Despite containing the horror of gas attacks, trench warfare, zombies and shoggoths, the story is more camp than creepy, with echoes of Wolfenstein and Hellboy. It’s serviceable enough, if on the short side. I don’t like to mention price but given that there are only nine missions, it’s useful to know that at $4.99 there’s a few hours of entertainment here. It’d be an uncannily lucky fellow who survived the later missions on a first attempt and even if so, the multiple objectives lead to some tough, drawn out defensive knuckling down.
No gasts will be flabbered by The Wasted Land but it’s a stern challenge with a strong set of numbers and rules governing its combat. As is often the case with this sort of turn-based skirmishing, there’s sometimes a puzzle-like precision needed to achieve victory, but in The Wasted Land there’s usually enough leeway for triumph to feel personal and well-earned, which made every minute I spent testing my mettle satisfying at the very least. And that’s in spite of the rough interface, which insists that the mouse button is clicked and then held for the majority of actions leading to the occasional mad slide around the map in an attempt to target a large man with a machine gun.
