Just So Many Zombies

Strangely enough, I think I’ve actually been more productive at home since I got Fallout

Ladies and Gentlemen, Jeremy has officially fallen for it.  He got totally duped and hoodwinked.  He just won't admit it.  Also, it bears mentioning here that this Blag entry is not sponsored by Bethesda Softworks, though it probably should be.   

So, it's no real secret that I enjoy the occasional video game.  Over the years, various different games have taken turns dominating overly significant portions of my free time.  Asteroids, Wolfenstein, Blake Stone, NHL95, Quake, Warcraft II, NHL Hitz, Grand Theft Auto V...you get the idea.  Well, not long ago, I was made aware of a new mobile game that came highly recommended.  It was called "Fallout Shelter," and life was never quite the same.  

The game itself was reasonably fun, but relied on the standard mobile-game play technique known by gamers as "Sitting around waiting for stuff to happen."  The idea is you are running a fallout shelter based in a 1950's-era world after the world's destruction via nuclear war.  You wait around while rooms create resources.  You wait around while settlers roam about the vast nuclear wasteland searching for goodies.  You wait around while settlers improve their skills.  You wait around while your radio beacon tries to attract new settlers.  There's a lot of waiting around.  That said, the game is stupidly addictive.  I found my stupid self coming back to the stupid game many many times trying to get the next stupid lunch box full of stupid bottle caps.  

What I didn't realize at the time (because I was blissfully ignorant of the universe), was that this little mobile time vampire was simply a teaser for the next generation of the "Fallout" series of real video games to come out.  They friggin' roped me into their little post-apocalyptic world, wanting to play the real game instead of this little shelter game.  

I bought Fallout 4 not too very long after it came out.  

Now, I've set up about a dozen new settlements, linked the supply lines to 5 of them, figured out how to wire up generators and laser turrets for defense, joined the Minutemen and the Brotherhood of Steel, killed a zombie with a jet-propelled teddy bear, built a basketball court, and killed three, count 'em three Deathclaws.  Go Jeremy!  

You'd think all of this would ruin my ability to actually do anything else...ever.  But, quite the opposite!  Since I've resolved myself to the fact that as soon as I sit down to play Fallout 4, I will be doing that until usually after bedtime, I force myself to get all of my standard errands done before I let myself play video games!  I'm so much more productive during that time than I usually was pre-Fallout.  I just have to tell myself "Okay, Jeremy...you're cleaning the kitchen before you let you play video games."  Sure, I sound like my own parent scolding myself, but it seems to have been effective so far.  I don't know if it will still work after I learn how to electrify the teddy bears.  That just sounds like WAY too much fun.