Riona (
rionaleonhart) wrote2013-07-11 09:25 am
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Entry tags:
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.
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.
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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!
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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.
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I think I'm just going to continue flailing until the game ends.
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I REALLY HOPED YOU TWO SPECIFICALLY WOULD PLAY IT
And, yes, the events shortly prior to the hydroelectric dam are incredibly horrible.
Ellie is so great. I love that my affection for her essentially developed alongside Joel's.
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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.)
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Clickers are pretty awful, but it's almost impossible for them to kill you if you have shivs to hand, at least. When you run out of shivs, of course, you're completely screwed. I think human enemies frighten me more because they're more intelligent, less predictable and can attack from a distance. CLICKERS NEVER THROW MOLOTOV COCKTAILS AT YOU.
Also sometimes human enemies will beg for mercy when you knock them down and I'm too terrified to show mercy and then I feel awful.
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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!
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I tend to end up meleeing as many enemies as possible anyway, because I get weird about conserving ammo. Infected are more manageable with that strategy, because they'll run right up to be meleed, whereas you've got to get to the hunters.
I think I've used the human shield trick maybe once. I don't feel comfortable taking a hostage if there's no way I'm going to let them go.
On an unrelated note, some arsehole has bought advertising space on the SA forums and filled it with banners spoiling not only the first Dangan Ronpa but Dangan Ronpa 2. If you get Adblock Plus and add fi.somethingawful.com/safs/goonbas as a filter, it should get rid of them.
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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.
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...why did you immediately go in search of the spoiler ads?
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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
AutumnFallAmerica is sillyis 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!no subject
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.
It did occasionally occur to me that I was dropping these poor guys straight into a horror film. Where did everybody go?
Elena's the only other of those characters I'm familiar with, but yes, it's terribly annoying when people say characters are the same just because of their roles!
The escaping-the-university sequence was just brilliant. 'The culmination of all their previous playing-a-wounded-character setpieces' was exactly how I felt about it; they've learnt a lot from all the horrible things they've done to Nathan Drake.