If you know me, you know I love post-apocalyptic literature and media. Its like candy for me. Zombieland, Brave New World, Half-Life, theyre all favorites of mine. If Katie would allow me to stock up on guns, Id have one for each number key with zero reserved for grenades (instead, she ops for the 2000s FPS genre and ops for only 2-4 guns. She didnt number my grenades, come to think of it) So as of late Ive grabbed three games that fall under that loose category: Prototype, Dead Rising 2, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Ill start with the most popular, Dead Rising 2. At first I was thinking Yeah, reenact the generic mall zombie flick! Its violent fun for sure. Finding new weapons to bash heads in with is fun, as is the creation of new weapons by putting two together. The storyline also does very well with taking a different turn than most zombie media does, and I found myself actually sympathizing with the protagonist in a way I normally dont in zombie films. However, its major flaw comes in the restraint it takes on you, which is a death knell for it. From the get-go you can go just about anywhere and do anything, but then it restrains you by giving a time limit to your fun and a very frustrating chain quest that honestly hems in the killing spree. Look, if you want to make a sandbox game where you want to do anything, you build it around the fact thatyou can do anything.Just Cause 2 is the best at this. They dont even have a story really, just a lot of quests and a small main chain, but the rest is about blowing the crap out of everything you can. GTA IV doesnt do this well at all. Which one would you play? The restricting ones or the ones that give you a match and throw you out of a plane (literally) to do what you want?

Prototype does a lot better with this, mixing well a story-based game with solid sandbox gaming and nice third-person brawling mechanics. It takes place in New York City that is slowly being infected a la I Am Legend. If you ever wondered how that might have looked from the start, then this is the game to play. The actual action is visceral, and Alex Mercer is a fun character, blending Spiderman with Altair. Acrobat-flipping and slicing people in half is awesome fun, as is the slow-motion effect that happens when you change powers or hold buttons to charge up attacks. For a nice romp in M-rated superhero territory, its the name of the game, and far surpasses any other superhero game Ive played (except Batman: Arkham Asylum. Nothing yet can do that).

The best game Ive played though of these three is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. If you always wanted to know what it feels like to try and survive during post-apocalyptic life, this is the right game. It is an MMOFPS, but not like Fallout 3. In fact, quite the opposite. Everything is real-time, and there is a living breathing world that interacts whether you are in it or not. Food, weight, sleep, medicine, and real-time physics are all there, along with the most impressive A.I. Ive ever seen. I mean, this is ahardgame. Expect to quick save often. But the game itself really is like a simulation of something like The Book of Eli. As long as you put a good mod on it (like Complete 2009) to update the graphics and fix the drastic amount of bugs involved, the game will play like you really are part of a messed-up world.

-JediLegacy (aka TheRaptorFence)