5 Games I Would Take To A Desert Island

Imagine a scenario with me. You’re on a plane on your way to the E3 expo in America and obviously you took your console and all your games with you in a massive duffel bag, because you’re a good gamer like that. Suddenly out of the blue the plane starts to shake violently, throwing everything around. At first you think it’s turbulence and just shake it off. After about 30 minutes of shaking the pilot goes on the intercom and utters a few words: “The engine fell off… We might be fucked.” Panic ensues and people start clamouring to the safety door. In the scuffle, someone knocks your duffel bag over and all your games fall out. You only have time to pick up five games and five games only. The mob of terrified passengers cause the safety door to open up accidentally and throws all of them into the dark ocean. By a miracle you grab a parachute that flies past you and you deploy it.

You land on a tropical island with no form of human in range. All you have on you is your duffel bag of games you picked up and your console. You travel for a few hours and find a little cave off the side of the coast. Inside you find a fully working generator that uses coconuts as a power source (Don’t question my logic) and a 50″ LCD TV hooked up to it. Also, there’s this weird ball with a blood hand imprinted on it, with a face. He can be your co-op partner. There’s also a big cupboard full of canned spaghetti and meatballs that can last you about three years minimum, and a water fountain that does not dry up.

Now if you were in that situation, which games would you have grabbed back on the plane?

Here’s my list in no particular order:

 

Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls series set a benchmark for open world RPG’s with massive landscapes and a plethora dungeons to spelunk. Skyrim refined that formula and made it into a game that is quite literally endless. You can play for hours at a time without even doing anything substantial. Once I fucked around for a good five hours just hunting deer and going down waterfalls just for the hell of it. In five hours you can pretty much finish an AAA military shooter game. I can go for days just collecting shiny shit for my house and catching butterflies.

It can be good training for the desert island (Which will be called Thaborania from now on) because you gain valuable knowledge which you can transfer into skills needed for surviving. Who knows, you might even stumble into a cave and discover the island is populated by underground dragons that drink booze and talk shit all day. Wouldn’t that be a perfect world?

 

Rock Band 3

Thaborania can become a pretty depressing place sometimes and all you really need is to crank up some tunes and rock the hell out. I will obviously have all the DLC on my hard drive because in this hypothetical situation I’m a rich son of a bitch that gets all the ladies. There’s nothing more gratifying than nailing a difficult solo in a song and if you allow a rhythm game to consume you, you will not want to do anything else for a long time. I played for twelve hours straight once, because I was just having copious amounts of fun.

It’s a shame the rhythm genre has died out a little and everyone got over it at some point, because it is a brilliant thing to play. My faithful volley-ball-hand-face-friend, Thabie, can possibly sing for me for me because to be honest I think he will do a better job than I will. The resident monkeys can expect to hear a lot of Here I Go Again On My Own by Whitesnake echoing throughout the island and possibly waking up the dormant volcano, Thabilliratiti, at some point in time.

 

Minecraft

An obvious entry in this list because Minecraft is, well, endless. No other creative game even compares to the sheer size and possibilities that Minecraft offers. My friends and I built a house, tower that extends into the sky, an ocean deck, a cathedral made out of bloodstone with a roof that’s on fire and a mine that goes on for about 1 km. Minecraft is a game where your imagination can run wild and free and the sky is literally the limit. You can build an 8-bit Mario for shits and giggles or even the largest treehouse in existence.

Minecraft doesn’t constrict you to a fixed storyline or events that have to happen. You just pop in, hit a tree with your bare hands and then let your creative juices flow. Just build that house sturdy enough to handle the onslaught of creepers and skeletons. Minecraft will put you in the mood to build that massive SOS sign out of rocks on the beach as well. Result.

 

Modern Warfare 3

Didn’t quite expect this didn’t you? Call of Duty fanboyism and haters aside I can well and truly say that Modern Warfare 3 is an excellent stress reliever after a long day. When I was working in a factory for two weeks doing hard labour, my brother and I fired up some Spec-Ops Survival mode and just shot people in the face. We were quite addicted to it and I even reached level 50, finishing all the maps to wave 15 at least. Our record is wave 36 on Resistance and I’m quite proud of that accomplishment. It became a clusterfuck of enemies and juggernauts and it was all very intense and gratifying.

So after a long day of collecting coconuts for the generator and having baboons throwing me with shit, I would gladly fire up some survival mode with Thabie and just relax while shooting terrorists in the face. Thankfully Thabie can do a better job than my brother.

 

Fallout: New Vegas

I’m going all controversial and saying that Fallout New Vegas was a better game than Fallout 3 in my absolutely humble and honest opinion. There’s just something to having absolute freedom to explore to your heart’s content and not be expected to follow a storyline set in stone for you. The game is all about your personal preference and not because your daddy wants to do something cool where you just have to go along with it. What’s brilliant is that you can choose from three options in the storyline. Will you be a cunt and go with the murderous lunatics or will you go with the more law focused military faction. It’s all up to you.

This would make a great addition to the desert isle super five because it’s all open world and full of possibilities like Fallout 3, but it has gambling and whore houses. Come on, how can this not be better than Fallout 3? I’d like to think of myself as a connoisseur of open world games because I’m a Bethesda fanboy till I die a gamer that appreciates freedom given to me.

 

Conclusion

As you can see from this list, longevity in games is super important. Why play a beautiful game with excellent mechanics and stuff for five hours and just forget about it after it. Rather get games that can eat up your time and encourage you to explore places you never would have. Sometimes you do just want something digestible and fun and that’s why I added Modern Warfare 3 and Rock Band 3 to the list. Gaming is fun and you can even have fun on a desert island populated by shit flinging baboons and possible cannibalistic natives that are getting a bit sick and tired of Lydia saying “I’m sworn to carry your burdens.”

What games would you have taken and why?