Fallout Made Modern

We're not far off Fallout 3 release day, which means now's a fine time to revisit the first two games in the revered RPG series - whether it's to bring yourself up to speed with what went before, or to better prepare yourself to gripe that Bethesda have done terrible things to your childhood.

If you are pondering reinstalling one of the old dears, I can strongly recommend NMA chap Mash's excellent High Resolution Patch.

It's been around for a few months now, but I've only just gotten around to giving it a go. It's absolutely splendid. Admittedly, it's not quite as impressive as the Planescape/Baldur's Gate resolution mod, due to Fallout's locations being a little more barren and its environments employing what appears to be tilesets rather than the hand-painted splendour of the others. It is unquestionably great to play Fallout at native resolutions though, looking crisp and detailed rather than blocky and blurry. The interface copes well with the change too - playing at 1920x1200 some of the text was a little squinty, but not painfully so.

So, highly recommended, if not nigh-on essential. The difference a pin-sharp resolution makes to the Fallouts' sense of agedness is immense: they definitely feel a whole lot more contemporary this way.

Thanks to Iain and Anders for tipping us off to this a little while back. Oh, and I've not been able to successfully screenshot the game in Vista (imy grabs comes out all green and 'orrible), so I've nicked one taken by Mash himself for this post.