am i the only one who was totally lost on how to play fallout 1

rofl im too use to FPS's

lol no, I died and I haven't touched it since

Old school RPGs can take a little getting used to, but are worth the effort.

It's probably because this game comes from an era when game manuals were supposed to be read.
-I do like it better now when everything you need to know is often mentioned within the game... but that was not the case back then.

The F1 and F2 manuals are great. I would feel shame if I didn't understand them. Did you read the manual at all?

That's one of the major problems of this day and age, everything has been dumbed down to a 1 minute lecture. A game like "Imperialism" was great, since if you did not read the manual, you basically were totally lost, and [censored] out of luck!

The first time I played Fallout I thought until the very end that you had to equip stimpacks to use them in combat. Also I never found out what FEV was.

Ever heard of a thing called "manual"?

This was in 2008 so if there was a manual it was some pdf somewhere I wouldnt bother to look

RTFM.

Isnt that the book about the spannish guy?

That's not really it. Data storage mediums have progressed to the point where it's more economical to put information in-game as a tutorial or help document than to print it on paper. It's mostly a cost saving method, but it has the added benefit of increasing player immersion.

Actually, in-game characters talking about game mechanics decrease immersion for me.

I don't think that including all necessary info in a game is directly related to it's complexity + I wasn't referring to the tutorial only. Example: Drakensang - that game is as complex as you would expect a true RPG to be (far more so than FO1 in many aspects) but for every little button there will be a text in a window explaining exactly what it does. That's not 'dumbing it down' it's simple usability. The interface is one thing that has undoubtedly improved through the years. (even if dodgy console ports keep dragging it down) Pretty much every game I can think of lately has that kind of feature (I just mentioned the most complicated one I could think of)

I hate the fact that most games will insist on giving me an extensive tutorial, even if I choose not to go through the tutorial system they've implemented.

I can understand a gradual increase in difficulty, but some games take it to the point where the decent weaponry, enemies or game mechanics don't crop up until just before the end of the game. Not a fan of that.

Narrator: Push the B button
Mario: What do you mean?
Narrator: If there's a creature from some different dimension watching us, It will understand what I'm talking about

:)

Like has been said, Fallout 1 came out before in-game tutorials were a standardized element - the game starts off with the assumption that you'd taken the time to at least scan through the manual before booting up the game. Fallout 2 took a little bit more of a step - the purpose of the Temple of Trials being to acclimate the player to the concepts that will be used throughout the rest of the game (and also to test out various character builds - if you can't make it out of the Temple in one piece, chances are you're going to have a lot of trouble keeping that character alive through the rest of the game.)

Plus, I've always found Fallout 1 and 2 to be particularly difficult games, at times. These are from an era of game design that had no trouble killing off your character, or leaving you in impossible situations that necessitated reloading (or even restarting) to a much earlier save point. (Anyone who's played some of the old Sierra point-and-click adventures and had to restart because they forgot to pick up that stick at the beginning of the game knows what I'm talking about...)

Anyway, it's not for everyone. I have a number of friends that I recommended Fallout 3 to, because I knew they'd very much enjoy playing it; but who I'd never suggest play the old Fallouts because I know they simply wouldn't have as much fun with them as I did. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and I think that's perfectly fine.

This is not always the case. You have to admit that those game companies who go the extra mile to toss in a well-designed, durable manual deserve some credit. Especially in the case of Fallout 1 and 2 where some sections are written in-character, as a Vault-Tec guide to survival and the Vault Dweller's memoirs, respectively. Oh, then there's also the days when nice other goodies such as maps and figurines used to come with the regular edition of the game, not some overpriced collector's edition that gets me a flimsy art book or a soundtrack CD that I could've burned myself using the files from the game.

That is to say, I prefer to cuddle up at night with a fresh new game manual and read the entire thing, drool at the images, et cetera, rather than sit through a monotonous tutorial or anything of the sort. As stated by several after your post, I feel that ingame help is really immersion-breaking. Yes, there may be some games where it's nice when an NPC tells you how to use this awesome new experimental weapon they've been working on, but at the same time, I think my character should already know how to initiate combat on their own, and they should expect me to know how to tell them to initiate combat.

No your not alone.Took me 5 try's to get my character right before i got the water chip.

Even though i didn't get the things right i still enjoyed it.

Glad i kept remaking characters because it helped me get past the glow.

If only Infocom still existed today....

Maybe because the manuals are hundreds of pages long and would be very expensive to print

*misses Infocom and their pretty packaging and trinkets* You can find most of the games online though.

I struggled with fallout 1, and gave up. It's extremely easy to be scathing of that but as I wasn't even aware there was a manual I had to read- as I bought it second hand- I found it really hard.

It was that sort of attitude that meant I really struggled to get into gaming when I was younger. 'Here, we're going to make this really awesome game, but you're going to need to read the manual to play it and everyone will be rude to you if you admit you're struggling'.

If I can tracik down the manual in pdf I'll give it another go, perhaps. I just never enjoyed reading game manuals. If I'm going to read a couple of hundred pages I'd rather it was an actual book than something I have to read to play a game.

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/dload.php?action=file&file_id=33&sid=fc0cb877a4cac376f11a2aeac8cff23f
Read it - it's pretty entertaining.

Thankfully back when reading manuals was a necessity the writers would often try to make it so it would be part of the game's fun. They were often far more entertaining that today's in-game tutorials. The manual of FO1 is one of the good ones.

Cool. I got jaded after reading one too many seriously dull ones.