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The 8 bleakest post-apocalypses in PC gamesOne Off The List
One Off The List
Post-apocalyptic videogames, the ultimate escape. How wonderful to venture to a strange land, so different from our own, and see what the world may look like an entire week from now. Well, today the PlayStation clan secluded themselves behind their barricades with The Last Of Us Part 2, leaving the PC tribe to suffer in the harsh elements of reality alone. But never fear, wanderer. Here are some similar games to play if you want to leave your austere existence behind, and indulge in a grim struggle instead. Pull up a plastic bucket, break open a tin of Pedigree Chum, here are the 8 bleakest post-apocalypses in PC gaming. A post-apocalyst.
DayZ
They did. You’re dead now.
NEO Scavenger
You wake up in a strange facility. The world has collapsed and there’s a snarling creature clawing its way into your room. So begins another fresh journey in this roguelike survival jaunt, a desperate anti-adventure in which having two pairs of functioning shoes can be the difference between a sad, infected end and a whole second day of extra life.NEO Scavengerunderstands that survival relies upon the mundane. Water bottles, crumpled t-shirts, bits of string. Finding a good rock. These are the tools and tales of the post-apocalyptic human. Not steampunk guns and magical steroids. No. A shard of glass duct-taped to the end of a stick. Unidentified berries. A clumsyfight to the deathin the mud between two sleep-deprived cowards. Oozing wounds from which the “winner” will later die.
The Walking Dead
Ah, the Sophie’s Choice of adventure games. Yes, this tumbling-down-a-hill story of one girl and her successive entourage of carers and carees is full of dead daddy figures and zombified nippers. But if all storytelling is a form of emotional manipulation, Telltale’s Walking Dead series is an unhinged campfire brutalist, offering you a choose-your-own-misery that other games have long sought to mimic. “Here you go,” says Telltale, “choose between saving these two characters, it’s easy. Actually, you know what? It doesn’t matter.
Nier: Automata
I Am Alive
“This is a bit like that game from last year,” I said as I bricked another man in the forehead in The Last Of Us during the hateful summer of 2013. “What was it called? Ah, never mind.” It was calledI Am Alive, and it was a skyscraper-clambering action game colour-drained to the point of resembling a 1940s newsreel. You could point guns at people and they wouldput their hands up, even when you had no ammo. You could put your own hands up when outnumbered and pick your moment to fight back. It was all set in a crumbling7 out of 10world where the biggest killer wasn’t zombies or mutants but dust from fallen buildings. If scavenging a copy of Naughty Dog’s blockbuster is like discovering a cache of tinned peaches, finding I Am Alive is like uncovering a pallet of posh dog food that tastesconfusing.
Frostpunk
The Long Dark
Nope. Still died.
One Off The List from… the 9 most desperate cowboys
Last week we threw a lassoo around the ankles ofthe 9 most desperate cowboys in PC games. But you, the just and respectful jury of the comment section, commanded the immediate sentencing of one of the no-good outlaws. It’s…Revolver Ocelot.
“Suggest Revolver Ocelot for the chop,” says list executioner “MiniMatt”, who takes umbrage with the gunslinger’s code name. “On the grounds that he sounds more like the comedy feline sidekick on aCBeebiesshow than a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy. Sure Hideo, you make a compelling, if disturbingly pervy, game but every character was named during a crystal meth-fuelled team-building trip to the zoo.”
