Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-08-19 06:47 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-08-19 06:47 pm
[ SECRET POST #2421 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2421 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 051 secrets from Secret Submission Post #346.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
"You can't deny that view." (redux, posted as a reply)
(actual review -- unmarked spoilers in this post)
I'm going to be honest. The Walking Dead TV show is a major disappointment to me as a fan of the comic. Largely flat characters who make nonsensical choices, pacing a little too slow to be effective, the new characters introduced aren't compelling, Rick's losing his mind is done very, very badly, the list goes on. In fact I'd go so far to say that only the first episode of season 1 is any good (it's actually great) and everything else is borderline unwatchable.
I'm going to be honest some more: Bioshock Infinite was also a disappointment. The opening of the game was very, very strong, but unfortunately the game very quickly lost its luster. The boardwalk sequence/borderline dating sim was the last genuinely interesting part of the game before it degenerated into hamfisted social commentary that gets tossed aside midway through making a half-formed point in exchange for generic comic book-style AU nonsense, all of it driven forward in as lurchingly a fashion as possible by unsatisfying gameplay that fails to evolve in any meaningful way. The interaction between Booker and Elizabeth is literally the most interesting thing about the game, but it's not very interesting in itself, either (creepy incestuous romantic overtones for 90% of the game notwithstanding.)
What makes The Last Of Us so good is that it takes up the reins of a couple of disappointments and shows us all how it should be done.
First off I want to talk about the presentation. The game uses a lot of smash cuts, especially when chapters end, or time passes. Scene, smash to black, caption: "WINTER", new scene smashes in. It even gets used when the player or an NPC is killed, rather than fading out with YOU ARE DEAD a la Resident Evil or something like that. This is an unusual method of scene transitioning for video games, seeing more use in certain kinds of movies and TV shows, and fits the tone quite well.
What's equally unusual is that for a zombie game there are precious few horde rushes. I can think of precisely three, all spread out quite a bit. And the ending doesn't even involve the iconic mushroomheads at all. There is no 'final boss.' There isn't much in the way of bosses at all, actually. Two bloaters you have to fight, an asshole with a sniper rifle, and a guy with a machete hunting you down -- those are the bosses you face, and save for the 2nd bloater and machete guy they're pretty well spread out. The ending is especially low-key, with only one last encounter that you can approach the same way you've been doing it the whole game, stealthily or noisily (and indeed the game gives you an M16 at this point, which in the context of the other weapons you've been using is absurdly powerful.)
The game's use of smash cuts does a lot to set the tone, but the soundtrack does as well. It's nearly all guitar work by Gustavo Santaolalla, with a select few Hank Williams tracks ("Alone and Forsaken" and "I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive" -- I can't believe how perfect those choices were.) But more importantly, it's not always playing. Half-Life was one of the first games since the 3rd generation of console games to mostly be played without a soundtrack, and those times the music did play it was very effective. Most of the music in The Last Of Us is played during transitional scenes, or during quiet scenes of poking through the ruins for supplies as opposed to something more bombastic like during a gunfight (though it doesn't shy away from low-key but fast-paced tracks.)
Actually, speaking of Half-Life, I want to say that if the opening hours of the game remind you of Half-Life 2, it damn well should. Both feature a semi-fascist regime dominating a singular walled city that despite a sizeable population remains largely abandoned and dilapidated, beyond the wall is a dangerous, overgrown wasteland inhabited by parasitic, mind-controlled zombies and environmental hazards. Both also feature some of the most gorgeous and realistic lighting I have ever seen in a game, a strong aversion of the "real is brown" trope that Killzone started, and both feature some of the most compelling post-societal settings, with abandoned houses covered in flaking paint, vines everywhere, weeds as tall as your knees, crumbling infrastructure, the whole bit. Half-Life 2 was beautiful for its time, and The Last Of Us stands as one of the most gorgeous games I've ever seen. I've played a lot of post-apocalypse games, and The Last Of Us has the most compelling setting since Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins Of The Moon, which is extremely similar in terms of tone as well as the general overgrown look to everything.
Gameplay is the single most important part of a game, and even the greatest stories can be hampered by poor gameplay. Fortunately, The Last Of Us doesn't fail in this respect. It's easy to complain about the shooting mechanics of the game -- there is, surprisingly, no discernable autoaim that I could see, unusual for a console game. This makes gunfights more difficult depending on how bad your aim is, but as you go along throughout the game you'll start to get a feel for the gunplay. The exception to auto-aiming is thrown objects, such as the myriad bricks and bottles everywhere. When you equip a thrown item, the nearest enemy (as long as there's one within range) is highlighted with a special reticule. For longer tosses, there's an arc displayed that shows you exactly how the item will fly and where it'll land. The bow you get does this as well.
Shooting isn't the only way you can take down your enemies. Most human enemies as well as early-stage infected can be snuck up on and strangled to death. Late-stage infected -- the iconic 'clickers' with clear fungal growths obscuring their faces -- aren't so easily taken down, however -- a stealth kill requires a shiv to be crafted. And the rare 'bloaters' -- the long-term infected that show up as boss characters -- aren't stealthable at all. Your only option with these shambling horrors is fire, and firepower.
One of the most important parts of the game is the crafting mechanic. Scattered throughout the game are objects such as duct tape and scissors, rubbing alcohol, whatever. Get enough of these together and you can craft makeshift shivs for stealth kills or to fight off clicker attacks, health kits, molotovs (which use the same materials as health kits, so choose wisely!) as well as home-made shrapnel bombs and smoke grenades. And if you have a melee weapon, you can strap blades to it for a couple of brutal strikes (good enough to take down a clicker) before the blades break off. Melee weapons themselves will break eventually, and you'll probably start keeping an eye out for pipes as those have the longest lifespan. Without melee weapons, however, Joel is just as good with his fists in taking down most enemies -- though, again, don't even try it with clickers.
In addition to crafting your equipment, at several points in the game you'll come across upgrade benches where you can modify your weapons a bit, using scattered parts mostly found in groups of 1 through 5 with the occasional box of 25. Unlike Dead Rising 2, though, you won't be strapping knives to boxing gloves. The upgrades you perform are rather more mundane -- longer range for your bow, a scope for your hunting rifle, increased magazine size, that sort of thing. The two biggest upgrades are additional holsters for your firearms, giving you a maximum of two slots for your long arms as well as two for your handguns. This makes things easier, because it means you're not always going through your backpack to find the right weapon for the right job -- for example if you're in a situation where both the shotgun and the hunting rifle come in handy.
In addition to crafting and upgrades, you'll be collecting supplements. These are quite rare, and go towards upgrading Joel himself. Everything from getting more use out of your shivs (in fact it may be a good idea to upgrade this first unless you're playing on easy, because a level 1 upgrade allows you to use a shiv to defend yourself from clicker attacks) to increased health. You'll never fill out everything in a single playthrough, however, so you have to make choices in what to upgrade. Fortunately, your stats carry through into a New Game+.
I've spent a lot of time talking about the tone, atmosphere, and gameplay of the game. Now to talk about the stuff everyone else is talking about: the characters and story. Big spoilers ahead.
On its surface, it hits a few cliches. The plot is mostly driven by Joel, the gruff older white dude, hired by Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, an anti-military resistence group, to escort Ellie, the neutral female, from Boston to Wyoming (with a stop in Pittsburgh), then to Colorado, then finally Salt Lake City, all in the hopes of finding a cure. You see, Ellie was bitten, but she's apparently immune, and the anti-military resistance group, the Fireflies, believe that she may be the sole hope of mankind. Cliche, right? Ellie is no damsel in distress, however. She's more than capable of taking care of herself, getting better and better at it over time (to the point where when you take control of her towards the end she's capable of taking down several mushroomheads by herself) and even in a sequence where it seems like it's up to Joel to rescue her, she rescues herself, Joel coming in only after she's thoroughly defeated her captor.
In many, many ways, The Last Of Us' Joel and Ellie do a better job than Bioshock Infinite's Booker and Elizabeth in showing a believable, compelling relationship. And a lot of that is because of why both pairs exist in the story. The problem with Booker and Elizabeth is that Ken Levine is a visionary who is trying to make a statement. Their interactions are Disney-perfect but ultimately Disney-shallow, serving as little more than the central points for a convoluted plot about alternate universes and string theory. Any debate and dissection concerning Bioshock Infinite by default must focus on this tired theme, rather than on the perplexities of the two main characters, who only rarely get to show off as complex personalities. In contrast, Joel and Ellie's interactions aren't a rare treat for the diligent player. They occur in every cutscene, gunfight, and quiet moment. There is no fluffy banter, no coin tossing. The game isn't about the zombies, it's not even about Ellie's immunity -- in fact, the immunity plot is a complete feint, because at the end it's all for nothing. This game is about Joel and Ellie, and the way their relationship grows. Joel is unwilling to take up a cause, and has to be guilted into it by his partner Tess as her last request before dying. And even after he's been with Ellie for months, he still makes one last attempt to spare himself pain by ditching Ellie, handing her off to his estranged brother to carry on the journey. Joel and Ellie have a fight about it, in which Ellie tells him everyone she's ever cared for has either died or left her, and then, and only then, does he fully commit himself to her. By the end, when the Fireflies, reeking of desperation, decide that in order to study Ellie's infection and create a cure they have to remove her brain, Joel has become so attached to Ellie as a surrogate for his long-dead daughter that he's willing to forsake even the hope of a cure, and in the process of rescuing her murders most of the Fireflies, including Marlene, who herself is attached to Ellie having known her since birth, but chose to sacrifice Ellie for the sake of the greater good. At the very end, right before the credits roll, when Ellie asks Joel what happened while she was unconscious he constructs a lie. It's implied that she knows he's lying, but accepts the lie for both their sakes. It's a very ambiguous, bittersweet ending, and perhaps the only thing that really makes it a happy ending is that at least neither character died horribly.
Bioshock Infinite was hyped for months, if not years, as featuring this exact same kind of character development and relationship depth, but in the end failed to deliver. And yet Bioshock Infinite is probably going to reap more awards. And I find that to be very sad indeed.
Re: (actual review -- unmarked spoilers in this post)
Sounds like I'll have to get my hands on the soundtrack. (If you have any other video-game soundtrack recs, I'm all ears. I love me some soundtracks.)
Re: (actual review -- unmarked spoilers in this post)
(Anonymous) 2013-08-20 01:05 am (UTC)(link)