The Last of Us Part 1 Is Pointless (and stupid)

 

Oh boy here we fucking go again. 

I remember when The Last of Us: Remastered came out on PS4 and I had all sorts of nasty things to say about that because is there anything more obviously money grubbing than "remastering" a game only a year after the release of the inital version?  Well history does like to repeat itself as yet another lazy cash grab from the hacks at Naughty Dog, who haven't done anything other than bottom of the barrel, shallow dross since the early 2000s I might add, are doing yet ANOTHER version of the first Last of Us game.

See, there is nothing inherently wrong with a remastering of a game as evidenced by the release of Resident Evil on the Gamecube. 

 When this came out it was cool to see because there was a 6 year gap between the release of the original and this one and in that time there were HUGE leaps in graphical tech and game play conventions.  We went from the game having cereal box people walking around on low poly pre-renders to models that actually looked like people walking around some really high detail environments.  On top of that the game was changed up a little with some additional mechanics, new areas and new bosses and a few other things.  When this came out it was absolutely incredible to play.

The problem with The Last of Us Part 1 is that even though there is technically a bigger year gap (9 years) the tech hasn't jumped up quite as dramatically as it had back then and game play conventions have become a homogenised mess that even the PS3 version back then was very much playing into.  If what I've read about the game is true also there is no extra content or nothing particularly special about it so it's literally a case of throwing it into an up-res machine, spitting it out and charging $70 for it.  It's disgraceful, lazy bullshit and the fact that anyone is even remotely excited for absolutely boggles my mind.  

If I'm being really honest, if a company MUST wallow in their back catalogue I'd rather they remake a game entirely rather than just remaster it and slap a new price tag on it.

For example I'm much more a fan of something like the Final Fantasy VII Remake because is's basically an entirely new game.  The good thing about a remake over a remaster is that it's not really a replacement for the original game and therefore feels like almost an entirely new experience.  If I want to go back to my 3 disc semi-turn based RPG with Duplo people on the PS1 then I can pop that game into my PS1 and enjoy that.  Then if I want to play a stealth-sequel retelling of those events with real time combat and modern graphics, I can play that and now both the old and new retain equal value. The same thing goes for the Resi 2 Remake.  If I want to enjoy some classic zombie murdering with tank controls, RE2 is right there for me to enjoy and if I want the same thing but a bit more modern then I can fire up the remake and enjoy both the game and the ugliest 3D burger ever produced by an artist ever made.

If The Last of Us Part 1 had waited, let's say, 10 more years to come out.  When the first game was nothing more than a memory in some old mans mind and then he could re-live that memory in 2032 turbo-graphic-o-vision then I wouldnt mind.  If the game had been added too, or reworked in some way akin to REMake then I also wouldnt have minded.  But as it stands The Last of Us Part 1 seems like a soulless, lazy, cash grab pile of bullshit because Naughty Dog KNOW they can milk your comfort zone to cash and they are willing to do it, as hard as possible, with absolutely no remorse

Shameful bullshit

The Epic Game Store

 

So today I didn't get much gaming done myself.  Mainly just a bit of progress in Shin Megami Tensei 5 in my lunch break and a bit of Persona 2: Innocent Sin on Stream so tonight I just want to take a moment to appriciate how cool the Epic Game Store is.

I'm sure there's a quite a few people who would turn their nose up at something like the Epic Game Store because if we're being brutally honest, it lacks a lot of the features that Steam does.  Hell, I don't even think it has game gifting as a feature which is INCREDIBLY stupid.  It caused a problem once when I had to deliver a grand prize for a game that was, at the time, exclusive to epic and I had made the incorrect assumption that gifting would have just been a thing but I guess Epic Games just assumes its entire userbase has no friends and therefore have not implemented it.  I got the game to the viewer in the end but I had to jump through some hoops to make it happen.

So despite it being barebones as all hell then why do I think its so cool? Well the answer is simple really, it's because they are constantly showering me with free shit.  At time of writing I have 58 games in my Epic Games library and the amount of money I've spent on any of that is ZERO.  Not a single penny since I downloaded the software and yet I have more games than I can shake a stick at.  It's not like they are shit games either; The Texorcist, Control, A Plague Tale, Sonic Mania, Remnant and Nioh are just a few of the standouts from the ever changing free game they just give away every so often

Even now, for Christmas, they are giving away 15 games for Christmas.  Every day I log in and BAM, another game in the library that will surely sit in the backlog for god knows how long.  I've heard its a bit shit but the first game they gave away in this set was goddamn Shenmue 3.  I didn't want to pay money for that but as someone who enjoyed the first two I sure as shit wanted to check it out, and now I can. 

They also seem to have some deal with Square Enix or something because as I was streaming I got an alert that says that Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Intergrade is now avaliable for purchase.  I've heard the FF7 Remake PC version is a steaming pile of dogshit but Intergrade was locked to the still unobtainable PS5 so just having it avaliable to me is nice, it might actually be the first thing I end up spending money on with the platform.  

Steam is still king and GoG Galaxy has way more features but it's hard not to have a soft spot in my heart for Epic when they just give me so much free shit so often.

Best Games of 2020 (That I played)

 Its New Years goddamn Day and therefore it's time to look back at all the stuff I played last year and pick a few games to say a short few things about.  Before I get into it though let me just make clear that this is not a "best games of 2020 list", this is a random assortment of shit of games that I PLAYED LAST YEAR.  Meaning stuff I talk about might not be from 2020, I just played it in 2020

Got it?

Good!

Lets go!

Best Game of 2020

 Looking back at the list of games I beat last year, I didn't actually beat that many games from 2020 so I really have no choice but to give it to Final Fantasy 7 Remake.  While it's sort of annoying that it's being split up into a trilogy, the things they have done with the game play and story are, so far, good enough to have me wanting more.  I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with parts 2 and 3 after the ending of the first one and I'm even more looking forward to seeing more of High Definition Tifa Midriff

Runner up goes to Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster.  I might have put it in my best game slot but its a remake of a game that came out in 2003 so even though I love it, it can fuck right off. 

Best non-2020 Game wot I played in 2020 (for the first time)

This award is for a game that I played this year, that was a first playthrough but didn't come out in 2020, and the winner is 

Challenging yet satisfying game play? Check

Killer soundtrack? Check

Built in counters for hitless/deathless challenge runs? Double check

Furi was easily one of the best games I played this year with its easy to understand yet hard to master game play and it's quirky bosses it pulls you in pretty quick.  Even after you beat it though, the extra difficulty level that comes with new attack patterns to deal with makes a second playthrough even more fun than the first.  It does an annoying thing where during the story you have to slow-walk between each stages but after the first play you can just select bosses off a list and avoid all of that so I guess it can be forgiven.  If you haven't played Furi yet, do it

Most Pleasant Surprise

When I first fired up Illbleed during the (still ongoing at time of writing) Horror Gauntlet, I'll be honest, I kind of hated it.  It has a weird brand of game play where damage can quickly spiral out of control and you can be left completely fucked and hidden traps that have to be marked before passing them can mean that at first, you'll be blundering into game overs constantly, but once Illbleed clicks, it becomes a really enjoyable experience.  With its absolutely bonkers plot about a killer theme park and terrible voice acting you're not only in for a challenging "horror" game but an absolute laugh riot to boot 

Worst Game of 2020

2020 was a special year for me, because Outlast 2 wasn't just the worst game I played that year, it was the worst game I have ever played IN. MY. LIFE.  

Takeshis Challenge, Super/Virtual Hydlide, Action 52 or any other shitty game you care to mention PALE in comparison to the absolute train wreck that is Outlast 2.  I plan to do a longer article about this absolute shit show but to summarize, Outlast 2 is a poorly written, poorly designed "horror" game that relies on nothing more than cheap shock value which will leave you frustrated and angry rather than terrified.  The first game was already a gigantic pile of shit and Red Barrels really outdid themselves on this one.  

Do no play Outlast 2, stay well away.  I could write a dissertation on everything that's wrong with this one and that's what I plan to do but until then just don't play it, don't even think about it.  Some people say that playing video games is a waste of life, and while I don't agree with that sentiment at all, I think that they may have a point when it comes to this one.

Runner up goes to shitty, generic open world zombie game Days Gone for being a boring buggy mess, but still leagues better than Outlast 2

The Last of Us Part 2 leaks and Naughty Dog (Spoiler Free)

The Last of Us Part 2 has been delayed and of course, the internet is not happy about it.  People are (or from what I can tell on Twitter, were) excited for this game and some users in particular are not taking the news of the delay very well.  However as you can probably tell from the title, delays are not the whole story with this, there have been big leaks regarding the story and while I have read them myself, I'm going to write this post without referencing them directly.

Before I get into the real meat of this issue though I'm going to once again touch on the issue of spoilers.  While its true that ruining the big twists of any piece of fiction for a new user makes you a bit of a dick head, at the end of the day, spoilers don't really matter do they?

For example, to take a non-TloU example, imagine that you're playing Final Fantasy 7 (PS1) for the first time and someone tells you that Aeris dies.  No more details than that, they just run up to you, scream that in your face and run away.  If you are the kind of person who, upon hearing that, throws a tantrum and stops playing the game, then I'm sorry but quite frankly you're a little bitch.  If anything a spoiler like that should have you asking questions of who, where, why or how and having you pushing on just to see how exactly something like that came to pass.  Hell, when I was streaming Resident Evil 7 around the time of its launch, some dude came in my chat and spoiled the game for me.  Only his spoiler was lacking in any detail so my reaction was one of more intrigued excitement rather than being upset or angry.   I even ASKED my friend for what happens at the end of the FF7 Remake because I had these ideas about the plot and when he explained what happens it sounded so batshit that it just made me want to play the game MORE so I could hurry up and see it for myself .

But the spoilers are only really half the story here when you start to look into just why these details were released in the first place.  From what I understand there has been some kind of pay dispute between Naughty Dog and an employee and when the company wouldn't cough up the money he was apparently owed, he coughed up the spoilers to the internet.

A quick google search can get you all manner of articles about the working hours and the working conditions at Naughty Dog and they sound pretty bad.  "Crunch" has been a problem within game development for a good while and can have some really negative effects on the people that are being subjected to it.  Hell, one quick Google search of "Naughty Dog working conditions" quickly gets you an article that references a tweet from Jonathan Cooper who states

This isn't cool, even a little bit.  These people are being worked to the bone and for what? so you can have some grimdark movie-game about a not-zombie zombie apocalypse.  Factor these statements in with the apparent reason for the leak and its easy to paint a picture in your head of the Naughty Dog offices being filled with overworked and underpaid staff.

If you're the kind of person who is currently on Twitter throwing a tantrum about <redacted> happening or Druckmann being a "SJC cuck-tard" then you're an idiot that's missing the real problem here.  Sure you can dislike the direction of the story or dislike Drukmann and his attitudes (of which there is good reason to, mind you) but what the real focus of all this SHOULD be is the way that, not just Naughty Dog, but studios in general treat their staff during a games development.  I think this story breaking off the back of "Gearbox (Borderlands) underpaying staff with promise of bonus based on sales and then not paying the bonuses" should have people getting quite upset.

These are the people that make your fucking games for crying out loud.  They put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into these things and they deserved to be compensated for that much work.  You can bitch and moan about the story or the delay but without the team behind this stuff you wouldn't have it any way, shape or form in the first place.  If you want more content like this that you really enjoy you should at least be making sure that the creative teams and minds behind it aren't dropping dead in the process of trying to get it to you because you know, a dead or hospitalized developer can't make games.

There's word in Japanese, 過労死 (karoshi), that literally means death by overwork, its been a huge problem here since long before I arrived in the country.  You HAVE to look after your staff because best case they get mad, leave and spoil your video game and worst case they just fucking die.  It's cool that these people have such passion for what they are doing but if we want to keep enjoying the fruits of their labor then we have to make sure that these people at least don't work in literal hell holes.

It's good that you're mad that this shit got leaked, just make sure your anger is being channeled in the right direction.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Demo Thoughts

I'm not usually one for demos.  When I'm even remotely interested in an upcoming title I try to avoid as much of the hype and marketing as possible and then just go into it on release day completely blind.  However when I caught news of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo dropping onto PSN my curiosity got the better of me in a BIG way and I practically ran home from work to download it.  Now having played it through I'll share some of my thoughts on it.

The game kicks off with the old opening that everyone whos even has a passing knowledge of the game is familiar with only this time its an absolute trip to see all that 1997 FMV done in all new PS4-O-Vision.  Not long after that cutscene ends you're in control of Cloud and are set upon by a couple of dudes to hack at.  I was playing with the combat on Normal mode but when you start the demo you are given the option of Normal, Easy and Classic and I will be going back to the demo very soon to try out the classic option but at time of writing I've not tried.

There's not really a lot to do in this demo since its just the bombing mission from the start of the game so the focus is really on getting some hands on experience with the combat.  At the start of the demo you have just Cloud to play with.  He can hack away at things with this Buster Sword in 2 modes, one for speed and one for damage or he can do an ability or cast a fire spell.  As you hack at things you fill up at ATB gauge which lets you use those spells an abilities and you can store up to two.  So for example, using the fire spell, a potion or hitting something with Braver uses up one of your meters and then you either have to wait or do some more regular hacking and slashing until you can do it again.  The more you hit things the more you fill up a little stagger meter and when that gets full you do extra damage to your opponent and exploiting weaknesses of enemies helps raise that meter even faster.  Things get real interesting when you get Barret into your party and you then have to manage a second character.  You can freely switch between your two guys and while your inactive guy while wander around the area killing enemies for you, their ATB fills up at a much slower rate than if they are actively fighting under your control.  So while, at least for the demo, its perfectly viable to control Cloud pretty much the entire time (outside of a tutorial when Barret first joins), if you really want to maximize damage then you'll want to be switching between your party members to fill up their meter and then take full advantage of a stagger when it happens. 

The one thing I didn't like about the demo was the English voice work for the characters.  It was hammed up and every time Jesse opened her mouth I got the pangs of cringe through my chest.  I'm sure the full game will have selectable voice tracks but the demo version just uses whatever language your system is set to.  My Japanese PS4 is set to English so everything was in English which means that if you're living in Japan the game will probably have full English support but its a little concerning for those that want the English text but the Japanese voices as there are no language options in the settings for the demo.  

Either way, the more I see about this game the more excited I'm starting to get.  I'm still a little skeptical of the whole, being split into multiple games thing but as far as gameplay is concerned its a solid action RPG experience and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the "full" thing.