Wasteland 1: The Original Classic

Obviously, this game from 1988 is a little dated to our modern sensibilities. Once you get into it though, and the controls start to click, and you find yourself dreading the next time a Hexborg or Tronnosaurus pops out from around the corner, or you happen to bungle a quest beyond any hope of completing it, only to find that you can use one of a handful of your other skills to solve your problems... well, that's when you know how good this game was, and really still is. I think the only things that are almost unforgivable from a design point of view, even for it's time, are the fact that items that are dropped are gone forever, there's no way to store items other than selling them and buying them back (at a loss), and you only get one save slot, which the game overwrites every time you go to a new screen. These complaints can lead to situations where you have essentially ruined your game, if you happen to drop a necessary key card or you lose one of your main rangers. There's no going back to a previous save. Yes, combat is basically just choosing whether to attack with a single, burst, or auto shot. Yes, running in combat is ATROCIOUS. You can find yourself unable to escape, but also unable to be killed, so you just get pummeled indefinitely. The paragraph lookup system is archaic but standard for it's time, and the re-release comes with hyperlinks that bring up the paragraph and a voice over reading the text. That's nice. At least you don't have to draw your own maps! I used a guide for character creation and a few parts where I didn't know what to do next. I would recommend doing the same for the character creation at least, because there ARE a few useless abilities (and not just under powered... I mean abilities that have no use in the game because they were never implemented beyond just being able to pick them... old school!) Give it a few tries and once you get into it, it's a fun and not-too-long experience.

Played this in my teens back in the early 1990s. Played it many times, I think it was like 3 times. There was also a walkthrough that was like an in game novel. Not sure if that is included in this game package. This game is deep and long even though it was on two double density floppy disks. Anyway, I can't wait for Wasteland 2. Bring it on. Oh the fond memories of this game.

and I wasted entirely too many years of my life leveling up my #1 character to the rank of "Supreme Jerk." And to think that after spending all that time killing Steel Reavers with my proton ax, when I finally got to Supreme Jerk I wasn't able to collect any more experience. I was so TICKED! I won't be buying this game again... but GOOD GRIEF, it was FUN!!! Here's a helpful hint: there's no point in increasing your strength beyond 60 or so. You won't hit any more often and you won't do any more damage. I think my strength was something like 110 and I did the same damage as my characters with 60.

Whilst we should understand this is a big piece of computer game history, we shouldn't look on it with rose-tinted spectacles. It's not overly intuitive, it has a lot of depth you have to really dig for, and requires plenty of time and effort to fully appreciate. But you cannot escape the world, the characters and what it led to: Fallout and Wasteland 2.

One of my all-time favorites. Such a simple looking game hiding a deep experience of skill building, team leveling and tactical combat. Wasteland featured a, strangely enough, mostly text-based approach to turn based combat. You'd select your attack and then read the results, such as "Brad empties his clip into a radiated giant rat." The game works as a top-down map from which you move around. Coolest thing was the open-ended way skills were handled. You could use skills (and there were about thirty of them) anytime to solve puzzles or get out of tight situations. You could try to talk to enemies instead of fighting, you could use acrobatics to entertain a group of people and win their favor. It was quite interesting and fun to know skills had uses beyond just combat. NPC's could join the party, lots of weapons, armor and locations.