Post Apocalyptic Games?

[The Madman]

You pretty much just described STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. Look it up, it's an excellent game where you're a scavenger roaming the irradiated lands surrounding the old Chernobyl nuclear plant. Strange mutants, deadly anomalies and gun wielding mercenaries aplenty.

And of course there's Fallout, the definitive post-apocalytic rpg and all-round classic game. Can't miss that one!

Look em up!

 

[ComradeJim270]

Go play Fallout. Now. I don't care if you have to find a copy of Windows 98 and put it on a new hard drive partition, you need to play it!

 

[hobartuk]

the world has been wiped out by a virus, however a small variety of people were mysteriously immune, sides are taken in forms of tribes, and in the deserted and decaying cities these tribes fight for superiority

only to be the puppets of a greater malevolent evil

 

[Melaisis]

You're all forgetting the biggest post-world dystopia out there, surely?

The Half Life universe.

"The world hasn't ended!" So? The world didn't exactly end in Fallout either. If anything, the characters are given more freedom and less cares about the actual state of the planet (aside from setting the protagonist a few quests) than Half Life. Combined with the depth and accuracy which HL offers, it makes for the best post apocalyptic game on the market, in my opinion.

STALKER also fits the OP's demands, but personally I thought it was shit compared to what it promised.

Toodles.

 

[Dr Faust]

In Guildwars (PC), players leave the newbie island via "The Searing," a cinematic which shows the savage destruction and subversion of the land of Ascalon at the hands of invaders. The landscape is changed to a fiery wasteland, and the humans have been pushed back into small and isolated forts and settlements.

Dark Cloud (PS2) starts with a cataclysmic event that imprisons everyone and their homes in dungeons around the world. Dark Cloud 2 reveals that the world outside your isolated hometown is barren and empty. In both games, the goal is to rebuild the world in some manner.

Actraiser (SNES among others) is a platforming/sim that gives you control of an angel (or was it God?) who has been tasked with rebuilding the world that was destroyed by his arch-nemesis in the prologue.

There is a shareware game by Ska Software called Survival Crisis Z, where zombies control the world. The object is to survive long enough to get an airlift out of town. You can help yourself survive by trading supplies from outpost to outpost, rescuing survivors, or conquering the city one outpost at a time. If you don't mind the dated graphics, it just might be right up your alley.Turns out this one can be downloaded for free at http://skasoftware.wordpress.com/category/scz/

There are even some games that give you the option of a "bad ending" where you have fouled everything up. Chrono Trigger has an ending in which, through your meddling in time, a species lizards became the dominant life on earth instead of humans.

Dead Rising (XBOX360) is a Zombie-Horror type game where you control a photojournalist trapped in a zombie infested mall for 72 hours. Depending on how much information you uncover about the zombie problem, the endings can be apocalyptic.

Deus Ex (PC, PS2) is a highly-acclaimed first-person shooter/adventure game that draws heavily from conspiracy theory lore. Without spoiling too much, at least one of the endings involves messing the world up pretty good.

Lastly, light guns? If you want some good peripheral action, look for House of the Dead, or better yet, Typing of the Dead.

 

[the_carrot]

STALKER isn't all bad.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

My Vision:
A world struck by nuclear winter, the world frozen by harsh snow in some areas and desert in others. Towns are empty and survivors hole up in what few cities remain. Mutants roam the land, a cross between zombies and psychotics...

Well up until that point we've got the backstory to Warzone 2100...

Post Apocalyptic is one of those subgenres of Sci-Fi that's seen a large increase recently. The Alien Invasion one obviously stands out with GoW, Half Life 2, Resistance and (arguably) Halo 3. But post-apoc's always been popular to put characters in doomed worlds. I remember playing the aforementioned Wasteland on the Interplay 10th Year Anniversary disc when I was a kid. In the RPG world other than the one that sounds like radioactive dust we've got Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger where segments of the game take place when the world HAS been crippled beyond recognition, and Abaddon, which keeps getting recoded by the person who designs it. Oh, and there's House of the Dead 4 for the lightgun games, where we're playing in 2012 with two shotgun toting loonies in a world allegedly covered in zombies.

Now that I think about it, Post Apocalyptic's a very, very, very expansive setting...

 

[shadow skill]

I would love to see a game that starts off before the apocalypse rather than post-apocalypse. I think it would be more interesting to actually play an active role in such an event. Further I think it would be great if said event was as sinple as your character existing. I think that there is a reat deal of untapped material when it comes to the apocalypse as it happens...