Summary
When it comes to post-apocalyptic games, it is usually some sort of mutation that pushes humanity to the edge of extinction and forces people to turn hostile toward each other when surviving becomes more and more difficult.
These mutations, however, don’t happen on their own. There is always a reason behind the sudden mutation of people, and usually, it is a virus outbreak. Many games welcome players to their universe by showing a massive virus outbreak as the background story, but not many of them take this concept to an open-world experience.
Not exactly a virus, butOnce Human’s world also suffers from a widespread entity that infects humans and turns them into weird, mutated monsters. The source of diseases in Once Human is a substance called Stardust that has spread all over the earth due to illegal experiments run by a company known as Rosetta.
The player assumes the role of a Meta-Human, an enhanced version of a human being that has been infected with Stardust by Rosetta itself without being mutated. Meta-humans are capable of using Stardust to their favor rather than letting it control their brain.
Wiping the virus doesn’t seem like a viable option for this MMO adventure, but players get to fight AI-controlled enemies and other players withindifferent scenarios. They start from scratch, build and enhance their bases, and then follow different quests to collect valuable items and grow in levels.
Sunset Overdriveis well-known and loved for its light-hearted storytelling, but it is also part of the reason why gamers like this game. The chaos inSunset Overdrivewas raised during a single night! A beverage company decides to hold a party to announce and serve a brand-new drink, but the problem is they are so excited about launching this new beverage that they skip the safety-check tests of the new formula.
So, when people test the new Overcharge FizzCo beverages at the party night, they quickly mutate into some hot-head monsters taking over the entire city. The protagonist is also a janitor of FizzCo, who is miraculously rescued from the monsters and then teams up with other survivors to clean up the city!
It’s quite fair to say that the story doesn’t really play an important role inSunset Overdrive, but it’s mostly the satisfying combat andmovement mechanicsthat turn it into an enjoyable experience with a big open world to conquer!
Unlike most games on the list, where the characters are trying to fix the world and get rid of the virus,Days Gonetells a different story within a virus-infected world. InDays Gone, it’s accepted by the people that the virus outbreak is something out of control, so they have to live with it.
As such, the game doesn’t really try to give many clues about the origins of the virus or how it spread in the beginning, but making progress throughout Deacon’s personal life also sheds some light on how the virus spread and what can be done to get rid of its consequences. However, the story never runs deep into those themes as it cares about the personal journey of Deacon.
As a story-heavysurvival experience,Days Gonedoes offer great combat mechanics. The game also offers Deacon’s bike as an important vessel that can be upgraded over time to provide more value to the player’s expeditions.
The Divisionis one of the few games where everything starts to collapse with a virus outbreak, but it doesn’t turn people into zombies or mutated creatures.The Divisionfocuses more on the lack of law and order once a deadly disease takes spans all of the United States.
The virus outbreak inThe Divisionoccurs on Black Friday and spreads through printed ink on cash, which makes people call it the Dollar Virus. With massive interaction between people on Black Friday, it didn’t take the virus long to spread all over New York and kill people.
The game itself, however, begins sometime after the outbreak. When New York is raided by different outlaw groups, the player is deployed in Manhattan along with some other national forces to take the city back and discover the origins of the virus.
The Division 2still receives new content from the developers, and it managed to deliver a great balance betweenPvP and PvEgameplay experience while also offering a fair and enjoyable progression path for the players.
Although it is now a discontinued franchise,Prototypeis still remembered as a fairly balanced game with satisfying combat mechanics and a complicated story. In the first iteration, the player is welcomed to a dystopian New York, where the Blacklight virus has already infested many people, turning them into mutated monsters.
The protagonist himself is also infected, but he tries to use his mutated form as a means to kill the hostile infected and find his past, as he starts the game with amnesia. As the story progresses, the player comes to the realization that he himself was one of the reasons behind the virus outbreak, though there are many twists in between.
The story in the second entry is less twisted, but it is still a continuation of the original game, where the original protagonist becomes with main antagonist.
Both games feature utterly satisfying movement mechanics that allow the player to traverse across Manhattan quickly and engage infast-paced combat.Prototype 2comes with even more combat innovations, allowing players to make use of environmental objects as weapons.
The events in both games ofDying Lighthappen after a colossal outbreak, but they are also connected to each other. The originalDying Lightis set in the city of Harran, a fictional location in the Middle East. The origins of the virus are never clarified, but it spreads at a quick pace, turning everyone infected in Harran into a mutated, hostile creature.
The player deploys to the city as an agent of a global organization that tries to extract some vital data about developing a cure for the virus, but the data ends up in the hands of the wrong person. While the player eventually manages to extract the data, and it does lead to a global vaccination to end the threat, the sequel sees the virus spreading all over the world in a much stronger state.
This time, however, the origins of the outbreak are known to everyone, as the organization that developed the cure was trying to turn the virus into a biological weapon, but they mess up, and this time, the entire world is infected instead of a single city.
BothDying Lightgames deeply benefit from the open-world settings, as the game offers so much content to experience other than the main quests. The originalDying Lightis still supported by developers and receives new updates, making it one of the most content-richzombie-oriented gamesof all time!
If it wasn’t for technical issues and some combat system mechanics,Vampyrcould’ve been much more popular than it is now. The game forces the player to make tough decisions, similar to previous Don’t Nod games, but the consequences are more severe this time.
Vampyris set in London during the peak of the Spanish Flu. The protagonist is a doctor who returns to London to help people in need as the number of infected people grows significantly, but some incidents turn the doctor into avampire. Now, the players are faced with a dilemma about taking lives or saving them.
On the one hand, the player needs to suck on other people’s blood to continue to live due to their vampiric nature, but on the other hand, the protagonist is a doctor, and killing innocent people is in direct contrast with his morality.
The game does an excellent job of trapping players between difficult moral decisions, and as they make progress in the story, they learn more about the nature of the disease and how to stop it. The open-world environment ofVampyrallows the player to plot their moves and find their victims at their own pace.
