So thing may seem a little grim at the moment, depending on your world views, but they could always be far, far worse and video games are here to remind us of the fact that, at least we are not living in their universes.
From grim, totalitarian states to worlds ravaged by a virus or supernatural beings, we look at some of the most apocalyptic video games around to remind ourselves of just how fanciful and unlikely they are to happen.
1. Resistance: Fall of Man
The clues are right there in the name for this one as a race of heavily armed aliens arrive in an alternative timeline of the 20th century and spread a virus that kills off humanity with America taking no notice until Britain is plunged into an anarchic quagmire of gun battles and plague like deaths.
This virus also turns humans into drones so you do end up shooting other humans and it’s all very bleak. The fact that Britain and America are also supposed to be allies makes it darker as well. Help your buddies out guys!
2. Final Fantasy VI
With a clown that controls an army of supernatural beings, this Kefka just takes it that one step further into full blown megalomania! Starting out as little more than a creepy court mage, he goes on to enslave Terra, burn down a castle, poison a water supply that kills hundreds of people then enacts a genocide of the creatures known as espers just to harvest their magic which he then uses to tear the world apart.
He then rules over the chaos for a full year! Basically, it is what would happen if Ronald McDonald became an all-powerful deity and ruled the world with an iron fist!
3. Fallout Series
The Fallout series takes place in a post-apocalyptic landscape where America has been devastated by nuclear war. Throughout the games, you learn that people who are born post-war don’t realize that they are being manipulated by ruthless corporations preventing them from seeing the outside world whilst you can confront the grim, wastelands of what is left.
In one game you come across a town built around an unexploded nuclear bomb and can either disarm or detonate it. Intense happenings also occur as you come across others who use the chaos and lawlessness to their own advantage and murderous ends. At times chilling and sometimes just plain tragic.
4. Resident Evil Series
A series about a virus that decimates the human population and causes zombie-like outbreaks amongst an array of creatures leads you to discover the corporation behind it are ruthless in the protection of themselves and their own assets as they were planning on using the virus as a chemical weapon.
In the fourth installment of the long-running franchise, it’s the ending that really strikes home as we see images of a peaceful village being corrupted by the religious order and mind-destroying parasites that destroy them from within.
5. Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon
As giant, alien insects begin to plague planet Earth, eating us whole, tearing our homes and businesses apart and just being really big annoyances to humanity’s everyday lives, we are forced to fight back and blow these bio-engineered bugs apart and take on the alien race controlling them.
Perhaps what is more horrifying is how badly buggy (no pun intended) this game is and how awful the controls. No one wants to live in a world where game developers don’t take their work seriously.
6. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chornobyl
In a, perhaps distasteful, using of one of the worst nuclear disasters of our age as the premise for a shoot-em-up survival horror game, you are placed into the Chornobyl exclusion zone after a second nuclear meltdown has happened (because, apparently, one isn’t enough) which causes flora and fauna to mutate and become dangerous enemies.
In a world where people think this is a good idea for a game, you are thrown into an alternate reality where repopulating Chornobyl was considered and even enacted, and nuclear radiation doesn’t kill you but rather makes you a super powered zombie creature.
7. Gears of War Series
Humanity now lives on other planets, like the civilized and pleasant Sera. However, unhappy at their colonizing of a supposedly empty planet, the hidden native alien race pops up from underground, where they’ve been living undetected, to wage a brutal and bloody war.
In a future where the technology exists to put a chainsaw bayonet on a machine gun, no one thought about monitoring what’s underground. Chilling stuff.
8. Phantom Dust
Genuinely a bit of odd game but, none the less, enjoyable, it was aimed solely at the Japanese market but got a Western release as well. Earth has been covered by a deadly dust (yes, dust is the enemy here) and most of the society is forced to live in underground caverns.
You have to collect skills and abilities by performing quests for others and then you can go on and battle bigger and better enemies throughout the land. Some great design and destructible locations makes it a pretty fun game all round.
9. The Last of Us
When a sudden and unexpected virus strikes down humanity and turns them into aggressive and uncomprehending beings (but definitely not zombies, don’t say zombies) you are tasked with making several huge and horrifying decisions in a game where your choices have ever lasting ramifications in a tense and realistic world.
Chillingly cinematic and grim, the cold, unfeeling universe is just a little too palpable for comfort.
10. Destiny
When an alien civilization attacks a futuristic Earth, the only thing humanity can do is put its faith in an aloof, universal being known as The Traveller. Apparently around for an extremely long time, this being is ultimately ineffectual and so it leads to dire consequences for the human race and its existence and survival.
Strangely effecting in its portrayal of both a future of great technologies and one of crumbling, dystopian city-scapes in a clever mix of the modern and the decayed.
