Saturday Morning Gaming: Desert Island Games

So, like, let’s say that you were stuck on a desert island. Sure, you had enough food for a year. Enough water too. Heck, let’s say that you have enough energy to run a gaming computer. BUT! You don’t have internet! And let’s say that the gaming computer only has three games on it. For some reason.

WHAT THREE GAMES DO YOU WISH YOU HAD?

And, immediately, there are a bunch of games that are off the table. No Fortnites, no WOWs, no League of Legends. All you’ve got are single player games. Sure, they can be fully patched. Why not?

The problem with this particular setup is that it rewards a very particular type of game. I mean, there are a bunch of games that I *ADORED* but probably wouldn’t be able to play again. But if someone asked me “Is the original Fallout a good game?”, I’d probably be able to regale them with stories about how I played the ever-living heck out of Fallout in 1998. I played it as a sniper, I played it as a brawler, I played it as a handgun guy. Man, that game was good.

But it’s not a desert island game.

You need to be able to replay a desert island game a million times. Part of that is being able to say something like “okay, this time, I’ll do it like *THIS* and come up with a gameplan on playing the same game you played last time in a completely new and novel way. You’ve got to be able to ask “would this work?” and then be able to hammer out that it would or that it wouldn’t. You need a game that you not only play, but can play with.

Which brings me to Fallout: New Vegas. If someone asked me if F:NV was a desert island game, I’d say HECK YES IT IS. There are one bajillion potential builds, there are four factions to pick, there is an interesting moral system that allows you to fully explore each of the four factions and give yourself eight different endings, it has Wayne Newton, and it has Johnny Guitar.

On top of that, it has probably the best DLCs in the history of DLCs. Dead Money? Old World Blues? HONEST HEARTS?!? Holy cow. Each one of these was absolutely amazing.

But the game also came out in 2010. If someone asked me “should I play New Vegas?”, I would freak out like the wolf in one of those old Tex Avery cartoons. But there’s a bit of a hump to overcome. Most folks don’t want to risk even $10 on a game that might make a great desert island game, but wouldn’t make a great game for 2023 given that they actually do have stuff like an internet connection that allows for stuff like multiplayer or the ability to just buy and check out the latest and greatest content from any given massive content producer.

Which is why it’s pretty cool that The Epic Game Store is GIVING AWAY Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition as their free game this week. Seriously. This is the whole kit and caboodle. Fully patched up so it’s no longer buggy, all of the DLC, and none of the guilt.

And if you got stuck on a desert island, you’d be so glad that you had this game with you.

So… what’s on your desert island game list?

(Screenshot is New Vegas in the distance. Screenshot taken by the author.)