Early impressions of The Last of Us

What I’m about to do is dangerous. Taking a skeptical approach with a game that the internet loves feels a bit like trash talking the kids at a little league baseball game. People tend not to take a liking to you. I don’t think The Last of Us is a bad game, to be clear, but Naughty Dog has built up such a reputation over the years that they’re going to have to live with the high expectations they’ve earned for themselves.

To be clear, I’m only about a third of the way through The Last of Us. My impressions are only a work in progress. When The Last of Us was announced with a cinematic trailer last year, I made a point of it to avoid all the screenshots, the gameplay videos, the story leaks, all of it. Everything was going to be fresh this time, unlike my experience with Uncharted 3 when I more-or-less had seen every major set piece and action sequence beforehand. So The Last of Us has remained mostly fresh.

Sort of. I’m not disappointed with it, I’m just… Meh. I’m underwhelmed. The game does nothing new, or at least, nothing noticeably new. You end up spending way too much running into corners just in case there’s a hidden artifact in one of the drawers or something, and the environments aren’t even that interesting. They’re pretty, but that’s about it.

And why am I carrying planks and ladders around like it’s so difficult to figure out that the ladder goes up against the wall with the yellow ledge? Come on now... Uncharted’s platforming was never exactly brain-busting, but at least it was a fun way to traverse the environments. I’m already bored of the point A to point B progression in The Last of Us. It’s just dull.

The combat is nothing special either, and that’s an optimistic way to phrase it as far as I’m concerned. I will say that I’m enjoying the struggle to maintain and conserve resources (I’m playing it on Hard). The best moments so far have made it feel like Naughty Dog really figured out how to translate the cinematic zombie experience into a playable adventure. It’s satisfying to sneak up on a runner, smash his head with a brick and then spray bullets (of which I only ever have like, five at a time) in a panic at the second zombie as it sprints toward me from across the room. If I’m fortunate, two of the bullets hit and I can run up and finish it off with a couple melee punches. It works.

But those segments where you’re sneaking around a dark room while the clickers stumble around like… Well, like NPCs? Those just aren’t doing it for me. It’s a bit pretentious to expect a video game to make you feel like you aren’t playing a game- I mean you’re holding a controller in your hands and staring at a screen. But the best games can really suck you into the experience, and those stalking segments with the clickers do the opposite for me.

We’ll see, I’m definitely going to give the game a chance and play it all the way through. That opening sequence in Texas was downright masterful, and I’ve heard that the story is fantastic, so the game has promise. I just can’t help but feel that it’s overhyped. When I read reviews stating that the Last of Us is a seminal experience that will transcend generations, or a masterpiece that people will be discussing at the water cooler for years, I start to wonder what it is that I’m missing. But again, I’ll wait until I’ve completed the game before settling on a final judgment.

**Update: Upon completing the game I can safely say that I enjoyed the experience a lot more than I thought I would. The story was intriguing and I loved the ending, and combat became more enjoyable as more options opened up.This isn't the Citizen Kane of gaming that so many people are calling it, but it's a really good adventure game with a satisfying, thought-provoking plot.

Some quick thoughts on Wind Waker HD

E3 just passed and, wow, it gave us a lot to digest and mull over. Next gen consoles, Kingdom Hearts III (!), Microsoft’s business strategies. But I have to say, even after several years of Nintendo taking a back seat to Microsoft and Sony, I'm still not entirely used to it. It just seems weird, it isn't right. It's uncomfortable even. I appreciate everything that Playstation and Xbox are doing for the industry, but they both lack that laid-back, light-hearted, Saturday-morning-cartoon-and-sugary-cereal sort of philosophy that Nintendo represents and that I still find myself craving from time to time.

Games are evolving more and more into an adult medium, but we don’t have to abandon our simplified (cynics might called it “childish”) roots. Gamers are a nostalgic bunch. Most nerds are. So now if you’ll humor me, I’d like to get a little nostalgic for a moment. Come along with me as I reflect on one of Nintendo’s below-the-radar highlights: Wind Waker HD.

The original Wind Waker came out at a time when E3 every year was sort of like a second Christmas for me. The Gamecube was my console of choice, and as much as I loved the Playstation 2's bountiful library of JRPGs, I'd still argue that Nintendo’s purple lunch pail was the best console of its generation. Nintendo was waning, sure, mostly due to their inability to secure the third party lineups that Sony and Microsoft had, but nobody could argue with the company's ability to churn out brilliant first party titles. It made E3 such a fun event every year. You just couldn't wait to see what the new Zelda would look like, or the new Mario. Needless to say, when people got their first glimpse of Wind Waker's cartoony, cell-shaded graphics back in the early 2000s, it caused a stir.

Wind Waker’s art design was a risk and the fans let them know about it, but give the game credit and consider it for what it was: a design choice. People never really think of Wind Waker as an open world game, but it was. And it was huge. With all of the islands and dungeons, and towns and whatnot, it’s easy to see how a more realistic visual style might’ve limited the developers (in the same way that I’d argue it limited Twilight Princess a few years later). The cell-shaded graphics made for a far more memorable experience, in part because the designers could really work their imaginations to create some unique environments. If a game is all about building anticipation for the player, then Wind Waker with its vast, open seas full of myriad little islands, is a textbook example of what makes for a great game.

I only wanted to bring it up because, frankly, Nintendo doesn’t get the credit it still deserves in the industry. They say kids get more cynical with each passing generation, but let’s not forget that sometimes the games (or movies, or books, etc.) that get written off as childish sometimes pack more of a punch than people realize. It’s a very good thing that Nintendo is re-releasing its updated masterpiece so that new generations can experience it.

Okay, you can go back to your war games and your DLC and your Cloud gaming now.  

Falling in Love with The World's Game

If you think it's difficult finding people to have a serious conversation about games with, try discussing soccer in America. People hate it. Hate, not dislike. I don't want to alienate the passionate soccer fans that are over here but let's be real, we're few and far between.

Since this is my personal space on the internet I'm going to use it as I see fit. Though no one is listening, I'm going to take a moment to wax poetic about the sport I'm beginning to fall in love with.

Let me get this out of the way quickly, for the sake of being honest and forthright. I'm still relatively new to this sport. Soccer. Football, I mean. I actually wake up before dawn on Saturdays now to watch the Premier League on NBC Sports, which is not something I ever thought I'd be doing.

But I'm still just an apprentice of the game. I first started following Manchester United in the 09/10 season, which you may recall as Year One of the post-Ronaldo era, and I've learned a lot about the club since then. The history, the glory. Sir Alex is a god, Ryan Giggs is a legend, the soft-spoken ginger in midfield is vastly underappreciated outside of Manchester. He scores goals galore, as the song goes. I've learned that people who say 'Man U' should be ridiculed to no end, and that Scousers are a bunch of wankers. Or, wait. Wankers are Scousers. No, the Scousers are definitely wankers, as are the Geordies and Gooners, I think. Either way, apparently my spell-check wasn't programmed by a soccer fan.

There have been so many outstanding moments since I began following United, but we never forget our first, right? Unless our first was the Auld Slapper, am I right? Sorry Rooney, but you brought that on yourself.

But back on topic, that first memory of mine is Michael Owen's injury time winner at Old Trafford against City, right after Craig Bellamy took Rio's wayward pass (or whatever that was, I'm still not sure) the length of the pitch to tie the game at three all. Isn't it ironic that Michael Owen, a Liverpool legend, is the centerpiece of this, my first experience with the magic of Old Trafford? Must sound strange for you lifelong United fans. On top of that, it was the immortal Ryan Giggs who found Owen at the far post with a beautiful long ball that Owen slipped past the goalkeeper and into the net. I leapt from my chair in rapturous joy. I paced my living room, waving my arms in the air and talking shit to my dog, who was a City fan probably. Then I went and played FIFA for like, three hours straight, I don't know. But it was glorious.

It goes both ways, though, doesn't it? I think we all remember the final day of last season. I was watching City's match against QPR because ESPN happened to have the game streaming on the Xbox, so when I heard that City was somehow down by a goal with only minutes left, naturally I had to tune in. United just about had the trophy in their grasp.

And that's when the spaceship tragically crashed into the Etihad Stadium to collect Comrade Tevez and bring him back to the planet Crustyassneck. Remember? They had to end the match two minutes early and United was handed its twentieth English title. Remember that? Yeah, I done seen it. I seen it with my own two eyes.

But in all seriousness, you know what really shocked me about that whole ordeal? As soon as Aguero scored and won City its first league title since Nixon was dragging his jowls through halls of the White House, I shut the TV off and it was like the whole thing never happened. It wasn't on the news, it wasn't on the radio, it wasn't in the newspapers the next day. I mean, it might've gotten a mention on the back page somewhere but I didn't exactly search for it. In England it was all over the place, but not here in the States. I could pretend that it never happened.

Contrast Manchester City's gut-wrenching victory with my Niners' recent Super Bowl loss. I can't so much as flip the radio on here in the bay area without having to hear about their inability to score with first and goal on the one yard line. It's awful. I mean, I think my eyes are still crossed from watching that shit, and the world just won't let me forget it. My friend Joey Montana says it'll get better soon, though. He's been great through it all. Joey is very quiet, and in fact I think I'm the only one who can hear him. He says it'll get better next season when we rebuild the secondary. Joey is a great friend.

But anyway, what was I talking about? I suppose there are positives to keeping our game- our wonderful, glorious game- an afterthought here in America, and a selfish part of me kind of wants to keep it a secret over here. It's just, you know, it's my thing. It's my sport. It can be yours too, as long as you don't say something stupid like, "If the good lord wanted us to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us hands."

I'd still like to see MLS grow and become a better league. We have the athletes here in the states to compete with the rest of the world, and I don't think anyone would argue that. Landon Donovan recently made a comment about how Lebron James would be one of the world's elite soccer players if he'd simply chosen soccer over basketball... I don't necessarily agree with that, but you see my point. We just have to convince those athletes to choose soccer. To choose the adventure of plying your trade overseas, in front of those famously passionate crowds, even though they'd be making less money than the elite baseball, football and basketball players do. I'd love to become a San Jose Earthquakes fan, I really would. But MLS just can't compete with the history and the excitement of the European game. Maybe the answer is importing more aging superstars, a la David Beckham? I don't know.

Or we can just forget about it. We can be selfish. Manchester United and everything we love about the club and the sport can be our little secret. People might laugh at us. They might think it's weird that we like to wake up at 5AM on a Sunday so that we can yell at Nani for being selfish, or celebrate a Robin Van Persie volley, or make fun of Carlos Tevez' fucked up neck.

As much as it bothers me to hear American sports fans trash the sport, even if some of their points are valid, I'm kind of over it. The game is great enough that I don't need validation from the people around me. I can't wait for the World Cup in 2014, I can't wait for the summer transfer window, and hell, I can't wait for this Saturday's match against Norwich and I can't wait to read everyone's thoughts about it.

So, I think I'm done rambling. Just felt like expressing my ever-growing love of the sport and, in particular, the mighty Reds of Manchester. Also, the treble is ON.
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Edit: Trebles are stupid anyway.