The Last of Us - PS3 Review

 

When The Last of Us was first announced back in 2011, I was highly skeptical of how it would turn out. From the initial footage it just looked like another zombie based game which was (and you could say still is) the fad at the time. But, the game had a good pedigree behind with developer Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted) and as more media came out it would seem that the story focused more on the human aspects of an undead apocalypse with action that looked very realistic. After finally completing it I can say that the studio has created one of the finest stories presented this generation, even if it the same can't be said of the gameplay.
 

The Last of Us, begins with our protagonist Joel and his daughter during the beginning of a fungal outbreak that turns it's victims uncontrollable monsters. After a tragic set of events we falsh forward 20 years and find Joel a much older and more curmudgeon smuggler living in a world post outbreak. The uninfected are quarantined off in shanty towns controlled by the government and rebels who call themselves "The Fireflies" offer a hope to thoes in the wasteland yearning for freedom.

After a deal goes bad, Joel finds himself charged with the care of the teenage Ellie, who it would seem is immune to the virus. Together they travel with the hopes of finding a Firefly controlled hospital and potentialy discovering a vaccine. 

This relationship between the two characters is at the center of the story. Joel has seen the world crumble around him while Ellie was born into it. Joel is disillusioned with life while Ellie brings a hopeful and youthful optimism as this is all she has ever known. On their journey we see these two very real characters develop and grow as they witness the absolute collapse in humanity. The people they meet along the way run the gamut of hermit weapon-smiths, heavily armed militias and cultist cannibals. And the ending? Absolutely perfect.

One thing that has to be mentioned is the presentation. The Last of Us is the finest looking game of the seventh generation of consoles. The faces express so much emotion and are dirt smeared and haggard avoiding much of the "plasticy" fakeness of most human models. Locations of abandoned houses and metropolitan cities over come with decay and natural rebirth have you stopping to admire the scenery. The voice acting is absolutely spectacular from the entire cast and the music scored by Gustavo Santaolalla (The Motorcycle Diaries, Brokeback Mountain) provides beautifully muted acoustic guitar melodies that fit perfectly for the setting.

Despite all this, the core gameplay itself fails to meet the level set by the story and presentation. The Last of Us is a third-person shooter/action-stealth game. The flow is this: watch some great story moments between the characters, move to the next area and encounter a bunuch of baddies to sneak around, go to the next story section. 

While these areas of sneaking and shooting are often tense, it is more due to the very slow movement controls of the characters and the often unreadable perception cones of the enemies. The enemies of the game consist of basic infected, who will run at you on sight, further infected, blind "clickers", who wander around only reacting to load sounds, and human foes who are often armed with long range weapons.

There is some fun to be had in sneaking up behind an enemy and delivering a stealth kill but more often than not, a baddie from across the level would spot me resulting in a one-hit kill and game over. And while these encounters usually take place in varied environments, calling for the smart use of cover, toward the end of the game I found myself just running past scenes as fast as I could to just get to the next story point. The gameplay is simply not "fun" resulting in too many deaths without any of the interesting traversal or puzzle solving of the studio's Uncharted series.

There is also a crafting and upgrade mechanic as well, having you finding scraps of rags and tools to boost the effectiveness of weapons or make traps, but the traps and bombs are too unwieldy to use as they usually attract all the enemies in a level on to your position and the weapons have barely perceivable benefits. While by no means the worst action-stealth gameplay, it definitely was not enjoyable.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

The Last of Us succeeds in having one of the most amazing stories of the entire generation. With the character development and believable world at the level of a Hollywood film. But the gameplay in-between the plot is simply too clunky and frustrating to be enjoyed. My recommendation is to set the game to "easy" and run past all the zombies you can to see the journey of Joel and Ellie. Despite all of it's flaws, it remains on the of greatest examples of story telling ever brought to video games.

8/10

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - Nintendo 3DS Review

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was my first ever Zelda title as well as one of my favorite games for the SNES. Now, 22 years later, Nintendo has released a sequel to the game on the Nintendo 3DS, set in the same world with the same top down gameplay. While this may not have topped the original, it still is one of the best titles for the system.

STORY:

If I was asked to tell anyone what the story of the game was, it would probably go something like this:

I had to look it up. This guy is called Yuga.

"This scary clown man starts to stir shit up by kidnapping the Seven Sages of Hyrule to revive Ganon. Link collects items while traveling back and forth between Hyrule and the dark "Lorule" (Fucking genius), completing dungeons to rescue the Sages and defeat the final boss."



Out of all the Zelda games I have played, the story in Link Between Worlds is probably the most inconsequential. Story was never a strong point of the series and Link Between World's narrative falls flat when compared to other titles in the franchise.

While this may be due to the more free-form nature of the gameplay, much of the feeling of being on an epic quest to save the land is lost and broken down into simply completing dungeon after dungeon to move closer to the ending (but it does wrap up quite nicely).

PRESENTATION:

Taken at 4AM after completing the game.

Link Between Worlds goes back to the top down 2D perspective of Link to the Past while updating everything with 3D models. The colors are bright and all the familiar elements from the original game, such as the red and green enemy knights, are brought out wonderfully in 3D. The game keeps the basic layout of the over-world from Link to the Past and it feels great to revisit these familiar locations.

The music this time around is a fully orchestrated, and while no new song particularly stands out, the music never gets tiring to listen to while hacking away inside the dungeons.


GAMEPLAY:

cr. Kotaku

This is where Link Between Worlds departs most from other Zelda titles. Instead of the regular game progression of "go into a dungeon", "find an item to solve specific puzzles in the dungeon", "defeat the boss" and "move on to the next dungeon", Link Between Worlds allows you to purchase almost all of the classic Zelda items from the begining (hookshot, bombs, hammer) and take on dungeons in any order your wish.

The items are all up for grabs in your home, in which after starting your quest, is converted into a store by a purple bunny man (I don't remember his name either). Items can be initially rented for a fee and then bought for an even larger fee. Rented items are lost should you ever fall in battle, but bought items are permanently kept in your inventory. These items can later be upgraded to more powerful versions with a collection side-quest.

So many elevators. So many floors.

It seems that Nintendo has taken a cue from the recent explosion of rogue-likes with this new open-ended as well as more punishing gameplay system. This also shows in the complete lack of tutorials that constantly bogged down other Zelda games ("HEY! LISTEN!). By this point you should know what an arrow does, if not, try it out.


 
The star of any Zelda game has always been the dungeons, and Link Between Worlds does not disappoint. The puzzles are truly clever, requiring multi-step and multi-layered thinking. The most interesting aspect of these new dungeon puzzles is that as you can bring in almost all the items into any dungeon, many of the puzzles have multiple solutions. There were several times I definitely "brute forced" may way past a spot using an item I'm sure was not supposed to be there.

Walk like an Egyptian

Another new mechanic brought into this game is Link's ability to flatten himself onto walls and become a living painting. This allows him to shimmy to places he was unable to reach before as well as travel back and forth between worlds. This is one new feature that must constantly be kept in mind after hours of trying to figure out a puzzle where the solution is to simply use your flatten power to slide around the outside of a building and through a crack.

BOTTOM LINE:

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game. While the story might disappoint, the ingenious puzzles had me playing almost non-stop during my 15 hour completion time. It's the classic Zelda formula distilled into its most basic components and given a fresh new spin for the more mature audience who grew up with the games.

8.5/10

LIMBO - PS Vita Review

After a recent sale on PS+ I decided to pick up LIMBO again for my Vita after playing about half way and giving up on my Steam copy.

STORY:

LIMBO is a 2D puzzle platformer with no story to speak of. Your character is a small boy who is only seen as a silhouette in a completely black and white world. You wake up and proceed to run right with no other motivation than to complete the puzzles and not die. While there are some hints at plot with hostile native children carrying spears, setting off traps to impede your progress and the appearance of a small girl, there are no dialogue or cut-scenes that give any explanation to who or where you are.

Presentation:

LIMBO is presented completely in black and white which lends to the feeling of isolation and fear throughout the game. You will see things such as giant spiders, corpses of those who came before you, and backgrounds ranging from fairytale forests to the insides of loud industrial factories. If there was one drawback to this visual style, it would be that sometimes puzzle elements are hard to make out unless you are really looking. You can often miss a bear trap on the ground or improperly judge an angle of a slope that will send you careening toward your death. The sound an music are too, kept to an appropriate minimum with the sound of your crunching bones accentuating the silence.

Gameplay:

And you will hear this sound of death, a lot. LIMBO is a game that isn’t afraid to teach you how to overcome it’s puzzles by killing you. You’ll solve one section of the game only to run head first into a spinning saw blade or spike-filled pit. Through this punishment you are taught slowly to respect everything in the environment as dangerous and to pay close attention to the things around you. While the puzzles can be punishing, luckily this is off-set with an extremely forgiving checkpoint system that restarts you immediately before the challenge you just failed.

The puzzles in LIMBO are excellent as well. Starting off from simple platforming and block pushing, and ending on some fiendish timing based puzzles, the difficulty curve is perfect during the games 4-6 hour campaign. While never reaching the “I’m a genius” level of Braid’s puzzle design, there will definitely be times where you will have a satisfied grin on your face after cracking an especially devious, multi-tierd section.

While the game is fairly short, I did enjoy most of my time in LIMBO’s dark and twisted world. And for the price I paid ($3.45), there was nothing to complain about.

Bottom Line:

LIMBO is an excellent pure puzzle-platformer whose truly unique visual style along with dark sense of humor make it a must play for those who like to flex their brains while not minding having them repeatedly caved in by a giant falling block.

8/10