Genre: RPG
Developer: inXile Entertainment
Publisher: inXile Entertainment

Wasteland 2 opens with a full-motion video sequence, with real, living actors, armed and dressed in post-apocalyptic grunge. Absolutely sensational! Then the game itself begins, and the immediately obvious event log in the bottom corner becomes manifest. At this point, anyone reared on 80s and 90s CRPGs will immediately adopt a warm smile, and with hand gently pressed to heart, exclaim "I already love this game, and I've only just started!" But hold on just a second cowboy-- the camera is finicky, the grid-based inventory clunky, and the stage art muddy.

Like most modern games-- or rather, is it more like the original Wasteland?-- this title is often mute, with just the sound of the event log to keep the player company. The event log makes sound, you ask? Why yes-- it sounds like a dot matrix printer! The silence does build tension, however, and it is into this vacuum that the heady, heated battle theme rushes during enemy encounters. Voice acting is workaday-- fitting, given the game's various misshapen denizens.

Wasteland 2 takes the 3/4 overhead perspective of the first two Fallout games-- ironic, the inspiration going in that direction-- along with the turn-based combat. There are a plethora of skills, from lockpicking to safecracking to weaponsmithing, which the player can attempt at any time. The stages are large and fun to explore, but some of the puzzle-like elements interfere with the pacing a bit more than is desirable.

There are two ways to look at this game: on the one hand, in a world awash with hopelessly watered-down non-RPGs such as the kind Bethesda passes off these days, Wasteland 2 is the Fallout 3 that the world should have a received. There is enough of the esoteric to whet any basement virgin's appetite, but... perhaps there is a bit too much of that? Which leads to the second way of viewing this title-- perhaps the developers could have taken the aesthetic from the original game and refined the modes of gameplay, versus the other way around? Even with the stuttered pacing and miry visuals though, Wasteland 2 is a couple of optimizations away from being a near-total triumph.