Every Wasteland game, ranked
All 2 Wasteland games we hold, spanning 2014 to 2020: 2 ranked by the GamingPickz Score and plotted below, the rest listed in release order so nothing in the series is missing. Together they carry 30,467 Steam reviews.
Where to start
- For the best-reviewed: Wasteland 3 (GamingPickz Score 7.6), the highest-rated entry we can score.
- For canon order: begin with Wasteland 2: Director's Cut (2014) and follow the release-order timeline below.
- For the money: Wasteland 2: Director's Cut gives the most score per dollar right now.
The Wasteland games on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueThe same 2 games, plotted rather than listed. The two axes below are the ones the ranking is built from, so a game sitting high and right is a game the formula placed near the top. Change either axis to see the field a different way. Where we hold a publisher wordmark, the game is drawn as its mark rather than a dot.
2 games have both
Axes are fitted to these 2 games rather than the full 0 to 100 scale, because a filtered list shares a narrow band and would otherwise sit in one corner. End values are marked. A point on the left edge is the lowest of thesegames, not a low score.
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- PC
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
2 best Wasteland games, ranked
Ordered by GamingPickz Score. Every figure links back to the source that produced it.
Wasteland 3 at a glance Released 2020 Studio inXile Entertainment Player sentiment 85% positive of 22,363 Critics 85/100 Price $39.99 Steam Deck playable Install size 45 GB Accessibility 0 declared features Raw 85% shrinks to 85.0 on 22,363 reviews, then blends with the 85 critic aggregate, giving 7.6.
What the data supports- Cloud saves and cross-platform play, so progress follows you between machines.
Worth checking first- Flagged for mature content on its store page.
- 2
Wasteland 2: Director's Cut
Best for: A consistently well-received pick in this category
7.4GamingPickz Scoremedium confidenceWasteland 2: Director's Cut at a glance Released 2014 Studio inXile Entertainment Player sentiment 83% positive of 8,104 Critics 87/100 Price $29.99 Steam Deck unknown Install size 30 GB Accessibility 1 declared feature Raw 83% shrinks to 83.0 on 8,104 reviews, then blends with the 87 critic aggregate, giving 7.4.
Worth checking first- Flagged for mature content on its store page.
Best and worst entry
The best-received Wasteland game we can score is Wasteland 3 at 7.6. The lowest is Wasteland 2: Director's Cut at 7.4, a 0.2-point spread across the series. The GamingPickz Score is a composite of player sentiment, critics and popularity, computed the same way for every game.
Cheapest way in, and best value
- Cheapest right now: Wasteland 2: Director's Cut at $29.99. Prices are read live from Steam and move.
- Best value: Wasteland 2: Director's Cut, the most GamingPickz Score per dollar in the series at its current price.
On a Steam Deck
Valve's own Deck compatibility rating for the Wasteland entries on Steam:
- Playable: Wasteland 3
Platforms across the series
Where the 2 Wasteland games have landed, counting every entry we hold:
| Platform family | Entries |
|---|---|
| PC | 2 of 2 |
The Wasteland series, game by game
Every Wasteland game we hold, in release order. Each description is the game's own, from Steam where it has a listing and Wikipedia for the older entries, never ours.
- 2014
From the producer of the original Fallout comes Wasteland 2. With over 80 hours of gameplay, deck out your Ranger squad with devastating weaponry, test the limits of your strategy skills, and bring justice to the Wasteland! The choices are yours…but so are the consequences. (Steam)
Plot
The game is set in an alternate history timeline, in which a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union took place in 1998 in relation to an impact event involving a cluster of meteors that sparked a global nuclear war. On the day of the cataclysm, a company of U. S. (Wikipedia)
Reception
Reception Wasteland 2 received generally positive reviews from critics. The game holds an aggregate score of 80. 70% on GameRankings based on 32 reviews and a score of 81/100 on Metacritic based on 54 reviews. (Wikipedia)
- 2020
Wasteland 3
7.6Following the critically acclaimed 2014 Game of the Year winner Wasteland 2, the RPG series that pioneered the post-apocalyptic genre in video games returns with Wasteland 3. (Steam)
Plot
Wasteland 3 is set in the frozen wastelands of a post-apocalyptic Colorado . The player takes control of two members from Arizona Ranger Team November, who survived after their unit was ambushed while on a mission in Colorado. The two survivors are subsequently forced to work with the local ruler, known as the "Patriarch", in order to earn his support for the Arizona Rangers - after the last game, and the choice between Highpool and Ag Center, the… (Wikipedia)
Reception
Reception The game received generally positive reviews upon release, getting a score of 85/100 from critics on review aggregator platform Metacritic . By December 2021, the game had attracted more than 2 million players. It was nominated for the category of Best Role Playing at The Game Awards 2020 , as well as " Role-Playing Game of the Year " at the 24th Annual D. (Wikipedia)
Wasteland, head to head
Two entries side by side on score, price, specs and reception:
Wasteland vs other series
How Wasteland stacks up against other series in the same genre, as a whole:
Also: Wasteland vs Fallout, Wasteland vs Dragon Age, Wasteland vs DRAGON BALL, Wasteland vs Mass Effect, Wasteland vs Mount & Blade, Wasteland vs Orcs Must Die!, Wasteland vs Yakuza, Wasteland vs ARK, Wasteland vs Risen, Wasteland vs Sniper Ghost Warrior, Wasteland vs State of Decay, Wasteland vs The Witcher, Wasteland vs Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Wasteland vs Torchlight, Wasteland vs Watch, Wasteland vs Age of History, Wasteland vs Age of Wonders, Wasteland vs ArcheAge, Wasteland vs Baldur's Gate, Wasteland vs Beholder, Wasteland vs Darkest Dungeon, Wasteland vs Divinity, Wasteland vs Dragon's Dogma, Wasteland vs Dungeon Siege, Wasteland vs Dungeons, Wasteland vs ELDEN RING, Wasteland vs EverQuest, Wasteland vs Gothic, Wasteland vs Kingdom Come, Wasteland vs Kingdom Rush, Wasteland vs Kingdoms of Amalur, Wasteland vs Marvel’s Spider-Man, Wasteland vs Middle-earth, Wasteland vs Might & Magic, Wasteland vs NARUTO SHIPPUDEN, Wasteland vs Pathfinder, Wasteland vs Prototype, Wasteland vs Shadowrun, Wasteland vs Soda Dungeon, Wasteland vs South Park, Wasteland vs Stronghold, Wasteland vs The Lord of the Rings, Wasteland vs The Surge, Wasteland vs Tom Clancy’s The Division, Wasteland vs Town of Salem, Wasteland vs Two Worlds, Wasteland vs XCOM
Common questions
How many Wasteland games are there?
We hold 2 Wasteland games in the catalogue, released between 2014 and 2020. 2 of them carry enough Steam data to rank; the rest are listed in release order below, including console-only entries with no Steam listing.
Which Wasteland game is best?
By the GamingPickz Score, Wasteland 3 rates highest at 7.6. That is a composite of player sentiment, the critic aggregate and popularity, computed the same way for every game, not our opinion. The full ranking is above.
What order should I play the Wasteland games in?
Release order is listed below, from 2014 to 2020. For most series that is also story order, but we list dates rather than telling you a canon; the timeline is read from Wikidata.
More franchises
Browse every game franchise ranked the same way, or head to the full grid.