Not to be heavy, but the nightly news is weighing me down. Since the hour long block of television is practically nothing but talking heads opining ad nauseum on stocks, a recession, two wars, global warming and N1H1, I think it's fine that me, wanting to be in the know, only seems to know one thing: the end, my friends, is nigh.
But come on, that's hogwash. Right? The end of the world isn't the stuff of real life. It's the stuff of movies. And video games.
It's believed that many great doomsday texts are reactionary to the dark times in which they were crafted. Shakespeare's great history's like Henry the Fifth ("Once more unto the breach") were written with England on the verge of decimation by a superior Spanish Armada. Looking into the abyss, you could say, Shakespeare saw most clearly. Or wrote it. God knows what the man saw.
Fallout 3 is no Shakespeare. Hell, nor is The Book of Eli. But traveling Capital Wasteland most definitely allows a catharsis of sorts. "It's the end of the world as we know it," infers Fallout 3's smiley faced Pip-Boy. "But I feel fine."
So, how well do you know your apocalypse video games?
[Edit: For more talk of nuclear destruction on American soil, give a click to Chris Dahlen's "Let's Burn Down D.C."]
