Game Review: Wasteland
Today’s game review is on:
By Interplay
Being the glorious and wondrous person that I am I have deigned to play and “review” this game in light of the recent release of Wasteland to the ignorant masses to prepare them for the second coming. However, I did not play the actual re-released version because it had a fucking annoying bug in it that made the game go wonky when you tried to use the clone pods and that is clearly unacceptable for reasons you’ll discover later. Otherwise there really is no difference between them save for out of place enhanced portraits for all the encounters, built in paragraphs for easy access with sub par narration for people who can’t read and a single music track from Wasteland 2 that loops over and over and over and over and over and over.
But before we start lets drag this thing out longer than it needs to be with a little background, Wasteland was originally released for the shitty Apple II and then ported over to the superior Commodore 64 before finally being rebuilt from the ground up for the PC in 1988. Wasteland featured a world that actually reacted to your actions, at least a great deal more than any game before it did. Wasteland also recorded changes made to each area as you moved about creating permanency instead of the typical “murder everyone in town for xp and loot and then do it all over again” which was common for RPGs of the era. If you’ve read my earlier reviews on Ultima you know that. One other lovable feature was the fact that once characters died, they were dead, forever. This was especially great if you left the area without noticing they were dead thereby saving the game and screwing yourself over. Wasteland’s contribution to RPGs and gaming in general can’t be overstated and blah blah blah let’s get on with this…
In the beginning…
War, war never changes, but it can be condensed into an easy to read nutshell: The world ended in 1998 because hey, why the hell not? It’s not exactly known who threw the first ICBM, but it hardly matters now. However, what does matter is that while the rest of the world was playing global thermonuclear war there was a group of military engineers in the California desert testing out ways to build bridges or some nonsense like that so they missed out on all the fun. After some time these engineers with their fancy university educations deduced that they wouldn’t live very long just wandering around in the irradiated desert with nothing but bridges to eat so they invaded the nearby supermax and threw all the prisoners out. Sometime after that it came to the attention of the engineers that survivalist wackos (the good kind) were living in the area so they asked them to move in.
Jump ahead awhile and now they call themselves “Desert Rangers” because it sounds a lot better than “A bunch of military engineer nerds and survivalists wackos”. Basically they’re like the do-gooder faction of the Northern California/Nevada area. Poking their noses in where it doesn’t belong and all that sort of thing…
Now, it is beginning of a fantastic story!! Let’s make a journey to the cave of Highpool! But first we gotta get rid of these shitty characters.
Enter a pointless name
Pick a pointless nationality.
But don’t pick pointless skills because they cost points and there’s an awful lot of pointless ones.
There! Our intrepid group of rangers are ready to traverse the deadly wasteland and make a mockery of the intended linear path of the game!
The first stop on the list is Highpool because it’s the closest and it makes me happy.
Gameplay
Wasteland is played in a two dimensional “tiled” setup as were a lot of games of the day that weren’t 3d dungeon crawlers. The world is divided between a standard overworld map with smaller maps representing towns and “dungeons”. The interface consists of the main view (duh!) the popup roster on the bottom, the title on the right hand side just in case you forget what you’re playing and the radiation level counter is just below that for those of you who actually remember to get a Geiger counter.
Combat is heavily based on Interplay’s tried and true Bard’s Tale system where combatants go in turns, but stats don’t play as heavily into Wasteland as they do in Bard’s Tale. The only stat a group of shooters needs is high dexterity while brawlers need strength and luck and possibly agility.
Everyone needs a high starting constitution because you’re an idiot if you waste skill points trying to raise it in a normally played game and IQ since skill points are gained by levels, but actual skills are learned at libraries dotted about the wasteland; if a character’s IQ is too low they’ll never gain the vital skills needed to finish the game and that would be BAD.
See? It’s a pool surrounded by high mountains and that’s why it’s called Highpool, pretty clever!
Oh boy! I bet if we help these people with this list they’ll reward us with stuff, because that’s how people roll in post apocalyptic America!
I’m breaking and entering, what’s it look like asshole?
If they’re enraged about me picking the lock on a door wait till they see what we do next.
The first battle of the game and we’ve already beaten some children to death with our bare hands, this is going to be awesome!
This is Bobby.
Bobby has a sick dog.
Sure kid, whatever.
Isn’t this exciting?!
And here’s Bobby’s sick dog. We did the humane thing it put it out of its misery.
Here’s Jackie.
Here’s Bobby again.
We did the humane thing and put him out of our misery.
Then we proceeded to give Jackie the boot, because she’s completely useless. After murdering children in Highpool we set out for the Ag Center due west.
Closer now, you can hear the conversation of the men you saw when
you came in. There is a short silence after each man voices his
thoughts. They speak of varmints who are impossible to kill. The
varmints are stealing their food faster than ever before and they
seem to be massing for a major attack. The simple weapons of the
farmers are not enough to stop them. They have no idea what to do.
One of them jumps as he notices you and they all turn to face you.
A stocky man they call Miguel approaches.
Classic gaming promotes literacy!
Most of the plot is revealed in the form of paragraphs included in a book with the game which no one has anymore because they all keep fucking stealing it off oldwarez sites like the scum they are, but a text file or PDF is usually included so so much for THAT form of copy protection! One of the more amusing things about the paragraph book are the fake entires with fake codes designed to fuck you up if you try to use them because Interplay knew you’d try to cheat, even twenty years later.
In the shadow of an enormous satellite tracking dish stands the
old man. Over 100 years old, he is still vigorous and bright of
eye, although he rambles incoherently at times. The farmers remove
their hats as they approach and wait for him to speak. Frowning,
deep in thought, he stares at what appear to be the remains of a
15-foot tall carrot. He holds a long shaft of broken metal in one
hand and mumbles something about wascally wabbits that he had to
beat away with his best rake.
One minute you’re standing around listening to farmers bitch about their problems, the next a fucking psycho farmer with an axe and a fetish for bunnies is trying to murder you in his field, this game is awesome!
Harry is about to have a bad day.
Yeah yeah whatever, where’s the loot?
Not particularly, but what the hell.
I’m so glad we risked life and limb for this.
The diary talks about the last days during which the satellite
facility was operating. “Las Vegas is still intact. Needles wasn’t
damaged by bombs, but some flooding occurred when the river level
rose. Quartz suffered a lot of damage.” In hurried script, the
last diary entry reads, “We’re abandoning the satellite
installation so we can join the farmers out at the Ag Station.
We’ve deactivated the alarms and electronic countermeasures that
protect this place.”
Not much else to be said. After stealing most of their fruit and selling it back to them for a profit it was time to hit up the Rail Nomads.
You have come upon the rail-nomads’ camp. Ornery looking longhorn
cattle wander among dusty tents, from which sullen faces peer. In
the background, a ramshackle collection of railroad cars, attached
with wood, hide, and an odd piece of corrugated aluminum, sits on
a rail siding. Two of the cars, the locomotive at the front and
the caboose at the rear, appear to be in better condition than the
theirs. As you approach, a strained silence falls over the camp
and you grow uncomfortable under the collective gaze of the
assembled nomads. Finally, one of the nomads steps forward.
“Welcome, rangers. I am the Brakeman of this train. I would be
honored if you would visit with me in the caboose before leaving
our camp. In the meantime, please accept our hospitality.” The
Brakeman turns and strides back into the camp.
After paying actual money, a whole fucking 500 dollars worth for an engine, we came back to Highpool to repair their broken water purifier and you’d know that if you’d been following along!
See? People in the post Apocalypse are really generous. I never did bother to go back to the Rail Nomads though.
Next stop
You know the Guardians to be strange collectors of old items and
as xenophobic fools who would not hesitate to kill strangers
without ever seeing the whites of their eyes. You’ve teamed that
the flags are in place to mark the closest an outsider may
approach the walls without being attacked.
Yeah, fuck that.
We decided it would be a good idea to take a tour of downtown Needles instead of heading to Quartz which would have been the next logical step on our journey.
This is Christina
This is Christina’s Uzi
This is me and Christina’s Uzi going to Darwin located in the northeast section of the map.
This is me and Christina’s Uzi telling the guards at the black-market what they can go do with themselves.
This is me and Christina’s Uzi explaining our plight to the black market guards.
However it’s all too clear now that they only thing they’ll respond to is Christina’s Uzi
Now Christina’s Uzi has some new friends to play with!
And now that we no longer have the stupid guards harassing us for the password every 5 seconds we are free to shop to our hearts content!
So after grabbing some ammo for our newly donated Uzis we decided to head back to downtown Needles to do a little community service.
Like cleaning up a little of the junk in the alley.
A LOT of junk actually.
Time to take out the trash.
Oh c’mon! you didn’t really think I was here to clean up the mean streets of crime city did you?!
Killing things is the way to get ahead in this man’s army.
Then we played in the sand for awhile and made sand castles to celebrate our promotions!
Which lead to even more promotions!
Shit.
We decided to visit the famous Needles toxic waste pit.
This is a place you can take the kids for the weekend.
These fucking doors won’t open to anything but explosives because they’re dicks like that.
Oh no!
My AK 97 is so fucking scared of you!
Wow! The way I play this game you’d swear I knew something about it!
Now that we’re about five times more heavily armed than the game intended us to be at this point let’s head back to Quartz.
A rifle! Well that’s it then, we’re all dead.
In the future people will listen to 80s punk bands and attempt to murder you for the privilege to do so.
What may seem like pointless graffiti to the ignorant (you) is actually a vital clue!
Premonition! DUN DUN DUN!
CDEDBD Ducks?
Aww yeah! I’m gonna score!
Well fuck em if they don’t wanna see the truffle shuffle!
Everyone in this bar is so violent.
Maybe they do wanna see the truffle shuffle.
Good one, stupid.
You don’t even want to know what we had to do.
Soon we became bored with killing punk rockers and bar employees so we proceeded to desecrate the local graveyard, like any true heroes would.
Who the fuck said “I want to be buried with my favorite toaster when I die”?
He’s pretty lively for a dead guy.
But enough violating the dead, it’s time for my date.
Why do these things always end in violence?
Not likely and now I can add trespassing along with another murder to my ever growing list of crimes.
I would say that rigging the safe with explosives may have been overdoing it on the security a little, but since I just killed him…
In fact, booby trapped shit is a pretty common theme in this game.
It’s amazing this inn has any tenants at all considering how hostile everyone is.
This better not be where I was suppose to meet Ellen.
TODO: Insert witty caption.
You may be a little late for that and again people getting all angry and shit!
I am seriously beginning to wonder if finding Ellen is worth all the trouble at this point.
At last! Now to score!
Woah! Wait what? Nobody said anything about crippled chicks.
I’m so glad I agreed to all of this.
Welcome to the Stagecoach Inn where we randomly booby trap the fucking beds with explosives!
Clerks with rabid dogs, filthy bums, stupid writers, crazy psychos, this town doesn’t need saving, it needs to be burnt to the ground.
There’s two types of bums in Wasteland, the killable kind and the indestructible kind.
Fortunately indestructible bums are usually pacified with Snake Squeezeins, always have a few around.
Ahead of our intrepid band of rangers lies the secret passage into the courthouse where the useless mayor is being held hostage!
Will they rescue the mayor?
Will they free the town?
Will they gun everything that gets in their way down with all those weapons they shouldn’t even have yet?
Who cares?
Yay me \o/
I WANT A FLAMETHROWER 😀
Make a people a fire and he’ll be warm for the night, set him on fire and he’ll be warn for the rest of his life.
Flamethrower is prohibitively expensive and can only be reloaded by selling and rebuying it, making it the largest military money pit since the war on terror.
Oooohhh 🙁
Sad.
I love Flammenwerfers. And to werf Flammen at people. 🙁
That’s the problem with modern games. Not enough child killing.
You didn’t dig up the loot in the rail yard?
*sigh* I thought I’d taught you better then that.