Hope you have your hazard suit handy, because this game’s totally rad … -ioactive! Nyuk, nyuk.

Title: Fallout
Developed by: Black Isle Studios
Published by: Interplay
For: Windows
ESRB rating: Mature

Available for free now on GameTap, “Fallout” is a role-playing game set in a future world totally devastated by nuclear war. You take on the role of the Vault Dweller, a player-named and customized character who is sent out from his hardened underground home, Vault 13, to find a replacement chip for the Vault’s water purification system. This initial quest leads to a larger adventure that eventually sees the player facing a monstrous mutant bent on absorbing all the remaining life on the planet.

The graphics look primitive by today’s standards, but they’re effectively gritty, gross and grotesque as the scenario requires. The game is a mix of real-time and turn-based elements. When out of combat you uses the mouse to walk around freely, talking to survivors in their ramshackle villages in the wasteland, taking on quests and doing favors. When fighting a mutant scorpion or a shambling nuclear ghoul or something, you’re given a number of action points per combat round that are used to move, attack and use items and skills. Once they’re gone, you have to wait a bit for them to fill up again.

The game was a bit favorite about a decade ago. The second game is available on GameTap via its pay service, and with the third installment on the way later this month courtesy of Bethesda Softworks, makers of the dense “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” it’s a perfect time to revisit this classic.

(Image from MobyGames.com)