The Last of Us

           The Last of Us, developed by Naughty Dog of Uncharted, Jak and Daxter, and Crash Bandicoot fame, has been justly hailed as a masterpiece by critics and gamers alike. It is a game of crushing emotional weight and narrative depth rarely seen before in games, though it’s becoming more common. The gameplay is tight and fun, if occasionally brutally difficult. It is one of the most beautiful and original games in recent memory. Yet, when broken down into its constituent parts, everything about it is as stale as can be. The zombie genre’s been done to death, the kid that needs protecting from the world trope is old hat, and the gameplay is essentially just toned-down Uncharted with crafting (which itself is ridiculously ubiquitous and tiresome.) Why is it that this game is so powerful then? Why are so many hailing it as one of the best cases for video games as art?

            Let’s start with the narrative. The game starts with the main protagonist, Joel, and his daughter as they experience an outbreak of a fungal infection slightly more worrisome than athlete’s foot. This fungal infection latches itself on to the brain and drives the infected to become violently insane. While trying to escape the city something happens to his daughter, and then twenty years pass. The world has gone to hell. Joel lives in a quarantine zone in Boston and works as a smuggler. Twenty years of rough living have molded him into a hard-ass with graying hair and a no-nonsense attitude. After a series of unfortunate events, Joel is forced to help a fourteen-year-old girl named Ellie across the country to a medical research center where she may hold the key to curing the infection. So in the simplest terms, it’s a road narrative. Two people are forced to travel a distance and learn a little about each other and Life with a capital L. Again, this has been done countless times. Especially in the United States, our art is filled with images of the road: Kerouac’s On the Road, McCarthy’s The Road, Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”, Weird Al’s “I Love Rocky Road.” It works though, because road narratives never get old and the medium was practically built for them. Road narratives are kinetic by design, as are video games. Most games use the road structure and message (it’s not the destination but the journey) anyway. Look at the newest Fallout games, or any of Bethesda’s open-world games. They are about a hero on the road looking for adventure and loot, who happens to also affect the lives of millions of people because they are the chosen one or something. It’s never about the destination, be it slaying a giant dragon or capturing a dam; it’s about the journey that literally allows them to grow via experience points. The Last of Us eschews experience points for the more metaphysical character development. They use the road narrative structure, as well as many of the zombie apocalypse tableaus such as the “look at how ridiculous our consumer culture is” routine, to grow a legitimate affection for our characters. While we get why Joel’s a mess in the beginning our understanding deepens as he travels down the road, and we start to root for him to come to terms with what has happened. While we get that Ellie’s sassy in the beginning, a trait which could have quickly worn thin, we find out that she’s also resourceful, smart, and genuinely a pleasure to be around. So essentially, and this is a really novel concept, the narrative is good because the writing is good. More specifically, the writers knew what they were writing for. They understood the medium.

            Like the story, the gameplay could have been tired. It’s a third-person action/shooter with a heavy emphasis on stealth and resource management. That does not sound fun. The reason it is fun is because of how well the story is integrated into the gameplay. As I’ve been saying for years now, the only way that games will advance as an art form is when game developers realize that they need to integrate the story and the interaction. Otherwise you’re watching a lame movie with some puzzles or shooting in between. A lot of the exposition and actual plot still comes through cinematics, but most of the character development is in the game. For instance, late in the game, there is a moment where Joel and Ellie are in yet another broken down building; this time it’s a train station. Ellie has been through a nasty ordeal, and has been quieter than usual. Joel tries to cheer her up by chatting cheerfully, but it just isn’t working. She keeps spacing out, not listening. Finally Joel figures a way to the next floor of the building: a ladder at the top of a high ledge. After the player presses triangle, he gets into position to boost Ellie up has he and the player have done countless times throughout the game. This time, however, Ellie never comes. Joel sighs and the animation halts. The player must walk over to Ellie and talk to her before they can continue. This may not sound particularly interesting on the page, but I found it to be one of the most powerful moments in all of my days of gaming. It’s subtle and understated. By usurping this repeated action, Naughty Dog lets us know in a way that dialogue never could that Ellie is really hurting. It is such a masterfully executed sequence that could only be in a video game.

            That’s where the power in this game lies: execution. The voice acting is impeccable. Both Ellie (Ashley Johnson) and Joel (Troy Baker, who also played Booker in Bioshock: Infinite) are so convincing and likeable. The story and gameplay are intertwined in interesting and innovative ways. Even the zombies, the second most tired horror cliché of the new millennium after creepy ghost girls, are handled in interesting ways. The fungus which causes the symptoms continues to grow over the years to the point that the host can no longer see, so they use their increased hearing capabilities to find their victims. This leads to a clever reversal of the use of stealth in video games, where players need to stick to the shadows to avoid being caught. You can shine a light right in their faces and not be found, but if you walk just a little too loudly they will hunt you down. The lack of ammo along with the seemingly patternless paths the enemies take add so much tension to the stealth that it’s suffocating. A friend of mine pointed out that the bandits and cannibals in the game are referred to as “hunters,” playing on the idea of survival in the post-apocalypse and forcing the player to question their own actions. Aren’t they just trying to survive too? The Last of Us is a game that knows what it wants to do and say and, most importantly, it knows how to do it. That’s what makes it so great.

            The game has not been without criticism. Philip Kollar of Polygon, for instance, criticizes the game for its difficult gunplay, some silly AI issues, and use of waves of enemies. Tom Mc Shea of Gamespot felt that the distance of the checkpoints didn’t allow the players to feel that they had enough to lose in dying and that they game, “…refuses to punish failure in a manner befitting the world.” I couldn’t disagree more with both of them, though in fairness to Mc Shea he still gives it a "Great" rating

. The difficult gunplay, even later when you are forced to use it more, only adds to the tension. When an
infected person is rushing at you and you just can’t seem to hit them, it is legitimately terrifying. Also, waves are the way zombies work. Again that’s why they’re scary. It is a brutal game that only becomes slightly less brutal the more you upgrade your weapons and Joel. Mc Shea’s complaint about the checkpoints is even more ridiculous. I thought they were usually sufficiently spaced enough to provide punishment for death. More than that, if this game was any more brutal Kollar would have a better argument. I would have thrown this game away in disgust if I had to totally restart a level, which seems to be the only punishment which would “befit” the world. I almost did anyway in my first real fight with the infected. Clickers have a one-hit kill that is so annoying I yelled at the TV, but I got smarter, started avoiding fights, and always made sure to take out the Clickers first if I could. Any real quibbles about the game are either expected (there are glitches in every game, and I’m pretty sure most gamers can ignore them by now) or a matter of opinion such as Kollar and Mc Shea’s.

            To be frank, this is an amazing game. The story is haunting with a nearly perfect ending, the gameplay is unforgiving but rewarding, and the overall experience will stick with you long after the game is over. I think that this is direction single-player games are going and it somewhat ironically gives me a lot of hope for the future. Now if they could make a game this good that isn't morally ambiguous and oppressive, I could die happy.

            Oh, and there’s multiplayer. Apparently it’s fun. 

Dear Esther/Triumphant return

Yes, yes I'm back. I'm making another run at this "writing on the Internet" thing, and I think I have a model that will work. Except for this post, you will get a review every Friday. Most of the month, they will be cheap, short indie games. Then, at the end of the month, there will be a more in-depth look at a larger mainstream release. To start, I've decided to look at one of the least reviewable games I've ever played because I like to make things as hard on myself as possible.

            Dear Esther is either genius or an utter failure. I can’t decide. Included with the eighth Humble Bundle pack, it can barely be classified as a game because of its lack of goal or real interactivity. You walk. That’s the gameplay. You walk around an island while a disembodied voice reads letters that are never actually seen except as subtitles. The weird thing is, even as you scoff at the game, you keep walking. There is something compelling in the enigmatic way the game composes itself and reveals the shockingly vague narrative. It’s a mystery, in a way, but not in the classic whodunit sense. The mystery is what the hell this game is about. It truly defies any kind of summary judgment, so the best I can do is lay out the pieces for you to pick up.

            Dear Esther starts with your character staring at the ocean from a first-person perspective while a letter is read and the sun sets. The graphics are fine with that strangely distinct look that the Source engine will give a game. After a minute or two of idly standing there, you, the player, will realize that all this time you have been able to move and the game decided spitefully not to tell you about it. This will be your relationship with the game from here on out. There are no arrows or objectives. There won’t be a letter explaining why you are wandering around on the island or where you actually are or what is going on in even the most basic terms. So you wander at a brooding pace around the island, sometimes getting stuck trying to figure out where to go only to realize that there was a staircase built into the wall that you had no way of seeing but should have known about if you didn’t want to flail into the sea. It is possible to die in the game, but you have to work at it. There’s no life bar or HUD of any kind, but if you swim out far enough into the ocean, you’ll drown.

            I don’t want to give too many of the hints about the story away because those hints are the only reason to play the game; that is unless you like walking but hate exercise. The most I can comfortably say about the story is that it involves people and cars. I also interpreted the game as being about loss and dealing with grief because of some of the content contained within the letter, but I’m sure that’s one of a million interpretations. I myself had at least a hundred of them. Between the cryptic letters and the strange electrical diagrams and notes about Damascus of all things, I occasionally had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t about anything. The conspiracy theorist in my mind wondered if designers Dan Pinchbeck and Robert Briscoe were just throwing images on the screen and hoping that they meant something like a bad film student. It’s all very weird.

            The thing is, when the game climaxes in one of the weirdest endings I’ve ever encountered, you get the feeling that you do understand; that there is something there. Subconsciously, on some level, you know what this game is about but you just can’t quite put your finger on it. And that’s the genius of the game. It’s so hopelessly pretentious, but there is something there on the tip of your tongue when it’s over. To use a slightly altered cliché, it’s like not knowing why you’re walking into a room, and then feel like you knew why when you were walking in and then forgot. To its credit, it also engages with narrative in a wholly interactive way. While you can only walk and turn your head (even the flashlight is automatic,) you are always driving the story forward. Even though your actions are limited every one of them drives the story forward, even if the story is driving through a swamp of molasses. It’s truly maddening in the same way that Inception is maddening or any of the other great mind-benders. I’m not saying that this game is as well-crafted as a Christopher Nolan film, but it has those aspirations and comes surprisingly close. I urge you to play this game if only to experience it. Is it good? No idea. I don’t really care, honestly. What I do know is that it’s cheap and it will make you question many things, including your own sanity. What more can you ask for from a piece of art?