(From the head of the Q.U. Crypto-Gameology Department)
My game review of Fallout 3 and Fable 2 is up at Fantasy Magazine.
For those like myself who feel guilty after spending time playing a game instead of on more productive pursuits or, heck, interacting with other humans, how might you justify to yourself and others the time spent playing Fallout 3 or Fable 2?
Well, let’s look at the arguments you might make, and see if either sells you.
Fable 2 as Life Lesson
One aspect of the game is the way in-game love interests tend to get crabby and berate you if you are gone from home too long, and if you don’t sweet talk them enough while home. So if either you or your partner is the type of person who could name every landmark in World of Warcraft but not your anniversary date, well, argue that this game is teaching the value of paying attention to one’s partner. What better couple’s therapy tool is there than a co-op fantasy RPG, I ask you?
Or learn the advantages of purposefully depressing an economy so that you can snatch up property and goods at a cheap price, then bail out the economy and sell goods for profit. Not that that would ever happen in the real world …
And remember the fun days when conservatives would get in an uproar over whether schools should teach sex education or offer condoms, because they wanted the right to misinform their own children and provide practical advice like "just don’t do it"?
Well, now they can complain about Fable 2 as well.
Yep. Give this game to your 12 year old, and let the game teach your child the dangers of unprotected sex when their character ends up with an unwanted baby or an even less wanted STD because they failed to use a condom.
Fallout 3 versus the RealApocalypse
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps under a bridge, given the current economy), you know that forming an action plan for surviving the collapse of civilization may not be a bad idea. As such, spending a few hours (or days) in a virtual futuristic wasteland like, say, Fallout 3, will really help.
To demonstrate the value of Fallout 3 in stimulating your post-apocalyptic imaginating, here are just a few of the things I came up with. Some were inspired by playing Fallout 3, and some inspired merely by the game’s existence. I’ve mentioned them in a previous post as well:
1. Become Leader of the Human Survivors by Playing Fallout 3.
In olden days, people turned to their elders for leadership. But it’s going to be pretty hard to respect our elders after the world falls apart. Let’s face it, by then our elders won’t be the men and women who helped settle this land, or faced the (first) Great Depression, or the hardships and sacrifice of a World War. The elders will be rambling on about the days of hardship when they had to cut back to just three double-tall Starbucks macchiatos per day because of the rising cost of fueling their SUV (the one with the televisions inset into the passenger seats, and the GPS to help them find the nearest McDonalds to feed their overweight spawn). Many of them will be the idiots who brought about the end of the world as we know it in the first place. And they’re going to tell me whether I can or cannot wage war on the mutants who control the fueling station? I think not. After all, I will be the one with the "Bigger they are" achievement for killing all the super mutant behemoths in Fallout 3.
2. Keeping Children Alive.
And by that, I don’t mean protecting them from mutants, or starvation, or even disease, I mean protecting them from ourselves. Imagine, suddenly there is no more television, no Xbox, no Nintendo DS, no internet, no working phones. The non-stop whining about being bored is likely to drive every adult mad. Especially if those children are used to playing hours of Fallout 3 – because that game is frickin sweet. And if you think the spoiled little munchkins will be happy with Legos and sports after playing a game like Fallout 3, well, think again. I’m already being driven crazy with requests to play my Fallout 3, and the civilization hasn’t even collapsed. Yet.
We’ll need to find something to keep the youngsters occupied before they get eaten by those whom they’ve driven insane with their incessant whining. Manual labor should wear them out so they are too tired to whine about boredom, but given that today’s kids have problems cleaning a single bedroom, they’ll probably whine so much about working that it will make their whining about being bored pale in comparison. It takes a village to raise a child – and I think that village should be far, far away from most of the adults, perhaps run by a gaggle of tough old mutant nannies. And before you judge me too harshly, give it a few months without electricity, okay?
3. Keeping Fallout 3 Alive.
I figure I can actually use solar or wind power to juice up my own widescreen and Xbox still. Just don’t tell the children or they’ll constantly be begging to use it. Anyway, I think we should look at what it would take to keep Bethesda Softworks up and running, perhaps in a mutant-proof vault. Did I mention that Fallout 3 is frickin’ sweet? But I would only keep the developers alive on the condition that they start making a co-op option for their damned games. I mean, come on, who reading this wouldn’tpay double for Fallout 3 if they added co-op? Are you kidding? That would be frickin SUPER sweet!
4. Consolidate All Religions Under Me.
For an idea of what would happen after the fall of civilization as we know it, look at what happened after the fall of civilization as Romans knew it. The Christian Church controlled western knowledge and power. True, that arguably created more problems than it solved, but we can’t have a fracturing of my – er, I mean our control structure. It creates chaos. And as demonstrated in Fallout 3, all kinds of whackos with god complexes will spring up after the fit hits the shan. So the
So you see, by spending many hours playing Fallout 3, it is not you shirking responsibilities and neglecting relationships – it is you practicing and planning for the inevitable end of civilization as we know it.
