrics. Unlike 'Wasteland' or the JRPGs of the time, the turn-base mechanic is that of a tactics game. In other words, you have action points that you can spend to move around in a hexagonal grid, but outside of combat it's real time.
Tim Cain and Chris Taylor created a very unique character system that emphasizes build freedom and creativity; really fun to play if you know what you're doing but very much flawed and easily exploited. There are a lot of ways to screw up your character without realizing, but that was on par with other RPG systems of the time. The real flaw in the system comes in the implementation of certain skills and their usefulness. Skills such as Science and Repair have very little opportunities of being used, while other skills are completely necessary and overpowered. Small Guns make up for something like 80% of your available guns and are the only available guns in the early to mid game. They won't do you any good in the late game though, so it's better to switch to big/energy guns at that point. It's almost like it was designed to be a progression system, but you won't know that when you start the game the first time and put all your points into big/energy and can't really progress. There's a lot of trial and error involved.
This trial and error philosophy seems to be present in other areas of the game as well. There are a lot of failure states that you can't avoid without previous knowledge, including quests and even game ending scenarios, in which you are required to load a previous save. Not to mention the time limit mechanic that you'll probably succumb to in your first try. This is not entirely a criticism, the game was designed with that in mind and there's a lot of replayability that comes from that. It also feels like there's more at stake knowing that your actions (or lack thereof) have consequences. My problem comes when the failure states are not communicated very well. Like when you choose a dialogue option that gives you a result you had no intention of acquiring. Of course, at that ancient time called the '90s, you were expected to save often and on multiple slots but I'd argue that there are more elegant ways of implementing this philosophy of game design. If you don't know that you're breaking something, and even after you break it you don't know what you broke or did that was wrong, it feels more like an oversight than purposeful design.
Some of these issues were later addressed on Fallout 2 and some were made worse. Regardless, this is by all means a flawed but great game, a gem in the rough, an unlicked cub as they say. When it's good, it's very good. When it's bad, it's frustrating but worthwhile. I started this game many times over the years, never going so far as beating it, mostly due to frustration or burn-out, but I always had it on my mind to return... and did, multiple times. Now that i finally beat it, it feels like an accomplishment. Few games do that, and that makes this one great.
(This review was first written on Steam -- 8 June, 2024.)
Informational review regarding versions, controls and engines.
This product was previously sold as the "Ultimate Doom" version of the game, which came out in 1995 and featured the original Doom (1993) and the expansion pack: "Episode IV: Thy Flesh Consumed" for MS-DOS. It was emulated with DOSBox here on steam.
In 2019, for Doom's 25th anniversary, id Software released an updated version of the game running on the Unity engine which was ported to the 8th generation consoles. This update, called Doom Enhanced, was later released here on steam as a free update to previous owners of Ultimate Doom, they also changed the store name to DOOM (1993). Fortunately, the original emulated DOS version still comes with this one. The same applies to the steam version of Doom II as well.
This new re-release, marketed as "Enhanced version", was made in a similar way to the community source ports, like GZDOOM or PrBoom+. It had numerous problems when it released but they managed to fix pretty much all the issues and is now considered a very good port. It unfortunately isn't as good as the community source ports in regards to mod support. Despite that, if you're just looking to play a very authentic Doom experience with modern QoL features like 60 fps, high resolution and widescreen support, the Enhanced version is probably the best place to start.
Nerve Software and Bethesda seem to have aimed for a very vanilla and conservative port, something more akin to the original experience. It even renders the game at a 640x400 resolution internally regardless of the selected output resolution, resulting in a very crisp but low-res image and without the downsides of running a resolution non-native to your monitor. This choice obviously makes the image look "worse" but the chunky pixels fit well with the low-res textures and is more authentic to how the graphics were designed to look. It's a matter of preference though and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an option to change that.
Nevertheless, If you're looking for the actual vanilla game, you can play the DOSBox version by selecting it in the launch options. You can choose either the DOS version with modern WASD controls or classic controls, in which you move with the arrow keys. Speaking of controls, you can also choose to play with keyboard aiming or mouse aiming, which were both a feature even on the original Doom back in 1993. Although many people claim that Doom only had keyboard controls back in the 90s, that isn't true and is a classic case of the Mandela effect. It is true that many people at the time preferred keyboard aiming but the game actually came out with mouse controls from the get go. John Romero even went on to say that Doom was made for mouse input, so was Wolfenstein 3d (source: soulsphere.org).
The original game didn't have vertical aiming however, that's due to a rendering limitation of the engine. Meaning you could only look left and right and not up and down. Back then, calculating perspective was really taxing on performance, so less angles = faster.
The first FPS that featured unrestricted vertical mouse-look was Bungie's Marathon back in 1994. Although Ultima Underworld (1992) rendered up and down angles, you had to click the edges of the screen to manipulate the camera. Heretic (1994, Doom engine), while giving you the option to look up and down, restricted it to very small angles and you had to control it via keyboard. In 1995, 3D Realm took note of Bungie's breakthrough and added a similar mouse-look control in its Build engine (Duke Nukem 3D 1996). That said, all of these games that let you control the camera vertically one way or another, didn't really re-render the scene like you'd expect and relied on visual trickeries to change the view. They did it by shifting the horizon line up or down instead of changing your perspective, that's so they didn't need to calculate any of the 3-point perspective distortions that we see in the real world. Hence why they all felt unnatural.
These engine limitations were one of the reasons that Quake (1996) was such a big deal when it came out, and why people call earlier FPS titles 2.5D in retrospect. It wasn't until Quake that full 3-point perspective became a norm in the industry, made possible with the arrival of hardware acceleration technologies. Eventually, since the release of Doom engine's source code in 1999, various community source ports were made. Some, such as GZDOOM added hardware-acceleration rendering options like OpenGL and Vulkan, which allowed real up and down perspective rendering like Quake and all modern 3D games.
Here are a couple of useful tips if you're playing in the DOSBox version:
Movement was binded to mouse input, overlapping your movement keys which will feel very strange if you're used to more modern FPS movement controls. You can disable this forward and backward movement with novert.
You should also correct the aspect ratio to the original 4:3 otherwise the game will look squashed. That's because, like many games at the time, the original graphics were designed for monitors that vertically stretched the image natively. I.e. the original 320x200 resolution is a 16:10 logical aspect ratio but ran on monitors with a 4:3 aspect ratio that stretched the image up and down to fit it, and at the time, graphics were designed to account for that. To correct this, just change the following lines on ultimatem.conf and ultimate.conf files in the game folder to:
[sdl]
output=ddraw
And:
[render]
aspect=true
Both of these issues were already corrected in the Unity source port (Enhanced Version).
(This review was first written on Steam -- 26 August, 2023)
This product was previously sold as the "Ultimate Doom" version of the game, which came out in 1995 and featured the original Doom (1993) and the expansion pack: "Episode IV: Thy Flesh Consumed" for MS-DOS. It was emulated with DOSBox here on steam.
In 2019, for Doom's 25th anniversary, id Software released an updated version of the game running on the Unity engine which was ported to the 8th generation consoles. This update, called Doom Enhanced, was later released here on steam as a free update to previous owners of Ultimate Doom, they also changed the store name to DOOM (1993). Fortunately, the original emulated DOS version still comes with this one. The same applies to the steam version of Doom II as well.
This new re-release, marketed as "Enhanced version", was made in a similar way to the community source ports, like GZDOOM or PrBoom+. It had numerous problems when it released but they managed to fix pretty much all the issues and is now considered a very good port. It unfortunately isn't as good as the community source ports in regards to mod support. Despite that, if you're just looking to play a very authentic Doom experience with modern QoL features like 60 fps, high resolution and widescreen support, the Enhanced version is probably the best place to start.
Nerve Software and Bethesda seem to have aimed for a very vanilla and conservative port, something more akin to the original experience. It even renders the game at a 640x400 resolution internally regardless of the selected output resolution, resulting in a very crisp but low-res image and without the downsides of running a resolution non-native to your monitor. This choice obviously makes the image look "worse" but the chunky pixels fit well with the low-res textures and is more authentic to how the graphics were designed to look. It's a matter of preference though and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an option to change that.
Nevertheless, If you're looking for the actual vanilla game, you can play the DOSBox version by selecting it in the launch options. You can choose either the DOS version with modern WASD controls or classic controls, in which you move with the arrow keys. Speaking of controls, you can also choose to play with keyboard aiming or mouse aiming, which were both a feature even on the original Doom back in 1993. Although many people claim that Doom only had keyboard controls back in the 90s, that isn't true and is a classic case of the Mandela effect. It is true that many people at the time preferred keyboard aiming but the game actually came out with mouse controls from the get go. John Romero even went on to say that Doom was made for mouse input, so was Wolfenstein 3d (source: soulsphere.org).
The original game didn't have vertical aiming however, that's due to a rendering limitation of the engine. Meaning you could only look left and right and not up and down. Back then, calculating perspective was really taxing on performance, so less angles = faster.
The first FPS that featured unrestricted vertical mouse-look was Bungie's Marathon back in 1994. Although Ultima Underworld (1992) rendered up and down angles, you had to click the edges of the screen to manipulate the camera. Heretic (1994, Doom engine), while giving you the option to look up and down, restricted it to very small angles and you had to control it via keyboard. In 1995, 3D Realm took note of Bungie's breakthrough and added a similar mouse-look control in its Build engine (Duke Nukem 3D 1996). That said, all of these games that let you control the camera vertically one way or another, didn't really re-render the scene like you'd expect and relied on visual trickeries to change the view. They did it by shifting the horizon line up or down instead of changing your perspective, that's so they didn't need to calculate any of the 3-point perspective distortions that we see in the real world. Hence why they all felt unnatural.
These engine limitations were one of the reasons that Quake (1996) was such a big deal when it came out, and why people call earlier FPS titles 2.5D in retrospect. It wasn't until Quake that full 3-point perspective became a norm in the industry, made possible with the arrival of hardware acceleration technologies. Eventually, since the release of Doom engine's source code in 1999, various community source ports were made. Some, such as GZDOOM added hardware-acceleration rendering options like OpenGL and Vulkan, which allowed real up and down perspective rendering like Quake and all modern 3D games.
Here are a couple of useful tips if you're playing in the DOSBox version:
Movement was binded to mouse input, overlapping your movement keys which will feel very strange if you're used to more modern FPS movement controls. You can disable this forward and backward movement with novert.
You should also correct the aspect ratio to the original 4:3 otherwise the game will look squashed. That's because, like many games at the time, the original graphics were designed for monitors that vertically stretched the image natively. I.e. the original 320x200 resolution is a 16:10 logical aspect ratio but ran on monitors with a 4:3 aspect ratio that stretched the image up and down to fit it, and at the time, graphics were designed to account for that. To correct this, just change the following lines on ultimatem.conf and ultimate.conf files in the game folder to:
[sdl]
output=ddraw
And:
[render]
aspect=true
Both of these issues were already corrected in the Unity source port (Enhanced Version).
(This review was first written on Steam -- 26 August, 2023)
Thief is kinda brilliant, and really one of a kind. Given I just played it for the first time, I was truly surprised at how good this was. I was actually expecting a lot of 1990s jank but there wasn't much. It's rare to recommend old games without any caveats but this is one is truly a masterpiece.
I had already heard so much good things about it, how much it influenced the immersive sim genre and stealth games in general. But now that I've played it, I actually think that it did it better than most of the games it influenced.
In more recent games, stealth is often given as an option to the player. You are rewarded with bonus XP for your "sacrifice" of playing the game stealthily. Some games actually give you a different ending as incentive for not killing NPCs, like in Dishonored. In all these games, you're actually a killing machine, and when you choose a stealth approach you're actually protecting the enemies from your true powers, instead of protecting yourself from the enemies. It's great for people who don't want to play in that style, but really hampers the potential of a true stealth focused game like Thief.
In Thief, you are not a killing machine that happens to be merciful and chooses to spare your enemies by avoiding them in the shadows. You are hiding to survive. Your enemies are smart (to a certain extent) and will track you down if you're sloppy. You have to use all your resources to beat them. Combat is your last resort.
The stealth system works with the expected cone of vision of your enemies that's ubiquitous in any stealth game, but most importantly, there's lighting mechanic as well. You have a "light gem" in your UI that tells you how visible you are in the darkness. That means that you can be directly in front of someone, if it's pitch black they won't notice you. But keep your sword sheathed, because it will reflect light and make you more visible! How cool is that? Also, to control your environment you're able to blow out torches or light them up with your special arrows. These are just a few examples of the clever mechanics you'll have at your disposal.
Sound also plays a huge role, different surfaces will be louder than others. You can easily run on tapestry without anyone hearing you, but the slowest creep on a tile floor will be heard if you're near someone. As another example: If you lean on a door, you'll be able to hear what's going on in the next room, like what the guards are saying, you can even gauge how big the room is by how the sound is travelling. All these systems are coupled with very impressive and creative level design, even for '90s FPS high standards.
This is a hard game. Difficulty settings don't scale enemies' HP or damage. It actually just adds or removes objectives of a mission. Playing on normal (there's no easy difficulty), will grant you the least objectives and you won't need to explore the level as much as in higher difficulties. I found this a very interesting approach that gives the game a lot of replayability potential.
The story and world-building are also surprisingly unique. There's a lot of genre blending going on and some unexpected horror elements. It seems to take place in a very low fantasy steampunk style setting, more medieval europe than Victorian England though. There are knights and electricity at the same time and for some reason it doesn't end up looking jarring. Maybe because it's not so over the top with the technology like in some "magitek" settings.
Also, the writing is great. From the guards Monty Python-esque dialogue to the more serious tone of the cut scenes, it's really well done. Moreover, most of the world-building is conveyed through environmental storytelling instead of exposition.
I really don't have many negative things to say about this title. Some levels are better than others for sure, and there are some frustrating parts where you will get stuck looking for some hidden room or object (the level "Undercover" was the worst offender for me), but none of its issues really detract from such a great experience.
Compatibility wise, the steam version is kinda broken, cut scenes won't load, sound quality will be limited and resolution is scaled badly. The good news is that modders upgraded the game's Dark engine to run on modern hardware and also fixed a lot of bugs. Just google TFix and install the latest patch to make it run properly. I recommend the lite version of the patch for a more authentic experience, since it doesn't include any mods or updated visuals. Also, remember to turn on OpenAL hardware audio in the game options for EAX support and 3D audio.
(This review was first written on Steam -- 22 August, 2023)
I had already heard so much good things about it, how much it influenced the immersive sim genre and stealth games in general. But now that I've played it, I actually think that it did it better than most of the games it influenced.
In more recent games, stealth is often given as an option to the player. You are rewarded with bonus XP for your "sacrifice" of playing the game stealthily. Some games actually give you a different ending as incentive for not killing NPCs, like in Dishonored. In all these games, you're actually a killing machine, and when you choose a stealth approach you're actually protecting the enemies from your true powers, instead of protecting yourself from the enemies. It's great for people who don't want to play in that style, but really hampers the potential of a true stealth focused game like Thief.
In Thief, you are not a killing machine that happens to be merciful and chooses to spare your enemies by avoiding them in the shadows. You are hiding to survive. Your enemies are smart (to a certain extent) and will track you down if you're sloppy. You have to use all your resources to beat them. Combat is your last resort.
The stealth system works with the expected cone of vision of your enemies that's ubiquitous in any stealth game, but most importantly, there's lighting mechanic as well. You have a "light gem" in your UI that tells you how visible you are in the darkness. That means that you can be directly in front of someone, if it's pitch black they won't notice you. But keep your sword sheathed, because it will reflect light and make you more visible! How cool is that? Also, to control your environment you're able to blow out torches or light them up with your special arrows. These are just a few examples of the clever mechanics you'll have at your disposal.
Sound also plays a huge role, different surfaces will be louder than others. You can easily run on tapestry without anyone hearing you, but the slowest creep on a tile floor will be heard if you're near someone. As another example: If you lean on a door, you'll be able to hear what's going on in the next room, like what the guards are saying, you can even gauge how big the room is by how the sound is travelling. All these systems are coupled with very impressive and creative level design, even for '90s FPS high standards.
This is a hard game. Difficulty settings don't scale enemies' HP or damage. It actually just adds or removes objectives of a mission. Playing on normal (there's no easy difficulty), will grant you the least objectives and you won't need to explore the level as much as in higher difficulties. I found this a very interesting approach that gives the game a lot of replayability potential.
The story and world-building are also surprisingly unique. There's a lot of genre blending going on and some unexpected horror elements. It seems to take place in a very low fantasy steampunk style setting, more medieval europe than Victorian England though. There are knights and electricity at the same time and for some reason it doesn't end up looking jarring. Maybe because it's not so over the top with the technology like in some "magitek" settings.
Also, the writing is great. From the guards Monty Python-esque dialogue to the more serious tone of the cut scenes, it's really well done. Moreover, most of the world-building is conveyed through environmental storytelling instead of exposition.
I really don't have many negative things to say about this title. Some levels are better than others for sure, and there are some frustrating parts where you will get stuck looking for some hidden room or object (the level "Undercover" was the worst offender for me), but none of its issues really detract from such a great experience.
Compatibility wise, the steam version is kinda broken, cut scenes won't load, sound quality will be limited and resolution is scaled badly. The good news is that modders upgraded the game's Dark engine to run on modern hardware and also fixed a lot of bugs. Just google TFix and install the latest patch to make it run properly. I recommend the lite version of the patch for a more authentic experience, since it doesn't include any mods or updated visuals. Also, remember to turn on OpenAL hardware audio in the game options for EAX support and 3D audio.
(This review was first written on Steam -- 22 August, 2023)