Practice for the end of civilizaiton...

[Texas_Bryan]

Team,

Been playing a lot of video games lately, while not working and all the other young guy stuff.  Favorites as of late have been the post civilization titles, and since that's a well loved topic here, I thought I would share.

Metro 2033 - PC, XBOX 360

You live in a destroyed and desolate Moscow, my favorite kind of Moscow, where people can only survive in the subway tunnels that lie beneath the city.  Great action game, with a fantastic dedication to atmosphere.  Neat mechanics like rechargeable head lamps and gas masks, also money is gone from the world, the only thing of trading value is pre-disaster 5.45mm ammunition.  Lots of political groups fight for dominance as most people try to scrape by.  Also, it was made by Russians, so you know its good.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - PC

By the original guys that stayed behind from the Metro 2033 crew, you get to go on a wild romp through Chernobyl, inhabited by mutants, mercenaries, and fortune hunters.  Game offers a lot of freedom and little help, so you have to survive by trading anything you can between rival factions seeking artifacts from the nuclear disaster.  One of the harder games out there.  Again, Russian made, so its pretty good, and bad grammer has it do at times.

Fallout New Vegas - PC, XBOX 360, Playstation 3

You get to go to 'New Vegas' two hundred and fifty years after the American Chinese nuclear apocalypse, the world is just starting to rebuild, so all sorts of characters are coming out of the wood work to claim a piece.  Best survival mechanics of them all; medicine is old pre war sorts, or made over a camp fire, do custom upgrades to guns to keep them running, rig together survive gear out of found parts on a work bench, and keep ammo in good supply at reloading benches.  Fantastic narrative too, with the New California Republic, Caesar's Legion, the Vegas strip, and assorted gangs and tribes.

If you only play one of them, go for Metro 2033, its the best looking and most consistently entertaining.