No preamble, straight to the games!

The Last of Us.

I've kinda been putting off writing about The Last of Us because it is, in a lot of ways, kind of the biggest, and "most important" game released thus far this year (note, for future people, that I wrote this in the week before Games of the Year Saints Row IV and Divekick were released). I didn't play it right when it was released, but I certainly played it closer to release than I have with a lot of other games that I've played recently.

And now that I'm here, writing about this game, I'm still not exactly sure what to say about the game. I did like it. A lot. I might even go so far as to say that I loved it. But... I dunno. I didn't love every aspect of it. Let me start with the things that I did like.

I liked the game play. I enjoy playing stealth games, and while this isn't strictly a stealth game, a lot of it does focus around getting through areas as stealthily as possible, due to overwhelming odds against the Joel and Ellie. At least, that's the theory. I haven't had a chance to play the game on anything other than Normal, but I will say that by the end of the game on Normal, between the numerous weapons and other upgrades, Joel is practically a one man army. Not as much of a one man army as Nathan Drake (who manages to murder hundreds of dudes with a scant TWO guns), but close. Still, even if the game got a little easy toward the end, I still loved the stealth emphasis of the game, even if I almost always ended up alerting the enemies and having to fight my way through.

I also really liked the voice acting. Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson are both phenomenal as Joel and Ellie, and the rest of the cast is about as good. Nolan North makes a special appearance as well, in a pretty un-Northern role, which I appreciated. The facial animations help back up the voice acting, as do the amazing graphics.

Or, at least, the amazing graphics in the cutscenes. See, my biggest complaint in the game is that I'm pretty sure all the cutscenes, or at least most of them, are pre-rendered. At the very least, they all look A LOT better than the game does during normal game play, which ends up making the part where I was playing look a lot less impressive. It's still a mostly good looking game, aside from the odd plant or weird ground texture, but the dissonance between cutscene graphics and in game graphics is something I never like, and it seems more apparent here than it did in something like the Uncharted games. But maybe I just wasn't thinking about it before, I don't know.

And I think it's a little ridiculous that Joel can carry about twelve guns in his backpack, but he can only carry about three clips of ammo for his pistol. Now, I know that in a real situation, you could very easily clog up your backpack with weapons and forget to bring ammo, but I think I would have preferred if the game had fewer guns, but let me carry more ammo. I'm not saying there should be more ammo in the game, I'm saying that there were times where I couldn't bring extra ammo for something like my pistol because I was full on pistol ammo, but then ten minutes later I would find a new gun and start carrying ammo for that one around as well. Again, I've only played on Normal, so I don't know if that changes on higher difficulties, but I doubt that it does. It's probably just less ammo.

And the story? Well, I'm not really a big fan of zombie fiction, and this one was kinda...cliched, in a way. I don't really want to spoil anything, but I will say that I think the dialog is fantastic throughout, and that I did like the ending. Or, at least, I think the ending is true to what the characters would have done, which is (I think, and I'm sure many would agree), kind of the golden rule of writing good characters.

Either way, I did enjoy the game quite a bit, but I hope the next game Naughty Dog does is a bit different than this. This is the fourth cover based third person action game starring a white dude that Naughty Dog has done in a row, and I'd like it if they did something different. I dunno, like a cover based action game with a black dude, or hell, even a lady! Haha, just kidding, that'll never happen. (That's a joke, not me being sexist.)

The Walking Dead: 400 Days.

In keeping with the zombie theme, I also played this! It was all right. If you haven't played this, then I'll say that it's DLC for Telltale's The Walking Dead, but instead of focusing on one character, this tells five, shorter stories about different characters. And while this is kind of a novel approach, it comes off feeling like it exists only to see how people react to these new characters for the future of their Walking Dead series.

But I think its biggest problem is that every time I was starting to really get into one of the stories, it ended and I had to move on. I guess that means it's good, because most of those stories did hook me by the end, but I also feel kinda ripped off. I shouldn't, because it's only $5, but I dunno. It's all right, worth playing if you beat the rest of The Walking Dead. It has rock, paper, scissors, and much like in real life, I lost.

Hotline Miami.

I uh, well, I should say that the main reason I played this is that when Ryan Davis passed away, one of the many things that I thought of was how much he loved this game, and its crazy style. So I decided to play it. And, during the course of events that led to me playing it, I wound up with two copies of the game, one on Steam, and one on PSN. But that's what happens when my friend gifts it to me on Steam, despite my saying that my computer would not be able to run it at a smooth framerate (which it wasn't). But he only paid $2.50 for it, and I didn't mind paying the full $10 for the PSN version.

But while my reason for playing it was mainly centered around Ryan, I ended up really liking the game. Definitely a lot more than I was expecting. I know the reaction of some of you readers is going to be something like, "Well, of course you liked it, it's a great game!"

Anyway, I played it, I beat it, and I had a lot of fun. The game is ridiculous, has style for days, and made me feel like a psychopath as I murdered dudes whilst listening to that insane music blasting in my headphones. Yes, headphones on a TV. Because I was using a small, not great TV.

BUT NO LONGER!

For, you see, I bought a new TV! Well, really, my dad bought it, because he's the one with the money, and I'm still living at home, but whatever! New TV! It was no sales tax weekend here in Taxachusetts, so we went to the local Sears on Friday (before the no sales tax weekend started) to look at TVs after seeing Elysium. We ended up buying it then, with the guy taking off an amount of money roughly equivalent to the sales tax, which led to a weird situation where we saved money, but still paid the sales tax to the state. I actually kinda like that, because unlike some people, I think governments need money to run, but I'll not let this turn into a political blog. Yet.

It's a 60 inch Sharp LED Aquos TV. Not a smart TV. We specifically asked if they had a non-smart version of the one on display, and they did. It was cheaper too. I don't know the exact model number or anything off hand, but the TV seems pretty great thus far. The games I've played (Red Dead Redemption, Borderlands 2) look beautiful, and the Blu-Ray of District 9 was absolutely stunning.

Now, I've used HDTVs before. Even that little not so good one I was using was a 1080P TV. But the picture on that thing wasn't really very good. At least not compared to the new TV. Granted, it's only been a few days, but I am absolutely loving this new TV, so I'm very happy with it.

I have played one other game that I will write about one more game here. Normally I like to beat games before I write about them, but I made the exception for this one. This is because I think I might have a special, Take-Two themed blog later this week, before Games of the Year Saints Row IV and Divekick come out next week. And this game, is, well...

I don't think this game is very good! That's why I went with a comically large picture here. For comedy.

So, I'm, I think, between three and four hours into the game. I don't really know how long it is, though I suppose I could look that up. The internet says nine to ten hours-ish. I can't be almost halfway into the game, so maybe it just FELT like I had played for 4 hours.

And the sad thing about this game is that as many faults as it has, I think it could have been pretty good with just a few "simple" changes. The first, and most important, being the controls. Let me say this simply:

Controlling a 3D character in a 3D space with a D-Pad is bad game design! Not once has moving Samus around felt natural and good. Not once has any of the platforming (which there isn't a ton of, to be fair) felt fun. These overly "simple" controls have made what could have been a good game into a clunky and unfun game.

Another problem is the lighting. There are a lot of areas in the game that are so dark that I can barely see. Now, at first I thought it might be the TV, but then I remembered that everything else has looked great on the TV thus far, and that the areas with good lighting in the game are perfectly visible. Then I thought the game might just have a brightness setting that I missed, but no, it doesn't. The only options are for the language and subtitles.

The story is bad, the voice acting is bad, the graphics aren't very good, even for a Wii game. Really, the only reason I have to finish the game is that I want to be able to say that I beat it.

On the bright side, I only paid $10 for it. And this was a while ago, too. I had bought it back when the last, big HDTV we had was working, but then it stopped working, and I decided not to play it until I had something widescreen that was big enough to have far enough away to use the Wii sensor bar. And boy, I sure am glad I waited. (Not.)

This music is about the only thing that can cheer me up after playing Other M. Ugh.

That's about it. I have some other stuff I want to write about, but that can wait.

If you are looking for an electronic book to read that is only a dollar and is a sci-fi adventure with whimsy and violence, and somehow have ignored my advertising of it in previous blogs, well, here you go: US Link. UK Link.Canada Link. If you're getting tired of seeing this at the end of all my blogs, then just find ways to trick everyone you know into buying it. Eventually it'll turn from a tiny snowball of sales into a giant avalanche of sales that will keep me out of the poorhouse and from having to have a real job!

Or not. That probably won't happen, but a man can dream! And I can too, but my dreams usually aren't that pleasant, but I'll spare you the details.

So, as always, I leave you with another addition to the Year of Luigi with another Luigified picture. This time, The Luigi of Us!