XNA: Nuclear Wasteland 2030

I really want to open with "this game is garbage", because as much as I really hate this game, it's not technically garbage. Pointless, not great.. but not garbage. The main problem is that this game has no real reason to exist. It's an FPS for a dollar, and boy do you get what you pay for.

See, it "works". You can do everything you need to do in an FPS game, shoot, reload, aim, but it's.. hollow. It's cheap. The animation isn't awful, but it's very robotic and very unappealing to a fault. The gameplay is a simple constant wave of enemies affair, and it gets old before the first wave is over. I think you can unlock new weapons aside from the default loadout, but I'm not really sure as I grew tired of this quickly.

In the still shots, it looks alright, but it's unbelievably hideous in motion. I didn't grow up with FPS games, I'm pretty much rubbish at them and get tired of them quickly. If you grew up on Quake, or Counter-Strike then you might be able to appreciate these games a tad bit more than me. But truthfully, I hope not. See, there's a lot of shit on XNA, and this is one of them.

Now mind you, this game is FAR from the worst offender, but it's thoroughly pointless. My friends you do enjoy FPS games laughed this game off, citing it for the same problems as I did. For a dollar, it lives up to it's promise of being a cheap FPS game. But a cheap FPS is not worth it. There is little to no value here. Save up your money and buy a REAL FPS. You can get older ones that are great for fairly cheap now. Modern Warfare 1 or 2, Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, all sorts of interesting and quality games for not a lot of cash.

I feel bad riding this game, but it really does deserve it. It was for a while on the Top Downloaded list, and it really does not deserve that, but a lot of crud is still clogging up the Indie Channel. Like I said, this isn't the worst offender, but it's unworthy of your attention. It's an alright start I guess, if the developer puts some more effort, or time, or whatever into the animation, and actually came up with some interesting gameplay, or at the very least standard gameplay conventions they could very well make a quality game.

The Indie Channel is not the place for an FPS game though. They aren't supposed to be big titles, and I don't really see an FPS being made on the cheap being worth playing. I don't know, maybe a call back to classics like DOOM and Castle Wolfenstein, but certainly not a 3D one. Put some more effort into making it a full game and try to get it released on XBLA, or as an indie title on computer. There are lots of options for games like this, this outing just fell short.

Nuclear Wasteland 2030 is owned by SickKreations