THREE thousand dollars, a week's preparation and five days of driving through the desert to visit dozens of obscure locations.

That's what it took for London copywriter Chris Worth to go on the video game road trip of a lifetime.

Inspired by futuristic role-playing game Fallout: New Vegas, Mr Worth set out to explore the Mojave Desert and discover just how close to reality the game really is.

"Fallout is not our future, but the future as people in the 1950s imagined it," Mr Worth told news.com.au.

"That's the 'Golden Age of Science Fiction', when aliens and ray-guns were all the rage and spaceships competed to have the biggest tailfins.

"The Fallout: New Vegas designers apply this conceit in incredible detail — even the ads for Sugar Bombs and Sunset Sarsaparilla have the innocence of 1950s advertising."

Even though it's set in an alternate version of the real world, the Fallout series still features many locations and buildings that exist today. In New Vegas, that means areas like the Las Vegas Strip and towns including Nipton and Goodsprings.

Mr Worth travelled to 34 of those locations to take photos and place them side by side with screenshots from the game to see just where the line between fact and fantasy was drawn.

He posted the results, as well as notes from his trip, on the falloutnewvegastour.com blog last month.

It may sound like the sort of thing only the most dedicated of video game nerds would do, but the twist is that he's not even close.

Mr Worth said he had played "very few" games and that New Vegas had been his first role-playing experience since the 1980s.

"I don’t consider myself a gamer," Mr Worth said.

"After years of not having even a TV, I bought an Xbox — along with a stack of other gear — when I moved back to London recently after some time away doing an MBA.

"I'd played the usual stack of Xbox titles — Halo, Forza, Mass Effect — and enjoyed them, but New Vegas was the first that really grabbed me and didn’t let go."

Nipton town sign as it appears in real life and in the game. Picture: Chris Worth

In fact, Mr Worth was so new to games that it took him a while to figure out how to get ahead in New Vegas.

"My first few days with the game were largely wandering around and exploring, getting to grips with how RPGs work," he said.

"Now here's a criticism game designers may want to note — it's really, really difficult to get into games if you're a new gamer. They assume too much knowledge.

"A few lines in the instruction booklet explaining that RPGs involve trading items and that not everything's worth the same amount would've helped establish the core elements from the start — and stopped me carting 200 pounds of battered books around."

Are you a Fallout fan? Meet the man behind The Vault

However while he may be a gaming novice, Mr Worth is no stranger to travelling, or to Las Vegas.

"I don’t need much excuse to visit Las Vegas. I've been there a dozen times for both work and fun," he said.

"Although I don’t gamble, there’s something about the whole glorious silliness of the place I enjoy.

"I've lived in six countries and travelled in a lot more, but I think the American West is my favourite place on earth, and Las Vegas is the capital of that region.

"I'm from a very green part of the UK, but of course a childhood of cowboys and cop shows makes me feel I'm stepping into a movie every time I get outside the major cities.

"The Australian outback actually has the same feeling — but of course Australia's mythology is less well known than the Wild West's."

As for the Fallout trip, Mr Worth said he had already been planning on travelling to California for a skydiving event when he decided to do the road trip as well.

"(It cost) about £2000 ($3050). Las Vegas can be a very cheap city if you pick your hotels right, but much of the trip took me further afield," he said.

"The Devil’s Throat, a 1990s sinkhole far out in the desert, is over 150km away from the Strip."

The car of New York gangster Dutch Schultz is reimagined in the game. Picture: Chris Worth

As for which locations were the most satisfying to visit, Mr Worth said that he most enjoyed discovering the sometimes unexpected ways in which New Vegas was based on the real world.

"There were lots of surprises that made me smile," he said.

"For example, Bonnie Springs — an abandoned town in the game — isn’t a real town, but a Wild West theme park!

"And in Primm, home of the Bison Steve Casino — in reality the Buffalo Bill Hotel — the buildings in the game seemed to be inspired not by the town’s architecture, but the mock building facades decorating the inside of the casino itself.

"I also liked the places based on something America does really well — national parks.

"Red Rock Canyon remains an incredible place despite being carpeted with carparks and touristry. Spring Mountain Ranch is a beautiful patch of manicured lawn, surrounded by breathtaking mountains.

"As in the game, much of the enjoyment comes from just wandering around rather than trading and questing."

Some areas that appear in the game, like the Nellis Air Force Base, are off-limits in real life, which prevented Mr Worth from documenting them.

And, of course, there are others that don't exist at all, including the famous Vault-Tec vaults, in which human survivors of a nuclear war take shelter.

Mr Worth said there was actually a real-life comparison to the fictional vaults, but he couldn't find an example to document.

"While none exist where they appear in the game, the real American West contains hundreds of nuclear bunkers and missile silos dating from the Cold War," he said.

"I tried in vain to find at least one I could visit — most are abandoned now. Mr House will never forgive me."

The Goodsprings Pioneer Saloon as it appears in the game. Picture: Chris Worth