Balance is a delicate thing – it can be a finely tuned system that gives all players a fair opportunity at success, or a gigantic mess of exploits, loopholes, and overpowered items. No matter what kind of game you are playing, from first person shooters to real time strategy to traditional pen and paper, gameplay systems exist that must be carefully considered and balanced. But, no matter how much time a developer puts into balance, we the players always seem to find a way around it.

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When all was said and done, my rag-tag crew of Desert Rangers stood victorious. The robot threat was ended, and peace returned to the wastes (such as it was.)

But wait, you say; you skipped over your struggles through Base Cochise!

You are correct.

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With Finster deactivated, and SecPass B in hand, the endgame lay open before us. We know that Base Cochise, to the far west, is the real source of trouble, but before that we have a few bits of unfinished business to take of. First off, we swing back to Sleeper Base to check out that tantalizing treasure room we saw earlier. As we expected, the new keycard does indeed open the vault doors, and the “impenetrable” crystal walls inside fall quickly to a few chunks of plastic explosive.

The loot bags inside contain a bevvy of valuable Power Packs and other exciting items, but the real gems here are the suits of Pseudo-Chitin Armor. These take our AC from a meager 6 up to a respectable 10. With this new-found armor, we suddenly feel confident to tackle the one thing that has been haunting us since we first left Ranger HQ: The Guardian Citadel.

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I think we can all agree that maybe – just maybe – this whole Mass Effect 3 ending business has gotten a bit out of hand. I still have not played it myself, and I have been meticulously avoiding spoilers, but I am confident that no matter what happens when I finally get there, I will be able to turn off the game and move on with my life.

Being disappointed by video game endings is nothing new. Heck, in the days of the Atari and the Intellevision, you were lucky if you even got an ending. Old man grumblings aside, once games started blossoming into more narrative epics, it was inevitable that disappointment would follow. Movies have been doing it for decades; books have been doing it for even longer!

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Having done all that we could for the moment at Sleeper Base, we head due south back to the town of Darwin. As we’ve already explored the town, there isn’t much to do but head straight into Project Darwin itself. Much like Sleeper Base, this area has a high-tech, polished metal look in contrast to the broken-down concrete that makes up most of the rest of the Wasteland. However, Darwin seems more lived-in – and as we know from Mad Dog and Metal Maniac, people were still working in the base until just recently, when they were kicked out by Finster.

This brings up an interesting point… as we just learned from Sleeper Base, Finster was the project director before the war. A little mental math tells us that would put him at an impossibly high age. So now the question remains: just who is this guy?

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The ghosts of the past haunting the present is a literary trope stretching back through history to times long forgotten. The idea that people we may have never even known made decisions that we must face the consequences of resonates with almost everyone, as it is something we deal with most every day in some form or another. Sometimes it is something small, like the previous owner of your home deciding that duct tape would be just as useful as screws in holding together the frame of your shed. Sometimes it is something very large, like a lone assassin taking matters into his own hands and reshaping the face of Europe for a century to come.

In the world of Wasteland – a post-apocalyptic world – the ghosts of the past are inescapable. They take the form of a shattered society, of mutant creatures roaming the landscape. These ghosts haunt with memories of fire and death, and can still kill with an invisible, radioactive hand. You’d think that that would be enough – that they would be satisfied with that much destruction – but you would be wrong.

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As is painfully obvious, Wasteland holds a special place in our hearts. So it is with no shame whatsoever that I direct you to the just-launched Wasteland 2 Kickstarter campaign. I have already wired Brian Fargo my account information, but I’m sure he’d be happy with whatever you could give him as well.

Sporting our heavier arms and armor after our shopping trip to Darwin, we return to Vegas to face off with the killer robots that roam the streets. The fights are still tough, but our ability to weather them is greatly increased. The robots are a treasure trove of loot, including a Sonic Key that I have doubt will be useful later. Skirting around the Scorpitron that still sits in the center of town, we make our way to Spade’s Casino.

Resisting the urge to try out Tyrion’s luck at the gaming tables, we instead seek out the barman. Again, like all good RPG bar folk, he has useful information for us.  Specifically, the password needed to speak to Faran Brygo. I know from previous experience that we could force our way upstairs, kill the casino operators, then return downstairs and literally kill every single person in the casino as well. It would give us some pretty heft loot, but in this case I think that may be stretching the bounds of “justice” a little too far. Deciding to bypass the bloodbath, we return to the streets.

Now, with no other choice, it’s time to deal with the Scorpitron. We can’t get to Brygo’s without going past it, and skulking off into the desert again hardly qualifies us as protectors of the people. Making sure everyone is at full health and fully loaded, we make a charge at the armored monstrosity. We grit our teeth, prepared for a battle to the death.

…and then it’s over three rounds later.

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There is a dark secret I have been hiding for much of my playthrough of Wasteland. Something that has been gnawing at the back of my mind, but that I have – through sheer strength of will – managed to ignore. Now, at last, having arrived in Darwin at an appropriate point in the game, I can purge this nagging demon from my mind.

Darwin is a sleepy little town in the far north-east corner of the map, encircled by a quaint ring of deadly radiation. It’s actually a very short trip from Ranger HQ, but with the only safe entry point through a mountain pass to the north, it takes a long trip around the map to get here without suffering glowing death.

Darwin, despite its sleepy nature, is full of some very aggressive thugs armed with some very painful automatic weaponry. Fortunately, our Rangers have grown strong enough that they pose very little threat (especially compared to the metal monstrosities of Vegas). Exploring the town, we find a very intriguing tunnel leading to the south. Checking it out, we find ourselves in a very sleek, metallic looking facility with a series of sealed doors. Eddard can’t make heads nor tails out of the fancy card-slot locks, and our explosives don’t seem to faze them. It seems that whatever it is that will get us in here, we don’t have it yet.

Heading back into town, I finally give in to my darker urges and head straight for the Black Market.

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When Nobuo Uematsu took the stage this past weeked at MAG Fest X, you could feel the anticipation in the room. Stage One, which had been pretty well populated for other performances throughout the weekend, was more packed than ever. As he raised his hands over his head to greet the audience, the cheers that went up came pouring forth in a cascading torrent of sound. For me, this was a moment to remember: a little over twenty years after the fact, I was about to see a performance from a man who had made a deep, lasting impact on my life.

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