ekj7: I like your video reviews, Ludo. They tend to hit all the right points with regards to the strengths and weaknesses of each game.
Did you play the original Wasteland? The goofiness and strange humour that you complained about in W2 were present in W1 as well. It's sort of a tenet of the series. Even in Fallout 3 you had the option of enabling "wacky wasteland" for some of this, which hinted back to W1. It does go over-the-top though, as the original used this more sparingly and to better effect. The scene in your video with the comment about the corpse in the morgue is also present in the sleeper base area of W1. Which does touch back to another issue you brought up:
Too much time spent referencing the first game. I totally agree with this. The odd reference here and there is fine, but I felt they went overboard, mostly in the Arizona area. I almost felt like I was playing W1 over again with all the references with Highpool, Ag Centre, Bobby & Rex, etc.
I haven't finished the game yet (about 1/2 way through Cali, I figure), but I mostly enjoy the combat. I like tactical, turn based combat like that in Temple of Elemental Evil far more than the real-time mess that I encountered in Baldur's Gate, and W2 delivers here. You do bring up very good points about the oddity of some of the system, such as the energy weapons and armour impact. I see what they were trying to achieve here, although I'm not sure this was the best way of doing it. They wanted to prevent the later parts of the game from degenerating to just energy weapons and power armor, making all of those other weapons skills you learned along the way completely useless. In turn though, you have a somewhat nonsensical system that you have to just try and ignore from a logical perspective.
They also ruined a few of the items that were memorable from the previous game. Power armour is no longer the best armor, and the meson cannon energy weapon is just mediocre. Also the way armor works doesn't seem to make it as useful or noticeable as in W1. Even with pseudo-chitin armor, I'm still taking 50 damage from a single rifle bullet from an enemy. I've also found the "awesomeness" factor of these armors greatly reduced by their sheer availability. I dug up a suit of power armor outside a gas station which seemed random. A hick scavenger salesman sold me the pseudo-chitin armor. Another junk salesman was selling power armor. I found the meson cannon in a chest lying at the side of the road. In the original game, you had to go through lengthy quests to gain these extremely rare pieces. It felt like a real achievement, it felt like these items had real value.
Explosives were another area that I felt the should not have modified from W1. A grenade always does 100 damage, no matter what armor a character is wearing. That makes no sense. Plus, there is no skill associated with AT weapons or explosives, no chance to fail, and no chance to miss.
On the other hand, I have so far had no real problems with the story or progression of the game. Perhaps I have low standards when it comes to storylines in games. I've always preferred to focus on the gameplay and have just expected game storylines to be about as deep as a budget, no-name action movie.
I really like the fact that you can solve quests in multiple ways, or in different orders, and that NPCs will have comments based on what happened, who's in your party, etc. This is a very difficult effect to pull off in RPGs, and I don't think many people can appreciate the effort that goes into something like this, and instead focus on criticizing the few times where it didn't work quite right in the game. You can kill anyone in the game too, even your fellow rangers. For the most part, you'll get the gear the enemy had too. I once killed a vendor character, and I was able to loot him for ALL of the items he was selling, as well as all the scrap it claimed he had in the barter screen. Cool!
Oh, and I think the Kevin Spacey clip is from House of Cards, a TV series.
Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the late response. I have no problem with random wacky moments (a lot of the Wacky Wasteland in fallout is low key like the golden pip-boy or off the beaten path) but here it sort of bleeds into the main experience pretty aggressively. For example, the main reason for going to Darwin village is that you might find a cure for someone at Ranger Citadel but in the same vault you get the wasteland game and the whole museum bit is right next to the person you save, it is a weird merger.
