The Last of Us - it's the time of the season

that jpg has many ilx appropriate applications

my hopes for this game are right around the level of gaming's lethal weapon moment, or at my most giddily optmstic, gaming's ghostbusters moment, although the original ghostbusters game had a fair claim to that distinction.

it was pretty cool but man the loading times

gaming's citizen kane with andy warhol's loading times

day 1 server issues :B

https://twitter.com/Naughty_Dog/status/345591249148985344

http://thecitizenkaneofvideogames.tumblr.com/

i am not sure this is gaming's citizen kane moment, but it is very good

it doesn't start off promisingly - for the first few sections of the game it doesn't hold your hand so much as take the controller, sit you down with a hot drink, and say 'listen, let me do this bit ok?'. but it gets beyond that, although it never quite stops giving you helpful nudges. it feels initially like it is aiming for Uncharted: Heavy Rain of Zombies but once it gets going it surpasses that low bar without effort. the basic gameplay is very simple and i did wonder if i really wanted to throw however many hours at doing the same thing over and over, but the game manages to keep contriving situations that refuse to let you just fall back on what worked last time, and that is probably the most impressive achievement. it's never scary but it is frequently intense. however it is as linear as all get out, no more illusion of choice of direction than i dunno operation wolf, so if you have a philosophical problem with that look elsewhere i guess.

supplies are scarce enough that you actually have to think about what your doing, which is essential for a game like this to work and if i'd have had to pick a place they'd have gone wrong that probably would've been it. it does look great, and the recognizable bits of boston at the start are very cool. the story and the characters and the voice acting etc are all at least reasonably intelligent but as usual the assumption is that gamers are impervious to subtlety, so none of it is what it could or should be to deserve the critical jizz.

so yeah, it is very good. it's paced so you can't put the controller down because you always feel like you're in the middle of something, but there is also a genuine feeling of not wanting to stop, of wanting to know what's next, and that's as much of a recommendation as anything imo.

how much space does it need to install on ps3? (ive only got the 12gb hd)

it's 26gb so it will want 52 gb (!) to download and install.

i mean from disc version - i've written off ever downloading anything on this flimsy thing

operation wolf!! i have not thought about that game in literally years

Anyone else getting a Children of Men vibe from this?

getting a citizen kane vibe
for christmas
lil orson welles head that takes three AA batteries

hey remember how you were like man i love uncharted's shitty gameplay but all these engaging characters and this breezy story are really dragging me down? have i got the game for u

like right at the beginning of the game this little girl dies and it's like who cares but the protagonist is fuckin freaking out and it's just like that heavy rain glitch video where dude is like SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN

lmao

This is good so far!

i'm kinda tempted? I don't like uncharted at all though.

I played Uncharted 2 for about 30 minutes and decided it wasn't for me. This, on the other hand, I started playing a couple nights ago and so far it totally rules, it's exactly Half-Life but it's too pretty and fun to not enjoy it.

Just on a technical level, I am super impressed with how fluid it moves from "you're playing" to "watch this!". And (barring the insanely long install time) the loading times are fluid and wonderful. Zero inventory management. Skyrim was the only other Big PS3 game I felt compelled to complete but this one kills it. Critic hyperbole otm, imo

lol @ "completing" skyrim

I said "compelled to complete", not that I completed it

I did complete a lot of it :( despite agonizing load times :(

me too, i even shamefully bought dlc :|

i watched part of a last of us playthrough and the boston ruins made me think of hl2. i guess the clickers wouldn't be out of place in ravenholm. i'm good with the uncharted style controls as long as the targeting isn't crappy

i am not gonna say anything about the ending except to say that it is kinda worth saying something about and not necessarily in a negative way

Loved the game but was so worried about the frequency of pastiche that was abundant during it's 14hr journey that I was afraid the ending would head the same direction. The turn it takes is fantastic, not so much a plot-twist as something you should have expected to have seen coming... and are, actually, given constant evidence of throughout the course of the game, not just gameplay tidbits in between purely relevant 20 second cut-scene segments. I really loved it, the game and how it eventually chose to close itself.

No spoilers, but vague details abundant

What I especially love is fact that that the game does not take your actions as a summation of the entire fate of the universe.... it starts as a character study and ends as such. The side characters you meet throughout the course of the game I initially thought were a bit irrelevant and undeveloped until I realized there is this large thematic string between all of these people and the ways they cope with loss. Everyone has their own dramatic reaction, and every reaction befits their own definition of self-preservation... whether identity, quality of life, or actualized existence.

Still, I am a bit askew as to what benefit having Ellie modeled after Ellen Page did for the series. Did they really find that we couldn't emote w/ a videogame character unless we had an already established connective node with them already? Were they afraid of creating a side character that was too generic to care for?

I haven't completed it yet!

Finding the fungus flowers in dark places never ceased to creep me out, like, the fuck out

ah I was wondering why she looked so familiar the whole time. Was it actually Ellen Page? Tommy and Henry look really familiar, too.

There's no official evidence to posit Ellen Page as Ellie's inspiration but it's all I could think about a year ago, seeing the videos teased for this at e3. Ellen Page actually addressed the likeliness with disapproval just recently: http://kotaku.com/famous-actor-sounds-upset-about-the-last-of-us-ellie-551365129

Tommy & Henry hit me immediately as Walt and Michael, from Lost.

Running with this theme, the developers behind Bioshock: Infinite cited the fact that they changed Elizabeth's initial look to resemble that of Disney's Belle (Beauty & The Beast) to make her expressions more emotionally charged and "real" in circumstance of her face... everything being super-expressed and all. I'm taking this cue and thinking that Naughty Dog did something somewhat akin in trying to give us a character with a face we wouldn't forget, especially considering the basis of the game's plot depends on an emotional connection with this character....

...which is a weird move, I think, as there's a fair amount of evidence from too many other videogames that we can become attached to a character without their possessing a physical allusion to something we already know, and likely like. Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 looks like nobody else, and is most definitely one of few videogame characters I can recall from memory as being particularly memorable.

started this last night, beginning was cool, i liked the flash-forward 20 years, and then all of the sudden i was spending an hour walking through houses and helping a lady climb on things

that could be an ok evening

Seeing ads and reviews for this make me want to brave my PS3-induced motion sickness and give it a shot.

Is it worth potentially barfing to play?

gravol

Still, I am a bit askew as to what benefit having Ellie modeled after Ellen Page did for the series. Did they really find that we couldn't emote w/ a videogame character unless we had an already established connective node with them already? Were they afraid of creating a side character that was too generic to care for?

― kelpolaris, Wednesday, June 26, 2013 6:36 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

nerdbait

i'll protect you ellen... *pushes glasses against bridge of nose*

^Totally.

It's so embarrassing/hilarious to see fanboys get defensive about this game's obvious pandering. "She doesn't look at all like Ellen Page! Stop criticizing this MASTERPIECE!"

Gamers are the worst people.

That said, having just finished the game, I liked it a lot!

Who's Ellen Paige?

Juno

juno who she is, don't play dumb

This game is so great.

Help a n00b:

If I love this game and the Tomb Raider reboot (and to a slightly lesser extent Far Cry 3), what else would you recommend?

The Walking Dead, Uncharted 2, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3, Resident Evil 4, Heavy Rain, Dead Space 2, Alan Wake if you can find it for like $2

I actually liked Assassin's Creed 3 too, like a lot.

this game is pretty great huh?

children of men vibe otm, at least for the first couple of hours: a freaky event that has rendered the survival of humanity tenuous; a government clampdown; a resistance group smuggling a girl out from the controlled zone of martial law; an ambiguous relationship between the protagonist and that group

zombies? do i have to?

lol this was EXACTLY my reaction as well. thank god they figure very very little in the first couple of three hours.

still waiting for it to hit that 25 buck used sweet spot

interesting, it's a real testament to this story and its evolution that people are still discovering, discussing and debating it.

gonna hard disagree Josh. the story is pulp trash that we’ve seen a million times. it’s about zombies for christ sake. what made it different was the execution. the acting in particular is tremendous. the co-op mechanic, also not new, actually worked instead of being annoying. the gameplay loops were very satisfying and the difficulty was pitched just right. etc

pulp trash? hmm.

I do see what you mean, but the characters are what ultimately sets it apart, imo, and the characters are the sum of writing and performance, which ultimately adds up to story. The gameplay and all those other important details, I think that's what helps it achieve more than just good story, for sure. But, like, its big inspiration was The Road, which is also pretty familiar stuff, but far from pulp trash, because of it execution. Again, imo.

I don't think Tracer was slamming the game, just noting that the plot itself is rote.

I think the specific callout from the video I linked I wanted to mention was the gulf between the playable action vs. set-piece adaptation. The Capitol Building clicker section is still way scarier in the game than it'll ever be for me just watching it on the show because I can actually fail that section, but something that's easier to overlook is the supply economy, inventory management, etc., i.e. basic gameplay elements that are uncinematic but go a long way to establishing the game's mood.

Yeah, I think I got that, but the video basically enforced that the same story has now been told essentially four different times, each using more or less the exact same framework with their own set of pros and cons. I agree that losing the gameplay is the biggest con, the question becomes how much does it fundamentally change that framework. I agree that it changes it a lot, and I agree with the video, in that the show lost something that the game uniquely provided, despite being overwhelmingly similar otherwise.

mourning the emotional wallop of crafting after hbo had finished sucking all the usable material out of the powerful cutscenes about fatherhood is exactly what millennial gamers had coming to them the moment they signed that infernal pact with roger ebert imo, a learning experience

Drag Me To TV

https://kotaku.com/last-of-us-clicker-bread-sculpture-joel-ellie-1850908509

Ok I was not prepared for the “from behind” scene. Not sure what my 11 yo thought about it either

refresh my memory

Do you mean Left Behind the expansion for the first game?

Thought it was great. Translated well on the show too

I hope it's Left Behind and not the scene from Part 2...

ngl i don’t remember any doggystyle in either game

Probably for the best

Ohhhh you mean the boat sex scene?

I've resumed my Grounded playthrough of LoU II .. And this really is the way to play. Yes it's very hard. You have no HUD, you have no ability to "see" sounds, everybody can see MUCH further (basically if you can see them they can see you), everybody causes more damage, they go on alert much more quickly, you have to be quiet as a fuckin mouse if you plan on sneaking up on anyone, particularly clickers. (I actually thought they had removed the ability to stealth kill clickers until I finally got one. The technique is to move about 1mm per hr and then right at the end push the fuck up and get them.)

The upshot is that you essentially have to learn how to beat each level perfectly. Run and gun is impossible. There are only a very small handful of moments where you're forced to break cover. So each level becomes more contemplative - like a puzzle - though still quite tense of course because grisly death awaits any misstep. What's kind of mindblowing is that there are entire levels where you can essentially just skirt everything if you pick out the right route. But in order to get there you need to get to know every nook and cranny like the back of your hand. It is the way to really appreciate every little detail that they put into the game - details you would normally be blazing past.

Another consequence is that the game is verrrrrry long I've been playing for hours and hours and still haven't made the switch into Abby, still haven't met the cultists, Lev, etc.