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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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 Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:42 pm |
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| another god wrote: |
| Nobody gives a fuck that there are no princesses? |
I think this thing of grizzled old killers teaming up with self-assured young girls to teach each other how to live again/become an efficient killer of men is creepy and weird. Oh look she's shanking guys and saying fuck all the time isn't that moe.
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:50 pm |
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| Dracko wrote: |
| They're still playing the same game. Speedrunning isn't about rushing. It's about figuring out the most optimal way to complete a game. Discovering what's optimal doesn't come about by not paying attention to what the game is offering. |
When the contents that you need to fully evaluate the game come only from slow, perhaps even ponderous, observation and exploration, then, by definition, speedrunning results in missing most of the game.
I'm moving through much more quickly on my Survival playthrough than I did on Normal, and I can already tell a difference in the quality of the experience. TLoU is a game that gives you as much as your willing to pull out of it, in a lot of respects, since there's the A Story (Twilight of Humankind) and the C Story (Joel/Ellie/Others' personal stories), and both of those are illuminated by participating in the environment as a kind of archaeologist. In addition to that, there are a series of B Stories interwoven through documents in the game -- many of which connect chapter elements together, such as figuring out the story behind Bill's and Frank's relationship, along with Ish's story later on -- that you only get by looking in unsuspecting places.
The mechanics are definitely a conversation to have, and I think that Troops does a good job of pushing that conversation forward. If you're only talking about the mechanics, you're demanding a very specific thing from a game that explicitly offers more than just that specific thing. My point is that those aren't reasonable grounds for developing an informed/comprehensive opinion.
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:50 pm |
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| Talbain wrote: |
| remote wrote: |
| So yeah, perhaps to simplify what Adi said, it's a setting I want to inhabit, not as much a narrative I care to watch. |
Day Z seems like a much better way to go about getting this experience then. What is the setting you're inhabiting in The Last of Us? Male protector meets copious walls? |
Humankind dies, nature sublimely doesn't give a damn and everything is basically OK except for humans. See ref. all of urban America.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:52 pm |
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Also as far as I can tell Day Z isn't even close to half as pretty. That's a weird, left-field comparison.
(Not saying Day Z isn't a phenomenal game or one that you can't inhabit, of course — it's just an entirely different thing.)
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:57 pm |
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Day Z versus just making a movie is an absurd contrast.
Where is booji now that his criticisms about the thread and community begin to vaguely seem accurate? |
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:14 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| Dracko wrote: |
| They're still playing the same game. Speedrunning isn't about rushing. It's about figuring out the most optimal way to complete a game. Discovering what's optimal doesn't come about by not paying attention to what the game is offering. |
When the contents that you need to fully evaluate the game come only from slow, perhaps even ponderous, observation and exploration, then, by definition, speedrunning results in missing most of the game. |
That's absurd. Again, speedrunning is not rushing. To make the most out of a swift playthrough, it requires understanding and probing of a game's mechanics and layouts down to a compulsive science. I can not understand how you could describe this as an avoidance of content.
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The Troops
Joined: 20 Feb 2007
Location: Providence
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:19 pm |
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| shrugtheironteacup wrote: |
| If only every piece of narrative media would lift the final shot/line from The Road for its own. |
Sorry, I only read the book.
| Adilegian wrote: |
| If you're in a hurry to speedrun, you're definitely going to enjoy the game less and probably even miss what's valuable about it. |
I didn't say anything about speedrunning. I'm not coming at this from the perspective of, is it possible to enjoy this game in this one extreme edge-case that is completely at odds with any storytelling. Make no mistake: this game left an impression on me that few have. I walked away from it feeling almost sick. But being objective, I have to go back and look at why.
To what extent did game design affect any aspect of this game's story at all? All the motion-captured performances are done up front, and etch in marble all of the game's settings, objectives, et al. It's plainly evident that they started with the script first, and then found places to sprinkle stock game mechanics in where appropriate, be they cover shooting, RE1 scavenging and item-combining, etc. Would I enjoy this story/setting more if the back of Joel's head wasn't being burned into my plasma, or if it didn't have to be rendered on a 2005 GPU? What does this world gain by being a videogame? The ability to look at the corridors of art from a slightly different perspective? It isn't as though I can go off and enjoy this world at my own pace. If, as Parker said, the game experience is at its best when I am walking through nature-reclaimed universities, colliding with triggers that dispense bits of dialog, isn't this experience better when seen with Actual Cinematography, without awkward horse animation? Is having that horse automatically run when pointing at Jersey barriers and jumping when he reaches a certain predefined place a shallow-enough game mechanic that I'd rather watch a person ride a horse? Is "doing a thing because you can do it" an example of game design? Is "pressing triangle to play a pre-authored animation" an example of game design? At what point are game mechanics so shallow that they are not game mechanics at all? At what point is being a game a detriment to the experience? Is going and building an environment with all the performance considerations of running in realtime, and the design considerations of being navigable by Third-Person AAA Game Mechanics worth it, when you can go and film a person doing these extremely rote things for a fraction of the cost? That CG rabbit looks so fucking bad!
I'm not asking for Super Clean Design, or to turn this into a Treasure game or anything, I just want some evidence that anyone, at any point in the creation of this product, had any insight into using the game portion as anything other than padding lifted wholesale from other games, a transition from one cutscene to the next. The only time something I actually did in the game had any resonance at all, was the final encounter, in which Joel murders what is probably the world's last living brain surgeon.
Now that "ludonarrative dissonance" sits along-side "uncanny valley" in pop game criticism circles, there's this really odd and obsequious desire to praise Naughty Dog for somehow managing to make small encounters that are Not Uncharted. Well, golly, is this not what we should be expecting? Were we supposed to collide with an enemy and be transported into a CoD arena? Is "we tweaked Uncharted mechanics just enough to induce fear" really going above and beyond for a 240-person company with near-unlimited resources? You can throw bricks and bottles to distract enemies with Gears of War arc-aiming. It's MGS1, except now the radar takes up the whole screen, and the guards say "fuckin' shit" and "son of a bitch" instead of "whose footprints are these." I mean, I guess that's world-building.
Is this what big-budget videogames are gonna be from now on? Slight variations on Gears with different themes until the end of time? Copy-pasting with no consideration as to how anything benefits the experience? We used to have nice things. AAA games brought us Super Mario 64 and Halo CE and RE4, all games a person actually sat down and decided how they play. Now games are just equations. Gears + HL2 + "Crafting" + Splinter Cell - ammo + "Puzzles." The same stale game mechanics repackaged over and over again, with "Story" ladled over it, and some multiplayer in the menu somewhere, to Keep That Disc In The Tray. Which is why I have to call bullshit on the people who say The Last of Us "isn't exactly fun." Take Gears, change the textures, reduce the ammo count, and make the health not regen: that's apparently all it takes to convey gritty desperation through game mechanics, just change a few values in the code somewhere. Glad to know I'm just a total conversation mod away from releasing gaming's War & Peace. |
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mauve
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:27 pm |
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The preparation/practice for actual speedrunning is insane. You think you sit around staring at stuff? These are guys who make a point of investigating every single bit of scenery to see if it can be used for something, analyzing every movement and breaking down the construction of every set piece. It's thorough and complete analysis on a mechanical level, rather than that of a film or movie.
This is also completely different from just ignoring everything in front of you and rushing through the game as much as possible, which I think is closer to what Adilegian means, correct me if I'm wrong here.
And, honestly, I don't believe there are wrong ways to play a game, only games that don't really fit for certain playstyles. Arguing in favor of how this is a story game and should be played in a way that is about engrossing oneself in the story is all well and good, and may even be correct in terms of how this game is best experienced, but doesn't change that, at the end of the day, it's the player calling the shots about how he wants to experience it.
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:59 pm |
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| Dracko wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| Dracko wrote: |
| They're still playing the same game. Speedrunning isn't about rushing. It's about figuring out the most optimal way to complete a game. Discovering what's optimal doesn't come about by not paying attention to what the game is offering. |
When the contents that you need to fully evaluate the game come only from slow, perhaps even ponderous, observation and exploration, then, by definition, speedrunning results in missing most of the game. |
That's absurd. Again, speedrunning is not rushing. To make the most out of a swift playthrough, it requires understanding and probing of a game's mechanics and layouts down to a compulsive science. I can not understand how you could describe this as an avoidance of content. |
Perhaps there's a misunderstanding of shared terms here.
In my mind, if I am speedrunning, I am not going to go out of the way to a cul-de-sac where a scrap of paper that illuminates 1/10th of a side-story that I never witness in a cutscene resides. If I am speedrunning, I am figuring out the quickest way from point A to point B, which does not entail going in a roundabout method to point F off in the distance. If I do this, and if this results in missing content at Point F, then hastening the progression from Point A to Point B has favored speed over exploration.
If you can tell me what is wrong with that description, I think I'll better understand where we're missing connection.
Perhaps "speedrunning" has a more precise meaning to you here than the general idea that I'm indicating, which is moving specifically from encounter-to-encounter, entrusting that sequence of encounter-cutscene-encounter-cutscene to provide the experience of the game. This approach will not give you the full content of TLoU.
EDIT: Looking at mauve's post, I think the point's there. I see what you're saying about speedrunning, and I did not mean to indicate something as specific as that kind of performance.
As for there being a "right way" to play the game, if we're talking on the level of actually seeing what's in the game, then there are complete and incomplete ways of engaging it. If you don't have time or interest to explore to a more complete knowledge of it, that's fine, but the difference that I'm talking about isn't "oh I guess you just didn't like Lolita, that's all well and good," it's more "you didn't like Lolita and you skipped five chapters at random? Get back to me when you've read the book."
That's the distinction that I'm drawing as far as the contrast between moving through the game quickly VS ponderous observation goes.
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 11:02 pm |
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And real quicklike, perhaps indicative of some kind of perceptual disconnect:
| Quote: |
| That CG rabbit looks so fucking bad! |
I have no idea how your brain is working to reach this conclusion.
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 11:31 pm |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
Day Z versus just making a movie is an absurd contrast.
Where is booji now that his criticisms about the thread and community begin to vaguely seem accurate? |
That's the intent. As a game experience, Day Z is far more apt at presenting a game, not to mention presenting a game that is also about post-apocalyptia when people are allowed to act as they will. The Last of Us is a narrative with shooty-choky bits. Which is fine, I guess, but it's closer to one thing than it is to another. I just have a hard time appreciating corridor shooters that can't decide if they're a videogame or a visual novel (and all games with copious cutscenes suffer from this, to greater or lesser extents). I presented Day Z as a stark contrast because it feels to me like the game version of the idea of zombie apocalypse, rather than what it's presented to look like via level design that leads the player by the nose.
Also Adi, I think speedrunning takes just as much ponderous observation of the game, just maybe not the context of the game you're most interested in.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:46 am |
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| Talbain wrote: |
| Also Adi, I think speedrunning takes just as much ponderous observation of the game, just maybe not the context of the game you're most interested in. |
I feel like you guys are totally failing to grasp what Adi is saying: yeah, duh, speedrunning takes careful observation and an understanding what of makes for optimal movement through a game (which isn't haphazard, but yes, it is rushing). In order to figure that out, it would probably behoove the speedrunner to take a more leisurely stroll through the game and plot a course instead of haphazardly rushing through the game from the start. This is the angle Adi and I (and mauve) are coming from, and I think it's weird that Dracko is failing to see that. A speedrunner would only be enabled by taking their time with the game at least once, if only in preparation for actual attempts at making good time. That's just the kind of game this is!
Maybe we're all saying the same thing and for whatever reason just not connecting on it, but I'll say again that I think taking your sweet time is the primary way to enjoy the game to the fullest, and speedrunning might be a secondary or alternative way to squeeze more out of the game. It's fine if others see speedrunning as the primary way to play a game, I just think there's no need to be bothered if others disagree and think the game should be savored.
Unrelated, but this game has so far done one thing that really pissed me off: died a few times during one sequence and it just killed the enemies for me and placed me at the next checkpoint. I felt insulted. This was on Normal, though — I hope it doesn't happen on survival mode?
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 1:07 am |
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I don't think that anyone's bothered by speedrunners, or their method for videogame appreciation, just the language being presented as though speedrunning cannot be a full experience (or a fuller experience).
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Ronnoc
Joined: 26 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 1:49 am |
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| I'm pretty disappointed after all the hype that fight two dudes is still not scary enough in a game. We need to always kill at least 20 dudes. |
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 1:57 am |
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except that there are plenty of fights against 2 or 3 human opponents in this game, and they're a lot better at being tense and scary than fights against hordes of shootmans in the call of doodies
the fights against 10 or so dudes often end up being a "pick off one at a time" deal, anyway, so it's not like you're being overwhelmed by tons at once unless that's how you're playing
just feel like this is a weird choice of game to pick that bone with, especially when there are some really great, small encounters here
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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:23 am |
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The great small encounters are why the big ones are so frustrating though. Also all the big ones start out really reasonable looking, but then no, the guys just keep coming and coming until you've killed like thirty. You'd think guys would value what lives they have left in this world. And by the 2nd half of the game it starts feel like the big encounters is all there is. In the beginning you realize ammo is scarce so your trying to sneak around and conserve supplies and it's cool and fun, but later you get all these guys coming all the time in every area you're in, it's tedious, you get frustrated so you just decide to cheat by using bullets, and you realize if you use bullets the game gives you more bullets because of course it's not just going to force you to sneak through the whole game, so it cheapens the survival aspect of the game too. You feel like the game will never let you get stuck.
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:25 am |
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Guys go back and actually read Troops' long posts, they're the best part of this thread.
| The Troops wrote: |
| I imagine the formalized act of "Ellie Riding a Plank" (the game contains six) is valued by all parties, because a) it allows the script-writers to remind the player that a thing they have probably done, swimming in a pool, is a recreational activity and has no place in a post-apocalypse, and thus Ellie wouldn't have experienced it, and ties into a story beat at the end; b) it allows all the concept and environment artists to actually utilize settings that have no combat relevance, but which they are attached to, such as the exterior of a hydroelectric plant or flooded subway tunnel, and can point to a thin justification of triangle-pushing "gameplay" as a reason to keep them; c) the animators see their hard work given multiple encores; d) particle artists can make custom water splashes; e) shader artists can make custom water-on-the-lens shaders when the screen catches a glimpse of that sweet FP_40 HDR, and finally; f) the creative director can fulfill his dream of making the "Game Pacing" graph (the result of hundreds of playtest analytics) look as close as possible to a sine wave. |
Brilliant paragraph.
Troops I agree there's something uniquely annoying about design by committee and playtest but I don't share your despair about it. This is a game, yes, with no interest whatsoever in qualitative gameplay innovation; all it wants to do is mash up a bunch of stuff already known to be good, maximize the polish and minimize the dissonance. It does not fail at this. There's room for games like this and I don't think we're at risk of those "best practices" infecting the entire game industry. There's plenty of scrappy experimentation still going on but it obviously has to happen in mid-budget titles.
| The Troops wrote: |
| Make no mistake: this game left an impression on me that few have. I walked away from it feeling almost sick. But being objective, I have to go back and look at why. |
I had the same reaction. I have no word for that ending, saying it's "bittersweet" or "ambiguous" or "grim" don't really fit it. It curdled all the positive elements of the narrative into horror, then it ended in flowers and sunshine. It resembles more than anything the ending of a Kazuo Ishiguro novel -- the noble principles amounting to evil in the wrong context, the solid wall of denial and good cheer that doesn't repress the deep sense of loss.
I'd never thought I'd compare a videogame to Ishiguro so the game certainly deserves all the extravagant praise from that angle. I agree with you it could've been done in a movie -- so what The Last of Us has proven it's that it's possible to have a poignant movie story in a game, which is neither contributed to nor fatally undermined by the game mechanics. I'm not sure that really proves anything meaningful about the medium, but there you have it. |
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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:40 am |
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Man what do you think I skim over The Troops? I read saved Troops posts every morning with my vitamins and supplements.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:46 am |
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| parker wrote: |
| The great small encounters are why the big ones are so frustrating though. Also all the big ones start out really reasonable looking, but then no, the guys just keep coming and coming until you've killed like thirty. You'd think guys would value what lives they have left in this world. And by the 2nd half of the game it starts feel like the big encounters is all there is. |
I dunno! I'm in the "Fall" part of the game where Ellie takes off on a horse and you get stuck in a house deep in the woods where some guys might have been hiding out, and they come in after you. There were maybe 5 or 6 of them, and no more came. I'm low on ammo (except for my old pistols), but I had enough stuff to throw molotovs and nailbombs at them, stealth killing a couple. It was only tense when one guy came down the hallway with a machete, I'll admit, but I guess that's because I've gotten better at sneaking.
Of course, I'm assuming I'm well into the second half by now, unless it comes all the way 'round to summer again.
| Broco wrote: |
| what The Last of Us has proven it's that it's possible to have a poignant movie story in a game |
Aw, come on. Really? Like nothing else has proven this before? Not trying to slam you, and I obviously I like the game, but this seems a little close to all the CITIZEN KANE OF GAMES RIGHT HERE stuff. You know that videogames have been poignant plenty of times, and it hasn't fallen to The Last of Us to prove this.
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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:52 am |
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I finished it and I figured what was going to happen at the end since pretty early one, except I thought it was going to be some "joel has a revelation that we're not worth saving if we have to kill a 14 year old girl to do it" type deal. Instead it was way more interesting. Joel wouldn't even be able to come to some kind of conclusion like that because he's too crazy, if he hadn't spent the last twenty years blocking out his daughters death he could of dealt with it and then maybe thought about the consequences of the situation he's in now. Instead he's just now coming out out of a 20 year cryosleep at the worst possible time and sets his sights on this poor girl to kidnap and come replace his daughter for him (all she can do in the last scene is follow directly behind him and obey his command, etc) and he just comes across as crazed and selfish for killing all the people he does in the game only to decide this time it's wrong.
I thought it was great.
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Felix
unofficial repository
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: vancouver
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 3:15 am |
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| sidenote since Parker said "kidnap" -- did anyone see Bobcat Goldthwait's latest, God Bless America? because that was great. |
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 3:29 am |
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| remote wrote: |
| Broco wrote: |
| what The Last of Us has proven it's that it's possible to have a poignant movie story in a game |
Aw, come on. Really? Like nothing else has proven this before? Not trying to slam you, and I obviously I like the game, but this seems a little close to all the CITIZEN KANE OF GAMES RIGHT HERE stuff. You know that videogames have been poignant plenty of times, and it hasn't fallen to The Last of Us to prove this. |
Yes, but my point is that when they have tried to be like movies they have not been poignant. Last of Us proved that's it possible not to fail at the longstanding game industry goal to make a game be good in the exact same way that a movie is. That is news to me: I had started to assume it wasn't possible given the long history of mediocrity. That said it remains something of an absurd goal and I continue to prefer to see games be their own thing instead of aping another medium. |
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 3:57 am |
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When you put it that way, I agree.
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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:12 am |
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Oh yeah, has anyone mentioned how the gun shots are probably the best of any game ever, even kane and lynch? It makes a world of difference when they're not making piddly little airsoft noises.
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:14 am |
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| parker wrote: |
I finished it and I figured what was going to happen at the end since pretty early one, except I thought it was going to be some "joel has a revelation that we're not worth saving if we have to kill a 14 year old girl to do it" type deal. Instead it was way more interesting. Joel wouldn't even be able to come to some kind of conclusion like that because he's too crazy, if he hadn't spent the last twenty years blocking out his daughters death he could of dealt with it and then maybe thought about the consequences of the situation he's in now. Instead he's just now coming out out of a 20 year cryosleep at the worst possible time and sets his sights on this poor girl to kidnap and come replace his daughter for him (all she can do in the last scene is follow directly behind him and obey his command, etc) and he just comes across as crazed and selfish for killing all the people he does in the game only to decide this time it's wrong.
I thought it was great. |
Exactly. Joel's blinkeredness is stunning. If you (make him) listen to the surgeon's recording expressing enthusiasm about vaccine possibilities, he doesn't give a shit and goes on killing without comment. Leaving aside humanity, he also ignores that Tess's dying wish was to deliver Ellie to the doctors, and that Marlene was herself Ellie's surrogate mother. It's a great direction to take his character, given that his tendency to repress his past has been repeatedly noted before, but it never took on meaning until now. At another level, Joel is just continuing by pure habit to do what he's done the whole game, murdersneak all the "bad guys".
Nobody asked for Ellie's opinion in any of it, but I took it as being quite strongly implied that she would've consented to the procedure if asked. Unlike Joel, she was introspective enough to think about her fate and I took her somber mood entering Salt Lake City as her intuiting and coming to terms with the fact that being a labrat for the Fireflies might mean she never left the hospital. (And another detail I thought was particularly neat: the science-fiction comic's story roughly parallels their trek across the country, and it ends with the heroine sacrificing herself to destroy the space zombies.) So this "rescue" in the name of saving her...
So, the ending is on one level totally unambiguous (except for those players who are just as blinkered as Joel himself), at the same time there's a lot to chew on there. |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:41 am |
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| parker wrote: |
| Oh yeah, has anyone mentioned how the gun shots are probably the best of any game ever, even kane and lynch? It makes a world of difference when they're not making piddly little airsoft noises. |
They are fantastic. It sucks because I have to play with headphones cause of my kid. If you turn up the volume enough to hear what anybody's saying, the gunshots are brutally loud. As they should be!
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:49 am |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| As for the boring charge -- well OK? It's not about shooting dudes but about sneaking and using traps. Those non-shooting sections are pretty good at being sneaking/trapping non-shooting game segments. Without that, it is just Uncharted with heavier gravity and a crafting system, which limits the kinds of violence depicted in the game. As someone who either plays games specifically designed for this approach or plays open-ended games with a preference for stealth and traps, it hits the right tone for that foray into the genre, so it's not like what it's doing there is bad or done badly. |
You sneak with the human enemies too. But then when they think they see you, they actually go looking. And then when they do see you, they fan out and search in intelligent ways that make it a lot harder to sneak back up on them. Zombie stealth adds one rule which is "you must stealth because one-hit kills" and then subtracts all the AI. I don't see where it gets fun.
There was this great part where you get separated from Ellie in a hotel and are in a half-drowned basement. You tug on a generator cord and the game spawns a zombie behind you. You kill it and then it spawns like 5 or 6 more zombies. I crouched behind a piece of cover right there behind me and watched with my smell-o-vision as they came sprinting around the same corner one by one, allowing me time enough to punch each of them to death. Gritty survival realism!
| Adilegian wrote: |
| The fungus reduces people to zombie-like state, forming a kind of symbiosis that retracts human ambition from the level of civilization-building to environmental animals. You see this everywhere in the game: the overwhelming of human endeavor by the natural environment. The zombie aspect is integrated into this theme. |
I dunno, man. I don't see reclamation being a theme at all. This game is 100% about Us. The terrible lengths we will go to, what we are willing to do and not to do. Narratively, all the zombies allow the writers to do is have parts where you don't have to feel ambiguous about killing humans.
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another god
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:50 am |
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The zombie parts remind me a lot of Hotline Miami. Especially with the way weapons are handled.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 5:47 am |
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The gun sounds are certainly enough to annoy my girlfriend. 8)
All of the sound design is fantastic, really, so using headphones is actually preferable.
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Broco
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Headquarters
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:19 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
You sneak with the human enemies too. But then when they think they see you, they actually go looking. And then when they do see you, they fan out and search in intelligent ways that make it a lot harder to sneak back up on them. Zombie stealth adds one rule which is "you must stealth because one-hit kills" and then subtracts all the AI. I don't see where it gets fun.
There was this great part where you get separated from Ellie in a hotel and are in a half-drowned basement. You tug on a generator cord and the game spawns a zombie behind you. You kill it and then it spawns like 5 or 6 more zombies. I crouched behind a piece of cover right there behind me and watched with my smell-o-vision as they came sprinting around the same corner one by one, allowing me time enough to punch each of them to death. Gritty survival realism! |
I've done this same kind of thing against the human AIs so I'm not sure why you prefer it so strongly to the zombies. Both the humans and zombies are equally easy to handle if you arrange to fight them one at a time, but challenging in groups. And I find the human AI's relatively cautious behavior makes it very easy to run far away when they're in alert mode then sneak up again to pick them off one-by-one again, to the point where their AI started feeling trivially defeatable by the end of the game. Whereas the very aggressive zombie behavior makes it more difficult to avoid group battles once they spot you (even though it had the opposite effect in your particular example).
As you come into more high-powered weaponry later in the game, there's also less "you must stealth because one-hit kills" and more "combat with good target prioritization and space control because one-hit kills". |
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:43 am |
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I think the reason the zombie parts are different is that they behave in much more volatile and unpredictable ways, flailing their arms and sprinting toward you in packs, which is something the humans won't do. Kind of what Broco said already. Both are interesting in different ways, but also easily exploitable once you get better at the game.
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:14 pm |
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Adi, was your playthrough a 100% run?
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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:38 pm |
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are we on the speedrunning thing again
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:51 pm |
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I'm not really sure why it's become such an issue itt.
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mauve
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:35 pm |
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because miscommunications
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 1:29 am |
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| Broco wrote: |
| CubaLibre wrote: |
You sneak with the human enemies too. But then when they think they see you, they actually go looking. And then when they do see you, they fan out and search in intelligent ways that make it a lot harder to sneak back up on them. Zombie stealth adds one rule which is "you must stealth because one-hit kills" and then subtracts all the AI. I don't see where it gets fun.
There was this great part where you get separated from Ellie in a hotel and are in a half-drowned basement. You tug on a generator cord and the game spawns a zombie behind you. You kill it and then it spawns like 5 or 6 more zombies. I crouched behind a piece of cover right there behind me and watched with my smell-o-vision as they came sprinting around the same corner one by one, allowing me time enough to punch each of them to death. Gritty survival realism! |
I've done this same kind of thing against the human AIs so I'm not sure why you prefer it so strongly to the zombies. Both the humans and zombies are equally easy to handle if you arrange to fight them one at a time, but challenging in groups. And I find the human AI's relatively cautious behavior makes it very easy to run far away when they're in alert mode then sneak up again to pick them off one-by-one again, to the point where their AI started feeling trivially defeatable by the end of the game. Whereas the very aggressive zombie behavior makes it more difficult to avoid group battles once they spot you (even though it had the opposite effect in your particular example).
As you come into more high-powered weaponry later in the game, there's also less "you must stealth because one-hit kills" and more "combat with good target prioritization and space control because one-hit kills". |
Well, sure, the game is not a pristine mechanical object and it's all exploitable eventually. (cue Troops post) We're not talking about Super Turbo here. Still, the zombies present a binary and therefore uninteresting mechanical situation: either do stealth perfectly or, if you fuck up, spend a lot of resources funneling dumb enemies down a corridor at you. Suddenly you're playing L4D without mouselook and limited bullets and that sucks. The human enemies have an ebb and flow that really works out all your mechanical options. You can run away, partially reset their aggressive search & find routines, throw them off their scripted patrol paths which opens up more of the level design to you. Basically you have more options from broken stealth, so failure doesn't result in such a dramatic combat situation. There's a whole lot more flexibility and to me, options are fun.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:01 am |
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At the part near the end, I assume, where the Fireflies decide to tell Joel they're gonna kill Ellie to extract the cure from brain or something like that, and I have to fight my way through several waves of trained soldiers. It starts out well as I stealth kill four in a row because they run up and check the body of the guy I killed just before them, but then I'm low on ammo, more are coming in, and I'm throwing bricks and picking off one at a time. Health is down to a hair. One guy left. (Unless there's another wave after him.) I pick up an assault rifle. He's right on the other side of a short wall in front of me, so I figure I can just spray him. I pop up, and I'm not aiming at the center of the screen, or something — he kills me with one shot.
That was my fourth try. Back to the first wave again.
Fuuuuuck.
This really killed the momentum and urgency of the whole sequence. Now I'm going to bed.
God damnit.
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Jigsaw
Joined: 11 Sep 2008
Location: Eskilstuna, Sweden
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 11:35 am |
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| another god wrote: |
| The zombie parts remind me a lot of Hotline Miami. Especially with the way weapons are handled. |
I think this is pretty much the one thing I've heard someone say about this game that makes me want to play it.
:o |
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sponkmonkey
Joined: 24 May 2011
Location: Berlin
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| Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 2:41 pm |
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I'd just like to come out and confess that I bought Too Human because of Troops' post ITT.
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The Troops
Joined: 20 Feb 2007
Location: Providence
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fairy godmilf
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: oakland, california
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| Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 12:44 am |
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i had a pretty good time with this game; it was super-dumb and a fair deal too long, though i appreciated the way it tries to meld together nuances of multiple genres, making it so it plays like a sort of real-time action shining force, or a point-and-click adventure with shooter metaphors! whatever it was going for, i don't reckon it quite got there, though it made me think about a lot of exciting game-shapes of the nebulous Future Of Video Games, so that is a good thing. also, i appreciated its buckets of graphics (nice color palette!) and scattered collection of individual dialogue moments wherein i thought, "it sounds like real people are talking inside my television". i liked the ending twist, and appreciate that a major video game developer was willing to mix it up tone-wise to such a drastic extent -- considering the vast library of happy endings modern triple-A games display (every color of the "just won the high school football game" rainbow).
the end of The Last Of Us is every bit as "a video game, essentially" as a more showoffy Bioshock Climax or a Metal Gear "turn the game console off now" moment, yet it is quieter and genuinely thought-provoking, so i liked that.
i'm left appreciating the game as a "nice gesture": it's a story about "zombies" by necessity -- because such a thing moves units with efficiency and because enough of the mechanics are pre-designed in neat packages -- and by deliberation it's an experiment wherein the designers thought their hardest toward attaching everything to "reality". i appreciate how densely they considered the logistics of a post-fungal-apocalyptic united states of america. i appreciate the game being a story about insane decision-making in the wake of apocalypse. i like a lot of stuff about it!
i like how the gunshots sound! i like how the closest we get to a post-headshot catch-phrase is the unmistakable (unmistakably performed?) voice of a fourteen-year-old girl spitting out "Fuck!" i like that it took me maybe two dozen choke-out kills before i realized i don't need to repeatedly hammer the square button to kill an enemy; i like that square initiates a visible struggle . . . and the eventual death carries no camera thump, no fanfare, no centered, screen-spanning "FUCK YEAH".
the game is at times ropy and loose, and i giggled a lot while duct-taping pairs of scissors to baseball bats as a blind zombie jerk approached me in a hallway while my flashlight shined all over it. i groaned with ferocity several times as the game asked me to pick up and carry yet another ladder, until, at the end of the game, when i had to pick up and relocate the same ladder five times in a single room, i realized i was being trolled -- and then realized i wasn't being trolled: they're just trying to space apart the story beats. when the game forced me to hang out in its world, i enjoyed hanging out in its world -- especially toward the end of the pittsburgh suburbs, with its many houses, each with a basement, a garage, an upstairs, a downstairs, a kitchen, and some variety of visual cues of the horror that defeated everyone inside.
my favorite moment of the game occurred in the pittsburgh stronghold: after stalking enemy bandit jerks for what felt like the length of a (weirdly paced) summer blockbuster, joel and ellie overhear two men talking inside a room in a building with a blown-out wall. one of them is clearly the leader. he's wearing a red jacket -- i think (he was far away) -- and he has a beard -- i think -- and a bald head. the man tells his henchmen to go find these assholes who are fucking up their camp. they sir-yes-sir him and trot off. then he stands there with his hands on his hips, at the brink of the blown-out wall. ellie says, "that guy on the second floor!" i shot him with an arrow; he died. i later ran through that second floor of that building -- i didn't even stop to look at his body. i like the comparatively subtle subtext: Post-Apocalypse, No One Is "In Charge".
my second-favorite moment was the ski resort -- just, the whole part where ellie is killing everyone. is that what the new tomb raider game was going for? i'm not saying the drama or the catharsis or what-have-you blew me away: i'm saying the level geometry was fantastic. i appreciated it as a sort of magnificent valkyria chronicles map with a weird new control scheme.
in summary, if action button dot net weren't inaccessible in google chrome because we link to a site that hosts malware, i'd (ask The Troops if he wants to collect his posts into a review, and then) write a review in which i give The Last Of Us four out of four stars because it's the first logical step toward a triple-A western video game that's almost as good as Raw Danger.
"Imagine a The Last Of Us . . . where all you do is carry ladders"
THE END
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