Let's play Wasteland: Complete

I'm simultaneously impressed by a possibly unintentional reference to The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird and disappointed that no one else seems to have caught it .

I was wondering how it got there, I only knew it from the stupid Family Guy joke.

To be honest after seeing the first updates of this LP I'm more interest at playing this old gem than watching this thread, just like in your Space Rangers 2 LP.

Keep fighting good fight!
Also manglers are not useless, I remember hoarding shitton of them and using all of them in the Citadel.

NonToxic said:

I'm simultaneously impressed by a possibly unintentional reference to The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird and disappointed that no one else seems to have caught it .

Click to expand...

yes, i saw it, but i thought of Full Metal Jacket.

NonToxic said:

I'm simultaneously impressed by a possibly unintentional reference to The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird and disappointed that no one else seems to have caught it .

Click to expand...

possibly unintentional

Click to expand...

Seems unlikely now.
I admit, I never caught it. Love the song, but never realized the tribute.
Nice one. Thanks.

Uhm, bump?

itz comin, should be today

Our first entry to Vegas after healing up involves stepping on an ineffectual land mine within three steps. Start as you mean to go on.




Grunker shows off the sheer power of the Proton Ax. His next blow does 50 damage, and upgrades his brawling to level 3. Hopefully we'll get three attacks per round soon.




Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but melee kills get you double the experience of ranged ones. Thinking of giving everyone a level of brawling and passing the Proton Ax around for some levelling, but I've yet to see the need, the game's at a pretty good challenge level just now without cheese tactics.




Here's our pal the Scorpitron. I'll come back for him in a bit.





Spade's Casino, and the mysterious locked door. We pick it and head on through.




What I've learned from Wasteland; it's far more profitable to be detected when you're supposed to sneak, because then you get far more experience and loot. With a slight concession to the Huey and Louie section.




I... didn't even mean that. I try using a couple of skills on it to see if that sets it off.




(it did)




And if this isn't a perfect "you gonna get raped" face...










Our kevlar suits still seem pretty effective against almost anything. They slowly wear down those members in rad suits, though, and when they do get a lucky hit through our armour, it tends to do about 20 damage.









Bit of a shit haul from here. Power packs, I'm assuming, are ammo for laser weapons, so we're hoarding them for now.




I'm sure he does. He goes down quickly enough as well.




A map? Interesting. We'll keep it around for now.




We find ourselves unable to open some of the doors. Grunker takes the Proton ax to them, successfully. Is there anything it can't do?







Don't trust chicks with guns, bros.





Sure enough, Ulminati takes no chances. That's a tranny if I ever saw one.




Proton ax again!




We try to climb down the shaft, and fail miserably. Ours are not dignified rangers.










Proton ax, you say?




We head back into the casino to clear it out. The guards don't put up much of a fight.







We pause, this sad display of distraught humanity touching something deep in our heroes' cold, efficient hearts.







Nah, just kidding.










He did not live up to his appearance. On his corpse, we find...









points go to IQ, qualifying Ulminati for Energy Weapons.






Not bad, I guess. Another map... are these actually for anything? We'll see.




On one of the poor, innocent civilians, we find another laser pistol. I'm a bit hesitant to start using them yet, not sure how prevalent power packs will be and it seems like overkill at this stage. I'm a total packrat, though.









Out of curiosity, we decide to take on the Scorpitron. chzr and Ulminati equip the laser pistols, Grunker and Alex arm up with rocket launchers. Letz go!




Oh.
His retaliatory attack is rather more effective. We retreat, healing our two serious wounds and deciding to leave him for a bit later. But we will have our revenge.




Uh... sure, why not.




Did that work? Not sure. BLOODSTAFF!




Good lord, they actually let us in.




Hmm. I try a few things on that to see if anything happens, but no dice.




How very Stars My Destination. Sounds like some good experience fodder to me.




These guys don't give much, but we find a couple of those Radiation Angels dotted around. They do.







We return to the camera, destroying it with a spare stick of TNT. That works.







Oh.
See that "more"? It's not just another one or two groups. Well.




They don't seem terribly accurate, but Christ, there's so many of them. We elect to stand in between the two large groups (they're split roughly in half between the East and West of the room) and slowly pick them off one by one.




They seem to have a lot of health on top of that. We burn through clips at an alarming rate, and eventually elect to approach the Eastern group and take them on up close.











We take some damage, but survive to retreat back to the wastes to heal up.
IQ and Dexterity for Alex.




IQ for Grunker, for energy weapons again. He qualifies now.




Still a lot of these guys to fight through. Time to grit our teeth and get on with it.




They dish out incredible experience for being fairly unthreatening until you get up close, at least.




dexterity for chzr.










Alex and Grunker fire off a few rockets to speed the process along.




After finally triumphing, we blow up the now-locked door and continue on.




And another.




The reactor core! We'll see what we can do with it soon. If anything. If I remember.




And another. Running out of plastic explosives here...




Here we are. How... religious?




Smurfette! My love. And yes we do, if you know what I mean and I'm sure that you do.




Seems like a safe bet. Since he did.

"Faran must have sent you to look for Max. Last l knew he was headed
for the sewers. He built a special key to get down there. It's called a Sonic
Key. Don't confuse it with the four keys of the Citadel. Max made a couple of
them and told me that he was hiding one somewhere in the old golf course.
Didn't tell me where, though. Didn't do him any good, either. The Newmen
grabbed him before he could do anything. If you return to me the Bloodstaff
from the Mushroom Church in Needles I can show you the way. Tell the bishop
DIPSTICK."

Click to expand...

I have to do a fetch quest for you before I get the honour of helping you out? Mushroom be praised for your generosity!
Also, not sure what these four keys are that she's talking about. Come to think of it, I wonder if we could pay a visit to the Citadel with the payload we're trucking around. Might be best to save it for when/if we're directed there, but if the monks there are anything like the Brotherhood of Steel, they'll have an armory that'll be well worth the asking price. I'll consider it.

NEXT TIME: We return the Bloodstaff, and venture deep into the Las Vegas sewers in search of the elusive Max, answers and anything we can bring to bear against that fucking Scorpitron!

And ugh, you're right, that Kutie doesn't look too cute.

Marvelous. Some day I should replay it.

For some reason, the Codex stopped sending me notifications about this topic, and I completely forgot it in the middle of exams! I am now back with a vengeance, ready to read!

Seems awesome so far, though I'll have to update myself on how Feng-Grunker is doing.

Excellent work. Still no Covenant? Ah well, he isn't necessary to the game, but it will be interesting to see if you find him. Decent character to have.

I enjoyed your way of getting into the mushroom temple, never tried that before. I merely gave the name of the 'father of the bomb'; 'Oppenheimer'. You find that clue on a certain wall.

This was a superb rpg, one of my all time favourites. It was great how much freedom you were given to do various things. Iirc you could even reset the map after you'd won the game and go back through it with your old characters (equipment was reset I think but skills / levels were kept) - it was a great way to go back and see all the stuff you'd missed your first time round.

Its well worth storming the citadel if you can manage it, though the rockets are pretty much the only things you're currently carrying that will blast through the mobs you find there iirc. If you know what route to take, you can minimise your combats and score the best armour in the game.

Its well worth storming the citadel if you can manage it, though the rockets are pretty much the only things you're currently carrying that will blast through the mobs you find there iirc. If you know what route to take, you can minimise your combats and score the best armour in the game.

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Not only worth it: Necessary. It isn't that hard though. Well, it is slightly difficult, but Wasteland isn't the most difficult RPG there ever was. In any case, there are things there you really, really want and a little something(s) that you need, perhaps even a somebody. Probably a good idea to have a free slot I guess...It usually is.

There is something in the Citadel as well that might please the BRO. Well, please him in a fashion...

Oh yes, Admiral, don't waste the power packs on the laser pistol. I am fairly certain that the assault rifles are better than anything else until the laser rifles appear. After this, Rockets, then Ion Beamers, and finally...the Meson cannon (only 10 shots per pack for this though).

Proton Axe is the king of the hill per 'shot', especially with high brawling.

I will shut up now.

The Blood Priest gives us the staff, and we return to Charmaine. Half-tempted to kill everyone in the Temple anyway, for experience, but I'll hold off for now.




k

Charmaine takes the Bloodstaff from you and her face lights up.
You clear your throat. "We've done our part," you say, "now do yours. We
need to find this character Max before all of Vegas is overrun by these
killer robots."

'"Ah, yes, Max," she croons, "that strange flunky for Faran Brygo. You
probably don't know that he is a robot."
The news hits you hard. "Things keep going from bad to worse," you mutter.
"Outlaws, Blood Cultists, Killer Robots, Bomb Worshipers, and now Cyborg
Robotnappers! What next?"
She inserts the Bloodstaff into a secret compartment and turns it. You hear
a low groan, as if some new doors were opening up. "The way is now clear for
you," says Charmaine. "If you survive your encounter with the Newmen, look me
up in a couple of months. I might have another mission for you."
You can only grumble and take your leave.

Click to expand...

A robot? He must be a fellow Codex-Number! The plot thickens, and so does chzr's only vaguely female mutant muscle-mass.
Now... er... where is the door...?





Probably not in here. Oh well.




There we go! Though we had to blow up another door to get to it anyway. Sigh. Into the sewers, where many a bitter vampire has given up in insufferable boredom.




Just like my cloak, actually.







Groan.




For the pun in its name, I have to say it doesn't have much of a snake look about it. Oh well.





That sprite still makes me laugh. Anyway, as you can see, our assault rifles aren't doing a great deal of damage to the cyborgs down here; full auto is the only remotely reliable way of piercing their armour, and even at that, many, many clips are wasted. If it comes to close combat, Grunker can still gleefully lay waste with his Proton Ax.




Approaching the river, we tentatively attempt to swim it...




After being washed out of the sewers and down the river to Quartz, we make our way back up and heal whatever disgusting affliction we picked up from the water. Let's think this through again.









We use our last rope at the edge of the river, and carefully clamber across. Onward!




Throughout the area, we stumble across strange parts; servo motors, power converters and so on. I'm beginning to get a bit worried about Max's health.













The sewers prove to be a damn tough slog. We retreat quite regularly to heal and restock the ammo we're quickly burning through. The fucking NPCs, in particular, seem fond of burning up entire clips when they have no real reason to. At least our skills rise quickly, which makes a notable difference to the damage we do.
We approach another chasm, and (after leaving to buy another rope) attempt to use it at the edge in the same fashion as we did at the last one.



Oh. Let's climb out and try that again. As I've said, the game is usually intuitive, but...




Right. Let's see what awaits us beyond...




There's something wrong with me. I read this as "a silvery mountain of reptilian cocks raise their heads".




Aww. He looks a bit like he's shrugging. We gently pick away at it while it lumbers towards us, then it reveals that it can attack six times a round and critically wounds everyone within a turn. Let's try that again.









Cyberwolves and cybernegros, oh my. These ones aren't too big a hassle.








...unless you let them get close, anyway. They seem to have a penchant for running away after a few full auto bursts. Please do that.




Now these things are fucking evil. They'll decimate you. Fast.




We retreat and heal our wounded, then attempt to finish them off.







Reconsidering, we retreat to the world map and fully heal. This is a recurring theme in the sewers.




While I don't want to waste power packs just yet - haven't seen anywhere selling them, and laser pistols aren't that good - you can't empty clips or anything, so I elect to use up the clips that come with each pistol I find. It'll be a good way of raising energy weapons before we start to really need it.




We blow up the wall and proceed.
















Oh piss off



We retreat and enter an empty combat round (with the encounter key) to reload. Feels manly.




Grunker is getting absolutely ridiculous experience from pummelling things with the Proton Ax (double the experience for melee kills, remember). I'm considering giving Alex and Ulminati a point of Brawling each and giving them a shot of it on random sewer encounters, since they've always lagged behind in levels somewhat.




Ulminati gleefully grabs the laser carbine. Unfortunately, it's rubbish.




For no real reason, this team gives us absolute hell. It takes about three retreats and heals before we can even whittle them down. With them out of the way, the path is open to... the next sewer map









And this is the greeting party as soon as we enter the next map. Joy.
Is it me, or is that a really gay description of firing a laser? "Waves of energy flash from Alex"? Just describe them as rainbow-coloured while you're at it, why don't you?




Another retreat to Quartz for 7.62 ammo. No kill like overkill. Now that's a manly description.









Oh for fuck's sake





Hard to see - DOSBox doesn't seem to like you taking screenshots of scrolling text - but Ulminati's energy weapons skill quickly rises with just a few bursts of the pistol and carbine. Which is good.








Slight fumble here, didn't catch her new rank. Either Master Grenadier or Sergeant, I think. Points go to Strength and Dexterity, and she will continue being a machine.









I saw a mudcra- oh, fuck it.




Not quite as strong as the Proton Ax, but there's nothing quite as joyful as wielding a chainsaw. chzr eagerly grasps it, twirling her greasy moustache in glee.




We can't cross the water here, but examination of the middle wall reveals it to be soft and destructible. Grunker takes his shovel to it, hacking away one square and four menus at a time.




Well, if there was any doubt that the parts we're finding are what remains of the unfortunate Max... now just to find out how to put him together again.







a Sergeant in our midst! At last! And guess who it fucking is. Glory hog.




One squad of disgustingly powerful new-generation Centron Super-Deluxe Next-Gen Editions later, and we make it to the lab. Why is there a lab in the sewers? Who cares? We open it with the Sonic Key.






We examine the equipment to the East.









:sa- hey, what the fuck? Oh well, points are points.




Repairing the android is a fairly simple task. The diagnostic function is useless, but if you choose to initiate repairs, it'll tell you fairly clearly which parts are preventing the repairwork, one at a time. After doing so (and only after doing so), it's simply a matter of selecting the right item (or going back to find it) and using it on the table, then proceeding until each of the tables has a fully repaired unit.

Max reaches up and gives his head a bit of a twist. You hear a
click and the android smiles. "1 came down here to negotiate a peace with
the cyborgs and what do they do? They rip me up and start using me for spare
parts. Ingrates!"
He stretches and stands. "1 have to get back up to Vegas and help
prepare for the next assault, but I've got a mission of great importance for
you. Head northeast from here and, across the bridge, you'll find a hidden
base. It is a journey you must succeed at. There, you will find lost
technology and information that you can use to stop Cochise before it's too
late."
A secret passage slides open in the room's south wall. At the same time,
a blast proof security door slides down in front of the entrance to the
room. It short circuits, preventing exit. "Go through the secret passage to
get out of here. One thing," Max adds, "It is possible you'll need to
recover some equipment from Project Darwin before you can complete the
rebuilding of the sleeper base. Be careful, though, and rebuild as much of
the base as you can before you venture off to Darwin. I don't like the
things I've heard about it at.

Click to expand...

Multiple trips back and forth or one trip to each? You know which sounds better. I'm not entirely sure I'm supposed to know where Darwin is, but when I first played the game (ten-minute test run to see if I liked it enough to really undertake an LP), I admit I did the same thing Liberal did in his miserable, girly failure of an LP; headed straight north from the Ranger Center, through a radiation field and into a strange little town. Called, of course, Darwin Village. I then promptly died. Nonetheless, that's where we shall head now, and see what there is to see...



But first... we have unfinished business in Las Vegas.
And BROs don't leave BROsuiness hanging.

TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR: the reckoning of the Scorpitron, the neglected matter of a man called Covenant, the showdown with the power players of Vegas... and the forgotten village of Darwin!

Excellent, excellent.

It will be interesting to see how far you get by doing things the way you are planning to do them. Sorry I didn't tell you about the Sewers, it is probably the most annoying part of the game, with a couple of amusing things thrown in.

I completely forgot sewers, but still remember how repaired Max.
And when you heading in the Citadel, take a lots of rockets. I remember using 3 manglers or two better RPGs on the one brother.

Great.

Okay, I don't like to out and ask for help, but is there any way back into Brygo's office? It's "sealed like a vault" and nothing I do or use will open it. Did I blow it by not attacking him when we first met?

Good work my good man. I recall the sewers as being quite rape-y but not quite as rape-y as that garden of eden or whatever it's called area later on. Anyway, in anticipation of incoming rape -

Admiral jimbob said:

Okay, I don't like to out and ask for help, but is there any way back into Brygo's office? It's "sealed like a vault" and nothing I do or use will open it. Did I blow it by not attacking him when we first met?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, no, there is no way back in. I saved the game originally and blew Brygo away before restoring it. I guess I should have dropped one of my cryptic hints about this...I would do it one day for the lulz if you ever get the chance again.

Still, the BRO can be assauged (heh) by an identical item that I believe may be hanging around the Guardian Citadel.

Strange that they didn't leave a back way in or something; you're pretty much left with the choice between what seems to be a rather long and involved sequence and... well, knowing what to do to actually advance the game. That tight vault-like door taunts me with all the things that should work on it. Ah well, might drop into the Citadel on the way.

Admiral jimbob said:

Strange that they didn't leave a back way in or something; you're pretty much left with the choice between what seems to be a rather long and involved sequence and... well, knowing what to do to actually advance the game. That tight vault-like door taunts me with all the things that should work on it. Ah well, might drop into the Citadel on the way.

Click to expand...

Well, at least you can do things in another order in Wasteland. And Brygo's hideout is one of the very few areas where other options are not available. C&C?

The BRO is not a necessary part of the game by the way, in case you were wondering.