Wasteland 2’s Kickstarter funding will end at 8:05 EDT today. If you haven’t checked it out or have not been following it since my original post, I urge you to go the Kickstarter page and contribute or upgrade your pledge. inXile has added new pledge categories and better rewards such as Mac and Linux support and 2 digital copies of the game now at the $30 level. They are about $180,000 short as I write this of the $3,000,000 pledge to make a mod kit for the game. If you can pledge $15 for a copy or higher. Let’s try to get a mod kit everyone!

I used to purchase many game guides, usually from Half Price Books because, well, they were half price. I originally subscribed to Gamespot because of their game guides which you could only download in pdf format if you were a subscriber. Now, if they even bother to make a guide, all of their guides are HTML format, for the console crowd to access I suppose.

I don’t think I have used their guides in a while, even when I have them because I have come to prefer text guides where you can delete the sections you have completed. I have found this makes it easier for me to avoid searching for where I am in the guide when playing a game. Also, I think since playing Baldur’s Gate 2 I discovered their guides are pretty lame compared to what dedicated gamers create. Gamespot’s guides may show you the main quests to finish the game, but in RPGs like Baldur’s Gate there are many side quests and hidden areas; hard core game walkthrough creators have documented them all for you

What made me think of this topic was that I just found I had purchased a game guide for STALKER:SOC. I have been enjoying the game using a text walkthrough when needed. Just flipping through the Prima paper guide there are many things left out that were included in the free walkthrough I am using.

Now I must say I did like the Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition Guide and purchased the same for Fallout: New Vegas. Other Bethesda games like Oblivion and Skyrim have guides just as thick (hundreds of pages). I even found a great Gamespot guide of Morrowind by Desslock that was around 300 pages (this was probably back when Gamespot cared about making guides for PC games). So there are good guides in paper and other formats.

My final verdict would be check sites like Gamespot or Game FAQS (where many user-created guides listed on Gamespot are stored) first to see what is available before putting down $20-30 on a paper guide. Sometimes free is better than paid for. But I want to thank all of the hard working gamers  who take the time to make these guides for the rest of us. You have helped me many times and I am grateful.

I don’t know if you can even find this game anymore, but it is not worth finding. I read some review that said this was an okay game for RTS beginners, but it is not too good. First off, the voice acting is terrible. There are many cut scenes in the game – between missions, in missions, etc. So you get to listen to bad acting a lot. Also, you have to move the camera around in the game. I guess this is supposed to be a cool feature, but I found it to be a distraction. Lots of times buildings and other structures were in the way so I had to swing the camera around to try to see my units.

There are three different factions in the game, but it would have been better without the aliens. Two human factions – the Remnants (Rebels) are fighting the Ascension (The Empire) over what’s left of the Earth after an environmental disaster. Somehow these random aliens looking for a new home world  come to play as well. The Remnant campaign is pretty weak – very easy for the most part. It also introduces you to the useless 3rd person FPS view which you don’t need to use to play the game. The missions were boring because you end up producing a ton of units and sending them to fight. They die and then you make more, ad infinitum, until you win. I actually had hope for the game when I started playing the Ascension campaign. They had some cool buildings and animation, but it soon bogged down into another grind.

Another annoying feature is the terrain deformation effects. You can have certain units sink, flatten, or build-up land, and other units freeze water. It looks nice, but is a major distraction. Also, the game has some crappy bugs; you get the crash to desktop variety plus a nasty bug that won’t let you progress to the next level. The game gets stuck and you have to force quit and reload your last save game. It was always a gamble whether I would make it to the next level or not. By this time I couldn’t even try to play the alien campaign and just gave up.

I think I may have paid $1 or $2 for this game, and now I know why. For $5 you might get some worth out of it, but personally I would just avoid it if possible.

I am happy to see larger game developers getting into fan-funded projects. inXile Entertainment is funding Wasteland 2 through kickstarter.com. Their goal was $900,000. As of this writing they have received pledges for over $1.4 million. If they reach $1.5 million they will make Wasteland 2 for the Mac OS and Linux as well.

For those who don’t know, Wasteland is the 1980’s predecessor of Fallout 1 & 2. For as little as $15 you can support this game and receive a digital copy when it comes out. Go to the Wasteland 2 project page on Kickstarter to pledge now. Pledging will continue through April 17, 2012 at 8:05 AM EDT. For more information on Wasteland 2, go to inXile’s Wasteland 2 website.

If this trend can continue, maybe PC gamers can finally get the games they want to play instead of the 50th installment of last year’s shooter!

I bought this game for $20 a few years ago from Best Buy. It looked cool – a WWI RTS, something you never see. While there are a few nice things about it, overall it is not a good game. The game comes with a short 2 mission tutorial to show you some basic things about playing. The manual is not very big, but hit the high points of the different buildings in your base and how to move and attack. There are 5 campaigns to play from Austria-Hungary, France, Britain, Germany, and Russia. There are also some single player missions. The developers appear to have done their research on WWI; too bad they put more into historical accuracy and less into fun game play.

The graphics look pretty good for a 2004 game. I read the game uses the Cossacks engine. You can see all the different units well and there are cool explosions from fighting. I also liked how when a plane is shot down it crashes into the ground exploding and can take out troops underneath the crash site.

The sound effects are okay and the units sometimes respond in their native language I think. The music though can be tedious. There are some classical pieces, but the piano playing is annoying. It would be fine if they left it only in the menu area, but during a battle it is just distracting.

The main problem with the game is the lack of strategic game play. Essentially you churn out troops by the hundreds and throw them at your enemy who is also building hundreds of troops and keeps attacking you. Base building on your own takes too much time; the enemy overwhelmed me several times before I switched to the Economic Adviser option. Here the AI runs your base for you so you can concentrate on the fighting. Unfortunately it likes to build tons of troops and cavalry. It will build some mortar teams (artillery is necessary in most battles and in attacking bases) and machine gunners. But it won’t build an artillery factory (for howitzers) and tank factory (for tanks and antiaircraft trucks) or an airport (for aircraft). You have to turn it off and build these buildings yourself (and most of the units) because it will use all of your resources turning out hundreds of troops.

If you are getting beat during a scenario or are tired of playing (scenarios can last 2 -3 hours) you can turn on the Military Adviser who will run your army and fight battles. At this points with both advisers on the game plays itself. While the Military Adviser sends troops out to fight, you can take control of them at any time.

There are many frustrating aspects of this game which detract from game play. Many times I would select troops and click an enemy to attack only to have them rush and fight hand-to-hand instead of shooting. Also, the fog of war only disappears when you have someone in an area, even if you been someplace previously. It makes it very hard to move troops quickly over the huge maps because you cannot see very far unless you have someone on the map in an area. Furthermore, tanks and airplanes are some of the funnest parts of the game but take forever to build. I can understand because the tanks are quite powerful but it makes for longer than necessary missions. Also, aircraft are hard to control and use. When you build an airplane, it takes off from an airbase and circles your base until you select it to send it somewhere. If it is flying over hundreds of troops, it is very difficult to select this moving target. At least once you put an airplane in an area, it will keep patrolling that area and attacking the enemy. Also, the game has 5 different resources you need plus electricity (from electric power plants you build) to keep your base running. Finally, the mission objectives are sometimes vague and the enemy hard to find. The huge maps and crappy fog of war make finding the enemy difficult and time-consuming, and the objectives are often unclear. One mission said for me to obtain air superiority. What does that mean exactly? I built a bunch of planes and kept sending them at the enemy base, but lost because I bombed an enemy hospital.

I played several missions and most deteriorated into troop rushes (I hardly used cavalry). Sending thousands of troops at the enemy over and over is not very fun. Sure it was fun to blow up enemy bases, but it took forever to get there and even that got old.

I wish I had read the GameSpot review of the game before buying it; for once I totally agreed with the reviewer’s opinion. If you can find this game for $5 it might be worth a try. Just don’t expect an engaging RTS. I know I didn’t get my $20 out of it.