It’s been a very busy week in terms of work, band and family
commitments so I haven’t had much time to play games. The game I probably put
the most time in to was the original Fallout.
I’m not sure what drove me to start playing this again. It
was possibly because I watched Yahtzee Croshaw’s review of Fallout 76 on
Youtube earlier in the week. He panned it, as most independent critics have,
but it took me back to the first game when I realised I never really got very
far in it; I certainly never finished it. In fact, the only Fallout game that I
managed to beat was Fallout 3, and that was nearly six years ago. But whatever
the reason, I got the game out and had another go.
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| Rest in Peace, Max Stone. |
Unusually for me, I shied away from creating a character in
favour of using one of the pre-gens – Max Stone. He is the strong,
combat-orientated archetype, and while he lacks the subtlety of the other
characters, and the roleplaying opportunities of a created one, this time
around I just felt like flattening people and blowing things up so that’s the
character I chose to use. I got as far as the Radscorpion Caves before getting
killed, after grossly over-estimating my own ability.
I started again as the same character, except I made him
into a woman and called her Maxine. I found the idea of a muscle-bound goddess
running around through Fallout’s wasteland an intriguing prospect, and I feel
that female characters don’t have to be faces and thieves all the time! This
time, after arriving at Shady Sands I went on to Vault 15, as there was
opportunities there to increase my experience points and level the character up
to the point where she might survive the Radscorpion caves. This worked up to a
point, but I still found myself having to go back to Shady Sands to get healed
by Razlow – though, if you give him a Scorpion Tail, he does it for free. I
manged to clear out the caves after a few goes.
And here I hit the same wall I very often do when playing
Fallout – I have no idea what to do next. Do I go to the raiders and clear them
out? I tried that a few times; it didn’t go very well. Do I head on to Hubtown?
I gave that a go but died after smart-talking to the priests there, I can’t
remember what they’re called off-hand. Do I go to Necropolis? I tried that as
well and nearly died, though I was surprised by how quickly Maxine heals. Don’t
get me wrong, all of these options are valid to try, at least – but as you’re
on a time limit, I can’t get my head out of the idea that I’ve messed the whole
thing up if I pick the wrong direction. I’ll probably give it another go a bit
later on.
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| The boss of the game is boss hard... |
Also I had a go with Ultra Street Fighter 2: The Final Challengers
on the Switch, specifically to play the Way of the Hado mode. This is a
first-person section where you control Ryu, and use the motion controls on the
joy-con controllers to do his special moves. I’d played it before using the
Switch screen, and found it a laugh, but quite difficult to do. This time, I
plugged the Switch into the dock and tried it like that. I found it a much more
enjoyable experience, and the moves a lot easier to perform. I still struggle
with the Hurricane Kick, as I can’t get the motion quite right and more often
than not it thinks I’m doing a Fireball, but it’s fun to try!
When you’re playing, you can increase the stats of your
character if you beat one of the three available stages. I’m not hitting quite
hard enough yet to be able to beat M. Bison, who appears right at the end of
the final stage and is very difficult to beat, but I’ll keep trying! This is
very much the Switch’s gimmick so it’s worth using this mode to explore what
this iteration of Street Fighter II has to offer.
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