TOP TEN GAMES TO PREPARE FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Amazon's new Fallout series has got us right in the mood for some post-apocalyptic gaming. These are the titles that did it best...

- Tom Morgan-Freelander

Whether it's fighting a robotic uprising, scrounging for supplies while evading zombie hordes, or simply trying to survive the classic nuclear annihilation scenario, there's something oddly compelling about life after the apocalypse. All that chaos doesn't sound like much fun in reality, but hand us a controller and it can make for some of the very finest gaming experiences.

We chalk that up to the freedom you're given to explore these open-world sandboxes. If civilisation has only just crumbled, or Mother Nature has reclaimed the land over centuries, there are usually plenty of ruins and abandoned buildings to loot through and outfit your character with all the tools needed to survive.

Few genres offer quite so much gameplay variety, with stealth, combat, RPG character-building and hardcore survival modes providing something for everyone once the bombs have dropped and you've worked up the courage to leave your bunker. And it's not all guns, gore and mutants either: the end of the world can be peaceful too. Sometimes.

So, from tightly scripted adventures to freeform first-person shooters where you're let loose to roam the wasteland, here's our rundown of the best post-apocalyptic games out there.

10 Death Stranding

This is essentially Kevin Costner's The Postman in game form, as told by Metal Gear Solid auteur Hideo Kojima. Except it's Norman Reedus in the starring role, and instead of delivering old letters you're lugging increasingly ludicrous amounts of cargo across an America infested with invisible creatures known as BTs. It's the post-apocalypse taken at a walking pace, with beautiful barren landscapes and spectacular action set-pieces.

2019

09 Stray