It's Fallout Time Again

[Egon the Monkey]

Well, it's that time of year again. The time that I blow the dust off  some old discs and go back to that post-apocalyptic vision of yesterdays  future. Some people have a spring clean. I have a spring "Let's Play  Fallout 2 Again!". If you haven't heard of Fallout 1 and 2, then go and buy  them. Now. You will thank me. You can get them both for about £6 total  these days.

If you do posess these games though, I apologise for the  ramblings. I thought I'd share a few mods to the games that clear up the  bugs in them, make a couple of the weapons make more sense (lasers  being useful for one!) and best of all, add in several areas that were  never completed because Black Isle ran out of time. The Fallout games  are classics, but the patches and fan mods are a grind of pepper on an  already delicious bolognese of plot, dark humour, and Big Damn Guns. And  if you take the Bloody Mess Perk, a bolognese of dead enemies.

Fallout 1:
Unofficial bugfix patch
Mod to make NPCs level up and change tactics/armour

Fallout 2:
Unofficial bugfix patch
Weapons mod that makes AP ammo and lasers work properly.
Restoration Project mod. Adds in the incomplete areas, plots and dialogue.

Anyone else got some favourite mods for Fallout games?

[Aethereal]

Unfortunately I missed out on the series in its vogue. However I have been meaning to play Fallout 1 & 2 prior to moving onto Fallout 3: New Vegas.

With that said, I wonder. Keeping in mind that I have never played the game before, would you advise playing the original with only official patches to get a feel of the classic game or is it better to move straight on and apply the various mods and unofficial updates?

[Wafflecone_Hiatus]

It's really better to apply the community updates...

[NeonGlobule]

And it's time to give Cass' dad a heart attack with stims again...

[Egon the Monkey]

It's much better to apply the updates. Fallout 1 and 2 are gems, but buggy ones. The mods I linked are there to make it play how it really should. For example, Armor Piercing ammo always does less than Hollow Points, even against armored targets. The weapons mod fixes that.

None of these mods affect the game balance in any unexpected way, other than that one has an option to make ammo more rare. There's a lot more mods out there, but these are the ones that are effectively fan patches to fix strange things like the sniper rifle being coded to work as a machinegun.

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

Excellent stuff.  I've got fallout 2 myself here, on this laptop.  What I would REALLY like is an improved interface, as I find it awfully clunky, frustratingly so.

[Random_White_Guy]

My favorite Fallout Mod was this crossover with NWN.

Summary

This rundown town old townsurrounded by raiders and mutated mushroom monsters, the brotherhood of steel harvesting lost technology from a cataclysm of the past, slums where gangs fought for turf that made New Reno look like a 6 year old's tea party. A huddled mass of people attempting to eke out survival in an apcoalyptic wasteland where even leaving the local market could result in your swift and brutal death...

EFalloUt. It's why my silly self is still playing NWN.

Jokes aside (Escape from the Underdark as so fallout glorious) though Fallout 1&2 are epic. The Turnbased mode though is a gearshift to get used to if you havent played it in ages!

Also: Do not discount Fallout:Tactics. It's got some awesome stories and even a small multiplayer RP community (Though I don't know if it's still active)