As a team of Desert Rangers, it's your job to restore order in this lawless post-apocalyptic landscape.
How you do it is up to you.
As a team of Desert Rangers, it's your job to restore order in this lawless post-apocalyptic landscape.
How you do it is up to you.
I will be honest here, and say that I was not aware of this game's existence until I saw it on the shelf at my local video game store, glanced briefly at the cover, before turning the case around and looking at the back. What I saw there blew me away! The graphics and gameplay reminded me of the X-COM series (one of my absolute favories), while the story seemed to be similar to the Fallout series (another one of my favorites). For me that sealed the deal right there, and I was willing to take a chance on a game that I had no concept of.
Wasteland was a 1988 tactical squad-based RPG set in an apocalyptic world. It was the first video game of its kind, and was part of the inspiration behind the original 1997 Fallout (so no wonder the story made me think of Fallout, but I had actually placed the wagon in front of the horse), and Wasteland 2 is a direct sequel that was crowdfunded through Kickstarter and released October 13, 2015 for PS4, XBox One and PC.
This is not the first time that classic games have been remade or re-imagined, or gotten sequels lately, but the common denominator have been that they have all been... well, crap, quite frankly, with very few games actually turning out decent.
Wasteland 2, I am happy to say, is brilliant! While I may have only scratched the surface so far, what I have seen is a story that is engaging and complex, solid game mechanics, and so many different ways to play that it makes the mind boggle. This is truly one of those games that lets everything be up to the player. Want to kill innocents? Go ahead. Can't pick a lock? Blow it up. Do you want to charm others into doing what you want? Or simply intimidate them? You can do all these things and more.
While I do not want to give away too much of the story, you play as a group of four Desert Rangers who are sent out to investigate the death of a fellow Ranger. As you might have guessed, things quickly escalate, and soon a much bigger threat looms in the distant, and it is up to you to take care of the problem. Along the way you can recruit other followers, who will assist you in different ways. However, only three followers can be in your party at any given time, the others will be waiting for you at the Ranger Headquarters. This means that you can easily swap them out to better fit your playing style or the mission at hand. Each one have different personalities, and some of them won't join your party if you are homicidal maniacs, for instance. But some might.
As you continue the story you will have to make difficult decisions, and people will die as a result of your actions. Every choice you make will directly impact the story and other quests, and combine this with a multitude of different skills, perks, weapons and equipment, and you have a game that is truly different every time you play it.