Close quarters engagements can result in mass casualties

Oct 1, 2014 14:40 GMT  ·  By

Wasteland 2 is a party-based role-playing game which takes place after an apocalypse and that means that the environments gamers need to explore in order to solve their quests are filled with a variety of dangerous creatures and with human enemies who are more than willing to use bullets and energy rays to take out the player and his companions.

It took less than 10 minutes of actual gameplay to get into a battle, and after dispatching all enemies, I was asking myself whether future encounters would be as easy to get through (I play on the equivalent of Normal difficulty).

After playing more than 20 hours of the InXile Entertainment-developed title, I must say that combat is not easy to get through, even if the core mechanics are simple and can be understood in about two minutes.

Gamers need to pay attention to the combat sequencer at the top of the screen to see how it will move next and then manage the Action Points of their character, who needs to move in good position, preferably with some cover, shoot enemies and deal with unexpected moments like weapon jams.

InXile tends to create scenarios where the player can position himself before launching actual combat, and the balance seems to be mostly based on the number of enemies present on the screen and on their use of a powerful ability if bosses are present.

Healing and killing

The biggest problem in Wasteland 2 when it comes to keeping the party able to fight is getting access to enough ammunition, especially for the better long-range rifles, and I was forced to use close quarters equipment a few times after being a little too wasteful with my bullets.

One of the characters I have designed had only limited bladed weapon skill and that meant he was mostly a meat shield and needed quite a bit of healing after each engagement.

Thankfully, Wasteland 2 mixes enemy types and gives almost all party compositions a fighting chance, and I quickly saw that each of the characters under my control needs to have a weapon that relies on a different type of ammo in order to have enough for the major battles.

It also helps to try and initiate battles from a very good position while also using the environments to make sure that a low number of enemies attack at a time.