Tag: post-apocalypse

The Monster Inside Me
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Find out how terrible you are in The Monster Inside Me

Ana and Jakob are hunched over and bickering by the fire, as usual. You try and ignore them and throw some crumpled up newspaper into the pit. The fire laps up the paper, hungry for more. As you stare into the flames, their arguing becomes harder to to tune out. Everyone is tired and hungry and stressed. It was a miracle you found this place untouched and managed to keep it fortified to ward off the curious. Just as you were about to shout at your friends, a scream is heard from outside. The three of you freeze. “What was…
Overland
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If you didn’t get your hands on Overland before, now is your chance

If you’ve been waiting to play Finji’s new game Overland, but didn’t make it into the limited First Access Program, then good news: Overland is now open to the public. Overland is a tactical survival game in the vein of XCOM but with far more adorable dogs and heartache. The game has you balancing a carload of survivors as you cross the United States, balancing gas shortages and injuries in a board game-like atmosphere. The game has procedurally generated characters with their own quirks and traits, allowing you just enough time to get attached to them before they are viciously…
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Test your inventory management skills in a new puzzle game

Inventory management is a tedious part of videogames. I’ve never found myself daydreaming of the minuscule inventory in Resident Evil (1996) (though I do remember that opting for playing as Jill netted you two more slots). Nor have I ever found myself enjoying the meticulous disposal of items over-encumbering Geralt of The Witcher 3 (2015). Even with the largest saddlebags hanging onto my dear steed Roach in that game, I often had to spend minutes at a time digging through and tossing out the most unnecessary junk to make room for something new and shiny. And in Witcher 3-time those minutes eventually became hours…
Feature

How “girl games” will save the post-apocalypse

A disaster completely destroys your city or country, what do you do? Thankfully, numerous videogames have prepared everyone for such a scenario. You immediately go on a killing spree as you look for The Thing that will improve your life, of course. Following 2013’s The Last of Us, you might bring a critical survivor to an important location, shooting mutated humans in your way, scrapping for supplies. Or you could seek vehicular vengeance a la Mad Max (2015). Alternatively, perhaps you need to look for your father, barreling across a hazardous wasteland, helping to purify water when you’re not firing…
Fallout 4
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Turning Fallout 4’s world into 1950s-style animations

If you’ve played last year’s Fallout 4, you’ve doubtless seen the series of animated shorts that play upon starting the game up. Black-and-white and with scratchy audio, these videos turned the post-apocalyptic Boston wasteland of Fallout 4 into a comedic, 1950s-style cartoon. (If you haven’t seen these shorts, then you can easily catch up on them all over on developer and publisher Bethesda’s YouTube channel.) Each of these shorts detailed one of the letters in the game’s  “S.P.E.C.I.A.L.” system. This has been a staple of the Fallout series since its first outing in 1997. It’s an acronym that stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma,…
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The Rust Belt is like Mad Max in the American Midwest

Replace Mad Max’s Fury Road with the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the American Midwest and you might get something like The Rust Belt, a dusty looking truck combat game by Galvanic Games. The Rust Belt puts you in control of a tow truck driver trying to get by in rural America after pollution has left Earth devoid of nearly every natural resource. While the upper classes have gone off and fled the planet, you’re left to travel through dangerous regions like the Eerie Desert, the Chicago Deadlands, the Detroit Militarized Zone, and the Iron Blighted City of Pittsburgh looking for supplies…
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This week’s Playlist pick finds beauty in the end of the world

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (PS4)  BY The Chinese Room and SCE Sonta Monica Studio The reclaiming of the term “walking simulator” is a great example of a community turning something derogatory into something positive. The label, given to games that focus on environmental storytelling like Dear Esther, was meant to deride interactive experiences that lack high scores and point systems. Walking is boring, the joke assumes, and thus any game that merely simulates this mundane activity is not worth anyone’s time. Creators like…