Wasted

Time and time again, our friends over at Bethesda have illustrated how war refuses to change. What they failed to mention, however, is neither does the human appetite. The world as we know it could be vaporized until nothing but space dust is left and we'll still be floating around, getting ourselves wrapped up in benders on the surface of an asteroid. Case in point, beer is important, and while Fallout 4 is an outstanding achievement in the history of our medium, it missed the mark big-time on radioactive alcohol. Treason, I declare! How could they treat beer so insignificantly as to almost outright ignore its glorious contribution to our society? How dare they relegate its properties to that of a pitiful stat alteration!

I'm fairly certain those were the exact words Mr. Podunkian said to himself that led him to make this game. That, or he just thought a Fallout parody where almost everyone was a bar-crawling drunk would be funny, but come on. You know it true to your heart that this game needed to be made at some point.

But the real question remains - did he do it enough justice? Are the Brewers of the Apocalypse sated? Am I ever going to break out of my roguelike addiction? That last one is a resounding 'no', of course, but is WASTED: A Post-Apocalyptic Pub Crawler another novel contributor against my rehabilitation?

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't so. I've logged in about 30 hours of playtime so far, and while it doesn't appear to me as the most refined concoction of Rogue elements invading other genres, it's a serviceable, entertaining, and demanding action title in its own right that offers a surprisingly deep content well and tidbits of sadistic humor sprinkled into the dialogue and the surrounding lore of the game, however hit-or-miss those tidbits may be.

WASTED is a first-person roguelike that mimics the plot of the prototypical nuclear winter scenario where half the world is wiped out. While the underground Vault lookalikes called Coolers failed to withstand the nuclear blast and the inhabitants were all mutated horrifically, the beer that they had brought with them was infused with radioactive mutative properties that made them a delicacy for the survivalists and scavengers that roam the wastelands above. You, as one of these scavengers, a Waster, are simply on a bender for these drinks, which enhance your abilities and act as the game's 'level up' system, per se. Along the way, you'll meet fundamentalists, militia men, dogs, and girl scouts that all want to turn you to dust.

I do my reviews in a Good/Bad format, so if that's not what you've anticipated, well, sorry, Charlie. The door's that way. Anyhoo...

Good: One of the most important features I look for in a roguelike is for it to have an intuitive control scheme and cohesive gameplay. In a game where death either permanently scars your save file or erases all of your progress, it is extra important that the player has no trouble getting his or her bearings before being thrown out of the nest into almost certain doom. WASTED flip-flops on this a bit - I've never played a roguelike that doesn't flounder at least somewhat on that aspect, to be fair - but for the most part, the controls are certainly user-friendly and customizable, and the mechanics do not take the average player very long to grasp. Items you already have in your inventory, such as ammunition and food, are automatically stacked with matching ones found in lootable chests and containers. Switching equipment and tools is as easy as a right-click in the menu, and the status screen makes it simple to determine how your character's attributes are affected by the alcohol you consume and the clothes and accessories you're wearing.

Combat is quick and straightforward, with shots to the head and the nether regions amplifying damage, and melee, gunplay, trap-making and stealth are all viable approaches towards making progress in the randomized dungeons. Each Cooler, while visually similar, brings about more factions with their own quirks, gear, and hazards to combat.

The game places heavy emphasis on resource management. Inventory space is extremely limited even with upgraded gear, so players have to prioritize which items they want to take with them on dungeon runs and store some in their house for later. It's a different kind of progress-driven game - whereas a less traditional roguelike such as Rogue Legacy saves your bloodline's stat upgrades and any unlocked equipment boosts, WASTED more or less teaches you to not put all your eggs in one basket and save potentially-beneficial healing items, weapons, and ammunition at home in case your current character croaks and a future beneficiary could use the extra firepower. It's a nice approach - and the best the game has to offer - in the way of difficulty.

Being a lighthearted parody game, I somewhat halfway expected the backstory to be slapped together and the setting to play second fiddle to the action, but to my surprise, this game has quite a bit of depth to it. There are thought-provoking, sometimes chuckle-worthy diary logs to be found on computers throughout the game's Cooler bunkers, the voice acting is actually pretty well done from what I've experienced and the character designs perfectly encompass the farcical nature of the game. I mean, you complete quests for a man who has a second head on his crotch. That spells it out for you, right?

The '80s aesthetic is also helped by the synthetic, retro-electric musical stylings. The soundtrack sounds like what you would hear on a cheesy cop show from the early days of color TV, which fits the game's tone to a T. It's really delightful and almost makes you feel as if you're in an action-packed B-movie.

Bad: I do enjoy this game a lot for what it is. Don't let the fact that I only put barely 5 paragraphs in the 'Good' section tell you otherwise, I wouldn't have logged in 30 hours if it wasn't damn addicting. It's just... there are many, many small contrivances and rough edges with WASTED that dampen the experience in comparison to other Roguelikes I've played.

My biggest gripe with WASTED takes form in the lack of effort put forth into programming enemy AI, which is absolutely puzzling to me. I never even entertained the thought that faulty AI routines could ruin the immersion in a roguelike, particularly because in most roguelikes, the procedural level design accommodates for simplistic AI patterns. But in a game with winding corridors filled with bear traps and laser tripwires, you need to make sure that enemies can still get around, take cover, flank the player, perform maneuvers like that, and there isn't evidence of work towards this.

It's not uncommon for me to walk into a room and witness a raider kill a rotten mutant in melee combat, only to stand around in the harmful goop left over from the mutant's corpse and fall dead on the floor. Likewise, I will often be prancing throughout the hallways and suddenly hear a couple of gunshots from traps go off, walk into the next corridor and I see that two robot droids ran directly into a sub-machine gun trap.

This also works in ways that actively make the experience unfair as well. Stealth becomes all but crucial to obtain better equipment and survive past the second dungeon, yet the stealth mechanics are dead simple from a programming perspective. If you enter a room while crouched, no one will notice. If you DON'T enter a room while crouched, everyone instantly knows you are there and gangs up on you, even the ones three or four rooms down. This isn't a problem with individual rooms - it's when you have four or five interconnected without doorways that it proves troublesome, as it all counts as one big room to the enemies, and when you step foot in it, they all know. There isn't even a sound indicator or an interface widget beyond small 'warning' text that shakes across the top of the screen.

Now, a point I'm about to make seems somewhat counter-intuitive, considering the nature of the genre, but I think WASTED puts a bit too much faith in its random placement of obstacles, enemies, and rooms. 'But isn't that the point of a roguelike, is to provide a new and unpredictable experience each time?' you say. Yes, that is true, roguelikes thrive off of this sort of gameplay facet, but over-reliance on the RNG erases the cohesion of the game's elements and can lean towards false difficulty.

I'll take Spelunky as an example. It is difficult, absolutely, but 95% of the time, the challenge presents itself clearly and openly to the player. It organizes enemies, terrain, and obstacles such that it is difficult to maneuver around, but you can get an idea of how to tackle it first.

WASTED follows the same ideology, but it just doesn't do it as well as it should. Dying to enemies that I wasn't prepared for or failing to maneuver around a trap is fine; it's when I open a door and immediately get my face blown off with a shotgun trap that insta-kills my character, or showered with bullets from a ceiling turret that was placed just above the entrance to the room that I have to draw a line in the sand. On some runs, I have had the immense displeasure of fighting at least 8 enemies at once, all armed with rifles and energy weapons that shred my health like it's nothing, and on other runs, I'll go three rooms in a row without seeing anyone. And this happens way far too often for a game like this. It wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't have a bonafide story line that requires you to essentially get lucky to progress through. I love the randomness of the game's design - it keeps things fresh and presents a new challenge every time - but too much randomness is a mess that resorts towards sheer dumb luck to survive.

Rather than those two things, there are a few slightly irritating First-World Nitpicks I have with the game as well:

• Dying and losing a character sucks... except there's a very exploitable bug where you can exit out of the game right when you die and essentially nullify that character's death, bringing time back before you entered the cooler for that run. This is why games like Fire Emblem implement systems that save right when characters die instead of afterwards.
• Speaking of bugs, this game could do with some polish in that department. Glass shards, containers, and traps can be found stuck inside walls and hanging in thin air, on occasion levels will fail to load entirely, necessitating a reset and loss of progress, and some voiced dialogue appears to be missing from the game.
• It's a Fallout-style game, yet there are barely any side quests to be completed, and those that are present are usually just menial fetch quests. Lame.
• A common complaint I've heard on the game's Steam forums is how unnecessarily punishing the game is in terms of letting you explore and gather resources. While I think these complaints are exaggerated a bit, they do have a point - the game is presented as if you can take your time, then it throws a nearly-unkillable guy with a minigun at you if you don't clear the floor fast enough. I think better communication on this mechanic is suitable to warn the player that this is meant to be a more fast-paced roguelike rather than one that lets you take your time.

Summary: As a game made and maintained by essentially one guy, it is a great time killer, especially considering the genre he hopped into and the fact that the game is made in Unity. With that said, there's definitely room for improvement. I see a lot of potential for expansions or a sequel on the horizon, and with some fine-tuning, WASTED has the potential to be another knockout roguelike hit for 2016 alongside Enter the Gungeon.