The first Wasteland was published by Brian Fargo in 1988. The gameplay freedom and challenging battles in the post apocalyptic world were an example for games like Fallout.

 .

But what about Wasteland 2?

 .

A nuclear war has turned the world into an infested desert and destroyed the majority of our civilization.

The player plays the role of a Desert Rangers, who wants that law and order return to the desert. The player get his first mission from General Vargas. At his headquarter you receive the information, that The Rangers has been attacked by an unknown enemy. One of the Ranger was killed by a technically advanced robot. As a result the player has to travel right across the post-apocalyptic map of Arizona and has to look for tracks.  It takes a while till the main story gets exciting, but it is not boring until then.

 .

.

.

.

.

.

Wastelands gameplay focusses on decision making. At start players have to form a team of four rangers. You can choose from a variety of 29 different skills. But you must select them wisely. These skills define which strengths and weaknesses our troop will have. Really different classes do not exist in this game. It is possible to play the hacker as a Sniper, for example. In addition to our four rangers we can get also up to three companions in the further progress of the game. But lets get back to the decisions. All made decisions have consequences, and these decisions must be made in wasteland. Almost every Quest has different endings. For example: We have to deal with bandits which terrorizing the population in their Territory. A brief but bloody war could as well have serious consequences for the civilians, like to let the bandits continue their rule. Wasteland 2 often surprises us with consequences for our actions which are completely understandable but we haven’t thought about.

.

It was a pleasure to play it twice. It’s not possible to see everything on the first play and the second one passed in a completely different way. Well done!

 .

Unfortunately, the battles haven’t in the same quality as the game it self. The potentials are given, e.g.each weapon type has its own advantages. But it’s more about clever positioning. This doesn’t mean that battles are easy.These are usually very difficult and challenging. Ammunition for heavy-weapons such as the sniper rifle isn’t often available.

 .

We don’t want to say too much about the look of the game. Not contemporary graphic, low detail character models and simple effects through the whole game. But wasteland 2 is for old school fans just beautiful. Definitely the gameplay is more important than the graphics. And we like it that way. A great atmosphere is produced by well written dialogues, great matching soundtracks and fancy designed figures and areas. You can feel that the developers invested many hours to realize the beautifully written dialogues. Wasteland 2 is a first-class role-playing game, because it contains a mix of great quests and lovely made dialogues.

 .

Wasteland 2 is a role playing game where the player has to think about his next moves and we like that. You have to take decisions about your skill points, treffen, about the smartest way and about the decisions in quests to to succeed. Everything you do has impact on the game. We like the lovely made dialogues, but the battle-system could be much better. The AI isn’t amazing, but the game is still challenging. We think that fans of such classic games get a great old-school RPG for a fair price.

.

.

Tested and written by Pascal van der Meer & Marcel Krafczyk

.