Be Prepared!

                      By Nick Edmunds

Sue's editorial regarding missing sections in the Baldur's Gate
manual (issue 59) struck a particularly resonant chord with me, as
it is relevant to my current gripe.  A gripe which, as ever, I am
loathe to suffer quietly.

I've recently been playing Fallout 2, coincidentally also by
Interplay.  This is a truly wonderful game, a masterpiece of a
contemporary adventure, a sort of role-play for people with no
mates. In short Fallout 2 seemed right up my boulevard.

Anyway...  somewhile into slaughtering drug addicts and
splattering mutants spines out in the radioactive future the
little quirks in gameplay began compounding themselves to such an
extent that I felt an explanation was in order. So off I trundled
to the Interplay website, where I found a patch to fix just about
every quibble I had with the post-apocalyptic gameplay.

However, all was not as straightforward as this Chosen One had
anticipated.  Turns out patching to version 1.02 meant game saves
from any previous versions were redundant.  Even worse, further
investigation revealed that some of the annoying niggles I was
experiencing were in fact major flaws.  Flaws to the extent that I
would be unable to finish the game without the patch.

This left me with somewhat of a dilemma: start from scratch or
don't finish. At this point my character was on level 18.  After
much soul searching, coloured by the atrocities committed upon my
person by a large mutant named Francis, I decided to start afresh.

As the industry's increasing need to release titles before they
become technologically dated combines with the trend for software
in general becoming larger and more complicated, it would appear
that patches are to be the way of the future. The moral is clear-
check for updates, patches, and fixes, if not before commencing,
then as soon as anything appears to be acting up.

Thus the only hope for the consumer, and perhaps even mankind
itself, is to learn from my anguish.  Oh, and watch out for
Francis - he's a bad'un.
















                              - o -