Review: Wasteland 3 by Deep Silver takes you beyond a nuclear winter, but some bugs need fixing

In 1988, Wasteland was released on the Commodore 64, about a group of desert rangers upholding law and order. Thirty-two years on, we have Wasteland 3.

Wasteland 3, by Deep Silver for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Role-playing games don’t have to be about swords, sorcery and dragons – the aftermath of World War III is popular too.

In 1988, a game called Wasteland was released on the Commodore 64, about a group of Desert Rangers in the southwestern USA upholding law and order, a century or so in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

The game was a huge success and served as the inspiration for the 1996 and 1997 classics Fallout and Fallout 2, which are considered by many as really kicking off the idea a role-playing game (RPG) could be about something beside High Fantasy.

The team behind the original Fallout games eventually founded InXile entertainment, who made a sequel to Wasteland (Wasteland 2) in 2014 and have now followed it up with Wasteland 3, published by Deep Silver for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Wasteland 3 games review by Royce Wilson.

Wasteland 3 is an old-school RPG of the kind we don’t see a lot of these days, and I really like it, although it’s obviously been exposed to some radiation as there’s quite a few bugs and glitches in the game.

The plot of the game is that your squad (you have six soldiers) are part of the Desert Rangers organisation and have been dispatched to Colorado in search of desperately needed supplies. Arizona is in drought while Colorado is in the depths of an ongoing nuclear winter.

Right from the start, things go terribly awry and your squad is plunged into a volatile local multi-way power struggle, where a lot of people want to kill them.

The game is viewed from an isometric 3D perspective which can be rotated, and the graphics style works well for the game. There are some neat lighting effects in there too, such as the electric sparkle from laser guns and how shadows are projected onto walls.

Wasteland 3 games review by Royce Wilson.

How you navigate through all this depends partly on your combat ability and partly on the skills you develop in your squad – having someone who is good at picking locks is going to make opening doors easier, being able to fix mechanical objects means generators can be disabled, and so on.

Combat is turn-based, with your squad members having a certain number of action points which can be used to move, fire weapons, reload, or heal themselves – all familiar territory to seasoned genre gamers.

Drawing on its roots from the first two Fallout games, there is plenty of dark humour in Wasteland 3. In many cases it’s not so much dark as “pitch black” – so if you’re a fan of the movie Fargo or the excellent TV series based on it, you’ll be right at home here.

Whereas the Fallout games draw inspiration from 1950s and 1960s ‘World of Tomorrow’ideas, Wasteland 3 takes more of its cues from the 1980s and 1990s, ranging from vehicle designs to neon lighting in places to all the audio logs being on cassette tapes – and even computers making the old Windows 95 start-up chime when activated.

Wasteland 3 games review by Royce Wilson.

One of the aspects of the game which really impressed me, though, was the opacity of your decision results across the 50+ hours of gameplay.

In most RPGs, it is usually very obvious which is the “good” path and which is the “evil” path – but not here. In many cases, you are choosing between the lesser of two evils – such as when you have to choose whether to side with the corrupt and violent police force of the game’s main settlement, or whether to side with the local organised crime boss.

Neither decision is great, and they both have implications that won’t become clear until much later in the game. Similarly, I liked how the game really reinforced the idea that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

While the story, writing, and humour were great, there were a lot of glitches and bugs in the game – far too many for something being made by an established studio with successful previous games under its belt.

Wasteland 3 games review by Royce Wilson.

From inventory items disappearing to quests not being completeable to characters simply vanishing to loading a saved game and finding characters in different places, there were a worrying number of game-affecting issues that dogged me throughout my time playing.

The story itself is great and really well written, the darkly humorous tone appealing, the combat and squad mechanics work really well, but I couldn’t shake the idea that the game isn’t quite finished.

Setting that aside – as hopefully it will be patched sooner rather than later – it’s been great to get stuck into an involved game with plenty of quests, delightfully dark humour, and rewarding combat.

While it’s not for everyone, if you are a fan of old-school RPGs or the Fallout series, I heartily recommend Wasteland 3, although I’d suggest waiting until some of the more egregious issues are patched up before striding out into the wasteland.