'Fallout Tactics' Puts Eager Grunts to Work

By AARON CURTISS

May 10, 2001 12 AM PT

aaron.curtiss@latimes.com

The end of the world, as it turns out, ain’t all that bad.

“Fallout Tactics,” which takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, is a wonderful squad-based combat game for the PC that puts players right in the thick of battle. Succeeding at “Fallout Tactics” requires stealth, cunning and no small amount of nerve.

The game begins far in the future as a splinter group of the Brotherhood of Steel crashes its airship in what used to be Chicago. Desperate for more muscle, these futuristic soldiers recruit from the ragtag villages that survived the holocaust.

That’s how players get into the game--as eager grunts keen to show the Brotherhood that they can fight. But it’s not easy. The missions in “Fallout Tactics” require concentration and strategic thinking as players try to keep their squads alive.

Unlike real-time strategy games, there’s no base-building in “Fallout Tactics.” It’s all combat, baby. Players get missions, assemble their squads and then figure out the best way to accomplish as many objectives as possible.

Once a mission begins, players have enormous control over the various members of a squad. Characters can run, walk, crouch and crawl as they explore the lavishly detailed terrain. Weapons can be swapped on the fly and supplies can be shared among the entire group. So if someone gets nailed, players can dispatch the guy with the first-aid kit to help out.

Players unfamiliar with the “Fallout” universe and its idiosyncrasies may need a while to get used to the game’s systems. The default mode features play that’s most like many familiar games such as “StarCraft” in that players can command the individuals in their squad to do many things at once. The original “Fallout” series relied on turn-based action that sometimes grew tedious.

But that’s not a worry in “Fallout Tactics.” In addition to straightforward combat, the game requires players to make friends and influence people so that they, too, support the Brotherhood of Steel. Sometimes that means playing nice and sometimes it means showing the peasants who’s boss.

For those unsatisfied with just blasting computer-generated enemies, the game has a nice multi-player engine that allows as many as 18 players to meet in combat over the Internet, a local area network or in direct modem-to-modem play.

Very little has been left out of “Fallout Tactics”--hence the game’s 1.2-gigabyte space grab for even a medium installation--and serious players should find very little to grouse about.

‘Star Wars Super Bombad Racing’

Last weekend I actually had plenty to grouse about, having been in a car accident that turned my car into a twisted hunk of steel. Oddly enough, getting sideswiped wasn’t the low point of the weekend. Playing “Star Wars Super Bombad Racing” for Sony PlayStation 2 was.

Essentially a go-cart-style racing game set in the “Star Wars: Episode I” universe, “Super Bombad Racing” lets players control characters from “The Phantom Menace”--from Jar Jar Binks to Yoda--as they race ships across Naboo, Tatooine and Coruscant.

But true to the visual style of cart racers, every character in “Super Bombad Racing” has an enormously oversized head. They don’t so much fly the various ships as ride them. See, the craft are so miniaturized that even Darth Maul’s normally big Sith Infiltrator seems no larger than a Vespa.

The result: a bunch of cutesy characters who look like they got their heads stuck in a fisheye lens scooting around on minuscule spaceships.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with extending a brand as popular as “Star Wars.” LucasArts Entertainment has done it dozens of times with relatively consistent success.

But “Super Bombad Racing” is a joke.

It plays even simpler than it looks, despite efforts by the design team to spice up things by giving each character unique secret weapons and styles of racing. Even there, the action aims for the lowest common denominator. Jar Jar, for instance, can use his tongue to slingshot past another racer, and Boss Nass can inflict damage with spit spray.

As with most cart racers, power-ups are scattered across the relatively easy courses. “Super Bombad Racing” does feature a nice array of gadgets--from speed boosts to a probe droid that tracks down racers in the lead and tries to knock them out.

It’s not enough. “Super Bombad Racing” is clearly a game designed for kids. And maybe the same tykes who thought Jar Jar was the real star of “The Phantom Menace” will find the same sort of mindless appeal in “Super Bombad Racing.”

But there’s nothing in the game for anyone older than 6.

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The Skinny

“Fallout Tactics”

Genre: Real-time strategy

Price: $45

Platform: PC

System requirements: Pentium 266 with 64 MB of RAM

Publisher: Interplay

ESRB* rating: Mature

The good: Great detail

The bad: Super-hard missions