The first game to catch my eye was Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.  Anyone familiar with the Fallout series of games knows this is considered the bastard child of the series, but don’t rule it out just because it doesn’t live up to its predecessors.  A lot of games don’t actually.  Now, it is by no means as deep as the original but turns out to be every bit as entertaining.  First off, the similarities are obvious.   Being a Fallout game it takes place in the same universe and captures the same tone.  Like the original it’s full of crass humor and is one of the few games to drop the f-bomb repeatedly and shamelessly.  There is absolutely no question upon pressing the power button that you have entered the Fallout universe.  It even shares the point of view, but employs a closer version of the ‘over the head 3rd person camera’.  The advantage here being the zoomed in viewpoint tend to help capture the actions of your character during combat. 

The key difference between this and its PC counterparts is the genre of the game.  The PC Fallout is a role playing game.  Although Brotherhood of Steel employs some surface role playing elements it is without a doubt an action game.  If you’ve ever played Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance you know exactly what to expect.  Where you once picked your target and attacked in a turn base role playing type style you now target and

unleash your weapon of choice as fast as you can hit the X button. 

Individual character stats are still present but are much more basic and don’t require much thought as your character now basically has one goal: kick as much ass as possible.  And ass you will kick.  Initially you pick one of the three ready made characters and set out to join the Brotherhood of Steel, a group of mercenaries that are cleaning up the wasteland one mutant at a time.  There’s also a rather nice selection of weapons to do aforementioned ass kicking with ranging from clubs to plasma guns, and they are all a literal blast to use.

Add all this up, plus being part of the Fallout series, and you’ve got a game worth a review.  It’s well done, sports some nice graphics, good sound, and has no technical issues to speak of.  But what really makes your ten George Washington’s worth spending is simply how much fun it is.  You can go at it co-op or single player.  Either way dungeon crawling with shotguns ready is just a blast.  Sure… some Fallout fanboys will sneer at me because it’s not ‘The Fallout’ game they have been drooling for since the original.  But fanboys be dammed!  They are the gaming world’s equivalent of literary snobs, and the true gamer should be able to appreciate every attempt to bring us a game set in one of the best worlds the industry has created to date (unless of course... said incarnation just plain sucks… which

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel does not). As for my ten dollars, I’m not looking for perfection just some quality fun.  Trust me when I tell you, you’ll have plenty of that here.

Advent Rising is the second bit of quality budget fun I discovered.  This game was released to critical dismay in 2005 and many, myself included, avoided it for this reason.  Where there had been so much hype there was disappointment in the flawed implementation of some great ideas.  After taking a chance on it though I can happily report it is flawed but not nearly enough to damn it to Bad Game Hell. 

First, the good points:  It’s great fun.  There are some seriously cool levels filled with enjoyable moments and some tense action.  There were multiple times I would come out of a fight, life critical, gun empty, and sweat on my brow.  It also has a fantastic story that was penned by celebrated science fiction author Orson Scott Card and is an original tale that does an excellent job of keeping you interested enough to drive you to continue.   The games presentation is beautiful too.  There are huge environments, mass amounts of space filled with gigantic warships, and pretty nifty interior sets as well all done up with a quality graphics engine.   You get a slight feeling reminiscent of Halo at times but it’s excusable.  They also decided on destructible environments, which always add a bit of enjoyment to the experience. 

The game-play itself is also solid. Your character wields dual weapons that are controlled via the triggers that make for some great combinations.  As you progress your character gains powers that you can assign to one of your hands too.  My favorite combination was the Surge power in one hand, a massive energy push that would blow up half the environment and send my enemies flying away from me, and one of the various badass machine guns in my other.  The dual weapon set-up really gives you the

advantage you need to take on the nearly overwhelming odds that you face through most of the game.   As Gideon, one of the last humans, you constantly face hordes of the aliens known as Seekers who just so happen to be responsible for eradicating your species (as well as messing up intergalactic politics to boot).  The Seekers present a variety of enemies for you to wallop and it keeps the experience fresh.  There are also a variety of vehicles you pilot, ranging from an alien tank to a dune-buggy type vehicle.  The developers used the exact same control scheme as Halo’s Warthog here but it’s a solid way to do things so I’m not complaining.  

eye as well.  There is some serious frame skipping which is disappointing to see, especially on XBOX.   This is related to some slowed down gameplay, occasional but annoying enough to note.   It was also the slightest bit repetitive but this is something most action games suffer from so it’s easy to forgive.

Overall though, it’s a great game though and well worth your ten bucks.  If you’re familiar with The Talking Crow you know that we have no greater respect than for quality entertainment which is made by people who are obviously genre fans.  That’s the feeling I got when playing Advent Rising.  I could tell the guys behind it are sci-fi geeks who really did care about what they were producing.  The majority of the games issues seem to be a product of a rushed release, which if I’m recalling correctly, was exactly the situation with this game.  In the end, I can forgive some glitches because I truly did enjoy the time I spent playing Advent Rising through to the very end.

So there you have it: the first Video Game Bargain Bin selections.  Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a fun dungeon crawler set in a post apocalyptic world; and Advent Rising, an original sci-fi action title with a lot of fun tricks up its sleeve.   Neither of these is a perfect 10 like Resident Evil 4, but on the flip side both of them together will only cost about what a decent twelve-pack of beer does.  So try them out when you have an opportunity.  I guarantee you’ll enjoy yourself, and if you don’t like at least one of these bargain titles I got a twelve-pack with your name on it.

Max - out!