Wasteland
is one of the greatest games to ever come out in the 80s. It was the precursor
to the Fallout series and is responsible for a completely new look on gameplay
and style.
As you lose
your cool through the wastelands, you figure out that this game is not easy to
figure out: you have little clues on what to do next. One of the main reasons
for that is that you barely need or need at all to follow any sort of
storyline. The game is very non-linear, and as long as you don’t get killed
earlier, you’re free to roam almost wherever your heart tells you to. Still, if
you want to advance in the game, let’s just say
that there are a couple of things you need to do in order to trigger certain
events.
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| If you venture into the desert, make sure you don't get into a mescaline trip, aye? |
This being
said, I wouldn’t call this an easy game. Not only many times you have no clue
what you’re on about, you really have to explore and go through a lot of trial and
error. Another curious feature is an instance of auto-save which might get you
into more trouble than blessing. It auto-saves when you enter an area different than the one you're in or whenever
you use the radio (needed for assigning stats at level up). Considering death
is permanent, and that healing conditions is not that easy at times, you have
to be mindful of your characters well-being. Nevertheless, with a decent skill level
of Medic you can usually keep your characters a-ok.
 |
| Libraries are, by far, the best kept places in a post-apocalyptic world. |
As far as
conditions go, enemies can leave you unconscious, seriously wounded or mortally
wounded. When you get wounded, do not venture into the wastelands as that will
most likely finish you off. The state of unconsciousness leaves your character
as useful as ketchup on pizza, but the good news is you only need to pace a bit
and it’ll recover. Health points can be recovered with walking or resting. Call
it a fat man’s cardio. You can also go to a doctor and waste away your money,
but there’s little point to that.
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| If you see any early signs of becoming a desert dweller, contact your prescribed doctor or pharmacist. |
Everything
else is just living the dream. Don’t get killed in the desert and avoid
radiation poisoning. Also avoid other sorts of possible poisoning that are hard
to describe without a medical degree. You’re able to hire several NPCs
throughout the game, which not only may give you more fighting power, it might
enable you to get a really good looking mule to carry around all that extra
ammunition you find and don’t feel like selling. Another thing that I love is
the fact that you have out-of-gameplay paragraphs to read; bits of texts
related to plot and/or that are too big to appear on screen, won’t appear in
game. Instead, you get a message to “Read paragraph 10” and off you go, explore
the wonders of creative writing.
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| You'll figure out pretty early that you're not supposed to face robots while wearing leather jackets. |
To sum it
up, it’s one of the old school post-apocalyptic pearls and a must for any fan
of the genre.
Oh, and
Wasteland 2 is presumably coming out late 2013. It's being developed by inXile and Obsidian Entertainment and it's going to have an alternative plot to the first one. You can already watch gameplay
videos, which shoves up your nostrils how great this game is going to be.
Don’t get
killed.
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