Wasteland Angel is a top-down, isometric arcade shooter developed by Meridian 4 & Octane Games. Wasteland Angel takes place after World War III, which has turned the planet into a wasteland full of hostile gangs and mutants. The game focuses around the heroine known as “Wasteland Angel”, who is determined to fight oppression and protect the innocent with her armed and armored muscle car. The primary objective is to protect innocent towns and their occupants from being kidnapped and enslaved by hostile factions. Game play consists of fending off waves of enemies, some of which are hell bent on your destruction, while others are focused on kidnapping the poor residents of the local town(s). Of course, a game would not be complete without over the top boss fights, and Wasteland Angel does not disappoint.
Wasteland Angel features power-ups, which are available by destroying as many enemies as possible. These power-ups can grant the Wasteland Angel extra health, armor, weapon upgrades, and secondary weapons. Like most arcade shooters the Wasteland Angel start off with a slightly weak primary weapon. This can easily be remedied by power-ups that can give you different ammunition types such as armor piercing, incendiary rounds, or an upgrade to your light machine guns that can be converted into a different weapon, for example the mini-gun. Secondary weapons such as land mines and napalm are also available, but unlike your primary weapon, the secondary weapons have limited ammunition.
Wasteland Angel features two different gameplay modes and four difficulty settings. One gameplay mode is Story Mode, and the other is Level Play. Story Mode allows the player to play the game from start to finish, chasing the ultimate score. Level Play allows the player to play single levels to hit the level specific scoreboards. The four difficulty levels included in Wasteland Angel are easy, medium, hard, and nightmare. Medium has a nice balance between challenge and fun; nightmare, however, is a lesson in pain. A very nice competitive feature is the inclusion of a scoreboard. The scoreboard shows the high scores of the top Wasteland Angel players on all four difficulty levels.
Wasteland Angel does offer enjoyable features as well as frustrating ones. Though most levels are a top-down isometric view, some levels put you into a first person behind the wheel view. The levels that allow you to be in first person mode were by far the most enjoyable and frantic moments of Wasteland Angel. There was a bit of sadness after the first person level was over and the top-down isometric view returned. The game controls are clunky via the keyboard and mouse, and one can speculate the game was made to play on a controller. This can be said because of the fact the game shows you the control select screen and the first option is the X-box 360 controller followed by the keyboard. One could speculate Wasteland Angel would be more enjoyable with a controller versus the keyboard and mouse.
The dialog for the heroine is fully voiced and very high quality, often sounding as she is speaking through a CB radio. Her inflections and accent are realistic and both make the game more enjoyable. The music is well done, and should be very pleasing to anybody who loves a rocking guitar. The only two complaints this reviewer can note is the lack of a native windowed mode and enemies can often drive off the screen while the heroine cannot. This leaves the player waiting for the enemy to return to the play field before carnage can continue. Wasteland Angel is fun as long as you keep in mind the game is simply a casual arcade shooter. The lack of depth or bells and whistles offered in Wasteland Angel is not terrible, as long as you are in the mood for mindless destruction and a low price.
