Wildbus… Wildbus… Yeah… Uhm… I’m not sure how to start this review to keep it rated for everyone, to be honest. Let’s keep in mind that the Nintendo Switch is a console for everybody, and some people tend to enjoy different things? Yes, let’s keep it at that. If you want to read more about Wildbus, hang on.
Wildbus
I’m not sure what the people who developed Wildbus were on while writing and developing this game. It straight up is unplayable for someone that’s sober of not under the influence of something (I think?). Or I missed a major key point in gameplay – if so, developers, please let me know! So what’s Wildbus about? It has a background story, told through interaction with the NPCs in the different bus-stop-towns you find along with the map, and goes a little something like this. The Great Devastation was a massive war between huge enterprises and the government that lasted for more than a decade. When the war ended, Arrakis became shrouded in the dark clouds of despair as mutant monsters and bandits rose from the darkness to control the world, but people who believe in the light drive armed buses in the wilderness in search of the Promised Land of Light filled with the ultimate happiness… Sounds like Nirvana right (the Buddhist term, not the band).
Ugh.
However the game offers zero help, introduction on how to operate, move or do in the general sense of gameplay. Yes, you drive around in a bus, which you can arm with different weapons and randomness to tackle your problems. After talking to everyone in town, you move into the wilderness and to the next town-busstop…thingie? But like I said, the game is pretty unplayable. I encountered many glitches and bugs which caused me to lose a lot of gameplay (yes, I worked through this, for you, the readers!). One of the glitches teleported me into a town I could not leave since I had not picked up an item in two cities before (a no-brainer since I shouldn’t have been there!)
Conclusion
And my whole experience with Wildbus was a bit like this – encounter problem, find a strange quest that’s pretty much too obscure to instantly grab or realize what to do – repeat until you glitch and the game gives you the middle finger. I hope that these kinds of problems get patched out before more reviews like mine start pouring in; I wanted to enjoy this game, but I was genuinely unable to. With no handholding of any kind, Wildbus expects you to experiment and piece together how actually to navigate its world and solve its mysteries. If Wildbus is wacky and odd for the sake of being such, then that might be the only way of deeming it a success – or maybe you can only enjoy the land of light on specific substances, I don’t know. For anyone looking for a legitimately fun video game, don’t go anywhere near this bus.
