Waste Walkers Reviews

In concept, I like WW. It has a good fundamental design of loot buildings, avoid/fight bandits, and lots to explore. There's a perk system and most items are pretty detailed. That said, I'm finding it hard to overlook how unpolished the gameplay experience is. Challenge wise, it's not bad with the occasional enemy difficult spike, but the game can be very rough around the edges. I think it's a pretty good effort for the time it was made, but there's quality of life issues I'd like to see in a future iteration. A lot of the game is centered around looting. Your character is worded early on as being clever and creative but the game doesn't seem to push this angle much- at least in my sessions, most of the items are useless junk that at least sound like they'd be practical. Maybe more recipes come in later, but for as fast as I could get special guns and SWAT armor pieces, my character never really learned to do much on their own. I'd like to see clearer comparisons on gear from merchants compared to held items and a toggle button for switching between melee/ranged. Scarcity also wasn't much of an issue- I could buy basically everything I needed fast and food almost never ran even slightly low. We're also told early on that this isn't a game where we're supposed to seek out enemies to fight. That's fair and there's a reasonable amount of maneuverability based on the character and the sprint button. But xp is still mainly tied to fights and the occasional quest. And with the amount of enemies present and xp needed for perks, combat still feels encouraged, particularly with easy ammo purchases. The map... egh. In a sense, it shows a lot of detail of where buildings are. Navigating where on that map one is can be a hassle, as a lot of stuff is muddy and washed out looking. I found I had to duck into buildings to get the title to pop up and then cross reference that on my map. A "YOU ARE HERE" icon would have been amazing. Similarly, a button to access the map (as one must frequently use it) would have been super useful as opposed to ducking into the status screen. Apparently there's random encounters? I didn't quite understand how this works... I played for three hours without anything random showing up and I figured that's the strategy- see the enemies, dodge around/engage them and plan things out. Getting jumped by 3 bandits at once after all this time was confusing and I didn't see anything in the game mention or imply it. Should they have been visible on the main ground? It's hard to say... I've seen spots where doors don't appear but the interactive barricade for it existed anyway. I like knowing what a game will throw at me in terms of gameplay expectations. It's not a bad game at all, but I can't bring myself to recommend it based on the roughness compared to the amount of DLC available. Maybe it's the limitations of the engine at the time it was made, but I feel like there's places where the bones of WW needed some love.