I wanted to make a sneak update tommorrow, suddenly posting Wasteland 2's beta funbuilding (just with teh Underrail, will do another one once the game hits the release status), but I need to type something now if only to vent myself. Fuck, this game is boring! How fucking droll it is! What a sad piece of shit! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Ok, now that I feel somewhat better, let me provide a detailed explanation. First of all, Wasteland 2 is not a piece of shit - it's just extremely, extremely mediocre (and probably heading towards that mediocrity from the direction of awful). At this moment, it extremely reminds me of Fargo's previous attempt at reviving the cult classics, 2004's Bard's Tale. Meaning the great story & atmosphere combined with the extremely shitty gameplay. Towers, man, those fucking towers, man... Sure, this time it's not a simplistic action-RPG and the game's system is rather complex, but what's the point when the level design is so boring it makes you wanna claw your eyes out? It reminds me of Kotor 2 debacle - the game's RPG system is excellent, the only problem, you've never given any kind of adequate challenge so you can actually use all those munchkined builds in action. But I digress.
What's most important about W2 is that it's most certainly not the mythical "indie hipster oldschool Fallout-like bonanza" that Fargo promised to his backers. Especially to the casual crowd ones - boy, will they rip his balls of once they see the final results. Though it's mostly a sad outcome - in our grand thread, there are enough talks of "well, at least this game will bring an oldschool rpgs to the masses", but thing is, what it will bring to them? What it will show them? What it will prove them? That oldschool turn-based party-based RPGs are ugly&boring (&probably bugged as hell as I don't believe they'll fix all of this in 2 months) pieces of shit, made by retards for retards? That's some fucking PR right there. Anyhow, the game is too ugly & too metagamey to appeal to the casual gamer. He'll most likely create the shit party, go on into rescuing AG center (main reason I'm raging here - the man who designed it should fucking quit the gamedev for, like, forever) and, well, rage quit after 30 mins or so. Because it's just unbearable mind-numbingness, that's why.
And even for the oldschool crowd, I dunno... Lots of the stuff in the game feels like it was designed by going through motions. Y'know, not passion, but going through motions. Ok, so our game is oldschool RPG, oldschool RPGs had lots of text - hurray, let's make it wordy! Believe me, I have nothing against large quantities of text (as anyone who read my LPs will prove), but thing is, all text should be to the point, it should mean something, it shouldn't be just blabbery for the sake of blabbery. Because the latter is nothing but waste of player's time. And here, the majority of text tells you fucking nothing. Ok, first quest, you go into area where ranger was killed and you see the large spot of dried blood on the sand. Game proceeds to inform you that there's a fucking blood on the sand and, apparently, that's the blood of killed ranger. Gee, and I've thought someone had their periods and sanitary pads are such a rare find in the post-apoc! So you make two steps further and see a radio-tower with the flag waving above it - obviously the game tells you that flag is waving in the wind. Sorry, but I can both fucking see and hear (because there's an ambient sound of wind going on), so what's the point? And this goes on and goes on and goes on. Please, I'm all for the quality writing, but this graphomaniac spam is nothing like that.
Or, for example, the skill system with lots of not that commonly used skills. Sure, Wasteland 1 had those, but also the majority of them didn't needed to be that high and there were different ways of training them available (as far as I know, never got to playing the predecessor). Apparently, it was like in the Darklands (which I did play a lot) - it was mostly logistical task of picking/acquiring the right skills and travelling though the world in a correct manner to level them up. Which, while it may sound somewhat mechanical, is rather fun. To the core audience of such games, at least. Here, the opportunities to increase skills are also present, but seem rather scarce and so it's all about gimping your party's combat efficiency lightly enough so they can still fight but can also solve stuff. But that's not the problem. The thing is, if that logistical challenge was rather interesting because it included lots of exploration and some management tasks, here this multi-skill challenge is rather banal and boring. Especially when you consider that the majority of problems can be solved with only one specific skill, so the interchangeability is rather low. But that's not the point. I dunno, the thing is that this multi-skill system doesn't really improve the game and just feels "going through the motions", as I've said - it's oldschool so let's do that. Little thought was given about how fun it is, it seems.
Not to mention that some skills are rather useless, especially in the weapons department - God, the balance is so horrible there. There is horribly useless (and at times even harmful, it seems) shit like the shotguns or the big guns or uzi (well, the big guns are probably good in the late game, though I'm not sure how they fare against armor) and there is stupidly overpowered stuff like brawling with its constant criticals just devastating anything. But then, it doesn't really matter because combat is rather filler-ish - tactics are almost non-present while enemies are rather stupid and just love to waste their APs on stupid shit. What makes it worse is that areas are usually populated by one and the same type of enemy, so once you've seen one encounter, you've seen 'em all. And where there's more than one (like in the AG center, fuck that place!), they areas are so overstretched that going through them feels like eternity. Developers boast 50 hours of gameplay in the full version, but I'm scared to think what it would've become if you cut out all the padding...
The only things that save this mess are the character building system (which, apart from the crappy weapon balance and needlessly complex skills, is rather nice and flexible) and atmosphere. But atmosphere is deeply flawed or, rather, counterproductive. The issue here is that the overall tone of the game is wacky and luzly - as I reckon, just in the wake of Wasteland 1. But, at the same time, the authors try to pull of some rather grim, dramatic and heavy moves... And, surprisingly, it doesn't mesh well together. Let me give you a spoiler-ish example (it's from the early game so it should be fine). Your first serious mission is a choice between rescuing one of two cities. They're attacked at the same time, and you can save only one. Of course, in reality, this is a rather dumbfuck concept - how comes that you are the only ranger patrolling that area? How comes that in those areas, vital for the Citadel's survival, there is no fucking garrison? The rangers have spent last 15 years fortifying their strength and their area so what the fuck?
Anyhow, you choose one - the other dies. And not in a pretty manner. And, since there are lots of radio-talks in this game, you hear their agony - for example, if you chose to forego the AG center (the wisest decision of your life, believe me), it's chief researcher will scream at you over the radio, insulting you in her desperation. And then, a moment later, she'll break down and ask for forgivenes, pleading for help. It's rather unsettling to hear General Vargas, a hardened badass, explain to her in a clumsy and totally lost manner that help just can't arrive, there's no help... And when you, having done everything in Highpool, finally go there, it's too late already - you find her dying and, with her dying breath, she tells "Fuck you, rangers". It could've been fucking superb (emotional immersion over 9000) if only the whole ordeal wasn't interlaced with the fucking lulz! Oh, calm the pet dog garoof! Oh, JB's daddy lost her fucking dowry in cards, so how will she marry a non-whore-fucking white know now? Oh, some hooligans bully a noble native, the horror, the horror! And when you explore the devastated Center, it also is a parade of witless quips - lookie, a vine-entangled corpse on a toilet! Well, if you gotta go - you gotta go! How fucking clever!
I dunno, it's like creating a beautiful painting and then taking a huge shit all over it. It's just fuck you. And I don't give two flying fucks if Wasteland 1's was wacky - you either go for wacky or serious, not both at the same time. Not to mention that, in terms of humor, this game is no fun at all. Believe me, I'm all in for the crazy post-apoc shit - one of my most beloved movies is Six-String Samurai and one of my favorite games is the (sadly, not often remembered) Superhero League of Hoboken, but both of those were genuinely funny, you see. Here, it's just oddball stuff that's not really clever or witty and the only way I can react to it is just saying "Ugh, okay".
And that crap repeats and repeats itself over and over again. I dunno, this strongly reminds me of Fallout Tactics - it too tried to tackle some serious shit (at some points) while combining that with shitload of dumb "soiled pants" jokes. The result was rather annoying.
And Mark Morgan is... Somewhere there. I dunno, he's not bad, but it's certainly not the level of F1&2. Not even close.
I could've said a lots of more negative things about the game (graphics mostly looking like ass - Age of Decadance looks better than W2, especially in the death animation department; the horrible camera & engine usage; annoying "stylish" gimmicks like the menu scorpitron moving each time you start/load the game or the noise animation you get when engaging the combat - shit gets old fast), but I'm pretty burnt out at this point. I'm not really disappointed in this game (wasn't a backer & saw no reason to believe in all of the sweet promises), but I still can't believe how can you fuck shit up so badly. It's a fucking joke.
