Wasteland 2

[shiznitz]

Combat is now getting a repetitive feel for me.  I go long periods without playing single player games.  Then one comes along that catches my interest.  I play it for 10-15 hours and then the repetition drives me back to fighting against or with real people.

Back to PS2.

[murdoc]

Combat is now getting a repetitive feel for me.  I go long periods without playing single player games.  Then one comes along that catches my interest.  I play it for 10-15 hours and then the repetition drives me back to fighting against or with real people.

Back to PS2.

It's funny, I go the opposite way. It's always other people who drive me to back to single player games.

[Riggswolfe]

Combat is now getting a repetitive feel for me.  I go long periods without playing single player games.  Then one comes along that catches my interest.  I play it for 10-15 hours and then the repetition drives me back to fighting against or with real people.

Back to PS2.

It's funny, I go the opposite way. It's always other people who drive me to back to single player games.

Agreed. I generally despise playing with other people. Also, I like stories in my games and you don't get that with multiplayer.

[Khaldun]

I finally really started spending time on this before Dragon Age hit. I'll probably get back to it eventually. Forgive me if this came up before but goddamn it, if I have a high Perception character who finds mines or other traps, then I really expect party pathfinding to avoid the mines. That is such a basic thing in a lot of similar games. To have to individually manage pathfinding when the mines are revealed on the map is just super fucking annoying.

[Falconeer]

I have been playing Dragon Age 2 again recently and I must say that it doesn't look like your characters avoid revealed traps in that one. Doesn't excuse Wasteland 2, but it reveals that programmers are lazier than you'd assume even when they have a huge budget.

[Khaldun]

I was thinking more of Divinity Original Sin, another retro game, but it's much closer to Wasteland 2 in its basic control schemes, and there the characters path around traps.

[Khaldun]

Got back to this and the barely post-adolescent quality of the writing is just getting to me. Just really misses the mark somehow a lot of the time.

[Falconeer]

Wasteland 2 is getting a huge facelift. New and improved graphics, and pretty much everything else from game mechanics to new voice overs, encounters, difficulty, UI and so on. This is clearly to push the console version, but it comes as a free large update for anyone who already owns the game on PC too so it's just too good to be true. As for fear of consolization, they mentioned the latest XCom game for inspiration, so I wouldn't complain.

http://wastelandrpg.tumblr.com/post/118362965301/wasteland-2-game-of-the-year-edition-coming-free

- A new ‘Perks & Quirks’ system to customise your squad with

One feature we’re very proud of is our new Perks & Quirks system, which we’ve teased a little bit previously with Eurogamer. In the GOTY Edition, you’ll be able to customize your squad of Desert Rangers with over 80 Perks & 20 Quirks, which let you fine-tune your characters throughout the game with unique bonuses and trade-offs.


- “Precision Strike”, which is a strangely dry way of saying you can now target enemies’ individual body parts

Wasteland 2’s Precision strikes will tend towards less random and more reliable. With Precision Strikes, you’ll be able to inflict debilitating status effects on your enemies to turn the tactical tide. For example, aiming for an enemy’s torso will reduce their armor value, letting you hit them harder with your other squadmates, and firing on their head (or CPU, as the case may be) has a chance to stun or even send them into a psychotic state where they won’t be able to tell friend from foe.


- Balance, more item drops, ‘reworked combat encounters throughout the game’

To improve on the gameplay experience and ensure the above features are fitted in seamlessly, we’re also overhauling game balance, item drops, and reworking the majority of combat encounters throughout the game.


- “Thousands of lines” of new voiceover.


As for graphics, Wasteland 2 has moved to Unity 5 and come up with “improved environment textures, character models, and Physically Based Rendering for more impressive lighting.”

[Khaldun]

I'm not sure they can fix the weak writing, though. Once I stopped I really had no urge to pick it up again.

[Bunk]

I haven't played it, mainly because a friend described it to me as follows: "You carefully position your squad making tactical use of cover, positioning the durable members to the front, and laying out a careful strategy. Then your opponent uses his first turn to run all the way across the map, past all the cover, and shoots you in the face with an assault rifle from two feet away."

Have they fixed that?

[Gimfain]

I haven't played it, mainly because a friend described it to me as follows: "You carefully position your squad making tactical use of cover, positioning the durable members to the front, and laying out a careful strategy. Then your opponent uses his first turn to run all the way across the map, past all the cover, and shoots you in the face with an assault rifle from two feet away."

Have they fixed that?

Played it few weeks back and enemies don't have unlimited movement, and engaging them from the longest distance means that they don't have the movement to run past your cover. If you engage them from shorter distance handgun and shotgun enemies can do some maneuvers to flank you but not people with assault rifle or heavy weapons, they lack AP to do long movement and shoot. However, they can shoot you so if some of your guys aren't in cover they will be hurt.

Acting first is extremely important so you should have 2-3 members with initiative of 13+ and preferably assault rifles so that you can shoot holes through the nearest people or put them on overwatch.

From a tactical gaming perspective I still found combat lackluster, there isn't enough tactical decisions you can do because weapons are poorly balanced. Maybe it changes once the new version gets launched but not sure how much they can actually do.

[Falconeer]

Ultimate Edition/Director's Cut launches at midnight. If you already have the game and didn't like it for some reason it is definitely worth giving it a second look as a lot has changed, including visuals and AI behaviour. Also added aimed shots, disables, perks and so much more. If you liked it a lot, even more reasons to give it another whirl.

New-ish trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_15WbBT-5w


EDIT:

Wasteland 2 Director's Cut changes a huge number of aspects of the game. Our main new features and changes include:

- Graphical overhaul and update to the Unity 5 game engine.
- Expanded voice-over with thousands of newly-voiced lines for key characters and scenes.
- Precision Strikes system allows you to target individual body parts on enemies in combat, which lets you inflict negative status effects on them.
- Perks system lets you pick bonuses for your characters as they level up.
- Quirks system lets you pick a personality trait for each custom created Ranger during character creation, with a gameplay-modifying positive and negative quality.
- Rebalanced gameplay, including virtually all combat encounters, weapons, loot drops and containers.
- Controller support on PC and console. On PC, you can select from keyboard and mouse input, as well as Xbox 360, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 DUALSHOCK 4 controller modes.
- Plenty of smaller additions to be found, of course, but we'll leave those for you to find.

How have you improved the graphics?