Monthly Archives: November 2013

The Last of Us

Review

You can safely read the review before playing the game.

The Last of Us is breathtaking. The game’s atmosphere is close to overwhelming. Naughty Dog have certainly put their work into the game’s scenes, to make them scaring and nervetripping. Both sound and light are well-made, and enhances the gaming experience to heights to the very top tier of today’s gaming.

Simply put, The Last of Us is the best game up to this date in the horror/action/zombie genre. The scenes are balanced and well-paced. Although you don’t think about it consciously as a player, the mix of action scenes with slower environmental gaming scenes with astonishing beauty creates an impression of great art.

But the astonishing atmosphere and well-paced scenes comes with a hard price. The game’s quests and scenes reeks of linearity (in a bad Max Payne kind of way). The game constructors have decided what way the player must go, and what he must do. So when I play, I do them, but when I know where I am supposed to go (i.e. where my co-characters go) I search everything else first, making sure not to let any supplies remain untouched. The illusion fades.

The Last of Us is an action game, and I should say something about the in-game conflict resolution as well. The game is constructed with stealth in mind. It is preferable to have a low profile and sneak as much as possible. The crouching with as little noise as possible gives a continuous feeling of suspense. And be sure that action will break loose from time to time, and give you your alotted amount of shooting and molotovcocktailing.

Conclusion. The Last of Us is a must-have game for most ps3-gamers. It plays on several different registers, and have a variety of scenes which provides suspense, action and adorable milieus. With its enhanced stealth mode, it delivers much more than any common fps or tps. The theatricals are quite ok, as well as the story. With all the benefits of this game, it is easy to overlook its sometimes tedious linearity. Simply put, The Last of Us is the best horror/action/zombie-game there is today.

Reflections

Spoiler alert. I will spoil the game in this section. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you complete the game before continuing reading. I am not joking.

So, what’s up with the ending? From a theoretical narrative perspective, it’s an easy one. There is no arc in Joel’s character. He stays the same from his daughter’s death until the credits.

Why on earth doesn’t the player get to choose whether to let Ellie go through with the surgery or not? Most certainly, had Bioware constructed The Last of Us, that choice would have been there. But Naughty Dog is not Bioware, and The Last of Us is a linear game.

The fact is that had Naughty Dog chosen to let the player choose whether to let Ellie go or not, they had to put much more resources into the development of the game. If you want to make such choice crucial, you need to implement a lot of background info on that one.

Think about Deus Ex(2000) which had three separate endings, depending on the moral choice of the player/character. To make this choice a real one, and not a pseudochoice, the programmers built in hundreds upon hundreds of small bits of info and arguments for and against the different choices. These bits and arguments was implemented into in-game newspapers, emails, dialogue and even the small subchoices the player made in order to complete quests before the grand finale.

So, if Naughty Dog would have chosen to give the player one choice within a game otherwise completely linear, they would have had to put in a lot more resources to represent the two sides of being selfish or sacrificing your loved ones to the firefly organization. Had they removed these resources from what they did good in the game, perhaps the tradeoff would have been bad.

Though, there is one fact which overrules every other, when it comes to letting the player make the story’s most important choice or not. It is an economic fact as well. It is not about creating a game, but creating a franchise. Because, with Ellie alive, a sequel is possible. And in the end, gaming companies creates video games to make money.

Most certainly, Naughty Dog has already contracted the main actors for a sequel or more, to repeat the winning concept. It is possible to whine about it (”There is no arc! There is no katharsis!”), but even though they didn’t make as complete symbolic narrative as Red Dead Redemption, they can repeat The Last of Us. And repetition is the key to success. Think about the Uncharted series with just Drake’s Fortune. Or Assassin’s Creed. Or Warcraft for that matter.

Let us all look forward to the sequel. But please, Naughty Dog, create arcs for the main characters next time.

A New Todolist

For years, I have used todolists. I have listed thousands of posts in my todolists. They have piled up, and I have given up the concept. And later I began anew.

I tried different methods. Simple todolists, where I did whatever had been written first I did what I’d liked to do, or what was most needed first. Compounded todolists, sorted by topic, willingness to complete and timeframe for each post. I developed a special cup-system for choosing and from time to time I let the dice choose for me.

All of my todolists ended the same way: into the nearest paper recycling bag or fireplace, depending on mood.

Then there came computers, internet, smartphones and apps. Naturally I used all of these possibilities in the best possible way. The computerized age took my todolists to another level.

First, the todolists became digitalized and immensely faster to write down, sort and delete. With internet, there came milkforgetting websites and God know what. I tested them all and rejected them all. There were apps, and I I found them insufficient. So I built my own.

I built them one after another, and finally I stood there with the best todolist app of them all, and I named it Postponemaster.

Postponemaster gave me what no other todolist had given me before. Perfect prioritization and structure. It gave me peace of mind. Finally, I could get efficient as I never had before.

I didn’t happen.

I found out, painfully, that Postponemaster was not my sole todolist. I found out that I had more than 30 todolists which I hadn’t thought about before. And they all craved for my attention.

I did things, some call it procrastination, but I call it fortitude.

Something might have caught my attention, and although that thing might have been solved quickly, there where other things in its vicinity. And they needed to be done. And I did them.

Again and again, I did them. And postponemaster stayed as a dream, only dreamt in the shadows of the night.

There were my inbox. There were my browser tabs. There were notes on my computers, my cellphones, in my irl inbox and all the numerous binders cluttering the bookcases covering my walls. There were dust to clean, films to watch, books to read, reread buy and write.

And I had an everlasting surge to run as fast as I could.

I had not run for weeks. And I did not do what I was supposed to do: the first post on Postponemaster. It was a failure.

I had come to the point of no return. All my labour had finally led me there. I had life. I had the solution. And I had more than 30 other todolists than the perfect one, which made it not so perfect.

I looked Universe in its eye. And I accepted my fate. And then, the very same fate gave me the insight leading to my redemption. The meaning of my life was to break every possible boundary.

I was to do a todolist of all of my todolists.

I listed them all. I ordered the list. The work was dire. I saw what I had made, and behold, it was very good. I rested.

I followed my todolist of todolists. And I ran. And I baked. And I wrote this piece.