My struggle with The Last Of Us

Playing The Last Of Us has been a nightmare. Having gotten the game 17 days ago, I was still only around 60% complete when I got home from work on Friday, so I pushed my way through and played through the rest of it on Friday night and early Saturday morning, and finally I feel like that game grabbed me. I’ve been playing in half hour plus chunks and not having a great time with it up until then, and not through any fault of the story, but I think it was just my ability to grasp the stealth systems the game offers. It probably took me a few hours to stop hating the gameplay, and it’s probably because I wasn’t really using everything to my advantage. Having just played through Splinter Cell Conviction again, I didn’t really take advantage of the bottles and bricks to redirect enemies (not to mention the fact that I also didn’t really use the listening feature for the first couple of hours, an idiotic move made by an idiot), and I was getting infinitely frustrated at both restarting sections I failed at, as well as the gunplay not quite being up to snuff when you failed. I think the reason I kept playing however, is that the game is making a point. Joel isn’t meant to be some shotgun toting superhuman, and in the heat of the moment it was very easy to blame the game for being clunky when really it was teaching me a valuable lesson: guns are a last resort, and stealth is key. It took a good four hours for me to get to grips with the mechanics of the game, and I think part of that is that the difficulty curve actually flattens out at that point, as it changes the combat scenarios, and makes them a little easier to predict and plan for.

As I look back on my ten or so hours with The Last Of Us, it was absolutely a game worth playing, but at the same time it was not the beautifully polished roller coaster ride that Uncharted 2 was. The story is beautifully presented and excellently told, and I think shows just how far behind some of Bioshock Infinite’s mechanics really are. Hearing that they might not be done with The Last Of Us as a franchise has me intrigued, since I really have no interest in a direct sequel, but another game set in this environment could be interesting to me. As with Bioshock Infinite before it, the media are very quick to talk a lot of very nice things about games that make an effort with their story, and I think both games have probably suffered for being overly praised in the media before release. For me, The Last Of Us is at least coherent throughout, and the gameplay didn’t ever feel like it was getting in the way of the story, even with a ten-hour run time and a much slower pace than most games offer. There’s not really much more I can add that others haven’t said more eloquently, other than to say that if you find yourself frustrated at the gameplay, take a break and come back to it with a different approach, because I think if you keep hammering your head against the combat like I tried to in the beginning, you’ll end up having no interest in the story. It’s a game worth enjoying, not just completing.

The Dillinger Escape Plan – One Of Us Is The Killer

I really want to find some time to write about a whole bunch of this year’s albums, including Kvelertak, Daft Punk, and the simply brilliant new Dillinger album, but the past few weeks have been as busy as they have been stressful, and while I’ve restrained from complaining or apologizing about it, I’d rather write something properly than stress out and write something half assed. It’s really hard to pick an ‘interesting’ song from it since there are so many shades to demonstrate that picking one track sells the whole album short. I think the title track of the album, ‘One Of Us Is The Killer’, is actually a really interesting track. It’s not particularly indicative of the rest of the album, but it’s easily the softest moment on the album, but also probably one of the heaviest. That kick into the super heavy riff at around 2:19 is one of the heaviest things I’ve heard the band produce. While to someone who isn’t familiar with the band, and this was something I was guilty of at first, their music is pretty undecipherable, but I think the magic of Dillinger Escape Plan is the subtlety and the technicality of everything. It’s not an album I can listen to constantly because it is a little like putting your head in a vice for 40 minutes, but when I need a wake up album, this and Converge are first on the list.

Wreck-it-Ralph

I feel like the last few years of CG animated movies has been a really weird ride. Pixar have been going from some of the best movies they’ve ever made (Wall-E) while also disappointing a whole bunch of people with movies like Cars 2. Dreamworks have been doing surprisingly good work apparently, since everyone loved How To Train Your Dragon, although I wasn’t the biggest fan of Despicable Me. Wreck-it-Ralph is a rare Disney CG movie not made by Pixar, which I believe is how we ended up with Bolt and G-Force, but Wreck-it-Ralph has much more in common with Pixar than those two movies. I was a little worried that the video game nostalgia would be a little hollow in Wreck-it-Ralph, but it’s actually quite impressive the lengths they go to. If I were a more sensible person, I’d ask why a movie seemingly aimed at kids has a bunch of 80’s nostalgia, but I think it works so well because that stuff is the Pixar ‘we are aiming this movie at families, not just kids’ concept that has worked so well for them. While it’s really bizarre to see Bowser, Dr Robotnik and Zangief in the same room, it pushes all of my retro gaming buttons in a way that’s charming. Saying that though, it also doesn’t feel so hollow that even kids that aren’t familiar with more obscure characters like Q-bert will still find likable cartoon characters, but unemployed Q-bert is just an extra special joke for the older people watching.

Wreck-it-Ralph is actually one of the best animated movies I’ve seen in a long while. The script is sharp, and the animation is fantastic from top to bottom, from representing janky retro animated characters, right through to the brand new shooter with it’s dubstep soundtrack and thousands of bugs to shoot. The casting is also pretty top notch, not only with John C Reilly putting in a good voice for Ralph himself, but Sarah Silverman actually stood out as a really great character in Vanellope von Schweetz, a racer in the incredibly popular game in the arcade, Sugar Rush. The overall concept of the story has the same sort of reality as Toy Story, allowing video game characters to hope from game to game in an arcade through the power sockets on the cabinets, treating the power outlets like train stations. While the attention to detail and the video game nostalgia starts to disappear as the movie continues, it delivers a great movie regardless, so it doesn’t feel like it leans on that too heavily. Wreck-it-Ralph is enjoyable from top to bottom, and while an appreciation for video games will really help bring it to life, I think it’ll still be enjoyable for anyone who isn’t.

My Adventures With Viva Piñata

When I first bought my Xbox 360, Viva Piñata was on the short-list of games I desperately wanted to play. When I actually bought it, I enjoyed the box more than the game, because the load times were so horrendous at that point that I had real trouble getting past all of the load times between menus. Luckily for me, I stumbled across a super cheap copy of it for PC, so I grabbed a copy, hoping I’d get more enjoyment out of it, and apart from the wonky install process, I’ve been loving it. The PC version was very early on in the Games for Windows Live program, so the installer is pretty crummy, and the game doesn’t even support 1080p out of the box. Luckily, there are some modifications you can make to one of the ini files to get that resolution working, and if you dig into the nVidia Control Panel, you can do some really cool stuff like crank up the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to make the game look really good. The art style of Viva Piñata still looks fantastic, so it helps make the game look a little more modern if you crank up the graphical filtering outside of the game, since the options within the game are pretty limited. The really nice thing is that the PC version in general has much better load times now than the Xbox 360 version, and on an SSD the game is blazingly quick, which makes the process of buying seeds SO much better. Even in the couple of hours I’ve played, I’ve gotten a lot further than I had previously, managing to finally wrangle a Fudgehog into my garden. I also had the amazing moment of clarity where I could finally buy accessories:

LOOK! THE SPARROWMINT HAS A HAT!

I know, it’s all superficial and pointless, but for some reason, playing Viva Piñata just does my heart and my soul good. There’s nothing quite like it, and as stressful as it gets, the excitement of seeing a brand new Piñata wandering around the outskirts of the garden is too good to stop me playing.

BADGESICLE!

Deadlight

For some reason the Xbox 360 has become the place for moody atmospheric 2D puzzle platformers. I guess you can look at the massive success stories like Braid and Limbo, and it makes perfect sense to put those games out on Xbox Live Arcade. I didn’t pick up Deadlight on XBLA at the time because I’d been so burned by Limbo that the comparisons put me off completely, but I eventually caved and picked it up on Steam a few months ago, and much like everything I have on Steam, it sits installed and not played for months. I’m really glad I got around to Deadlight, because as you can probably see from the screenshot above, it’s a gorgeous looking game. It has some similar design elements to Limbo, with a emphasis on shadows and well animated, deliberate looking characters. It doesn’t quite go as far as being completely monochrome or silhouette, but you can see some of the similarities, especially in motion. For me though, I think that even though the visuals aren’t quite as stylish, the gameplay is far more involved than Limbo, and honestly it’s a lot more fun to play.

I will say that I’m just about done with zombie games. It’s really not a fault of the games, since they seem to get better and better, but much like World War II several years ago, the theme has been absolutely beaten to death numerous times. Deadlight doesn’t break any sort of new ground in zombie games, telling the story of a guy in a post apocalyptic Seattle trying to find his family. Pretty standard stuff in terms of zombie material, and the story really doesn’t go anywhere interesting, becoming merely a reason for the character to be platforming around. The actual gameplay is pretty good, the controls aren’t quite as tight as you’d want for some of the platforming segments, but it’s perfectly serviceable as it is. Not only is there puzzle platforming to deal with, but also combat, both melee and eventually gunplay. The game really doesn’t want you to be killing all of the Shadows you come across, since you have a stamina meter which depletes rapidly when you start swinging your fire axe. You’ll also find that you’ll get swarmed by Shadows trying to do this, usually getting overpowered and killed in the process, especially since it seems that escaping from multiple Shadows can be challenging when you often get stuck on them trying to run past or jump over them. Towards the end of the campaign, the game starts to change focus and push you into more combat focused scenarios, and to compensate they start throwing more enemies at you, so you are never really in a situation where you’re expected to mow down waves of enemies. The gunplay is quite interesting for a 2D side scrolling game, since you aim with the right analog stick and fire with the right trigger, but to reload you have to manually feed in bullets by tapping the left bumper, which is a nice touch, especially when you’re in the heat of battle, frantically trying to reload your gun.

So far, so good. The first hour of the game was great, with interesting environments, and the game keeps pace with plenty to traverse and avoid. The game then takes a dive once we enter the second chapter, which begins in… a sewer. Yes, the dreaded sewer level takes up a massive chunk of this chapter, which is massively disappointing considering that this game only take around two and a half  hours to beat, so the fact you waste a good portion of time in a boring sewer seems like such a waste of great art direction. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that all your weapons are taken off you for this section, so you get stuck with a slingshot to throw rocks at things. The second chapter was also where I started having some issues with the scripting of the game. I feel like at least half a dozen times something that was supposed to happen to enable me to continue on my route wouldn’t happen, and until I died and restarted from a checkpoint, I’d be stuck in the same area, which is a little disappointing. Not only that, but the platforming would also let me down at times. Throughout the campaign I’d miss a jump a couple of times that I should have been able to get, and I don’t know whether you really need to be dead on with certain jumps, or the collision detection or physics are not always consistent throughout the game, but it takes the wind out of the sails when you get 90% of the way through a section and then miss an easy jump, only to be sent back to the start. I also had an issue where the game crashed on me at the end of the sewer section, and the save system is such that when I reloaded the game, I had to run through most of the sewer again.

Honestly, the real weak link in Deadlight is the story, which has absolutely no bearing on the events of the game, and while it starts with good intentions, it falls into cliché really fast and stays there right to the ending. By the time I’d gotten to the final sections of the game, I was tired of the inconsistent platforming and unclear objectives, and while the game is not even three hours long, it had probably outlived it’s mechanics by the time I was finished with it. Deadlight has some really neat touches, and I think that if the game had stuck to what it accomplishes in the first hour, rather than wandering off into the tedium of sewer levels, it would have been a hell of a lot more entertaining by the end. As it is though, it’s a fantastic looking platformer that doesn’t quite cut it on a mechanical or a story telling level, and worth taking a look at if you can find it cheap, or you just want a solid 2D action game.

The Last Of Us Is Distracting Me…

I would be writing about Deadlight right now if this hadn’t turned up, but now…

E3 2013: Sony

During a four hour bout of horrendous insomnia, I couldn’t stop checking Twitter to see just what Sony was announcing. After the somewhat lukewarm reaction the Xbox One seemed to get, it didn’t seem like Sony needed much to gain some excitement. On the PS3 side of things, Beyond Two Souls continues to look super exciting, but everything else was to be expected. On the Vita side of things… I wish I was more excited about what they showed. I love the hardware, and there have been some great games, including greatest game ever made ever, Persona 4 Golden, but there wasn’t a whole lot of exciting new games. I’ll probably pick up The Walking Dead to play through that again, and some of the PS2 remasters on Vita sound like a great fit, but hopefully we’ll see more Vita stuff at Gamescom and Tokyo Game Show. Killzone Mercenary certainly isn’t going to cut it.

The PS4 stuff in terms of games was pretty good. I’m definitely looking forward to Killzone Shadow Fall (seems like they’ve made an effort to add some more colour to the palette again) and Infamous Second Son, and the fact that Driveclub will be available in some form on PS+ on day one is a great way to start with a new console. Watch Dogs, while not exclusive, looks incredible. The indie stuff is really the exciting revelation about Sony’s show, since I think Valve have proved with Steam that games like Watch Dogs, Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed can live alongside smaller budget games like Octodad, Hotline Miami and Transistor, the new game from Bastion creator Supergiant Games. The Vita has been a great place for indie games since there isn’t a whole lot of full price games for it, and games like Sound Shapes, Guacamelee and Thomas Was Alone have helped make the Vita a place to play interesting games, so hopefully Sony can continue putting out some fantastic indie games throughout the first year of the console so there isn’t such a lack of content.

I don’t think there’s any point writing about used games at this point, but I will say that £349 seems like an easier price to stomach than £429. And Destiny looked cool.

E3 2013: Microsoft

£429, huh. Wow.

I know, I know, everyone is going to be posting pithy blog posts about the E3 press conferences, so I’ll try to keep it to a minimum, but there was some interesting tidbits from the Microsoft press conference, even if the seemingly massive price for the UK was a sting in the tail. The Xbox 360 portion of the show was tiny, showing a fleeting shot of a new redesigned console, a port of World of Tanks, and a couple of other pieces which don’t exactly have me excited for the next year of Xbox 360. In terms of Xbox One, I thought it was a decent showing. Even if the intro to the Battlefield 4 demo might be the most embarrassing E3 press conference moment in recent memory, the game looks great on Xbox One, especially if their claims about running at 60FPS are true. The Remedy game Quantic Break continues to look really interesting, and will probably be my eventual reason to buy an Xbox One. The other games were a bit of a mish-mash. I’m sure Forza Motorsport 5 will be great, but it’s such a known quantity, and they didn’t really show anything I wouldn’t expect from a next generation racer. Dead Rising 3 seems interesting, but I feel like a little of the character of the series was lost in that demo, while retaining some of the odd quirks like the stiff animations. Certainly a game that I’ll try at some point, but not really a console seller. Ryse looked pretty, but I don’t think quick time events are really the way people want to experience Roman combat, and I’m sure I don’t. Killer Instinct… there are no words. I don’t know who was begging for a sequel, but I assume it was many years ago. Both the new Insomniac game, Sunset Overdrive, and Project Spark seem like interesting concepts but they showed so little that I can’t really be excited for either. Considering that Battlefield 4 and Titanfall are both going to be available for PC, I feel like the only games I’m going to be missing out on without the Xbox One will be Dead Rising 3 and Quantic Break, so it’s going to be interesting to see what exclusive games Sony can muster.

Sure hope we’re not looking at £429 for a Playstation 4.

Music Collecting: 10th June 2013

It hasn’t been long since I did the last one of these, but I had a new vinyl arrive literally a day or two after I posted the last set, and since that was already a massive list of things I decided to wait, and luckily some vinyl was given to me to justify another post! I was handed a bundle of records which a kind soul had duplicates of and so knowing I’m still getting my vinyl sea legs handed them my way, and it’s a really cool bundle of records. The only one I’ve had a chance to listen to so far is the one pictured above, Yessongs, a triple vinyl live album, which opens with Siberian Khatru and Heart Of The Sunrise, two of my favourite Yes songs. Certainly made my Sunday a little less miserable! In amongst the others are The Who’s Quadrophenia and Yes’ Tales from Topographic Oceans, two albums I’ve tried to listen to before and never quite gotten my head around. I’m wondering if it’ll be like Who’s Next, which I owned on CD for months and months, never quite getting a handle on what makes it so great, until I managed to get a vinyl copy, where I was able to put it on and actively listen to and enjoy it.

The other vinyl I got was something I ordered a long time ago, but it was out of stock on Amazon for so long I almost forgot I ordered it when they dispatched it. I had ordered it originally because it was listed for £5.50, which was even cheaper than the CD version, but I’m so glad I did because I happened to pick up The Dillinger Escape Plan’s next album, One of Us Is The Killer, and enjoyed it massively, so for a vinyl copy of Option Paralysis to turn up a few days later was great timing.

Luckily it actually came with a digital copy which still worked, so I’ve been able to put the album on my iPod to listen to, and it sounds like a great album, but it’s overshadowed by the new album, which along with the new Daft Punk album is absolutely one of my favourites of the year so far.

Revisiting: Splinter Cell Conviction

In the middle of a game drought, I tend to veer towards either achievement hunting on the Xbox 360, or trying to make a dent in the massive backlog I’ve accrued on Steam. A lot of the games I have on Steam are games I’ve previously played on other platforms and wanted to play again, so Splinter Cell Conviction was a game I jumped at the chance to play again. I remember having tonnes of fun playing through it the first time, and having played through it for the second time on PC, that fun still stands up today. The rough edges are still present though, and those become a little harder to grit your teeth through in 2013.

The thing I fought against the most was the controls. I remember them being a bit of a challenge to get my head around the first time, but third person shooters have gotten to the point of having very standardised controls, so having to remember that clicking in the left stick reloads the weapon, and X on the Xbox 360 controller therefore doesn’t reload but instead uses a grenade or an EMP for example. The cover system is also a little odd by today’s standards, opting for both a manual crouch and a manual cover button, which if you’re not careful will lead to you crouching round corners when you mean to run up on someone. It was quite weird to play a fairly modern shooter that didn’t use the left trigger to aim consistently.

The other thing I had brushed aside from my memory is the horrendously wonky difficulty curve. The game itself is actually really generous in terms of difficulty, much more so than any of the previous games, and I think it’s the reason I enjoyed it so much. That being said, there are a handful of moments in this game that seem oddly difficult, and the checkpoints are placed such that you’ll end up seeing the same cut-scene or empty corridor over and over again until you get through to the next checkpoint. I also got to a point late on in the game where I stupidly picked a weapon without a silencer, and then had to slog my way through several areas not being able to be stealthy until I came across another weapon stash.

I think it says a lot that I enjoyed Splinter Cell Conviction just as much second time round as I did three years ago. It’s cinematic, it’s visceral, and the action is a lot of fun, even when you are wrestling against the controls. While I’m optimistic about Splinter Cell Blacklist, it seems like they are pushing the stealth stuff even further into the background in favour of action, which are the spots where Conviction doesn’t quite hold together, since the gun play is pretty loose once you start using shotguns and assault rifles. The interrogation scenes feel really half-baked by today’s standards, but the mission where you are sneaking around a carnival shows just how great the stealth moments of Splinter Cell Conviction can be. That being said, two playthroughs is probably enough, even at it’s already short run-time, and if I remember correctly the co-op starts out good and gets repetitive and dull quickly, so I can happily uninstall it and move onto the ever-growing digital pile of video games.