Wasteland Angel is a under the radar indie PC game that was recently released on steam, on September 1st. I've been waiting for a demo of this game, just so I could try it and because I'm always intrigued by games with apocalyptic settings. The demo finally showed up yesterday on 9/11 and it gives you several levels of the single player campaign to try out. First off, let's get down some basic details.

Basic Information
Developer: Octane Games, Meridian4 
Genre: Action, Indie
Platform: PC only
Price: $9.99

Before I go into my impressions, let me detail some of the features of this game. It's a top down action game that has you controlling a vehicle, a vehicle that is mounted with weapons. While this isn't Twisted Metal, or anything like it, it does have the same kind of car vs car mayhem, but it's far different than Twisted Metal and the only thing comparable is the vehicular combat. I know I basically repeated myself twice there, but there must not be any confusion that this is like Twisted Metal, because I really like Twisted Metal and I cannot say the same for this, but more on that later. Enemies vehicles drop power ups in this game, power-ups like increased armor, better weapons, sentry turrets and mini-nukes (among other power-ups). There are twenty-four levels to explore across six different landscapes. There are offensive missions, escort missions and defensive missions, all of which are varied throughout the campaign. Wasteland Angel has large boss battles and FPS shooting/driving bonus levels. For more information on the basic info check out the steam page.
Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/46520/


Now, let's get to some impressions. I slightly hinted that I may not like this game and that certainly wasn't a lie. I had already seen reviews and videos of Wasteland Angel, none of which made me want to play it, but I still gave it a chance and checked out what the demo had to offer. You get to try out four or five levels in the demo, a boss battle and some bonus levels, so all in all a decently lengthy demo, but unfortunately it wasn't very fun. Like I previously stated, you control a car and it's a car that has decent controls, but nothing spectacular. The thing that I really dislike about the core gameplay is shooting and combat. Sure you get power ups and all that, those are good things that make the game better, but the shooting your guns, blowing up other vehicles and using specials just doesn't feel good. Your bullets have a floaty feel to them and nothing impacts like it should, but I'm not saying that this game needs to be realistic, I'm just saying that even though the combat is arcade like, it's not arcade like in a good way. There is a story in this game, but it's really minor and uninteresting, although the voice acting sounds just fine. Wasteland Angel feel's like a arcade game, but it has a lot of length, different modes, weapons and power-ups; unfortunately, none of that makes it worthy of your money. It is underwhelming in many ways, combat is dull and repetitive, and the environments are less than stunning. It's been a while since I've been so unimpressed by a game, but Wasteland Angel has so few attractive qualities, qualities that we come to expect out any game that has a price attached to it. Please do not just listen to my opinion on this, try it yourself, its a mere 500 megabyte download to play the demo, but I unfortunately had an unpleasant time playing through the demo. Thanks for reading and check back for more tomorrow.

 -Written by Sean Cargle