Wasteland 2 Previews

We have rounded up a couple of Wasteland 2 previews based on the beta build of the title currently available on Steam that we missed earlier.

Should You Play It goes for a very compartmentalized approach:

Combat: All combat is turn based on an isometric playing field. Unless you encounter raiders on the world map, combat takes place directly in the world where you are at, instead of being transported to a special combat only area. Your party and the enemies will all take turns moving around in and out of cover, and using their melee and ranged weapons. Each character has a certain amount of action points that they can use per turn, and unlike a lot of turn based games, you can still move even after attacking or doing another type of action. Combat experience earned will be given to your party after combat has ended, and if someone was unconscious at the end they won’t receive any from that battle. If you’re in a level, combat will only start when you are in the sight of an enemy, and because of this it is actually possible to kill enemies before combat even starts. When one of your party members lose all of their health, they will simply fall unconscious, but if they take a massive hit, they will fall and start to bleed out can possibly permanently die.

Loot: Most loot comes from defeating enemies, though a lot of it also comes from containers and safes that you find through exploration. The loot that you find on bodies is relative to what it is, such as finding guns and bullets on raiders, and different parts of insect body parts on mutated bugs. Locked and unlocked containers contain a lot of random items in them, such as medical blood packs and scrap that is used as money in the world.

While Leeds Student Newspaper has a shorter but more organic piece:

Graphically, the game isn’t much to look at, and at times the world can feel pretty empty even when you’re not wandering through the desert. It gets around this by clever use of flavour text; every so often, witty messages appear in the lower half of the screen to add description to the world. This just about makes up for the visual shortcomings, but in a modern game, you rally expect better.

It feels slightly harsh to pick too many holes in this game, as it currently is still in beta, and so the occasional loading error or frame rate drop can be ignored. The combat system, however, does feel slightly lacking in depth. InXile apparently forgot to implement any strategy, as tactics never evolve much beyond clicking on assorted shaven-headed psychopaths and waiting for them to die.

Finally, Mossed Neuronn’s Railway Station to the Space has another write-up with a few screenshots to go with it:

For now the game is available only for PC, OS X and Linux versions will be later.

I think everybody who expected the game that is a mix of Wasteland, Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics will be happy with the result so far. Keep in mind that game is still in very early technical stage so it needs a lot of polishing. But personally I enjoy it even now, so final result should be totally awesome, no more no less. Just wait guys, just wait.

Also, if you have played Wasteland 1, you may notice a lot of references.

The beta already have an update (around 100 Mb) and available on Steam Early Access. So if you cannot wait, you can purchase it right now for $60 (the beta-access pledge on KickStarter with with some additional digital stuff), final price is going to be lower.