Combat is turn based and tactical, which is one aspect (and an important one) Wasteland 2 gets right. There is plenty of terrain you can use to take cover from enemy fire as you advance, many times blocking line of sight AND line of effect from area splash damage. Abilities you’ve gained from leveling can be used in the battles, and eventually you become quite formidable. There is a stamina system where different actions have different costs and once you run out, that character’s turn is done. The combat’s initiative sequence is based on individual units, encouraging players to try and quickly kill the first enemy that can move in the turn sequence before it gets to act. Both melee and ranged combat are very well done, but the game has a tendency to throw ridiculous odds at you in some cases, especially early on when you’re led to believe you’re in an area performing quest objectives that align with your current strength levels. Permanent death is a very real thing here (although there are ways to prevent that from happening if you’re properly equipped and have the right group balance), so saving before any important interaction whenever possible is definitely recommended. Ammunition is a constant concern early on, although it can be scavenged well enough from the environments and after fights by looting corpses. Which, is how you’ll get most of the material you need to sell to vendors and craft weapon upgrades, provided you’ve leveled up at least one of your character’s abilities as a gunsmith.
Which brings me to character progression, which is very deep and offers a veritable megaton of customization options in order to create a highly specialized team capable of taking on any challenge, from fighting your way through a violent town to picking locks and disarming traps to get better loot and sneak into unauthorized areas. Other options allow for negotiating with vendors for lower prices, skills that can provide you with more dialogue options when interacting with NPCs, improved medical aid to characters afflicted with various status effects and so forth. This is a thoroughly detailed aspect of character building, but the levels don’t quite come fast enough for you to really enjoy the fruits of your labor. Not that it really matters, because improving the firearm skill of choice and upping some key skills such as repair, gunsmith and paramedic got me through most tight spots. And while a few areas were closed off to me due to being unable to hack or talk my way through a security measure, I never felt I was missing out on anything to adequately sample what the game had to offer. I couldn’t help but think that perhaps a less daunting skill tree might have been better, given the leveling pace and the types of obstacles you are tasked with facing.
I think my biggest gripe with Wasteland 2 has to be its interface, and it’s the prime reason I was never really engaged with the game as a whole. As I played, the greatest struggle I encountered was with the clunky and cluttered menu system, which I felt was doubly guilty of being both poorly arranged and boring to look at. I had to frequently click through dark, drab menus, character inventories, and skill trees devoid of any charm or nuance in order to get to where I wanted and the entire process felt tedious rather than compelling. If a game is going to bury me under piles of text, it had better find ways to make me enjoy the process and Wasteland 2 made no effort to do so. For as much time as you spend on micromanagement in this game, the presentation leaves a lot to be desired. It didn’t help that I found the color palette drab and offputting and the text unappealing and lacking any charm or unique character. And when I struggled through the copious verbiage of Wasteland 2’s many dialogues, I found myself losing interest not just because the content wasn’t interesting, but also due to the presentation lacking a hook. It was all so plain and functional and devoid of any joyous spark. Even the character art, while very nicely done, looks just like everything else I’ve ever seen in the post apocalyptic genre. Wasteland may have been one of the forefathers of this type of game, but it’s far too entrenched in the sensibilities of the past in terms of its presentation. This may be the first time a game ever lost me because of what a chore the bookkeeping turned out to be. In fact, overall the game’s graphics are capable, but nothing to really get too excited about. They fulfill the intended function of representing the characters and environments well enough, but it’s all very small on the screen and despite some nice attention to detail, it’s all lost on a tiny model set.
The world design makes good use of the concepts that make up the environment’s themes and ideas. Objects are well placed and the different maps are pretty well put together on a technical level, although I found myself having to backtrack through areas far too often for my liking, oftentimes being forced to take very circuitous routes just to get where I wanted to go. I don’t want a straight line path to get through a town or abandoned city, but I felt like it took too much time to investigate zones and would like for inXile not to make the same mistake when they revive The Bard’s Tale. Get me to the good stuff a little faster and in a more engaging fashion is what I’m trying to say.
The music isn’t very remarkable, being mostly dull and droning mood and atmospheric content that did nothing to liven up the experience for me. It doesn’t even seem to revel in what it is very much, preferring to stay in the background rather than become part of the overall experience. It never quite rises above the accompanying action and rarely adds anything to it. After a while, I found that playing with headphones on while I listened to music from my playlist, or even from other video games kept me invested in what was happening on my screen while playing Wasteland 2. That I was replacing the game’s soundtrack with my own selection is telling.
Overall, I’d say that I consider Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut a taxing experience. I know that there is a hardcore subculture of gamers out there that love games in this genre, and growing up with video games in the 1980s, I can say that I used to be one of them. In some cases, I still am, provided some new elements of engagement are implemented (the way dungeon crawlers from Japan handle it, for example). That being said, games that are as menu driven as this need to do more to interest me, especially in regards to character and inventory management, rather than testing my patience. I feel that the mechanics are solid in Wasteland 2, but the game doesn’t have much else going for it. The presentation isn’t very engrossing and the storyline is so inconsequential as to not even matter. One could argue that a game like this doesn’t require a strong narrative because, it’s aiming at a different target entirely, but if that’s the case why breathe so much life into the world’s lore and why recall so much of Wasteland’s history? I know that this game has largely received rave reviews, but I must question whether it’s because they simply prefer to see the game’s virtues and dismiss it’s flaws or, if it’s because the genre is so starved for content that the retro element is overpowering any sense of skepticism. I choose, however, to view the game through the lens of the present since it was released in the here and now. And it’s been proven that retro gaming can still appeal to modern audiences without having to be forgiven (Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge) for its ancestral flaws. As it stands, I am none too eager to revisit this wasteland any time soon, and really hope inXile does a better job with The Bard’s Tale.
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Review copy provided by inXile Games
