Kotaku Ranks The Fallouts

Fallout >>> Fallout 2 > Tactics > FNV

I cannot withstand that bethesdian consolitis-riddled concept of FNV, it simply killed any fun for me. Sorry. As for writting and NPCs, it's better than Fallout 2, though.

Haven't played F3 and FOBOS.
 
I have the feeling my rankings would change based on whims, personal feelings and how recently I played each title, so I'm not really willing to do one.

I know I ultimately don't really feel like Fallout 2's wackier and more playful atmosphere detracted from my enjoyment of the title I also feel like New Vegas is superior to Fallout 3 thanks to stronger writing, tighter (though still rife with problem) gameplay balance and quest design that is just as good as the first two titles. It was sometimes diluted by the necessity to fill an enormous world with a lot of quests and some not-quite-confident area design tho'.

And I enjoyed Fallout 3 as an open-world Bethesda-style hiking title, even with all its mechanical and writing failings, and felt Bethesda did a great job with their art department (though I can't forgive them the new mutie and power armor designs, no siree!). There was always an interesting sight to look forward to, and the development team packed a lot of detail in those location.. it's a pity that for the most part it amounted to stuff like unique loot or unique mini-bosses rather than interesting quests and new perspectives on the setting, tho'.

I mean, on the long run, even though Bethesda clearly tried hard to differentiate the game's quest design and atmosphere from TES, it still feels hollow and it's off compared to the proper Fallout titles, even discarding the horrible, horrible writing. Speaking of that: Patricia Hernandez cited Moira Brown and Tranquility Lane on Twitter as "memorable" and I'd have to agree. I suspect our reasons for thinking that those things are memorable differ, though: she probably thinks Moira was funny and interesting and a nice note of bleak, dark humor, while I think she was obnoxiously written and badly voice-acted; similarly I feel like Tranquility Lane is a slog on replays and both the writing propping it up (character's motivations, backgrounds, how it works, etc.) and the actual writing in-location (character dialogue, text, etc.) are super-weak, while I'd guess she at least enjoyed that, if she thought that was a memorable section.

So, yeah, I guess I can just went hipster and put my non-ranking into text. Kotaku (and Brother None, who has a future as a gonzo journalist if his inXile gig doesn't work out) has gotten people to discuss, so I guess that's good?*

* I'm a bit baffled that Fallout 1 is last, but can't really argue with purely personal feelings, which is what the list deals with
 
Fallout 2 > Fallout 1 > Fallout: New Vegas > Fallout 3 > Fallout Tactics.

Never played BoS, nor am I planning to.

Fallout 1 could have been top of my list, but I played Fallout 2 first and for many years before I even tried the first game. I will probably get some shit thrown at me for saying this, but for me the humor of Fallout 2 was one of the things that made me love it so much. I also love how much variation it had in cities and areas to explore. I love Fallout 1 with all my heart, but once I played it I felt it was a bit too small and contrived. That said, the story and atmosphere is one of the best I have ever experienced in a game and I kick myself for not playing it first as I'm certain it would be on top of my list if I had.

New Vegas is great story-wise, with good humor, great characters and exploration, and especially a lot of room for roleplaying. Unfortunately it suffers from a horrible engine and pretty linear exploration (it simplty doesn't make any sense not to go the intended route, and the game never really feels like it opens up and lets you find all these awesome places to explore). Fallout 3 had a lame story, even lamer characters, cringe-worthy "humor" and next to no roleplaying at all. But what it lacks in those departments it makes up in atmosphere and exploration and I can definitely enjoy it from time to time. Still can't touch the top 3 games though.

Tactics is a game with good intentions but poor execution. I love that type of strategy gameplay, I love building my guys and purchasing equipment and going on missions. But there's just no freedom, it's extremely linear and it becomes very boring very fast.
 
Fallout Tactics > Fallout 2 > Fallout 1 or 3 > New Vegas

I love them all. Each one I've played 100-200 hours+ of but I have never been able to get myself to replay New Vegas again. While Tactics I have to play every year. i just love the storyline, setting and gameplay.
 
Like how their reasoning for 3 being the #2 spot was that lots of people played it and it was pretty fun to explore, not how it was a good Fallout game.
I get the feeling Tactics is what F3 wanted to be, it has the resident gritty anti hero cool guys (BOS) as the main faction fightin' super mutants, robots and raiders just the BOS are still dicks and I love them for it. Also ninja deathclaws are way better than tinfoil hat Enclave deathclaws.

Anywho 2 first for being the first game I played and still being one of the biggest games in scope, then 1 for being so damn well paced and tight in it's delivery.
Then either Tactics or NV, Tactics appeals to the isometric sprite graphics whore in me as well as the solid (well solider than Arcanums) combat engine and a story that felt Fallout crossed with a western plus robots. NV for being NV, great characterisation and verisimilitude let down by the engine.
3 for being 'aight and then FOBOS for being derp, judging by the wiki article and the Kodex LP.
 
New Vegas > F > F2 >>>>>>>>> F3 (The Pitt dlc was fine)

Why i choose NW for the winner? Because, i played it much more than the others. And i like modern games with more detailed models, weapons, voice acting, music. Despite the shitty engine, developers made an impressive work in New Vegas. I liked the storyline and dialogues too. And all of the DLC's are great. I will always remember Joshua Graham.

The classic comes the second. i've finished the game 2 or 3 times. I don't need to explain why this game is fantastic.

Unfortunately, i've never finished F2. It's a great game but i feel like i lost in the storyline. It has fantastic characters like Marcus. Dialogues were funny and there were funny details here and there.
 
I can't stand FPS fallout games. I tried both NV and F3, F3 just made me sick all the time and while NV was superior in every way i still couldn't finish it.

So for me it's 1 > 2 > FoT and the unfinished NV would be somewhere between 2 and FoT, because FoT is bad Fallout game while quite decent otherwise. F3 doesn't even exist for me anymore.
 
Hmm...which one helped me explore my sexuality most? And which one influenced how I see America? And which one caused me to think other people would want to hear about my sexual and cultural explorations? So many questions to answer before I broadcast my opinion on the net...
 
New Vegas Ultimate Edition > Fallout 2 > Fallout 1 > New Vegas Vanilla > Fallout 3

Fallout 1 is pretty amazing in the writing department, and that makes up for stuff like the horrible inventory and busted ending slides, but if you're comparing it to other games those things have to be taken into account. Fallout 2 is slightly less legendary than 1 in terms of plot, but more legendary in every other way. Fallout 3 is a fun first-person shooter with the Fallout brand name attached to it. New Vegas blends the Bethesda mechanics with great writing and world-building, and while it's buggier than F1 it's less unfinished feeling overall, and I end up saying 1 is better mainly because it was the first one. New Vegas Ultimate Edition is the best game I've ever played.
 
I have already vented my anger in the previous topic in the other forum, so I will just post my list here.

Fallout New Vegas - Fallout 1/Fallout 2 - Fallout Tactics - FOBOS (yes I rate it higher than Fallout 3 as it at least had a 'new' storyline instead of a rehash) - Fallout 3

Fallout 3 just feels so much like a generic Xbox shooter, only without any linear corridors, you go from one scripted scene to the next but with the pretense that there is freedom)
The side quests seem more like distractions from the main quest in general though some were indeed better than others.
 
For me:

New Vegs - Fallout 1 - Fallout 2------------------Fallout 3

I've never played either Tactics or FOBOS so I can't say anything about them.

But then again, top 10 lists + Kotaku, it's like the worst SFW things about the internet rolled up into one.
 
For me
2>Wasteland>Arcanum>NV>1
Fo1 rated low because other sequel of Fallouts are very awesome.
Fo1 is also a great game too.
Wasteland is simple game, even rule is somewhat strange compare with SPECIAL. but that simplicity doesn't matter since importatn thing is using proper skill to solve the problem which is the most important thing of Fallout series is very well designed.
I really love NV but it has some problem comes from beth's idiotic engine. for example, there's no way but choosing dialog to using skill to solve the problem, which means they have to give answer to player and it makes situation simple to solve.
For Arcanum, it has really good dialog and skill usage is not bad but too bad there's no other way but combat to use technology.( for magic there's one situation that you need to use magic to solve the mystery.)

Fo2 is rated high because it is liberate from Wasteland which Fo1 is copied(for plot, Fo1 is copied lots of part from Wasteland.) and contents increased and still quest design is good.

I don't count fo3 as a Fallout.
I rather choose STALKER. :lol: :lol:
just kidding.
for fo3
Morrowind>Daggerfall>>>>>>>>>>oblivion>>skyrim>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>fo3

Yeah... it's worst game of TES.
 
Anyone who ranks FO1 lower than FO3 doesn't even deserve the traffic of me reading their article. Feel free to like FO3, feel free to like FO3 better than New Vegas for whatever reason, but FO1 is simply better than FO3. Even the gameplay shortcomings in FO1 are ultimately not as bad as the ones in FO3.

FO1 has the best atmosphere and coherent storyline and locations of the entire franchise. It suffers from some system mechanics issues and UI faults but the most important aspect of the series (Decision making, storyline, problem solving, and moral ambiguity) are displayed at their best in FO1.

For me:
FO1 = FO2 - FNV - FO3 = Tactics - BOS.
 
Walpknut said:
Didn't know Arcanum was a Fallout game, Or Wasteland for that matter...
Click to expand...
Actually Fo1 isn't liberated game. it's very similar to remake of Wasteland with new rules. I rate higher Fo2 than Fo1 because it is liberated from Wasteland and upgraded form Fo1.

For Arcanum I consider it as a another sequel of Fallout.
I heard that Fallout wasn't intended to be series so it is able to make sequel without name of Fallout or post-apocalypse.
Many people don't agree with me though.

I rather these games as one of Fallout series than idiot fo3 :P
 
FO2 had solid gameplay mechanics and a much broader world, but it lost coherency, atmosphere, and most importantly, opened the way toward the kind of derp seen throughout Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

Gone are the days of Fallout team playing "Mad Max" on a loop, gone are the days of Tim Cain wanting to explore the ethics of a post-nuclear world instead of inventing another plasma gun.

Instead we got a universe which proudly displays vampires, children who withstand a direct nuclear blast, talking trees, insta-ghouls, The Matrix, apparitions, cowboy robot sheriffs, aliens...

Fallout universe has become a fifth-grader's idea of a sci-fi novel. An amusement park chock-full of every single thing that at some point someone thought to be "cool".

Fallout as a universe died with Fallout 2. Both Fallout 3 and New Vegas only took the derp further.

There's no value in Fallout IP anymore, unless someone reboots it and insists on staying within a coherent post-apocalyptic world. That would require a skill in writing and thought, however, which rules out Bethesda, and if New Vegas is anything to judge by, Obsidian as well.

mobucks said:
the only fallout game I ever beat was fallout 3.
Click to expand...

Then you beat no Fallout game.
 
Fallout and Fallout 2 will always be hard to rank because, as has surely been mentioned, their strengths are very different.

I played Fallout 2 first, because circumstances at the time didn't allow me to buy video games, so it just happened that I played 2 at a friends place before I had a chance to play 1, but I remembe being extremely hyped over 1 when I saw some gameplay on a television show SVT used to run about videogames. Fantastic that they don't do that anymore in this day and age, you'd think.

Anyway, therefore Fallout 2 will always have a special place in my thoughts. It's better in some ways, it's bigger obviously. It's better mechanically, no doubt. It might be a better computer game. But still, Fallout is clearly the better adventure, so to speak. Fallout for me is really a very, very good PnP RPG adventure that you play solo. It reminds me so much of the 80s PA PnP RPGs I re-played with my group about the time Fallout came out.

So, 1 > 2. Then there's a rather big gap to the others for me.

And then, I'll pull out the shocker Tactics > NV.

I guess I just really like Squad based tactical games. I always liked the turnbased combat in Fallout despite it really being more suited to a squad than one guy. Couple that with the nothing short of atrocious shooter parts of NV and 3, and Tactics is just barely more fun to me than NV. NV obviously has a story and setting that is miles better than Tactics, but it just manages to constantly annoy me by insisting on claiming that it is an FPS when that part of the game is easily it's weakest point, by far. I'd never re-play NV. It's just not fun to play, once you've experienced the story once.

And I guess I can't really claim BoS is better than 3, though I'd be tempted to. BoS is a stupid dungeon crawler, identical to one of those other games that came out at that time which had a fantasy setting instead, so I guess BoS and 3 have that in common as well, huh? It was mildly entertaining to play in co-op with a friend, but it obviously tarnishes the name more than anything else. But then again I reall have very little good to say about Fallout 3. The gameplay is shit, plain and simple. Any other shooter will provide you with better gunplay. Any other RPG will provide you with better writing. Exploring the wasteland seems pointless when all the locations are the same meaningless dungeons with no story whatever with a chest at the end, filled with generic ammo and very rarely a unique weapon. The places that do have story are just totally nonsensical or don't fit the setting at all. The main problem is perhaps that Bethesda didn't think an average post apocalyptic town would be interesting and that it'd have something special like a nuclear bomb, or two super heroes to be COOL! Whereas PA fans are probably more likely to want to explore the PA setting and think about what might actually happen if this happened in the real world. Not much of what happens in Fallout 3, I think.
 
Nicely put shihonage, totally agree. Fallout 1 has that something that makes the game timeless, Fallout 2 on the other hand, while entertaining and with interesting quests doesn't have such quality about it (FNV is even worse and F3 is shit). I'll never forget characters such as Aradesh, Master, Decker, Gizmo, Doc Morbid and his dwarf, Butch, Loxley (I think he's my all time favourite :D), etc. I don't remember many NPCs from other Fallouts though (the Enclave sergeant and that's about it). Cities were also less interesting even though they were bigger and you could do more quests. San Francisco was awful, Redding was awful, New Reno was awful (as a location, as a quest cluster it was very good). To be honest I don't remember such interesting location such as The Glow or The Hub or Boneyard or Junktown or Necropolis or... /IMO
 
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