The Last of Us and other stuff

Like some others that did not think the Last of Us was the perfect game, I feel about the same about it as I felt about Bioshock Infinite. Great story and presentation, decent game. I was concerned after having played the Uncharted games and not really enjoying that story, but the Last of Us had something that was much more appealing to me. Less matinee action and gung-ho adventure, more grim character drama. It is definitely worth playing for the story alone, but again I’m not entirely sure how much the game adds to it.

Again, the game is not bad by any means – just not very interesting. It basically comes down to sneaking and cover-shooting in a linear sequence of arenas, there are a few different weapons and upgrade possibilities but in the end they don’t make much of a difference. Most of the time just dying a couple of times to learn the layout of the combat scenarios was the fastest way to proceed, the few puzzles the game throws at you to change the pace are all variations of the same three basic concepts. In a sense, it is more relevant but less fun than Bioshock Infinite was – like The Last of Us tries to shoehorn in gameplay that’s fitting but not very fun whereas Bioshock just took an ill-fitting but amusing game and bolted it onto a story. I would highly recommend them both but they are made to guide you through a narrative experience rather than provide something new in the gameplay department.

I have played a bunch of other games in the last few months. Dustforce and Starseed Pilgrim are both fantastic, but kind of hard to finish so I am still working on them – this is sort of why I didn’t write about anything else. But I digress, I wanted to write something about these;

Monaco, I played with a friend whenever we both had time. It is kind of fun in singleplayer but it really sings in multiplayer as it makes it so incredibly easy to help each other out – more often than not, you do it inadvertently. I feel like after playing Monaco I can better understand what high-level players find so appealing about team games.

The Swapper, a really solid puzzle-platformer with an intriguing theme that ties into the gameplay hook really well. Doesn’t hurt that it’s also very pretty and does not overstay its welcome.

Kentucky Route Zero act 2 was a stunning followup to the first chapter. It’s delightful, with events and characters that are really odd but still very relateable.

Gunpoint had some flashy mechanics that did not really do much to improve the gameplay, luckily it also had solid leveldesign and overall a very painless user experience so it was fun all the way through.

Posted on Jun 25/13 by Saint and filed under Reflections | No Comments »