Games for the Apocalypse

[Dog Pants]

It's not a particularly original question, but I can't remember the last time we did it. The apocalypse happens. Zombies, nuclear war, alien invasion, plague, whatever. You sit it out at your computer, like the Japanese guy in World War Z*. You and the surviving geeks of the world get to live out your remaining years isolated but online. Come up with your own justification as to how the technology stays available and you don't die of starvation or terminal bonch-stank. I suppose it's a convoluted way of asking which games you could go on playing for the longest. So, which eight games would you lock yourselves away with?

I'll post my eight later when I'm back from visiting folk.



*The book, not the unrelated film of the same name

[Joose]

Hmm. Well, in general I think the games with the longest staying power are either creative, like city builders or minecraft style things, or stuff that has essentially endless difficulty scales, like tetris. Or, I suppose, things that dont have endless difficulty scales but might as well do as I am never, ever going to hit the top end.

In no particular order then:

1) Minecraft, with a decent collection of mods. There is always something bigger and sillier I could be creating in that game.
2) Space Engineers. As above really, but in space. Especially with the new planet content.
3) Cities Skylines. It has a bum name, but its the best city builder I can think of.
4) Nuclear Throne. AFAIK, the game has no end, it just loops around getting harder and harder each time. Its also a lot of fun.
5) Arkham City. Best of the batman games, and I still go back to it every now and then despite sinking many hours into it. Not for the story, but for the challenge mode. Theres always room for improvement there.
6) Bit of a cheat, but Game Maker. Bored of the games I have? I shall make my own.
7) KSP. Fits in both the creative and the balls hard catagory. Maybe with nothing better to do with my life I could actually achieve something more than just about getting to the mun.
One of the Total Wars maybe? Or Crusader Kings. Deep, deep strategy that will take bloody ages to learn, let alone master.

[Dog Pants]

Absolutely, story based games are finite by their nature (although often higher quality). Again, in no particular order:

1 - XCOM. I can play this over and over and not get bored.
2 - Civilization V. As above. Any Civ would do, but V is the latest and in my opinion best.
3 - Minecraft. Same reason as Joose.
4 - Dwarf Fortress. I love town builders and DF is the grandaddy. I'd need an apocalypse to dedicate the time to learn it again though.
5 - Eve Online. Assuming there were enough survivors to play it. Still probably the best sandbox MMO out there.
6 - DOTA 2. I might find the time to get half good at it if I was quarantined.
7 - Planetside 2. The only shooter I can think of that I might dedicate a lot of time to. For shame, Battlefield.
8 - KSP. I stole this from Joose, but I agree. When I had the time to understand what I was doing I really enjoyed it. And I still need to rescue that guy I got stuck in orbit.

[fabyak]

I think I'm going to have to steal several of them.

1) XCOM - Really enjoy it, not very good at it but there is a shitload of scope and challenge there.
2) Civ V - Long games with a lot of variety and different every time.
3) Minecraft - Building!
4) KSP as well - I really enjoy it but I'm shit at it. I want to explore!
5) Burnout 3 Takedown - Absurdly good fun and loads of challenging stuff to do (not to mention therapeutic exploding of *everything*)
6) Street Fighter IV - I've always wanted to be good at Street Fighter games and having just got this I can see how many moves there are to learn and characters to play. Would provide a change of genre.
7) GRID Autosport - I love my racing games and this has pretty much every variety so would keep me going for a long old time.
8) Rocket League - I already play this endlessly and it shows no signs of getting dull. If there are people left to play against that would be even better.

[Chickenz]

Assuming this isn't just for pc games then my 8 would be:

1. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (N64)

2. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (PC)

3. GTAV (Xone)

4. Resident Evil 4 (GC)

5. Pokemon Red or Blue (GB)

6. Assasins Creed Black Flag (Xone)

7. State of Decay (Xone)

8. Command & Conquer Generals

[Dog Pants]

Good call with Pokemon. That game goes on for aaages.

[FatherJack]

In order of no particularity:

1) A Manager of Football game, ie: Football Manager - I have played these enough, I think, to indicate that they are not some mere passing fad. Only WoW have I played more in recent years and if you were to count back to Commodore 64 hours well..then you would probably run out of memory on the Commodore 64. A ludicrously simple premise, select and trade players to build a winning team, a "what if?" with every step.

2) A construction game, ie: Minecraft - For the building of virtual cockpalaces in which for me to sit athrone, enormous erections for me to gaze upon, glorious vistas for me to despoil with collosal phallic..you get the idea.

3) A dwarf fortress-style game, but not actually dwarf fortress because fuck those graphics, ie: Towns, Gnomoria - less building for the sake of it, more creating an efficient layout for the efficient creation of more things to efficiently lay out.

4) A car-driving game, ie: Gran Turismo - I find that GT and Forza (not Horizons) sit on the right side of arcadey-sim-drivy games for me, although given a lot of time I'd lean more towards the sim than the arcade, so maybe I would dig out that copy of Grand Prix Legends. *explodes on start line*

5) A open world game, ie: Grand Theft Auto - okay, so the story can run out fairly quickly of you play these sort of games a lot, but many hours can be spent in just the fucking up of shit on pretty much any corner within the game world.

6) A skill-based game, dexterity-based, not a MOBA, ie: Street Fighter - something to do with my fingers, just to have them have to move quickly and do different things, I played the shit out of Street Fighter II and you can always get better.

7) A solid shooter, ie: CounterStrike or Team Fortress - I guess it could be any number of PC shooters, but these two stand out as being fun to have a blast in even many years down the line.

8) An RPG - by which I probably mean a JRPG with repeatable elements rather than a story-driven western RPG, so things like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Rune Factory stand out.