As Dame Shirley Bassey once famously bellowed, “It’s all just a little bit of history repeating”. And so it is with this week’s Epic Games Store giveaway of the Fallout Classic Collection, which Tim Sweeney previously wafted at storeshop visitors in December 2022 and February this year.
For those who didn’t grab it previously, the good news is there’s some neato stuff in the Fallout Classic Collection. You get, for instance, the game that started it all – Black Isle Studios’ original 1997 post-apocalyptic RPG, Fallout – plus its 1998 sequel. Both, of course, are bona fide classics, and Eurogamer sang their praises as part of a retrospective back in 2011.
“From the unrelentingly bleak, darkly ironic tone to the novelty of the open-world, post-apocalyptic setting,” Keza MacDonald wrote, “from the inspired, cerebral turn-based combat system to the immense degree of variety and personality in the character-customisation, the superbly-written quests and characters and the gallows humour that underpins the games without lessening their emotional impact, even the well-placed, gritty violence; there’s very little about the games that doesn’t command as much respect now as they did a decade ago.”
As for the Fallout Classic Collection’s third game, 2001’s Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, it’s less widely revered, but still solidly enjoyable, introducing squad-based combat action to the isometric wasteland of its illustrious RPG predecessors. That, though, isn’t quite everything Epic is giving away this week, and its full list of freebies looks something like this:
- Fallout 1
- Fallout 2
- Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel
- Wild Card Football
That last one, if it’s previously managed to pass you by (I, also, was unfamiliar), comes from Saber Interactive, and is described as a “fun pick-up-and-play arcade-style football game featuring 7v7 team-focused gameplay with the unique Wild Card system that lets you change the course of the action in an instant with special power-ups and rule-breaking abilities.”
Wild Card Football and the Fallout Classic Collection can be permanently added to your Epic Games Store library for zero pee right now until next Thursday, 5th September. At which point Football Manager 2024 and Sniper Ghost Warrior will stumble blinking into the freebie arena, waiting to be snapped up by curious hands.