Finally Finished TLOU

Hey, been a while guys.  Figured I'd start the ball rolling again by letting all of you know I've finally finished The Last of Us.  I wrote my own thoughts on it here.

But I wanted to ask, what game are you all interested in playing now?  I have a few things on my backlog, and wanted to check before I started mopping up on old games.

Welcome to fall, football, and beers gentlemen.

- SBG

AC: Unity

I dunno if I will actually play Ass Creed 2014 for the reasons I mentioned in my first post (I feel like I've played different iterations of the same game every year for the last half-decade).

 

I am genuinely interested in why developers always go for that "papers flying around in an empty city" look. It's surely become a cliche by now.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5eGRnbZ0fo (I don't remember how to embed from an email)

Re: [We Blew in Cartridges] Ass Creed

I have a "try everything once" approach to the side missions. In terms of doing anything more, I've enjoyed a couple of the assassination quests and I've killed a few animals dumb enough to stumble into my path, but I don't really see the point in actively seeking these sorts of side missions - I guess you can upgrade stuff? Or sell stuff? I've never really felt the need.. I've tried to hack all of the computers in Abstergo though, I've really enjoyed those Desmond tapes.

 

Most strangely, I feel somewhat guilty when I go hunting for sharks with a harpoon. So I've stopped doing that. All the political correctness of social media has really gotten me in recent years I guess.

 

Ass Creed

I don't know about you guys, but I am getting super swept up in all the side missions. The assassin missions, the sea faring, all of it is wonderful.

Have you guys figured out the harpooning yet? The only thing I wonder is, why am I building toward?

Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag: A Pirate's Life for Me.

New game time. I know there's a lot of differing opinions about the AC series from the three of us but that should definitely be a good thing going into this game.

I actually played quite a bit of it on 360 before starting over on PS4 a few weeks later. Still, i abandoned it on PS4, never really expecting to go back to it. Now i have a reason.

On a personal note, i'm a huge fan of the AC series and have been since the original game came out years ago. Altair was a great character and the crusades were a great setting. Getting through Ezio's story over the course of three games definitely kept my attention with his (and Desmond's) story. The games under the AC2 umbrella brought some gameplay dynamics that were fantastic and others that remained stagnant for too long throughout the series. AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations were still very enjoyable games to me. Hell, i even read some of the companion books to go along with Ezio's story, i liked it that much.

maybe it's the "De Firenze" that really connected me to Ezio. 

Connor Kenway's debut in AC3 was easily the lowest point of the series. Connor was a bad character and, with the exception of naval battles (which are fucking awesome), the new dynamics of gameplay, specifically those goddamn horses, did nothing to enhance the game. Couple that with the squatty, boring setting of the northeastern colonies of Boston, NY and Philly as well as the god awful and extra-abundant native american language (that made half the dialog in the game require subtitles) and AC3 never really had a chance to please with creative choices like that.

Philly in AC3. Who thought this would be fun? 

I remember going into a meeting with Ubisoft right before the official announcement of AC4. The devs at Ubi Montreal were fucking stoked about the new game. They knew they had something that fans would like and had taken the fans dislike of AC3 to heart. Refocusing the game on Edward Kenway, emphasizing the naval battles and weaving Edward through a story that loosely incorporated real life pirates and forsaked (forsook?) the squatty cities of AC3 for massive jungles and islands like Cuba, was the correct direction.

damn. 

Overall, AC's story and pseudo-historical angle has always been one of my favorite aspects of the franchise. Like reading Devil in the White City or other Erik Larson books, there's an enjoyable formula at play here. That said, i remain skeptical of two major components of the AC series.

1 - Combat has not evolved as much as it should have throughout the series. I've used the Arkham comparison quite a bit regarding this and i think it remains true. You simple can't have the combat of your master assassin be so clunky when Batman can fluidly take on 30 guys at once.

Or, you know, like eight without breaking a sweat. 

2 - The external story, taking place outside of Edward at Abstergo Entertainment, is one that seems to have ignored what came before with Desmond Miles. Don't know how i feel about that because i hated the way they ended Desmond's story in AC3 but that didn't mean i was happy to abandon that plot entirely. Intrigued to see how it's handled here in Black Flag.

Abstergo: You only thought we were an evil shadow corporation. 

Edit - i left the above as a draft for weeks until HotFuj reminded me to post it. Sorry about that. I'm a handful of chapters into AC4. Still intrigued by the Abstergo element and really want to see how that gets sorted. The meat and potatoes gameplay is still something i enjoy though my gripes about combat remain and i 100% agree with the fact that the missions requiring you to tail and eavesdrop are stupid and annoying. It's just a bad formula and shouldn't be used more than two or three times a game. All said, i'm chugging through the game and, even though i'm covering ground i've covered before on 360, i really don't mind doing it again. Let's see if that remains the case when all is said and done.

-joker

Assassin's Creed IV - 1st two sequences

Assassin’s Creed IV

I’ve played Assassin’s Creed 2, Brotherhood, Revelations and now Assassins’ Creed IV. Ever since I started, I could not help but abbreviate the game to Ass Creed. It flows, is funny, and makes me feel a strange comfort in my stomach.

I skipped 3, primarily because it was seriously panned and I was pretty burnt out on the whole series. I saw Ass Creed IV for $30 bucks on my XBO (and had no XBO games for the first month I had it) so I thought, “Why not?”

Ummm, so this is a videogame within a videogame?

With that viewpoint of no expectations, and really nothing to lose, I am able to look at Ass Creed as it should be, mindless, kind of dopey, fun. That’s what it is. I don’t have this boner that everyone seems to have for pirates, but I definitely like the ship faring aspect as well as the huge map. Yet again, all of the cities look strikingly like Florence, Istanbul or probably any other city that exists in the world. So I have played maybe the 1^st couple of sequences, haven’t really dug in, but I’m definitely enjoying the ride. One thing though, I have NO idea what the story is about cause I keep checking twitter while I’m playing the damn game. I don’t know if that’s a bigger indictment of me or the game. 

AC4: "I hate this game!"

AC4 is a good game and in many ways a return to form after the dismally boring AC3. Its not easy to write any thoughts about AC4 without referring to AC3, so I'm not gonna bother trying to do that. Also, despite it being a good game, i'm going to mainly discuss the things I don't like about AC4 (as I usually do..)

Enslaved / TLOU: Left Behind

Enslaved Post-Martem / TLOU: Left Behind

Enslaved Final Thoughts

The need to publish this post has felt like the headband atop Monkey’s neck. Soooo before I jump into that ending, let’s discuss everything after say mid-way. The game introduces Piggy, who ends up being my favorite character. They actually built someone you like, and empathize with (though Piggy “testing” Monkey against that Rhino thing was super weird). Piggy was a sensitive, lonely guy, and to have him right next to Monkey’s rippling, muscled body, with little to no personality, felt a little odd. I’d rather be Piggy ending up with Trip than Monkey.

Getting through the game felt like a chore. The puzzles weren’t particularly difficult and the platforming was non-existent, thanks to a miraculous engine that allows me to press A anytime during a run towards a jump. When we picked this game, we knew it wasn’t gonna be for the gameplay. It was going to emanate from the story.

So did the story do a good job…maybe. I liked the characters, I thought the idea of a lush apocalypse was cool, but annoying things kept popping in the way. Why didn’t Monkey have a shirt!! It’s so bizarre. We keep harping on it, but when you have to play 10 hours looking at this guy jump around metal and water and bridges and industrial complexes, you’d figure he’d want some sort of coverage. Just think of him making jumps onto a metal platform, and his bare skin hitting the platform with all that force! The characters aside from Monkey are legitimately interesting. I would have loved to have learned more about Trip and her father, as well as why Piggy really respected and loved that family. Women portrayal in action games have been analyzed of late, so it is interesting to see how Trip is portrayed. She’s definitely strong, and I feel the ending shows just how strong she really is.

About that ending. It’s the Matrix. You’ve seen that movie right? Well, I feel this game is that. Just with different people. It was kind of a let-down in that it was about 5 minutes long and super bizarre, but I feel as if the whole journey of the game let us brace for that kind of misstep. I just feel that there was no cohesion or catharsis for the viewer other than the Pyramid was set up by some nebbish dude who wanted to take people away on this dreamscape. It reminded me of Batman Forever where Jim Carrey’s Riddler creates this thing that sucks people’s brain images and places them in some fantasy land.

I feel like this game just did it, and hence why my post is so jumbled. Would I recommend this game to others, no. Am I glad I played it, I don’t know. I just felt mind-fucked for 10 hours into thinking this is a high quality game, but with a rather hollow soul.  ONTO THE NEXT GAME.

The Last of Us: Left Behind.

               Remember when you’re a kid, and it’s September and you see all your friends after a super short three months. You have so much to tell them about, but bringing it up makes you feel sad that you aren’t living it again? That’s what I felt about The Last of Us. This game and its story made me happy to tell people about, but super sad cause it was over. I was mixed on the idea of DLC, cause it normally feels shoehorned.

That thought went away about 25 seconds into the DLC as we are given the details about how Ellie saved Joel after he was impaled. While playing the game, we completely gloss over that fact, since we’re now given the ability to play as Ellie! But in this DLC, we are given the reason why Ellie basically goes on a suicide mission to save her friend. It’s cause of Riley. She lost her friend while Ellie lived, and Riley taught Ellie some valuable lessons that helped explain Ellie and Joel’s relationship (and maybe why she accepted Joel’s lie at the end of main game).

The reason why was cause she learned from Riley that holding onto the people you love will make you do anything for two seconds more. It could be me holding onto my memories of the Last of Us. I will play this DLC just to get two seconds more. I’d even take pictures of me and the DLC in a photo booth. DLC be acting all silly, me trying to work on my Zoolander face. Then we’d kiss.

When I heard it was going to be a prequel, I was disappointed. I wanted Ish, Bill or a Firefyl story to help build the world. The Last of Us, if it taught me anything, shows that it’s not the world that matters, but the people we need to survive that ultimately tell our tale. I’m torn on recent news of the potential of a sequel. Should anymore be said of this story? To be honest, the sequel will be made. It’s all a money game, and the sequel for TLOU will make gobbles of money. It’s worth the investment from Sony’s POV, so they will throw whatever they have to in order to get this done.

When I actually played the DLC, for that brief second it brought me back to the summer.

Next Game folks?? Let’s use your next posts to list some contenders.