The Rest of the Last of Us

I'm about halfway through playing "The Last of Us," Naughty Dog's newest game.  Renowned for their Uncharted series, Naughty Dog is once again tackling an over-the-shoulder shooter featuring a male lead and his female sidekick sloughing through bad-guys.  In this case, Joel is the protagonist, and the head you inhabit throughout the game, and Ellie is his side-kick, a precocious fourteen year-old who holds the secret for combating the zombie apocalypse.

Just from that synopsis, the game doesn't sound all that original.  The plot certainly is nothing to write home about.  But the acting is incredible and the designers seemed genuinely interested in building real characters.  Joel, especially, is tired and broken.  But each of the side-characters with whom you often interact are fully-developed, often conflicted, people.  Expected emotional cues occur early in the game, and then diverge quickly into rarely trod territory.  So despite its mediocre plot (so far . . . there could be a twist I haven't anticipated) the characters feel real, and I have developed a genuine attachment to Joel and Ellie.

What is ruining the game for me, though, are the baddies.  First, from the trailers and the synopsis on the back of the game, we know already that the world is in the last gasp of ruin.  Anarchy prevails, zombies run wild, and decency is all but unknown.  So we should expect Mad Max-style confrontations, as well as 28 Days Later run-ins with deranged and hostile enemies.  And we get both.

But other than their skins, each enemy seems to behave the same way.  Some zombies hunt by echo-location only, and wander around maps with ears cocked.  Others group together in packs and rush you from corners.  There's the occasional solo--a big daddy who's nearly impossible to gun down (which, because of the limited ammunition practically requires that you just run in circles whacking it with bits of debris you find lying around). 

Your "human" opponents aren't much different.  Especially the "Lord of the Flies" baddies who wander tumbled urban landscapes.  Some you can just sneak past, despite the fact that it's broad daylight and they're staring right at you.  Others gang up and rush you from all directions.  The only exception are the cops and soldiers who sometimes lob a few bullets your direction, which only makes me suspect I'll soon encounter a zombie who lobs some sort of spit-bullet my direction. And there's the occasional solo baddie who's nearly impossible to gun down (see above).

But oh well.  Because really, the bad guys aren't there to be killed.  Unlike Uncharted and Uncharted Two, which were notorious for the massacre you inflict on untold hundreds of red, blue and yellow mercenaries (literally, they all wore different color clothes so you knew how to shift your tactics for them), The Last of Us depends on sneaking and not-killing as much as bludgeoning your way through a map.  In fact, it built itself on that premise.  You're given hardly any ammunition (though there does still seem to be a lot lying around in odd locations) and expected to think your way through and around confrontation.  More often than not, if you decide to go in guns blazing, you're bound to get shot dead in the first charge.

Beyond the obvious disadvantage this lends to your character, and the lazy enemy AI, the atmosphere is fantastic, lush, and, well . . . atmospheric.  At first, I was a little unsettled by how bright the world seemed.  But then I realized that despite the downfall of human civilization, the sun would still shine.  This lack of lens seems an apt metaphor for the game itself.  We see the end of the world unaided, with all the humanity, anarchy, and danger unmitigated by directorial or narrative sleight-of-hand.

So consider this an update rather than a review, because I suspect the ending is going to leave me raw and slack-jawed.  I'll let you know when I get there.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves . . . It Stole My Heart

I know.  That is a particularly bad title.  Also, I'm sure you're probably asking yourself why I'm only now getting around to playing this game.  The answer is simple.  This is the first time I've had time, and a Playstation, with which to play it.

Let me go ahead and let you know that while this is specifically a review about the second installment of the Uncharted franchise, it's also more generally a review of the first one as well, since I purchased the Game of the Year dual-pack and played both games sequentially.  Although, why would I have played them in any other order?  Hmm . . . .

Overview

Regardless, I should probably start with my thoughts on third-person shooters.

I really don't like them.  I find them clunky, unwieldy and aesthetically unpleasing.  Why would I want to spend the next 10 or more hours staring at someone's backside?  You know, unless it was a really nice backside. 

Motion Capture

Naughty Dog, the game developers, went to a lot of trouble to make me want to stare at another guy's back-side for well over 20 hours.  The motion capture in general is flawless, and all the more nuanced in the second game.  Furthermore, this game includes a lot more freedom in movement than many third-person games I've played before.  The camera rotates easily, and the cinematic feel of the game provides that you have more than ample opportunity to look at more than just Nathan Drake's backside.

Gameplay

Overall, the gameplay was remarkably smooth and enjoyable.  A few times, even though a particular puzzle was not difficult to solve, making the character perform the requisite actions was excruciatingly ponderous.  These were few, but noticeable (particularly in the first game, Drake's Fortune), but they hardly detracted from my enjoyment of the game once I resigned myself to dying a few times.

Game Design

As for the game design itself, it was beautiful.  I can't review it glowingly enough.  Each set felt immersive and the level of detail was simply stunning.  My only complaint was the seemingly illogical construction of some of the sets.  While I recognize that this is an action-adventure fantasy, many of the puzzles and locales simply didn't make any sense.  Of particular note is the puzzle which requires you to point a beam of light at specific points to activate ancient machinery.  While this might work with modern technology, I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief that a five-hundred-year old civilization had the know-how to get this up and running.

Monsters?  Really?

Also, there are monsters.  This was handled much more expertly in the second installment, but rather indelicately in the first.  In a game more-or-less grounded in the real world, it felt like a betrayal to find out that Incan gold really is cursed.  While they explained it (sort of) in game as some kind of infection, the more glaring plot holes (such as where all the infected people came from, or were we to assume that they were well over three hundred years old?) were never adequately filled in.  In fact, the plot holes were so offensive that I stopped playing the game for nearly a week until my ire had subsided.

The monsters in the second game make a little more sense.  Tied as they are to the abominable snowman (or yeti) myth, since the game is set in Tibet, I forgave the designers more readily.  However, they handled their monsters much more adroitly, so my pique was short and quickly assuaged.

Brass Tacks--Story and Characterization

The story, however, and the characters, are what truly make these games phenomenal.  Another developer could have gone a completely different route, and paid lip service only to a full fleshed out plot; or they could have invested less effort in voice and motion capture.  The level of investment that Naughty Dog displayed is truly remarkable, and adds a level of believability, and ultimately, playability into the game.

In each game, you play Nathan Drake, who, in the first game, is a loveable rogue searching for the mystery of his forebear, the eponymous Sir Francis Drake, of privateer fame.  The mystery, basically, is that Drake died childless--yet family history leads Nathan to believe he is his descendant.  Tied to that, is the mystery of El Dorado, which Francis Drake seems to have discovered.  So basically, you're on the hunt for the Golden City, plagued by baddies and trying to save both the day, and the girl.

The second time around pits Nathan against a warlord and a friend who betrayed him.  The story deepens, however, by the introduction of a new girl in Nathan's life, and the absence of the female lead from the first story.  In the second game, Drake is on the hunt for the lost treasure ships of Marco Polo, which lead him eventually to Shangri-la.

Morality?  In a Video Game?

I suppose one of my major complaints about these two games are the moral ambivalence that each displays.  Certainly, I'm not going to blame violence in video games for violence in the real world, but these types of games are woefully disinterested in the morality of wiping out thousands of people in the course of the adventure.

What is all the more worrying is the flippancy of it.  Perhaps you can make some sort of an argument for self-defense, as the bad-guys probably shot first (but certainly not always, and your character often takes the killing hand-to-hand), but the game designers make very little effort to explain why the character is there at all.  Beyond a nebulous sense of greed, that is.  Because, ultimately, he is a treasure-hunter.  A tomb raider; in the first game it is explicitly stated that Nathan Drake is killing people for the money.  He wants the goods.

The violence inherent to most games has never bothered me.  Modern Warfare is an example of a game that I love, the violence of which makes Uncharted pale in comparison.  Yet, I assuage my moral sense with the belief that there is some sort of moral continuum.  The bad guys are terrorists, the good guys are the forces of order.  But even then, the terrorists have some sort of goal. They're part of a complex moral order that has been aggrieved.  And while I probably disagree with their reasoning, at least they have one.  Nathan Drake's moral order is unbridled avarice.  And that bothers me.  Monsters?  Kill 'em.  Aliens?  Mow 'em down.  But human beings?  I'd like some nuance with my carnage, please.

Conclusions

Basically, I like these games.  They're not perfect, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons and I would never hesitate to recommend these to a friend.  Or even a perfect stranger.