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Open the vaults: the first two Fallouts return to Steam in high-res with Cloud saves

Fallout 1: do not expect to find any heroes in the Brotherhood of Steel.

Oh, the house Bethesda built for Fallout was good, very good. But it never did recreate the same junktown vibe of those ‘90s jaunts through the Wasteland with Black Isle.

Now the publishers have wrestled the last few rights to the series from Interplay’s remaining fingers, Fallouts 1, 2 and Tactics have come back to Steam with their skin still attached – and a few extra doo-dahs in their inventories.

These three are the Fallouts viewed from what we call the isometric perspective, though I’m sure an engineer would tell you otherwise. The first two are some of the best-loved RPGs ever made in the West, and are still oh-so playable today – thanks to a robust turn-based engine and an aesthetic that’s a bit Silver Age comic books.

The third is Fallout Tactics: made by a plucky Australian studio, defiantly non-canon, but by all accounts quite good.

They’re all available for $9.99 individually on Steam, or together – as Interplay had been selling them for years – at $19.99.

What’s new is save game compatibility with the Steam Cloud for all three games. And for Fallout 1 and 2, the option to launch either in Classic mode or Default, which allows for high resolutions.

Fallout Tactics doesn’t do high-res, and won’t run on Windows 8. But Bethesda assure us its multiplayer still works a treat via direct connect, so that’s something.

I’ve spent scores of hours with Fallout 1, but never fell in love with its direct sequel – Fallout 2, with its scattershot tone, identikit textures and extreme early difficulty. Think that was just me though, yeah?