"Hi Everypony! Or, Everycreature! Joystick here, and welcome to my review of Wasteland Warriors! The new FPS by Four Stars Studios! This game just came out a few days ago and it's already become one of my favorite games this generation!

Wasteland Warriors is a hero shooter set in the fallout Equestria universe, which is a semi popular series of books written by Various authors. They aren't as widely known as the Daring Doo books, but it still has a sizable fanbase. Currently there are 20 characters to choose from that are categorized into four different combat roles, similar to Overwatch. Those roles are offensive, defensive, tanks, and support characters, each having five characters.

Game play wise, each character plays differently with a unique load out and fighting style. Some characters such as Henrietta and Calamity can actually fly and reach higher areas much more quickly. Others like Chainlink is very slow and cannot sprint, however makes up for this with his chain weapon which he can use to pull enemies close to him, therefore breaking their concentration.

While you have your usual run of the mill game modes such as control points and capture the flag, Wasteland Warriors stands out from the rest by providing its own unique game modes that go well with the new scavenging system. Such as Arms Race, which has two teams competing to collect resources, and Settlement Assault, which involves one team defending a settlement from the other team.

Oh. I should probably mention the scavenge system. During rounds, there are numerous scrap piles and other clutter scattered throughout the map. Players can salvage these resources and bring them back to their base, which then allows them to purchase upgrades and other abilities for their team. Certain characters are better at salvaging than others since they can loot faster and collect more resources in a single run.

Collected resources can be used to upgrade characters, purchase items, and construct different structures. While the only character that can build things is Scotch Tape, they aren't the most expensive to place down, plus certain characters can upgrade various buildings, with Scotch being able to upgrade anything built. This allows for multiple players with several play styles to help out with base defenses.

By far the most fun part of the game for me are likely the special abilities that each character can use which can turn the tides of a match. I'm not going to go into details, but lets just say that they range from summoning boss like characters, to special power attacks, and huge character buffs. Almost every one of them is a reference to a specific moment from fallout Equestria, which fans are sure to love.

Overall, Wasteland Warriors stands out among the hero shooter sub genre due to it's ascetic and gameplay. Far to many hero shooters have come and gone due to how they always end up trend chasing whatever is popular such as Battleborn and Law breakers, and that trend doesn't seam to be slowing down.

I recommend picking up this gem if you haven't already. It's free to play so there is no real barrier to entry aside from owning a platform to play it on."

The launch of Wasteland warriors was a massive success. Although there wasn't much hype leading up to the game at launch, it still proved quite popular among gamers all over equestria. It started to gain popularity when a predominant twitch streamer, Doziboy, played it during one of his livestreams. Sure most of the players in the match were bots at times, but that was still much more preferable to a nearly empty map when the game was searching for players.

While most of the games player base lived in Equestria and it's surrounding countries, several humans from earth had built a cult following. Earth wasn't exactly a pony friendly place and most games developed by Equestrian studios often sold poorly. Not necessarily due to poor quality (several equestrian games would actually surpass most AAA games from earth in this regard) but because the average human gamer was discriminatory of ponies and considered their culture and lifestyles 'Cringy'.

That didn't stop the several human who did play wasteland warriors from enjoying the game however. In fact, most of these human players found wasteland warriors to be a much more enjoyable experience since it didn't try to force you to buy micro transactions every time you booted it up like almost every modern game from earth did.

"Ah Finally! It's ready!"

Grey clover had been waiting for steam to download his recently acquired copy of wasteland warriors. After playing a few rounds at a friends house, he said that he would pick up a copy so the two can play online. Once the game launched and the four stars logo appeared in a decent animation, he was greeted with the main menu screen. The background was of a large overlook of the equestrian wasteland. Although he couldn't tell where it was the menu was showing, he guessed it was between Manehattan, and Canterlot.

The options that were present on the side of the screen were Offline Skirmish, Online play, Stable, options, Credits, and exit. Clover selected online play and was bought to another screen. This one listed a series of playlists that ranged from specific gamemodes, to team sizes, to ones where specific rules were in place.

Each playlist also had a rather interesting image that popped up whenever the player highlighted it. The playlist for Balefire bomb showed Brimstone Blitz pushing a wagon holding a bomb while Velvet Remedy was streaming some sort of magic to him. Arms race had steelhooves and Morning Glory fighting over a large weapon that both of them had found, and Settlement assault had scotch tape building a barricade that calamity was shooting from behind.

Clover went with the Wasteland tour playlist, which showed Little Pip, Blackjack, and Puppysmiles charging forward into battle.

The screen then transitioned to a player log showing twelve slots, with his username Greystache53 right at the top. The other 11 had 'Searching for player' listed.

It didn't take long for the slots to fill up and for several other usernames to appear below his. Along with three maps and modes to appear in the middle of the screen.

The maps in question were Ponyville, a control point map, Bucklyn Cross, a settlement assault map, and Fun-farm, which was a bale-fire bomb map.

A short 15 second timer started with the words 'vote for the next map' above it. One vote for Bucklyn cross instantly came up.

"Guys vote for Bucklyn! I almost have the achievement for wasteland crusader Manehattan!" The player named 'kingsmeme59' spoke as a speaker icon appeared next to his gamertag.

Instead, several players had voted for ponyville, with one other selecting Bucklyn cross. Fun farm got no votes.

"No come on! I need a win on Bucklyn Cross!" The user spoke again.

The timer ran out, and Ponyville was the winning vote.

Kingsmeme let out a groan that was barley audible.

The screen changed to a loading screen with a backdrop of ponyville, a loading bar at the bottom right of the screen and a loading tip to the left of it. The tip read "As P21, you can rig one of your mines to an enemy by sneaking behind him. Be sure to get out fast though as he will be alerted before he explodes!"

The tip showed P21's character portrait to it's left.

After a few seconds, the game finished loading, and Clover was met with the character select screen. Clover moved his cursor over a couple of the character icons swiftly, each glowing for a swift second as they were highlighted. The last character to be highlighted was Velvet Remedy, the first support character to be listed.

Velvet was right in the center of the screen smiling brightly with her horn glowing and emitting small cross particles. Clover guessed that this was Wasteland warriors take on Team Fortress 2's Medic.

Some of the other character icons began to show Bright blue outlines around them, to indicate that a team mate has picked him or her already, Blackjack being the first to go.

"Oh of course Blackjack gets picked first!" One player uttered.

Not wanting to wait, Clover selected Velvet. He then spawned in what looked like a broken beaten down version of the Carousel boutique. Several dresses and other pieces of clothing that would have been on display were either missing from their mannequins, or torn apart. In front stood blackjack with the username 'Whiskiqueen' above her. The avatar then pulled out a brown bottle from nowhere with her magic, opened it, and chugged it's contents down.

Clover went over to get a good look at the bottle, and noticed that there was a label on it that read, "Wild Pegasus" It wasn't the most High resolution texture, but it was clear enough to read.

"Oh thank goodness! Someone picked Velvet."

Clover turned around and saw another player as a pony wearing heavy power armor. This one named 'nerzz0'

"Hello....?" Clover said.

"Hi." nerzz0 said before walking to what appeared to be a large gate door.

"Mission starts in 30 seconds" An announcer said.

Other player avatars began to spawn inside the room. A dark blue unicorn with a long black mane, a Griffon with a blue streak in some of her feathers, a white pony with red stripes and very pointy armor, were just a few of the avatars that were on screen, each giving a different name when clover looked at them.

"Mission starts in 10 seconds" claimed the announcer.

All the players went up to the gate, several wrecked buildings clearly visible beyond it.

5...

4...

3...

2...

1...

The gate opened and everyone ran out to the sound of a siren going off. Clover could see a control point with a Bright red light emitting from the center as well as a nearby screen that showed a red eye on a black background. On the top of the screen were five dots, the two on the left were blue, the two on the right red, and the middle one was a light grey. The red and blue dots were both crossed out with an X, indicating that they couldn't be captured yet.

Clover moved with two other players, one of which being nerzz0, who was slightly trailing behind him. The other was Whiskiqueen, who was sprinting past the two others. She made it to the neutral point in the center of the map first, only to encounter an enemy player who was a large tattooed earth pony that charged into her, grabbed her, and smashed her into the ground numerous times.

nerzz0 fired rockets into the other player, which caused him to back off. Unfortunately it was far to late for him to save Whiskiqueen.

"Typical Blackjack players...." nerzz0 said. "Always reckless and jumpy...:

"Why what's wrong with them?" Clover asked as the two moved to capture the point.

"They almost always seam to be the most naive..." nerzz0 responded. "Not just in how they play, but also how they act. They claim that blackjack is the best character in the whole series, even going as far as to claim she's part of the original story!"

Other enemy players began to approach. A purple alicorn with a minigun game into view. She fired at nerzz0, forcing him to fall back and halting his capture attempt.

Clover tried to fire his shotgun at the alicorn, but the range was too long for it to make contact.

"Did you read the original story?" Clover asked.

"Yes of course I did!" nerzz0 answered.

"It was the first book in the series that I read. Which is required to get a basic understanding of the universe. Far to many ponies end up reading project horizons first, probably cause blackjack is in it...."

"Oh don't get me started on that...." Another player on their team stated.

Behind them came another player, who was a grey unicorn who was levitating a rifle with stripes on it. Shooting at the players that were trying to take the control point. The character had 'Bananawarrior' above him.

"I've been seeing several artwork for Fallout Equestria where it's the main cast, only Xenith is swapped out with Blackjack..." He said.

"Really?" Clover asked. "Most of the artwork I see if of Little Pip. And..... Occasionally Blackjack...." He admitted.

"Hey at least you picked Velvet Remedy. She almost always never gets picked. Probably because she is primarily a healer." nerzz0 stated.

"AAAHHHH!!! FUCKING FUCKWAD!!!!" Another player screamed over the mic.

"That's the 9th something time I died to one of those pink mist ponies!!!"

Clover and the others had just secured the central point when they heard that rant.

"Must have melee killed a puppysmiles player." Bananawarrior guessed. "That's something you definately don't want to do. She leaves a pink cloud whenever she dies."

"Button! What did I just hear you say?" A woman shouted, slightly muffled, but was clear enough to be heard by the other players.

"You have just lost your gaming privileges for the rest of the day!" The woman stated.

"Mom! MOM! No...!"

"Screaming like that, especially such foul language will not be tolerated under this roof! Now get over my knee this instant!"

"Mom don't! Pleas don't...!"

Before the player could plead, their connection to the game was severed, and the voice stopped abruptly. The message 'Whiskiqueen has left the game' was shown to all the other players.

"Oh ho ho.... He's in trouble now.." nerzz0 chuckled. "Sounds like his flank is going to get real sore!"

"Maybe he will enjoy it when he gets older!" Another player stated.

Clover had just been killed by a sniper-shot while following nerzz0. Once he respawned back at the boutique, he noticed that the area surrounding the point right outside had changed, there were some walls, turrets, and other structures on the path to the rest of the map. There was also a small green earthpony player swinging a wrench at one of the turrets.

"Hey quick question. How many of you are humans?" Bananawarrior asked.

There was no response for 3 seconds.

"Eh.. it's fine. This game isn't well known among humans such as myself."

"I always thought that Humans were scared of us." Clover said. "Once I heard about how several humans screamed for several hours straight when they saw Celestia at one point."

"That's only half true." Bananawarrior stated. "First the only humans what do that are the old and ignorant boomers who forgot how to have fun. Second it wasn't Celestia they were scared of, it was of the statue that is located right in the middle of one of your villages. I think it was of three ponies if I recall...?"

"Oh! You mean the Legion of Doom?" nerrz0 asked. "Yeah that makes more sense."

"Ah.. Got it." replied Bananawarrior.

The match progressed as normal and clovers team had just advanced on the final point, which was located right outside of a ruined golden oak library. Several structures were built around it, which several players were firing from. One amber Pegasus was firing sniper shots from the highest tower.

"nerrzo you think you can knock those towers down?" Clover asked.

shortly after the question was asked, the largest tower was hit with an explosion and came crumbling down, forcing the Pegasus player to re position.

But instead of nerzz0, a different player showed up next to him. A blue earth pony with a grenade launcher, which just finished playing the reload animation.

"P21 is more effective at dealing with structures like those. While persuasion takes longer to fire, it does more damage and travels faster than steelhooves missile launcher."

Clover and the P21 player moved to the side to deal with the other towers, one of which had a laser turret that fired at a flying griffon. Another grenade launcher round was fired at the tower, bring it down along with the turret, unfortunately it was too late for the Griffon player who died before it went down.

Clover pumped healing magic into P21, both holding out until reinforcements arrived. Soon an alicorn showed up behind them, followed by a pink maned unicorn who threw an ammo box at the blue earth pony.

"Move up! This is the last point we need to capture to win!" The alicorn player stated.

The four players moved up to the capture point, and the alicron put up a bubble shield to protect the others from incoming fire. A large cyborg pony followed by a brown earth pony holding a chain came out at began hitting the barrier. The shield turned from purple, to blue, then quickly to yellow before breaking.

The brown earthpony threw his chain at the pink maned unicorn, pulling her off the point, and towards the brute. He then incapacitated her using a whip that he shortly pulled out.

Clovers team all tried their hardest to support the three characters on the point, but the two large ponys were making it difficult for them to hold their ground. The Alicorn was able to down the brown pony using her mini gun, but was quickly taken out by the cyber pony's duel cannons.

"Keep holding! I'm almost there!" nerzz0 shouted.

Another grenade round was fired at the cyberpony, but it wasn't enough to take him down. It kept firing, and took down P21, leaving Clover, who was playing Velvet Remedy, alone against a character that she had no chance of taking down single handily.

Clover switched to his shotgun in a desperate attempt to hold, but right before he thought he was lost, a large static explosion erupted next to the cyberpony, killing him instantly. Followed by a green Pegasus who run up to the point, finishing the capture.

The words, 'Victory' appeared in bright green on the screen, and bellow it, a box with the words 'Winning capture' in it along with pictures of the green Pegasus and velvet Remedy, followed by their usernames.

The screen then transitioned to one of a white pony with red stripes with the caption 'Play of the game' that was spoken by the announcer as the pony looked at the camera smirking while laid back.

A first person view of the character, along with triumphant music played, showing the character using what appeared to be a hoof held chainsword slashing at numerous foes. Near the End, the camera transitioned to third person, showing the pony covered in barbed wire making several slashing motions and animations in a rapid chain, killing multiple enemies in her path.

The screen then went to a list of every player in the session, with 16 on each team. Every player had an icon next to their name, usually it was the cutie mark of the character they were playing as. The background was that of the stable tec logo.

"Talk about a lucky save!" nerzz0 stated. "Good thing that Murky showed up."

"Wait. Isn't Murky one of the weaker characters?" Clover asked.

"He takes alot of skill to master, but you can really mess up the other team if you know what you are doing." That explosion was caused by one of his EMP mines, which he can to only place down, but also detonate on command to stun those around him. It's extra lethal against Deus and Turrets."

Several players were typing 'GG' in the text chat among other things.

"Hey let me add you." nerzz0 stated "That was a good game we played."

"Oh I'll add you as well." Stated Banana Warrior. "Not alot of people I know play this game."

"Sure thing. It will be nice to have others to play this game with." Clover claimed.

Clover accepted the friend requests and waited for the next round of voting to begin. He had a good feeling that he was going to enjoy playing this game some more, and try out the rest of the characters to see which one fitted his playstyle.

Author's Note

Footnote: Game updated.

Patch notes: Server stability.

You may have launched much better than your competition, but there is always room for improvement. Severs are now much more stable when connecting players outside of Equestria.