Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel is an 2004 action role-playing game developed and published by Interplay Entertainment and distributed in Europe by Avalon Interactive for the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. It was also the first in the franchise to be made for consoles, and the last to be made by Interplay during their initial run on the series, before they sold the rights to Bethesda Softworks.

Plot
The game takes place in Carbon, Texas, in the year 2208, 47 years after Fallout and 33 years before Fallout 2. The player character is called the "Initiate" and chooses to control one of three initial characters: Cain, Cyrus, or Nadia, all of whom have pledged their allegiances to the Brotherhood of Steel and have become initiates.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) A confusing and weak plot.
 * 2) * Along with its intro cutscene acting like a satirical, but weirdly desperate serious recruitment propaganda film for a very isolated post-apocalyptic faction like the aforementioned Brotherhood of Steel.
 * 3) ** Some clips of several cutscenes from the previous Fallout entries are also lazily used in the intro.
 * 4) The graphics are average at best, looking more like a 2000 launch title on the PS2. The framerate also struggles to be stable, mainly on the PlayStation 2 version.
 * 5) The game has nothing to do with the gameplay of the other Fallout titles, and it feels like a generic top-down shooter with Fallout style slapped to it.
 * 6) The skills don't actually do anything, making them pointless.
 * 7) It tries way too hard to be dark, gritty, and edgy, with mainly an unnecessary amount of profanity being used.
 * 8) Overuses a lot of toilet and other dirty humor, which isn't all that funny after a while.
 * 9) The soundtrack consists of instrumental heavy metal music from bands such as Slipknot, Skinlab, and Killswitch Engage that were popular with teenagers at the time, which completely goes against the retro aesthetic that the Fallout series is known for. The only exception is the main menu theme "A Nuclear Blast", which imitates the 1950s pop songs normally heard in Fallout games.
 * 10) The jumping feels wonky, especially when going from platform to platform.
 * 11) Absolutely no replay value whatsoever, as there are no collectibles or anything else.
 * 12) The game never gives you anything else to do, and there aren't any real sidequests, it just throws stuff at you like you're an idiot.
 * 13) There are lots of scantily clad women in the game for no apparent reason, since the game tries to be mature and edgy.
 * 14) Grating sound effects, especially for the weapons and enemies.
 * 15) The weapon descriptions try to be funny but simply fail at being hilarious.
 * 16) There's a ghoul (Cain, a former Necropolis resident and ex-follower of Set, the ghoul from the first two main games of the series) as a playable character, which is rather nonsensical and out-of-character for the entire faction since the Brotherhood has a bias against mutants or any unfortunate tragic ex-humans, regardless if their intelligence is still intact.
 * 17) * Speaking of playable characters, your other two playable characters aren't even born within the Brotherhood of Steel (Nadia was a semi-scavenger and Cyrus was a literal tribesman before joining them), making just as little sense, since the BoS back then was still the most isolationist faction besides the Enclave (which had no choice, due to extreme reactionary beliefs of "reviving" the old United States, though here the BoS is a little better than them, because while they don't allow outsiders to join them, they give offers if said outsider has proven themselves worthy) in the series.
 * 18) * Fallout Tactics already had the BoS recruit several random wastelanders to its ranks, mutants and deathclaws included. The BoS wasn't written as having a militant "anti-mutant" ideology before Fallout 4, in Fallout 1 and 3 they only fight super mutants because they pose a severe threat to everyone in the wastelands. So this is a debatable point.
 * 19) This game almost killed the entire Fallout franchise until Bethesda Softworks picked it up and came with their own Fallout 3 a few years later.
 * 20) * In fact, this game also killed off the developers, who were forced to scrap the initial plans for their own version of the original Fallout 3 which used the codename Van Buren during early game development.
 * 21) It's nothing more than a clone of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, just with everything that was Dungeons and Dragons replaced with Fallout.
 * 22) Insulting product placement. Fallout 's iconic drink Nuka-Cola got removed in favor of lesser-known real energy drink Bawls with a blatantly slapped retro-futuristic appearance on it for no justification of being there, other than promoting the drink.
 * 23) NPCs lack animations, which is especially noticeable during dialogues. The only exception is a boss of a game's raider gang - Jane, and even then it's just a looped idle animation that tries to make her look sexy with her boob physics.
 * 24) Level design is needlessly confusing in some areas, especially Vault 0.
 * 25) Towards the end of the campaign, the game becomes more unstable and glitchy.
 * 26) The lighting in some areas is horrendous, making navigation even more annoying.
 * 27) The game has suicide bomber enemies that are extremely annoying and deal tons of damage.
 * 28) The final boss regenerates health, so the game is made pretty much impossible if the player doesn't have enough ammo to kill the boss quickly.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Despite the problems with the intro. The intro itself is actually good, and it does fit the backstory of the franchise.
 * 2) The controls are pretty good, despite the poor jumping mechanics.
 * 3) Some of the weapons, while weak, can be really fun to use.
 * 4) Some of the voice acting is passable. The late Tony Jay (who voiced the Lieutenant from the first game) does a great job playing the Narrator and Attis, the final boss.
 * 5) It has an unexpected cameo of now old Vault Dweller (in this game he is known as Wasteland Stranger) from Fallout, despite the game taking place in post-apocalyptic Texas.
 * 6) This game has been declared by then-new owner Bethesda Softworks as officially non-canon from the whole franchise, with the exceptions of some ideas like allowing non-born members to join the Brotherhood of Steel, but only exclusively for the Eastern Brotherhood of Steel; which were reintroduced (but only for less radiated humans, and who were orphans before becoming as a Squire for the EBoS) in Fallout 3 and 4 as an example.
 * 7) While the game is a poor Fallout game, it can be enjoyable for (unironically of all places) the fans of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance due to the extremely similar gameplay.
 * 8) Playing in co-op with a friend can be fun.

Reception
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel received mixed reviews from critics, but mixed to negative reviews from fans alike (excepted for the Baldur's Gate fans as mentioned above), and is now widely considered the second-worst Fallout game after Fallout 76.

Because of this game's failure, Interplay had canceled many titles, such as Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance III, along with planned Fallout games including Extreme, Tactics 2, and most notably Van Buren. The cancellations, alongside a lawsuit from Snowblind Studios for stealing their engine, Interplay closed Black Isle Studios and sold the rights to Bethesda Softworks for them to make Fallout 3, and have since gone quiet.