damn no review? Intersting... I didn't know this was aquired by 1C, but it's appropriate. It definitely doesnt have the granularity or control of 7.62 High Calibre or the enginne but it's quite nice all the same. I preordered this game somehow, it came to me with the bonus mission disc and pen and paper rules, and i belive a black felt bag of some kind.. I highly reccomend you locate this version if you seek to get a copy of this game. (hint: it's four discs/.isos) the PnP is no big deal but the bonus missions (there's two, though the second is a bit harder to find) is quite fun and amusing.

A lot of people dont like this one but I played this quite a bit, (I've played it about 4 times.) It's a very nice mix of several things. Basically it's an Xcom Fallout, with some of the kind of elements of RTT (real time tactics) and smart pause type systems you do in fact see in 1C games! a few criticisms come from both the fallout camp and the tactics camps. (If you've played FOnline reloaded this game plays pretty much llike it, but is smoother, and of course has none of the MMO elements.)

Commadning a squad of (i forget) 5-10 troopers of various races is pretty cool, you can get racial perk paths that are depended on stats. the whole char building system is built off fallout 2 with more perks and things added, but it works the same way. Whats nice is you can actually specialize a bit. Different races has mins and max special stats that go beyond the vanilla 0-10. This means You can say get a super mutant with lots of carry weight (str 13, and special persk) to carry the heavy gun, get a stealthy (high agility race) like a deathclaw or ghoul (not sure why they chose it but the ghouls are great snipers and scouts in this game) exploring the racial perk paths is very enjoyable. Suprisingly enough this hits the sweet spot for RPG elements (for my personally) and the game is ideal. What else is new? One of the skills is Piloting. Hence that implies you get vehicles in the game

TBT is kind of drawn out with a big squad like this. enemy ai can take a while to cook off as well (the maps are large and it scans the whole area) you have 100% control of your units, but really I vastly preferred playing with RTT option. You can set your troops to fire when their CTH (chance to hit) is at a certain threshold. This is pretty good design, there are a few bugs (and exploits!) you will discover with the RTT if you play this long enough. for example try exploring punch daggers with Torn or another high agility character. The punch daggers animation is very quick as it is unarmed and it costs a few AP so it recharagers fast in RTT mode You can spam attacks and kill defenelss enemies with this method. It's an easy way to clear the second mission with mostly one unit.

traps are fun, sometimes its not worth it but you can sneak>trap doorways and things by mining a corridor then throwing a grenade down it after baiting some enemies to run after you by unsneaking. you can aslo hit mines with burst fire. Indirect and supressive fire is quite useful indeed, especially with some of the bigger weapons that have high AP characteristics....

i've a lot of respect for this game. they took the basic idea threw in some things and mixed it with xcom elements and did it really well. they didnt mar the basic of fallout either. There's even random Encounters! :D unfortunately this game does not have the in depth questing or dialogue (there is some, and you can talk some fights out but mostly its a pure combat oriented approach) It's well worth checking out if you like games like it. Wasteland 2 plays a bit like this in the sense you go to a location and you do things there. Has a similiar feel too even. I like the approach of FT more than wastleand 2 actually.

Grinding and levelling is kind of a balance/bottleneck. It's kind of such that new chars you pick up are disadvnatge becase you didnt pick their perks and they are already levelled. you also obviously dont want to lose troops and rebuild from reserves for this reason. And finally you get most xp rewards on the missions rather than cruising around in the wasteland. These factors lead to some pragmatic constrainments when picking your party. I would say this is the biggest flaw in the game.

a few tricks: the two bonus missions recruitable vaultboy 2 ap/short anim spam attacks driving with wheel in left hand, rifle in right hand, and rifle selected (driver can fire) having everyone in cars go prone to get better accuracy XD storing ammo and stuff in lockers in your bases and cars. auto attack >33% bursting with AK47 from the hummer can solve almost any problem, and the ammo is very plentfiul (dont sell it!) the crazy stuff you can do with some special ammos Stitch with a shotgun platform, harold with a sniper, torn (or a few others) as a sneaky melee asssin.

For me, it's a perfect mix of things, aside from a few games like UFO Afterlight and 7.62 High Calibre nothing quite gets it right to my liking but FT hit the sweet spot for me.