Wasteland 3 Review _Buy_ Wait for Sale_ Never Touch__

 regardless of the entertainment type i think horror and humor is a hard thing to mix correctly other than the scream series in a couple movies and games here and there mixing the dire feelings of dread with tongue-in-cheek hasn't actually met with a great deal of success in the game sphere there are a couple titles that pulled it off and fewer is renowned for shining a black light on the smatterings of questionable body fluids left over from the mayhem

trays like wasteland and the wasteland series i'm not saying that wasteland is a horror game but you do some pretty horrible things throughout it and unlike

many titles where you're just traips around double tap and half a nation of dudes just working for their pensions and then you smirk and somehow get away with it wasteland has always been about the reflection of the repercussions few games can claim that the boring parts of fielding a small group of robot chickens and questionably copied clones of yourself into a turn-based battle against a mercenary unit that doesn't even notice you because they're too busy

thinking up really cool names for themselves so let's take on the mantle of the rangers in a world that lived through nuclear armageddon whether it deserved to or not by in exile wasteland 3 comes out on the pc xbox and ps4 this week it's also on game pass as always if you like the video maybe subscribe graphics are up first so wasteland 3 is this heady step up i think from the predecessor and while not always demonstrating the sheen of some other titles let's say like divinity original sin two it can still look beautiful even if that's just some nasty apartment filled with the refuse of someone's life and lack of care about it or driving through the snowy roads and trails of a post-apocalyptic colorado location after location each with small secrets and well-established histories build out as you explore in the game world it also doesn't hurt that by the time you have just a couple hours into the game your little band looks like they sprinted through an old junkyard buck ass naked covered in the world's strongest glue but i'll get to character design in a moment because to me much of the character in games like this especially due to the way the camera is sort of zoomed out is the world and its environments itself trekking across colorado has a really unique feeling to it that's different from all the wastelands prior discovering small out of the way sellers of stolen items the less asked about those the better or locations that you never knew existed just never really stops wasteland is nothing if not surprise after surprise in exploration game form but you know what we've seen fancy graphics before this isn't just reflected in the graphics though it's also reflected in things like the voice and the narrative i'll get to that in those sections somehow wasteland offers this rich tapestry of life in a world that no one probably really wants to live in anymore and you can feel that ignoring that sure a bit of it's more colorful than say fallouts drab or grays and browns here that color is half of the enjoyment there it's that desperate difference between the drab way in which you live here and the colorful way

in which it's presented and i know a lot of people won't notice those kind of things but i certainly do appreciate it another thing i appreciate is good

character design the first main character you meet has a warhammer that's just two fists an american flag the only way that could be cooler if it was somehow four fists and its grip was mcdonald's fry bags he's like a space marine minus the multiple hearts and shrunken genitalia also luckily translates to your characters as well with a bit more of a flexible and in your face armor design than we sometimes see here well at first i was worried it was just going to be like 11 versions of the same ranger police officer jacket when you're making your character i was actually walking around in a small amount of time in what looked like a deep-sea world war ii diving rig for a helmet my own version of bioshock's big daddy just rumbling stumbling and tumbling through the game world cosmetic choices can be turned on or off if you don't want that and you want a little bit of a cleaner look to your characters but i say turn them on the more ragtag the better but sometimes that can actually get in the wayespecially in wasteland 3. when you're four rounds deep in a giant battle that involves smoke grenades real grenades flamethrowers rpgs and toxic attacks it can actually get hard to see what is happening that's also because if you

turn off the hit chances and a few other settings for information you still have a lot going on graphically and a lot of color now too much isn't necessarily a bad thing here but i will admit there were a couple times where i moved to the wrong space simply because i thought yeah this is where i want to go and then move to it but the effects were laid on top of one another so much i didn't notice it wasn't the actual place i had chosen regardless of where i was or what i was seeing from burning offices to blazing disco dance floors the game ran pretty good i can't say it was amazing though 4k

with all the settings on ultra of which there are a good number of settings you can adjust was usually above 60 frames per second on the i7 and the 2080 ti

but there were certainly some drops surprisingly though if you use the button to highlight items in the game world you can interact with there's a noticeable bit of stutter which is really odd just well to add some floating text getting it to run at 60 required turning down shadows or the resolution or a mix of them it still looked really good despite that the jump from 1440p to 4k sees another sacrifice in this game i think i did get a couple fps from using full screen so you could always try that here's the thing though while it's not always technically at the top of the heap and sometimes a place or two did look rough wasteland 3 for the most part does exactly what i wanted from it it offers an almost tractor beam draw for me into a post-apocalyptic world

things that don't look like they belong probably don't and jumping into battle is this catastrophic color explosion you expect in a game as you trading shotsbetween flamethrowers and shrink rays and then the thing you didn't think was probably supposed to be there turns out that's a bad guy too i love

the way everything mixed together and that weaving of graphics over gameplay really worked well i do just wish they toned it down a bit and that brings us to sound music and voice engines for what was done to you he's yours be my guest well done like there's no windows o clocks in here you know hard to keep

track of when the day uh when the day starts or ends let's do voice first because this is phenomenal it's a massive step up 575 speaking parts 38 hours of audio fully voiced acted characters brian fargo tweeted that emil minty who is the feral kid from road warrior not the feral kid from the starting horizon zero dawn because i swear to god they look the same is also in this well there are a couple times where it sounds like the voices don't exactly matched up i was astonished by the amount that exists here and the subtlety between them all when you realize claudia christensen is like 200 people in skyrim it starts to make you have an uncomfortable discussion in your head about puppetry and where the strings are attached here everyone is pretty much discreet from the seething character threatening your lives deep in some robotic sedate commune to some random jackass who mouths off one too many times and sees the end of

his short life at the end of a shorter barreled shotgun even the radio works to offer this tangible connection to the overarching world itself pulling you from spot to spot to new adventure to new adventure as they're offered to you even as you set forth to do your own each report from different people or the

 occasional dispatcher who also becomes this weird voice of frustration and humor on the other end the combination of overlapping and in this case

locationless offering of quests also helps wasteland spread its wings a bit it feels like a breathing world as you find out that two or three quests

overlap and you can't help everyone and you think man that sucks and then some psychopath live broadcasts the disastrous results to everybody this is

one of those places that the extra budget that wasteland got is noticeable and that brings us to sound some of the larger battles can get really busy with fire burning across the entire floor of a room and then you get shot with a grenade and you're still trying to figure out where the enemies are when two people drop smoke grenades and all of those make different sounds and the guns themselves have a nice percussion and a good punchy feel to them it's a troubled world nothing heals that ill underbelly of crime like a cylinder full of 44 caliber tums delivered at 400 feet per second especially if you sound friggin awesome while you're doing it and while it's not perfect overall it does that brings us to music i think brian fargo himself described this as a weird soundtrack and i would agree fully it's weird it is also awesome first while exploring and traversing the land sometimes there actually isn't that much music playing but then you realize that a song's being blasted over some ill-used speaker system and it's a remix of an annie linux song there are a number of well-written musical tracks here if you pay attention like a busker in town who seems to ad-lib a song about the rangers until you actually realizeyour characters are singing along and  those are interspersed throughout for example montage i found a group of kids who had in the end caused this huge amount of killing and murder and i felt that as any justice bringer does they were beyond redemption so i whipped out the old smoke wagons and proceeded to cannon home in the guts a couple of times and then all of a sudden this cranky old western song starts playing with a ragged edge to it

as we're trading shots across the rocks it was a poignant moment that was absolutely delivered due to the music i can't say i didn't miss more environmental music especially exploring but the trade-off is just this oddly paced almost awkward soundtrack that leaves you thinking why is there nothing really playing right now then boom the most epic moment ever happens unexpected but well done and that brings us to gameplay and a bit about the story of course set after wasteland 2 thus the title your rangers are sent to get help from the patriarch this egotistical ruler of the frozen state of colorado he himself has his own issues though as his family's fractured sending his children to all corners of the state each vying to take over the rules of reign from their

father and all exposing you to different levels of the absolute shitburg that is gonna crash into the titanic of your plans to heal your own state and

keep the rangers going quickly beset by a horrible ambush and watching most of your people die you awake to find yourself almost friendless but still trying to establishthis beachhead from which to rescue your mission how are you supposed to take on all this well first you create characters or choose from the game's established pairs like pissy punk rock lovers or a father and child who for whatever reason we're with therangers that's like sending a boy scout

 into the friggin navy seals but whatever or you can create your own custom ones which is what i did now characters have various attributes coordination luckawareness strength speed intelligence and charisma which affect things like your health lucky chances hit chance itself critical hit chances the ability to find enemy weak spots and your leadership respectively each level you accrue from adventuring killing and general mayhem gives you a point to spin in one of them from there on you also outfit yourself with an assortment of skills and i gotta remind you intelligence affects how many skill points you get when you level up so it's important almost regardless skills like weapon and armor modification are allowed in the field first aid lock picking sneaking repairing mechanical devices and so forth nothing really surprising when it comes to choices there perks are also given

out as you level up the perks are related to the main skills for instance you might have the ability to make weapon mods from items you break down in

the field or continued use of a flamethrower might teach you how to engulf them with more flame because apparently the first amount of flame wasn't enough

you can also round out your character with a background like getting extra experience from each level or possibly having a higher perception due to your childhood tracking enemies down lastly and only if you want you can give your character a quark this is a major benefit at the cost of a major penalty like

much more effective attacks in comba but not wearing armor because well just because you saw a lethal weapon i guess one word of warning don't overlap

characters and their weapon types too much in this game regardless of the difficulties you choose ammo can be insanely hard to come by mid game and there's nothing more painful than having friendly fire on and not only barely doing damage but accidentally hitting your teammates with about 40 bucks worth of automatic rifle fire and realizing that was the last bit you actually had between you and from there on you're exploring both the outlands of colorado

and the extensive wildlands in your upgradeable vehicle as well as various cities and large inhabited locations on foot each of those offers diverse npcs

offering quests deaths and jests as you explore kill and one-liner every single character you meet and a lot of games try to do something that waistline nails and that's allows you to play in diverse ways play a mouthy sob with a love for baseball bats with nails through it and maybe you want to see someone's insides and what they look like versus seeing what someone is like on the inside or a more laid-back adventure just there to help the rangers and

keeping their traditions intact but both may offer completely different sections of a quest or quests both totally different experiences with the world's characters scene spots others don't and so forth and that's because wasteland i think it pays attention to literally everything you do i can't think of a

game other than the prior wasteland games that track so much of what you do how you treat somebody and their reactions to you other than maybe disco elysium i've brain transferred sentient ai's into theunexpected brains of stupid kids i've mowed down entire groups of gang members only to find out that they were basically starving and i could have probably talked my way out of it easily both within the same exact area it's not only the reaction that matters in games like this but your own attention prior to it check out each location and find two or three ways into a stronghold one of them skirting past everyone but also possibly putting another entirely almost unconnected group onto your trail it's not just that you can do something three different ways it's that when you do it three different ways there's also reactions it's not just getting into a place it's the events because you got into that location and how you did it that resound comparisons to deus ex continued as i played this combat is also mostly unchanged from the prior games and the largest pure adjustment is that each team goes in one fell swoop versus character by character so entering into an ambush can result in a slaughter as a number of enemies go prior to in your characters and them even getting their weapons to bear but vice versa also works this does unlock all sorts of potential for crazy combos and situational combat tactics each character can carry the typical two weapons both fed by their requisite skills and how many points you have in those combined with the weapon or specific statistics it may have action points are used to move attack use quick items special moves that are specific to you or the weapon you are using as well as a finishing step this allows you to prep and have more action points for the next turn it allows you to jump into a defensive stance and get more defense or if you have a couple points it actually allows you to do an overwatch of some sort all this may sound great and it is and i've always liked wastelands combat but sometimes it can get pretty hectic when you add in that you have cover and then armor and that needs to be penetrated to do damage at times you can sit there and it's like beating a watermelon with a friggin tongue depressor it's not terrible it can just be a bit

frustrating we've seen other games work around this in various different ways seeing those numbers is just one of the caveats and one of the conceits of getting extra data to the gamer i get that normally the more passive times in the game are actually busy there's always something happening in wasteland 3. when you're traveling you're hearing radio blasts and alerts and people requesting help or just telling you about the world the next moment

 you're using a number of skills to de-trap a location then find completely different ways to fulfill the quest you just work through in a totally different way wasteland has no issues informing you that hey stupid sometimes the hard way is not the only way you can do something but it rewards you for both for example if you upgrade your character with survival skills you will noticeably reduce the random battles when driving your ice cream death machine through the frozen wonderland of colorado which seems at first like a good idea but those battles many times offer new locations items or story prompts that you wouldn't see if you did that but for every good there is a bad in wasteland or at least something that bothers me a little bit and that's because there's a noticeable hesitation and pause when moving through the inventory tabs which doesn't sound like a big thing but the game's 50 plus hours long and waiting

for a moment for the game to sort of grab that command feels like ages when you're deep into a dungeon and just want to upgrade three characters that leveled up so you can continue moving forward also weapons don't really easily indicate if they have been upgraded at least i could never find a quick color or item icon change many times having to scroll through the stats or just go into the mod system itself to check luckily enough going into the armor and weapons mod section is well worth it all manner of upgrades can be added to everything from padding and helmets to bigger barrels on flamethrowers to chokes on shotguns extra padding to the other parts of the armor even later some implements and implants that can be purchased that also up those stakes one last thing that bothers me that i got to mention it infuriated me and that's the mission log i had a couple bugs with a few quests not activating when i finished them and another two or three that stated steps i needed to take but those characters were busy taking dirt naps because i had killed them like a couple

hours prior but it's just not really well thought out it updates in a really weird way half way through the steps and due to wasteland 3's huge

flexibility in the narrative finding the exact update that you're looking for can be difficult also fyi it doesn't give waypoints that you can

see for quests it just gives you narrative information i'm absolutely behind that decision i think it's awesome but if you want to traipse through the

dark forest of the future following breadcrumbs realize that ain't gonna happen here lastly there are a number of interface bugs like having to switch tabs to get the game to update information this was all in the embargo document as stuff they said would be patch prior to release

i had no crashes no game stopping bugs of that kind but i wanted to inform you i also wanted to inform you that the game does let you play any way you possibly want to and yes that means evil and it starts pretty much right away i let somebody basically die with their last breath without the respite of a final parting shot because i reveled in the misery they felt after causing it to others now you can play it saf you can play it nice and that also

offers its own feeling of returning law to a lawless land i just feel that in my world that success would be measured by count how many bullets i shot and not how many i have left how does all this come together though do the bugs end up offsetting the enjoyment well that's why we got fun factor i had some tech issues for sure the performance is not exactly where i would want it though it's better than a lot of other games it's just not exactly at the top cusp and one or two battles i struggled with as well as that quest tracking system that is almost mysterious as the quests in the game themselves i still had a tremendous time playing it's what i wanted more wasteland 2 but forcibly dragged into the future kicking and screaming and then outfitted with the budget to offer full voice and a unique soundtrack to say the least i think not since desperados 3 have been this surprised by a sequel wasteland 3's almost prodigious strength is in that connective tissue of the narrative and the continued player interaction that never caused me to be bored especially in a camera view like this where for me it's not always easiest to keep me invested in the characters and it had and set a constant tempo it just doesn't have a great deal of down time so many other games do in this format and that really helped it so as you guys know i rate games on a buy weight for sale rent or never touch it again rating system with rent being replaced by deep dee sale on pc so as we know this is game pass for sure check it out on game pass boom

when it comes to full price i do think it's worth it but i do think you should expect to see some bugs this is a game that is huge in its scopein its size oh by the way one of the few games i haven't got a chance to finish i'm right at the end i still haven't got a chance to finish it's so long and there's so many different ways in which you can do stuff i ended up re-saving reloading something just to play as the good guy through an entire section and there was a completely different way in which to handle multiple parts there is a lot to be offered and i don't think after multiple playthroughs most people are gonna see even three-fourths of what this game offers and speaking of offers i offer you reviews there aren't two minutes long or filled with sponsor bullcrap check me out on twitter follow me there i i rarely actually really push twitter i need to start doing that but you know the best place is patron

i buy a copy of every single game even if the dev gives me a code so my cash is on the line like yours if you leave a comment i give the game away to somebody in the comments section at the end of our week every time on friday on the twitch podcast 10 30 a.m pacific standard time that's it for me i hope your 2020 gets better there are some cool games coming out not just cyberpunk keep your eyes open for more reviews more previews more impressions more podcasts from me i hope you have an amazing week peace out and enjoy the rest of it they go for oh jesus they're dead