But What if I Don't Like Fallout 4?

If you've been paying attention to almost any mainstream culture over the past few weeks, you probably would have noticed a certain buzz in some quarters about an enormous new post apocalyptic role playing game. Fallout 4 arrived this month with an appropriately nuclear sized bang and seems to have taken over the world. No doubt you have seen the adverts, both on the internet and in the real world. The internet is awash with talk of it, your friends and their kids are talking about it, and collectively its players have already spent hundreds of years of playtime exploring its post-nuclear wasteland.

And all that is wonderful for those that are into it. But what if you're like me, bitten by the post apocalyptic bug whilst having absolutely no interest in playing the game. Well, I'm here to help. Here are a few post-nuclear literary worlds you can immerse yourself in whilst your friends have disappeared because they're spending days at a time on their PlayStation.

Mortal Engines:

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines quartet is set several thousand years and two or three world orders after the end of a cataclysmic event known as the Thirty Minute War. As a solution to the problem of the world's dwindling natural resources, many of the remaining inhabitants of the world have returned to a nomadic lifestyle and put their cities on wheels. Vast tracked cities roam the remains of Europe and a now empty North Sea gobbling up natural resources and hunting other cities in a system known as Municipal Darwinism.

If this all sounds a bit grim, rest assured, it isn't. Mortal Engines is a rip-snorting action-adventure on a massive scale, following two outcasts from London that has almost everything. There are the aforementioned cities on wheels. There are airships, gunfights, and humorous misunderstandings of the technology we left behind. There is a terrifying and unstoppable, yet sympathetic antagonist, and best of all, there is Hester Shaw. One of the strongest, angriest female leads I have ever laid my eyes upon. I really can't say enough good things about Mortal Engines, and if you enjoy a great adventure story, you need to put this on your list.

There is also a quartet of prequels, starting with Fever Crumb, set at the dawn of the traction age. Sadly, we may never see the fourth book, but the three that we have wrap up quite nicely on their own and are well worth your time. Just be sure to read Mortal Engines first.

The Metrozone:

Put simply, Simon Morden's Metrozone trilogy is Die Hard transplanted into London, with a post-nuclear twist.

Metrozone's world is one that has survived a wave of nuclear terrorism perpetrated by a group of Christian fundamentalists known as the Armageddonists. It is here that we meet the lovably unlovable scientist, Russian refugee, and possible sociopath, Samuil Petrovich. A chance decision to intervene in a kidnapping sets off a chain of events involving the Neo-Yakuza, an all powerful computer virus called the New Machine Jihad, some car chases, some crashes, many explosions, a few giant robots, several heart attacks, and a warrior nun. And that's just the first book.

Just like Die Hard, the story tears along at breakneck pace and Morden takes great delight in beating the stuffing out of his leading man. You'll read these books in a single sitting. They're that good.

Metro 2033:

And now for something a little different. Metro 2033, by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky is an altogether more plausible study of what we might become in the aftermath of the unthinkable. Set twenty years after a nuclear strike on Moscow, what might be humanity's last remains make the best of what they have living in the world's largest bomb shelter, the Moscow Metro. Unremittingly bleak from beginning to end, the inhabitants are beset by terrors from all sides. The surface is devastated by war and given to the mutants. Radiation seeps through the cracks and makes everyone sick. People lose their minds in the darkness of the tunnels or to the Dark Ones who periodically venture down from the surface. And of course there are the other people, who can be much worse than all of that. 

So yes, Metro 2033 is dark, but it's also an excellent study of how we band together to cope with the most extreme situations and a compelling journey to take alongside Artyom, the story's leading man. Read it and feel the terror at how close we once were to this book becoming reality.

Wool:

Continuing the bleak, we move onto Hugh Howey's Wool. In Wool, we find ourselves with Juliet, living in a silo with no contact with the outside world except for what's shown on the screens in the main communal area. Those screens show a completely dead vista of lifeless foothills and hints of towers in the distance. As a power struggle and rumblings of an uprising begin to brew, Juliet finds herself caught in the middle, and that's when the real trouble starts for her.

Whilst Wool is less unremittingly grim than Metro 2033, it still has a very downbeat and dystopian tone. The society in the silo is very much two tiered, and very controlled. The elites of the upper floors tend to look down upon the people of the lower floors, who as usual are the people who actually keep the civilisation running. Particularly cruel is the twist inflicted upon anybody unlucky enough to be sent to the surface. Like Metro 2033, Wool is scary because it's so plausible, and it's very much worth your time for that reason.

Shades of Grey:

Let's finish on something light, shall we? When you open the covers of Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, you find yourself in Chromatacia; Britain several hundred years after The Something That Happened. A Britain where your place in society is determined by the colours you can and can't see. In fact, almost everything in this society, likened by Fforde as an English grammar school as run by Pol Pot, is determined by colour. From the names of towns and places to a person's job, to whom you can and can't associate with, even your name. Amusingly, certain shades of green have narcotic effects and stronger shades, such as lincoln, are strictly controlled.

Also, there is a critical shortage of spoons.

So yes, Shades of Grey is a very strange book, and it drops you in at the deep end, with leading man Eddie Russet about to be digested by a carnivorous tree. There's a lot to take in, but thankfully, Shades of Grey has an ace up it's sleeve. It is very funny, which helps lubricate the gears of your mind as you try to catch up with the strange place you've found yourself in. Once you're up to speed however, things quickly get sinister, stranger and amazingly, funnier. The plot barrels along through a conspiracy that will shake the characters' worldview to its core and on to an ending that will definitely play on your mind. 

I love this book, and have recommended it to pretty much everyone who's ever asked me what they should be reading. If I have one gripe with it, it's that the next book isn't coming soon enough.

In Real Life

Games have influence, universal fact. From the innocuous way that playing Metro 2033 sent me to buy the novel it's based upon, to the debate around violent games that has recently flared up again. I'm not going to wade into said debate, because at the moment I don't think it's something that I can frame properly and say something worthwhile about. It's an extremely narrow view, but personal experience says violence in games hasn't affected me. I'm a lover of Tekken, and do you know what I take away from it? Not the need to go and punch someone in the face, but the urge to put a real life kung fu moviestar name to the games characters. As a for instance, Raven is obviously based on Wesley Snipes, Law and Lei are famously Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, Feng is clearly the guy with the rings from Kung Fu Hustle. Tekken bowl mode in the original Tekken Tag made me attempt to take up bowling as a hobby. I was terrible at it and I remain so.

So, I make real life decisions based upon what I've played. I suspect a lot of other people do too, and hopefully we can be well rounded and sensible enough to apply some common sense to those decisions. It's because of games that I developed a minor taste for adrenaline. I'm one of probably millions of people who took up skateboarding as a spotty teen after playing the first Tony Hawk games. I was rubbish, like most of us probably were, and I went on to getting my kicks on two wheels instead. I owe pretty much all of my scars to the mountain bike that I turned to after giving up on skating.

My best friend and I spend an awful lot of time on racing games, we've been karting several times to take the competition into real life. It turns out that most of the racecraft you learn in Gran Turismo can be quite useful. It takes a lot practice and adjustment, but the skills to learn a track, its braking points, racing lines, the fundamentals of drafting, and learning to judge grip translate quite handily from a gamepad to a kart. I can't speak for whether or not it applies to a proper sportscar as well though.

I learned about snowboarding from SSX. Although I don't ride, it does mean that I spend an awful lot of time on the Red Bull website, and of course, the reason I own a motorcycle is completely down to Road Rash. And this is just me. Aside from all of this I reckon games greatest influence is in the realm of music. How many of us have discovered new bands from a good licensed soundtrack? I can pretty much track back the entire range of my musical taste back to two games. Gran Turismo and Wipeout 2097. The rock from Gran Turismo, the electronica from Wipeout. I was 12 and 14 when I played these games. My mind was malleable. The Prodigy's Firestarter drilled itself into my brain and it's stayed there forever.

EA games in particular are great for finding new music. Say what you like about the games themselves, the licensed soundtracks have always seemed to be curated with care to maintain a particular atmosphere appropriate to the game it was a part of. From the laid back hip-hop of the NBA street games, the thundering electronica of SSX, the punk and indie of Burnout, to the rock and pop of FIFA. There are artists in those games who still have albums in my CD collection.

And now game music is flowing in the opposite direction. Where before, games companies bought in mainstream sounds, now original compositions are now going out and influencing tastes in the world outside of our hobby. A recent article, the one that actually inspired this post, in Edge Magazine detailed how Aeris' Theme from Final Fantasy VII and the theme from Skyrim have recently gatecrashed the Classic FM hall of fame. Aeris' theme is very high on the list, above several very famous classical pieces. Amongst gamers, it is rightly hailed as a masterpiece, and although it doesn't need it, it kind of feels good to have a piece of music so close to many people's hearts recognised by the relative mainstream.

We now live in a world where the London leg of the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds tour can sell out the Royal Albert Hall in a few minutes. Where Nobuo Uematsu's oeuvre can be considered a legitimate enough artform to be hosted at said venue. A world where the Final Fantasy VI opera can be performed live with genuine opera singers, backed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Voices. Most amazingly of all, the people performing this music, were obviously enjoying themselves. In case you haven't gathered yet, I was there. I was sat right above the stage. You could see the musicians faces and hear what the conductor was saying to them. It was an incredible experience. An event like Distant Worlds would not have happened in the UK even five years ago, and if it did it wouldn't be in a venue as prestigious as the Royal Albert Hall. I went to a Videogames Live concert a while back in Cardiff, and while the venue was large it still felt slightly under the radar. Flash forward a few years and Distant Worlds has all the hallmarks of a serious cultural event. It's amazing to see the change happening.

Less orchestral sounds are breaking out too. I'm a big fan of Bastion. I love its art, I love its story, I love the bluesy vibe woven by the narrator and the soundtrack. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the soundtrack for Christmas and the CD hasn't left my stereo since. The Bastion OST is pretty much the most listenable album I've heard in a very long time, by any mainstream artist or otherwise. Darren Korb's blend of complex beats, guitars in various esoteric tunings, strings and world instruments makes for an incredibly interesting listen. From the straightforward blues of The Pantheon, to the hazy opium den sitars of The Sole Regret, no two songs sound the same. People have asked what I'm listening to and are genuinely surprised when I tell them it's a game soundtrack. It's like they wonder for a moment why it's not all chiptune bleeps and bloops.

Then again, while chiptunes are still somewhat niche, there are slightly less underground producers out there working with synths mashed into all sorts of old consoles. Check out this cut from Joker. I recommend decent speakers. If you're a fan of the Hyperdub label you've probably heard of him. The synth genuinely sounds like its innards were transplanted from a Megadrive and the track itself sounds like something right out of Streets of Rage. It's not chart fodder for sure, but this is a producer with a record deal from an influential label using something that is, if not old games hardware, certainly sounds like it. It's people like this who will drag the sounds of our hobby out of the stereotypical darkened bedroom and into the daylight.

I genuinely feel like we're at the beginning of something here. Where the grand scores of games like Final Fantasy, Shadow of the Colossus and Journey find their way into regular play on Classic FM the way film scores have, and where composers step away from the orchestra and experiment with genre blending in the way Darren Korb and to a lesser extent, Akira Yamaoka have in their soundtracks to Bastion and Silent Hill. Eventually it might be perfectly normal to have a rack of game OSTs sat next to a rack of film soundtracks.

Gaming is culture too, and although some gamers might want to keep games underground, I personally think that if the music breaks into the mainstream, the rest of the world might be a bit more understanding about our sometimes obsessive hobby. Perhaps they might even wonder what they've been missing and give gaming a go themselves...