I feel like I’ve been a bit hard on Last of Us. There are issues with the gameplay and good lord, the save points at times are terrible. But the characters in this game are truly amazing. It’s not just that the game features interesting types of people, but the game handles them with truth and subtlety. That and the fact that when the gameplay lines up correctly, there are some fun scenes. The game is warming on me, and while the annoyances are still very annoying, the strengths are quite strong. Spoilers within.

Day#4 of Last of Us is just more of what I’ve come to expect from the game. The relationships between the characters are good, but the plot is just so derivative of every other zombie story that I keep wanting to write walker instead of infected. And there are just fundamental problems with the gameplay that I can’t ignore. I have a lot of respect for Uncharted 2 for what it did for interactive cinema, but this game is just taking this way too far with pointless interactivity, loss of agency to cut scenes, and a pure lack of information about what to do in a given scene. I actually can’t imagine how this game is going to improve, but there’s just so much GOTY hype I want to see if there’s going to be at some major twist to redeem this. Spoilers within.

This game is really walking the line for me. On the one hand, the narrative is improving a bit. The characters are pretty good and the incident dialogue is great, but the main points of the plot are so obvious that it’s insulting my intelligence. The gameplay on the other hand remains stubbornly not gameplay. It gets a little better when some of the stealth scenes get stronger, but there’s still a tremendous lack of information at the start of every scene that makes me have to replay scenes over and over just to understand them, the reloading points are just awful, and there are just so many times where I’m not allowed to control the action it makes me want to scream. I’m going to stick with this game because of how much everyone talks about it, but it has a long way to go before I feel like it’s living up to what I expected. Spoilers within.

So Day#2 of Last of Us after a LONG delay due to work, but my feelings are the same. The game is just not that good yet. It’s certainly pretty in the models and the settings, but the main thing is that I don’t feel like I’m playing a game. The characters just do things and I have no control over it. It’s not just that I don’t get to decide how it goes; I often don’t even get to PERFORM the action. That couple with that fact that I currently find the characters repellent and the plot obvious. Things get a little better as the core dynamic of the two main characters (Joel and Ellie) is established, but even that holds no surprises for me yet, because the main story is just so self-evident to me I feel like I’m going through the motions. I seem to be making good time in this game, but I need it get MUCH better for it to live up to the hype. Spoilers within.

Well, why not start back up big? After a few months of insane travel, I’m now back to gaming for realz and getting back on track with Naughty Dog’s newest, The Last of Us. There has been much hype about this game in terms of its narrative, so I begin cautiously optimistic. And my impressions so far? Honestly, underwhelmed. It’s basically Uncharted with a different story at this point, so the gameplay is very cinema-based and the everything else rests on the quality of the narrative. That hasn’t impressed me yet. The beginning is too standard for the genre to impress me, and then I’m honestly a bit turned off by the violence up to this point. If there’s emotional power in this story, I haven’t seen it yet. Still, there’s enough quality that I’m curious to see if it gets better. Spoilers follow.