Wasteland 2

I played the demo and couldn't stand it for more than 10 minutes... hope the final version wins my heart and changes my mind

Game is good! Shame about the environment art as it doesnt get near how well Fo1/2 was made (despite it being only 2d).

So what you guys think ? So far i find it cool, but not amazing. Artistically it's not looking very nice, actually it looks quite cheap, that's killing a bit the immersion for me. The level design is kind of giving me meh feelings too it's really predictible and dirigist so far, like there's a door you need to picklock and obviously there is an ammo crate after it, or a digging point, or a safe and you need 3 skills for the same thing. It gives you an Unity amateur game vibe sometimes, if you see what i mean, it doesn't feel well finished.

Anyway it's not as good as i was picturing it to be, at least really not as well made as fallout 1&2 were. Kind of disapoint. But i'm still at the begining so we'll see

edit : MIXED FEELINGS

But its no doubt the closest a game came to the level of Fo1/2 though.

Well damn the level design is really terrible. Maybe this has to do with the retro experience i don't know, but i find it to really spoils the game. It's a shame, because they have a cool cover system but there's nowhere on the maps to make cool tactics. It's usually 2 crates placed randomly or a fight over a wall corner. And the profusion of the same crates, the same safes filed with random stuff in the edges of the maps (which are the only lootable objects) are getting really redundant. My worth-my-money-o-meter is getting at the orange, this has gotten a bit overhyped. Writing and story are good though

Fo1/2 was just really coherent in the art department, great art direction overall. For some reason wastelands 2 has normalmaps slapped on everything for no reason and good visuals are not about that

I really like the game as a whole, but design wise there are just so many goddamn flaws that make it really hard to enjoy the moment to moment gameplay. Percentage based chances are completely off. I had a critical failure chance of 10% go off 3 times in a row. Or a 70% hit chance misses 4 times in a row. Or a weapon jam chance of 5% two times in a row. Statistically, this shouldn't happen. These things continuously happen, so it's not a fluke. I don't mind if the percentages are harder than they are shown, but for fucks sake show them correctly then.

Then there's a lot of (game) design problems with chaos theory; a team member goes rogue and ends up wasting her turn on movement (instead of combat); puts herself in a shitty situation, and as a result gets herself killed in one turn, without any player input. This is not good game design, because it completely negates player agency and just creates unnecessary frustration. I'm not saying they should serve the game on a silver platter, but fucking limit the randomness of these things. No designer and certainly no player can predict where shit like this ends up with multiple consecutive failure states, so remove them from the game. It's not fun, it's not interesting and it's certainly not realistic.

And the AI is horrendously "gamey". The AI cares more about inhibiting the player characters by giving them status effects at the cost of their own well being. No human being would sacrifice their own life to just stand next to a person on the off-chance that the person gets "stressed out" about shooting in a firefight. It just breaks the experience of the game so much. Again, this is NOT good design.

I'll return for more once i play more, but these things are my major gripes of what otherwise feels like a solid nostalgia trip.

https://www.gog.com/ is starting their winter sale by giving this away for free.