I recommend you read the full
Wasteland 2 review to get a clear sense of what makes it a great game; this review will focus on what’s new and different in the Director’s Cut version, which moves the action over to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
The Director’s Cut bulges with new voice acting, new graphical upgrades, and gameplay modifications in the form of perks and traits. The formerly prevalent bugs and glitches are now as common as hope for the return of contemporary society in the grim, post-apocalyptic tale developer inXile weaves for us — which is to say not at all. In some cases, that means I got to witness content I missed the first time around. In a back room in the town of Highpool, for instance, I winced as I started an event that gave me my first big dose of trouble during last year's playthrough. Here, however, it played out with all the alarms and angry bellows of goons I was supposed to hear.
I'm also impressed with how well inXile handled the transition to gamepad-based play. It particularly performs well when applying character skills such as lockpicking and safecracking to environmental objects. All you need to do is walk up to a safe or locked strongbox, pull the left trigger, and select the appropriate action from a skill wheel. The character with the proper ability will then announce that they'll take a shot at it or somesuch, and boom, hopefully you’ve got some new goods. The right trigger handles combat abilities in a similar fashion, allowing you to reload or activate a skill like rapid fire with minimal effort. It's all wonderfully intuitive, and it helps keep the action moving at a brisk rate. Navigating party inventory is similarly simple, as it merely requires cycling through the various rangers in your party with the left and right bumpers and transferring items with a click of the X button. The one drawback of all this is that sometimes the AI pathfinding falls short. It's generally not that much of a problem, but early on there's a segment with explosions that forced me to rely heavily on the "wait" command for most of my party members while my lead ranger scouted things out.
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The Verdict
Wasteland 2: Director's Cut presents much the same experience that impressed us last year, but here it's given a facelift that affects everything from its graphics to hours of new voiceover files. While echoes of the original release pacing problems remain, the Director's Cut does much to add variety to the experience with new features such as perks, quirks, and precision aiming. It's likely not enough to warrant a replay if you've already finished it, but if this is your first foray into inXile's bleak vision of the future, this is the best place to start off.
Score: Great -
strong console adaptation of a great old-school roleplaying game
