Read Play Blog December: Holiday Wishlist

Read Play Blog is a meme about video games and books, posted every 16th of the month. Bloggers are encouraged to answer a discussion question, and recommend a video game that is similar to a book they liked. Hosted by Happy Indulgence Books & Read Me Away.

What is on your gaming wishlist?

Not much, to be honest! I'm not one that anticipates games, really. I'm a patient gamer without even trying! But there are a few games I already have access to that I've been meaning to play/finish:

Papers, Please. Yes, it was my New Year's resolution to finish the game by the end of the year. I know! But hopefully I will have time on Friday. I'm so close to the end of this particular play through. The problem is that I already know what the ending is going to be. :( The other problem is that there are SO MANY little paperwork rules you need to follow by this point—it's been so long that I don't know if I can remember them all, or remember them very quickly! But I'm SO CLOSE to the end I don't want to start all over! Ugh!

Journey. I started playing this one at a friend's while I was traveling in the US in June. Unfortunately I was still fairly jetlagged and the game is very mellow and calming, so I didn't get to play it a whole lot because I would fall asleep while the controller was still in my hand. But JV bought it a couple of months ago, so now I'm excited to give it a try when my sleep schedule is normal.

Fallout New Vegas. It finally happened! I finished (more or less) Fallout 3 and decided it was time to move on! So by the time we pick up the Fallout 4 GOTY edition (at a reasonable price), I should be done with New Vegas, right? Also, JV and I call it "Fallout Lou Bega." In fact, it was pretty hard for me to type the actual name up there, instead of Fallout Lou Bega.

Speaking of which...

Recommendation & currently playing:

Fallout Shelter and Fallout Lou Bega Fallout New Vegas. I HATE ANY AND ALL OF YOU WHO BLOGGED ABOUT FALLOUT SHELTER. I COULDN'T RESIST AND NOW MY CELL PHONE BATTERY IS CONSTANTLY ON THE VERGE OF DYING AND I GET SUCKED INTO IT FOR LONGER THAN I SHOULD AND AGH!

But it's fun, and it's free. I know a couple of people playing it who haven't played a Fallout game before, so I think it's important to stress that the cutesy sims resource management game that is Fallout Shelter is nothing like the actual Fallout games. There are some of the trappings that are the same: weapon and item names, the SPECIAL traits, and so on. But otherwise it's a horse of an entirely different color.

As for Fallout Lou Bega, I really like it so far. I'm only level 5 or so, so that's a real shock coming straight after being an unstoppable death machine in Fallout 3. "Oh, that's right, I don't have Grim Reaper Sprint anymore." "Ugh why can't I hit anything in VATS?!" "What do you mean, I only have 25 points in lock-picking?"

But the biggest and best difference for me is the graphics. It's so shallow, I know. I should really cite some substantive difference, like the expanded companion interaction options or the massive amount of crafting possibilities, but I can't help it: the landscape in New Vegas is actually attractive. And interesting.

Fallout 3 screencap from Joseph Nicolla

I really liked Fallout 3, don't get me wrong. There is an astonishing level of content involved; lots of fantastic little details that don't really affect the game in any way but make the experience that much richer. But when you're in the Wasteland, it's...gray. Brown. Rust. Yeah, a nuclear winter isn't going to be bursting with wildlife (well, except that one sidequest....) but there's some kind of blue-gray filter that dulls everything.

Fallout New Vegas screencap from Jamiecat

The biggest difference is the sky (which you'll naturally see a lot of while you're roaming the Wasteland). It's much richer and brighter and stands in much starker contrast to the landscape. The landscape itself is also different, though more subtly. The desert fared much better than the Capitol Wasteland in the Fallout alternative history timeline, so there are many more plants and quite a bit more greenery—even if this is the desert.

I mentioned this to JV and, being more educated in these things and also more sensitive to them than me, he immediately pegged the difference I was trying to describe. "Fallout 3 has a blue tint to all of the colors, and it's quite strong. In Lou Bega, it's yellow, and it's not as strong."

All of this means that it's much easier to stare at the game for hours on end. I mean, just compare the weapons between those two grabs! The rifle in the top image is nearly all gray, with just darker and lighter bits. In the bottom, there's a clear difference  between the brown wood of the stock and then the yellow metal (brass?) decoration.  I'll probably get through New Vegas a lot faster than I did with Fallout 3, even if the gameplay and writing are equally strong in both. (Though, it goes without saying, I really like the expanded crafting options in Lou Bega, especially all the different options for healing items!)

I don't have any good post-apocalyptic reading suggestions that would go well with the Fallout universe, but when it comes to nuclear disasters, I think I'm going to try to find Red Alert by Peter George. Apparently it's the novel that "loosely inspired" Dr. Strangelove. And there's nothing more relevant to Fallout than the Cold War and nuclear armageddon!