Fallout Season 2 Episode 2 recap: 'Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter'

Please note: major spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 2! (Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios) (Image credit: Prime Video) (Image credit: Prime Video) (Image credit: Prime Video) (Image credit: Garry's Mod) I praised the continuing use of flashbacks in my Fallout Season 2 review, and this episode opens with a perfect example. We've seen Shady Sands at its peak in Lucy's memory, as she realized her childhood recollection of an idealized cornfield actually took place during the brief time she spent there with her mother, but now we get to see it through the eyes of young Maximus. He's the same age as he was in last season's flashback to the immediate aftermath of the bombing, so we know something's likely to go wrong even as we tour idyllic suburbs patrolled by NCR troopers-one in veteran ranger armor complete with duster and gas mask. Max's father hands his mother a jar of pure rad-free water (siphoned from Vault 33, which is how they came to Rose MacLean's attention in the first place), and Jo Stafford sings You Belong to Me. Everything's perfect. A little too perfect. Here it comes now: a caravan is led into town by a man repeating a phrase New Vegas players will know well. "Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter." He collapses, bleeding from the eyes, as Maximus and his father join the crowd gathering around him. Embedded in the back of the man's neck is one of the mind-control devices we saw last episode. Max's father investigates the caravan, revealing an atom bomb counting down. Sending young Max home, his father attempts to defuse the bomb but a failsafe activates, accompanied by a cheerful Vault Boy thumbs-up on the display. With only three minutes on the timer, he runs home to pack his son into the refrigerator and have a teary goodbye with his wife just as the explosion goes off. That Hank, what a prick. Doesn't he know how much time we spent helping Shady Sands get on its feet in the first game? I cleared a cave full of radscorpions for that town at low level, you absolute asshole. And here he is, receiving a "detonation successful" notification on his Pip-Boy then settling down to read The Wind in the Willows to young Lucy. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Like the first season, Fallout Season 2 sometimes goes a whole episode without checking in on one of its protagonists. The lack of Maximus in the previous episode is made up for here, and we see him in full power armor, now a knight of the Brotherhood, on a mission that involves taking down feral ghouls with detached efficiency. At the end of the mission Maximus recovers an artifact that Elder Cleric Quintus calls "the key to our new home" as he uses it to unearth...

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