The Last of Us - Review

The Last of Us is one of those post-apocalyptic games that really gives the feeling that everything went down the toilet a long time ago, and it certainly has. Set 20 years after a mutated version of the real-life Cordyceps fungus effects the human population, transforming them into rabid and violent  creatures. The surviving population has fallen into the regular array of nomadic tribes, heavy-handed military settlements, trigger-happy bandits and the odd surviving settlers.

 
The story follows a man named Joel, who, after his own fair share of loss during the initial spread of the outbreak, works as part of a smuggling operation with his partner Tess. Usually sitting on the wrong side of the fence, Tess and Joel are given the task of escorting a young girl named Ellie to a rebel-like force know as the Fireflies. As their luck continues to dwindle, they find out that Ellie is  immune and the Fireflies intend to find out why to engineer a cure.

Without spoiling too much more of the story, the game itself is the many years of work from developer Naughty Dog. Known for their Crash Bandicoot and Uncharted series, The Last of Us marks a big change in direction for the developer, and their years of work have shown in the sheer amount of polish this game boasts. For the entire length of the game, its design and detail to both the environment and the characters was faultless. The character rendering, especially during cut-scenes, is one of the best I've seen to date. Although it's visuals are top quality, it also doesn't miss a beat to the gripping and enticing story and writing. The ebb and flow of action and exploration is paced perfectly, with many quiet walks interrupted by the sudden appearance of resting infected. The world is filled with character. You'll find signs of life everywhere, each adding to the atmosphere of the world around you, making it very engrossing.

There is also a great deal of emphasis on allowing you to choose how you want to play. While you could go guns blazing, you can also opt for the stealthy approach and often sneak pass an entire squad of bandits and continue on your way. With that said, it does still force you into certain circumstances on occasion. Several areas required you to eliminate all guards or infected in an area, usually so you could safely use an object, such as open a garage door. Infected are sometimes already aware of your presence when you enter a room, and sneaking past agitated infected is quite impossible.

Your companion's AI is quite well done, though it does break realism on several occasions. I had Ellie run around trying to hide and walking right in front of guards or them walking right on top of her with no reaction. Enemies also suffer from patrolling in circles, taking the same path back and forward until you put them out of their misery. Despite the few breaks in realism, the combat AI is aggressive. Enemies take cover, blind fire, try to flank you and assist each other. Your own partner is also very responsive, often stabbing enemies when they're grabbing you, or hurling bricks and bottles to stun  them. Later on, Ellie uses a gun and provides a much greater combat role.

The game is also very forgiving, with frequent check-pointing the game doesn't punish you much for failing, which may feel soft for some, but I was grateful for it on several occasions. Loading times are also quick, aside from the initial load of the game which took up to five minutes one time. It features a Multiplayer mode, but it seemed pretty samey and I did not try it. There is also a New Game + mode so you can go back and try and find all the collectables.

The Last of Us is a real piece of gaming gold and although lacking re-playability (unless you're a collecting freak) the ten to twenty hour journey is quite worth the effort.

Plenty of Time To Explain

Newgrounds is the birthplace of many an internet oddity, one such oddity made it's way to Kickstarter, raised over $25,000 and made a full fledged game of itself. That game was: No Time To Explain.

The game starts with your future self telling you that there is no time to explain before being promptly snatched away by a giant UFO crab or something, I don't know. It takes a page out of the insane book and slaps it on the classic jumping puzzle. Using the future blasting device that is both laser gun and rocket boosting device, you use it to navigate an increasingly difficult array of pits, spikes and the usual array of slightly-hazardous-to-you-health obstacles.

The great thing about this game is the pace, snappy music and instant respawning from the last place you touched safe ground keeps the game running smoothly, at least till you get to a boss. There are several boss levels, each one increasingly more difficult. They start out easy enough, even though most will one-hit-kill you, you instantly respawn and don't have to start the level again, so there is no challenge on those ones; then there are the bosses that use certain attacks that set you on fire. Fire is a different danger all together. If you are set on fire and don't jump in water quickly, you burn to death and must restart the room completely. With several later bosses using this power, and the glitchy and uninspired fights that take place, the game goes from face-paced platformer to annoying and frustrating grind.

Aside from the annoying boss fights, the rest of the game is fantastic. The randomness is thrilling and the variety of challenges keeps it fresh. One second, you're a failed clone sticking to walls and sling-shotting wall to wall and the next you're flying through the air on a jetpack blasting at dinosaurs.

It's short, so you won't go nuts playing this game, but I found the overall comic nature to slightly outweigh the letdowns of glitches and the boss fights. Oh, and on of my favorite quote of all times.

"My ribs are in my eyes! THEY'RE IN MY EYES!"

Randomitis: Torchlight is Free for a day!

Drop your things and put on your pants! If you rush over to GoG you can pick up a copy of Torchlight for free for the next 24 hours! Featuring solid dungeon crawling, mighty monsters and pretty sparkles; Torchlight is definately one of the keepers.

Pick it up at GoG today.

The Dayz Cometh

Open world zombie survival. It all kicked off with the Arma 2 mod, DayZ. It set a very different stage for gaming, and also brought up a great many issues when it came to discerning what kind of gamer you are. With the much anticipated DayZ Standalone almost out of Private Alpha and said to be entering a Public Alpha soon, New Bohemia and mod creator, Dean Hall, released some info on what to look forward to.

Although the visuals in the DayZ mod were good when cranked way up, they have been much improved for the standalone. They have introduced many new assets and buildings, and 90% of buildings are now enterable according to New Bohemia. New items, including combinable items such as purifying pills to clean dirty drinking water and the gunplay has been significantly improved. While the game is still running on the Arma 2 engine, it is much improved for DayZ.

There is also some chatter about Sony picking up DayZ for the PS4, assuming the PC launch doesn't collapse. Despite that, there is no announced release date for DayZ, but we've been told it should only cost about $20-$25USD. I'm looking forward to it, DayZ was a great experience, despite the 'human' nature of some players, but the fact that zombies are a real threat, as is cold, heat and illness, it makes the world just that more hostile for everyone.

My Cards got more Digital

With the Steam Trading Card Beta still underway and having spent a good few weeks trialling the update, I'm going to give you the Low-down: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

The Low-down

It's always nice to see Steam trying new things, but it's been a little hit and miss. The attempt at social media with the introduction of the activity feed was bit of a flop, but the Community features were well received. Greenlight and Big Picture, in my opinion, were huge steps forward in regards to reaching a different kind of player and developer base. Now Steam has dialled back the progress train with collectable trading cards.

These cards are accrued through playing your favourite games that support the feature. Most games don't even need to update, as the whole process seems to be handled through Steam. As you clock up time playing the game, you have a random chance of receiving a Trading Card (or a rare Foil Card). For Free-to-Play games, you can receive additional card drops each time you spend $9 on in-game purchases (currently only for TF2 and Dota2). The game will drop up to half the set, the rest can be accrued though trade or bought on the Community Market. When you have a full set, you craft them together to receive various items in your inventory and XP, which I'll talk about later.

 
The Good

The whole thing is a novelty, and if you don't care about this sort of thing, you can easily ignore it, or better yet, make some money by selling the cards you earn to those who do care. If you do care, then it's a little something extra for you to do, to pass the time, if you really need to.

In conjunction with the Beta, Steam Profiles have been revamped. Now with unlockable backgrounds, profile features, badges and emoticons, you can earn these bad boys by crafting sets of cards. Each time you do, you earn a profile background, badge and custom emoticon that relates to the game you crafted the cards for. You'll also receive a random Steam coupon, and a Steam discount is always nice. The new Steam profile page is much snazzier, but if you don't like it then too bad, you're stuck with it.

The Bad

Steam now has a Level system, like a RPG. Unlike an RPG, it's mostly useless, and the only benefit you get from gaining Steam levels is the extension of your Steam Friend's List cap. For every level, you may have an additional five friends on your list. For some, this may be a big thing, but I personally don't agree (says the guy with only 51 friends).

Once Trading Cards are out of Beta, I expect the value of cards significantly drop to the point of worthlessness. Foil cards will retain some value, but like Mann Co Storage Crates which now sell for .03c, they will most likely end up as junk in your inventory, and you can't get rid of them so easily.

The Ugly

Steam doesn't do this without a pinching a little money off the side. As with all things on the community market, Steam takes 15% of the sale, 5% for itself and 10% to the game developer. Since selling cards is the best way to get rid of them, Steam is making a nice profit for this. Not particularly a bad thing, but unless you get an awesome coupon, the whole process will cost you money.

The sad thing is you don't actually need to 'play' the game, rather, you can just open it and have it idle in the background. Similar to the whole TF2 debacle (I proudly wear my Cheater's Lament, thankyou), it doesn't promote playing the game, which I believe misses one of the most beneficial points of the whole system. Encouraging players to buy Independent games is one thing, actually playing them however, is just as important.

In conclusion, it's mostly a money making gimmick, but it does provide some degree of novelty. It's a different take on Xbox's Gamer Score system, but I just wish the cards were more than a disposable inventory item. As a lover of various trading card games, I love owning cards as much as I love playing them. Overall, the update has been reasonably well received, but it is still in Beta, so we should see some changes as time goes on.

Watch the Steam Trading Card Group page for more updates.