rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (NOOOOOOOOO)
Riona ([personal profile] rionaleonhart) wrote2013-07-11 09:25 am

Fuck You, Laundry Basket.

More of The Last of Us; I'm now at the hydroelectric dam, but this entry doesn't deal with anything beyond the hotel (and I'm talking mainly about gameplay; there's nothing plot-related in here). I'm sort of amazed by how long this game is, compared to the developer's other PS3 productions. The Uncharted games were so short, about ten or twelve hours of gameplay each; in The Last of Us, I've already played for twelve hours and, judging by the percentage on the save screen, still have a good way to go.

Of course, that playtime may have been inflated by my strategy in stealth sections, which is 'hide and panic for ten minutes, try to sneak to a new location, get spotted immediately, end up dead, try again'.

Every so often, I remember that I'm playing this on Easy mode and sort of want to cry. I'VE DIED MORE THAN TWENTY TIMES. At least the checkpoints are kind; Naughty Dog generally doesn't believe in forcing you to redo things you've already succeeded at, which I think is a good attitude for a game developer to take.

Going through the hotel full of hunters was probably the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a videogame. I think the human enemies in The Last of Us frighten me more than the zombies do. One lit a Molotov cocktail and I freaked out and wasted half a clip panic-shooting in his general direction, because I'd been set on fire before and it hadn't gone well.

(Speaking of Molotov cocktails: at one point I accidentally equipped a Molotov, and Joel pulled the bottle out and lit it just before I switched to my pistol, and when I changed weapons he tucked the still-burning Molotov back into his pocket. JOEL. JOEL, THAT'S A TERRIBLE IDEA.

What with that and my inability to sneak and the times when I end up furiously punching a wall instead of the guy behind me, Joel is starting to look more than a little incompetent when I play him.)

This game makes me feel like a hunted animal. Playing it is a horrible experience sometimes. But then there are the lovely moments, like when I catch Ellie trying to balance-walk along the edge of the pavement, or when she pulls out a joke book and regales me with terrible puns.

I was a little worried, before I started this game, that maybe I wouldn't love Ellie. She was the reason I was considering playing this game at all; the gameplay isn't my thing, the genre isn't my thing, but the fact that you were travelling through a post-apocalyptic world with a fourteen-year-old girl made the game seem more human and more interesting. If I hadn't loved Ellie, The Last of Us would have had very little to offer me.

I needn't have feared, because I adore Ellie. Part of this is probably an inclination to become attached to anyone on my side when I'm in an unsettling environment - the worlds of Shadow of the Colossus and Red Dead Redemption both frightened me, and I ended up clinging to my horse for comfort in both - but I'm pretty sure Ellie is great even when I'm not blinded by how glad I am just to have someone with me. It's an attachment forged by fear and maintained by Ellie being generally delightful.

The Last of Us is really a very, very good game. It's a bit more violent than I'm generally comfortable with, and it can be extremely stressful, but I'd definitely recommend it. Just be prepared for a challenge, even on the lowest difficulty setting.
wolfy_writing: (Default)

[personal profile] wolfy_writing 2013-07-11 10:58 am (UTC)(link)
because I'd been set on fire before and it hadn't gone well.

I love that you said that. I want to create an entire story purely so I can have someone casually go "I'd been set on fire before and it hadn't gone well." (This being my brain, all of the ideas I'm coming up with are unpleasantly grim, but never mind.)

But then there are the lovely moments, like when I catch Ellie trying to balance-walk along the edge of the pavement, or when she pulls out a joke book and regales me with terrible puns.

Aw, that is really cute!
wolfy_writing: (Default)

[personal profile] wolfy_writing 2013-07-11 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
I may have to look at it myself, as I read the whole Wikipedia article for the game, so I haven't got much left to spoil.
squeemu: Magpie holding a ring in its beak. ([me] abandoned)

[personal profile] squeemu 2013-07-21 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
Augh, augh, Baco is at the hydroelectric dam right now and my heart is full of hurting. EVERYBODY. EVERYBODY EVER.

And Joel, will you just sit down and have a talk with Ellie about that robot already? She doesn't need to carry it around anymore.
squeemu: Magpie holding a ring in its beak. (Default)

[personal profile] squeemu 2013-07-21 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
Also, Ellie is the best. Ugh, I love her so much, and love watch Joel fall in love with her (in an entirely familial way). Augh. AUGH.

I think I'm just going to continue flailing until the game ends.
thebaconfat: (Default)

[personal profile] thebaconfat 2013-07-25 02:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Does "fuck you, laundry basket" happen in the game, or is it something you yelled at the screen? Because I can easily imagine either scenario.

[identity profile] futuresoon.livejournal.com 2013-07-11 10:11 am (UTC)(link)
The hotel was worse for you than the clicker museum? Man, hunters always seemed much less stressful to me for some reason. Plus the hotel is so well-lit! Good lighting does wonders for the fear factor. "A hunted animal" is probably what Naughty Dog was going for, though.

Re: the length--Summer's definitely the longest section, so now you're in Fall you're actually in the home stretch. Winter's not terribly long and Spring is tiny. (Which is a little saddening, given that they're the best sections, but maybe drawing things out would lessen their effectiveness.)

[identity profile] futuresoon.livejournal.com 2013-07-11 05:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Infected are more prone to swarming you, though; with hunters and soldiers you generally have cover to hide behind, and it's easier to take them out one by one, if you have good aim. Which. I don't. But Infected run at you in groups, and it's all in melee, which doesn't require as much aim but takes longer to kill even one target. The awful generator room was in the hotel, right? Hunters don't pull shit like that, man. Although it is possible to avoid most of the awful if you do it right. But not knowing there is a way to do it right is the cause of much consternation.

I concede that infected do not throw molotovs at you. At least there aren't a lot of those dudes? And once you hear "I'm gonna light you up" you get a chance to panic and run before the molotov lands. Plus with hunters you can use the human shield trick, if you want to feel even more horrible!

[identity profile] futuresoon.livejournal.com 2013-07-12 07:11 am (UTC)(link)
Nah, I've just watched enough Let's Plays to see a wide variety of combat experiences and acknowledge how bad I would be at most of them. I would probably do okay at sneaking! Shooting, not so much.

Grr, really? I haven't seen any banners like that, though. I only read the updates post-by-post via the handy "I don't want to read that thread" Twitter feed, so does that make a difference in how many ads you see? A bunch of refreshes on a random update are only giving me standard moving ads for restaurants and so forth. Nothing vindictive.

[identity profile] futuresoon.livejournal.com 2013-07-12 07:32 am (UTC)(link)
I was curious! Well, in retrospect, I'm spoiler-paranoid enough that this does not really make sense. But since I've been reading both the LPs a lot lately (including today) and haven't seen any spoilers, I was probably gambling with the universe that my luck would hold out. Hey, it worked. I'll just be sure never to go all the way to the bottom of a page.
nano_moose: Black Plague. Philip stands in a snowfield, utterly dwarfed and alone. ([BP] ...fuckberries)

[personal profile] nano_moose 2013-07-16 05:50 am (UTC)(link)
You know I've played this game from beginning to end and I failed to take a single human shield? If I successfully grabbed on to a dude in a firefight, I choked/shivved him, dumped his body and went on my merry way. I know Joel really is kind of a bad person and he has zero compunctions about stuff like hostages - as evidenced by just about everything he does - but I don't like it! I can't deal with it!

I am just a-okay with sneaking around picking people off one-by-one and grinning evilly as the lone remaining dude calls out to his fellows and wonders why everything has gone so very, very quiet, apparently. I'm not sure what that says about my moral compass. It is possible to avoid some confrontations, I've found - just wiggle by and stay unnoticed - but it's easier with Infected because they're not very smart. People call out your tactics to each other and, you know, don't wander around sort of bouncing angrily off walls.

Ellie is so wonderful! I get irrationally annoyed by people saying she's "just like" Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite or Clementine from The Walking Dead - sure, they may all be female youthful AI companion daughter-surrogates for the protagonist, but they're really distinct characters. Ellie's had to grow up quickly and learn to deal with loss - she's a hard-ass with, I think, a bit of a hero-complex. Elizabeth's sheltered and well-read; she's highly intellectual, but she's not very practical. Clementine is, you know, EIGHT, so her personality has yet to really solidify, but she's good at reading people and putting pieces together in her mind quickly. And none of them are Elena (compassionate seeker of the truth), and none of them are Elika (defined by her faith), and none are Emily (Empress-to-be with necessary manipulative streak) or Eleanor (super-genius extreme individualist) or Yorda (a prisoner unused to independent action) or Alyx (engineer surrounded by theory-driven scientists with hidden reserves of rage)! Have similar roles in gameplay is not the same as being identical in personality or character!

...Wow, I didn't mean for that to become a rant. But, um, Ellie's really cool. The end of Autumn Fall America is silly is such a damn brilliant bit of gameplay, the moreso for it being gameplay - I think it was the culmination of all their previous playing-a-wounded-character setpieces, used to impart weakness in a player character. That's very unusual!
Edited 2013-07-16 05:51 (UTC)