Last Token Gaming Book Review – Ready Player One (2011)

By Jordan Nelson

Do you want to go on a thrill ride in the ultimate video gaming future? Do you want to know what it will be like when technology and everyday life are so integrated that you will never be offline? DO YOU LIKE THE EIGHTIES?!?! Then Ready Player One is the book for you. The book takes place in the not so distant future, where 3D technology has advanced to the point that we beam lasers into our eyes all day every day. The premise of the book is that the inventor of this great, amazing tech has died. He left all his fortunes to whomever can find his easter eggs in a literally ever expanding multiverse. There’s an evil competitor corporation who hires people to sell their souls and try to find the easter eggs (the sixers), and then there’s the good guys who want to find the egg for glory and riches beyond their wildest dreams.

What can I say about this book besides: Wow? Ready Player One is amazing on so very many levels. The author, Ernest Cline, brings so many classic loves, video games and the eighties in general, into this book that the whole thing feels like a blast of nostalgia. I paced myself when reading this, only reading it on the commute to my day job, and I was done within three days. I could not put it down, and to be honest ended up reading when I had promised myself I wouldn’t. It’s such a perfect combination of nostalgia and the prospect of the amazing future for games that I think we all want. That is, one of perfect, 100% immersive, 3D gaming. Not only that, digital schools. You can go to school, and learn most anything all from home. This is the future I dreamed of as a kid, and Cline perfectly put it into words.

My final rating: 10/10. I don’t think I could find anything wrong with this book if I tried. Read it. The Steven Spielberg movie adaptation is currently in the works, and I only hope it is half as good as the book. Even then, it would still be mind blowing.