Beaten: The Last of Us Part II (PS4)

 I have quite a few Playstation 4 games in my backlog, but The Last of Us Part II became a priority for a brand new reason: I had to play and beat it before the TV show's second season premieres. That has never happened before, as usually videogames licensed to television or movies generally deviate in plot from the games they attempt to bring to live action. Not so The Last of Us, whose epic first season followed the first game in the series almost to the letter. 

Of course, I was going to play it anyway. The studio, Naughty Dog, created a great formula years ago with their Uncharted series, and the Last of Us has simply been a new application of that gameplay and storytelling formula. This write-up will contain SPOILERS for not only both games in the series, but presumably the both seasons of the TV show.

So the formula I mentioned above works this way. The game is very focused on the story and characters, with lots of cutscenes, personal development, and small things that add texture to their tales. The gameplay is basically exploring, sneaking, and fighting against both the weird mushroom zombies and other survivors. The locations play out in a linear fashion, and the world in not an open sandbox to explore.

The two main characters from the first game return, living a relatively peaceful life but dealing with the ramifications of the first game, where Joel rescued Ellie from a medical team that he realized too late was going to kill her to get the cure out of her. One of those ramifications is a new character named Abby, who is the daughter of one of the doctors Joel killed during that rescue. Yep, it's a revenge tale. I was thinking it was weird that the player controls Abby for a moment at the beginning of the game before gameplay turns over to Ellie.

Abby gets her revenge but leaves Ellie alive and heads back to Seattle, where her brutal faction is fighting another. Ellie now wants her own revenge and sets out to find Abby. The first third of the game, then, is Ellie's battle find Abby and her cohorts in the ruins of Seattle. That section of the story takes place across three days in Seattle before Ellie finally confronts her.

I thought that this scene was leading to the big, final fight between the two. It had really felt like the game had been long enough at this point for that to happen, but then the game shifts to playing as Abby, and her own three days leading up to that confrontation. Okay, I thought, we are creating a sympathetic character out of the villain, I can go along with that.

Abby's story is pretty good, too, leading up to that confrontation, with lots of twists and backstory filled in. Finally, Abby catches up to Ellie and we get to play the boss fight as her, not Ellie. At this point, both of these revenge-driven characters have lost their own friends in their rage, but Abby stays her hand and warns Ellie to let it go and never show up in her life again.

I really thought the lesson was to let go of revenge, as both characters by now have made a journey where revenge had cost them more than their own lives to accomplish. Ellie goes back to her home where she and her girlfriend are raising a baby on an idyllic farmhouse, there is a beautiful scene where Ellie is sitting on a tractor holding that baby at sunset, and it seemed like I had finally reached the end.

But then Ellie gets a new tip on where Abby ended up in California, and still can't let it go. Thus begins a third act with Abby in California, where she gets captured by yet another savage gang of assholes, and then Ellie, hunting her down.  I was pretty tired of the game by now and it felt like the lesson I thought was the whole point seemed washed away.

Oh, I thought, Ellie is going to see how horrible the savage gang of assholes has been to Abby and will free her and together, they will take them out and finally go their separate ways. I gave out an exasperated sigh when that did not turn out to be the case, and Ellie just can't let it go, leading to yet another final boss fight between the two.

I guess the point was that Ellie was so traumatized and suffering PTSD after Joel's brutal murder that she could not let go. There was a lot of unfinished business between Ellie and Joel before he died, and only a quick flashback in her brain at the last second of a positive memory of Joel brings her back from the brink. Abby goes her own way and Ellie heads back to her now-empty farmhouse, her girlfriend and baby long since gone.

I can't say the story did not make sense, as I have my own revenge issues, but damn that was depressing, dark, and bleak. It felt like Ellie had grown into a much different character after the first game in a trajectory that veered from where I thought she was going. Overall, after a few days to think about it, my complaints about the story are pretty minor, and really it's not my story to tell, it's Naughty Dog's.

As far as the gameplay part of the game, it was exactly like I expected. Sneaking and stealth kills, melee weapons and dodge moves, guns that can be upgraded, improvised bombs, and the player working their way through gorgeously designed areas that show the full glory of vegetation growing over everything - it's all there.

Resources and ammo are scarce, but were never too scarce that I got stuck anywhere without them. The combat was balanced and fun, the jump scares well timed, and even though the story seemed to drag on, the gameplay never got old. Each encounter and area that the player fights through is usually unique enough to avoid any tedium.

The old tropes persist though. Sudden sections where one is cut off from retreat, like falling through the floor into a horde of zombies, are common. The player can meticulously clear out a large area they are in, but not retreat back to it for stupid reasons, like doors that close behind the player permanently. Enemy AI runs the gamut from clever to stupid, as always. 

At times the enemies seem to be smart, filling in patrol routes after the player takes out a few of them in an area. That also means that at some places, one can hold a corner and wait until the curious enemy wanders over the the same spot their friends got killed. You can also clear out part of a level where it seems every enemy heard the battle and joined in, only to find that one guy on the edge of the play area who heard none of it and is still wandering around in his own little space.

One glitch toward the end had enemies that were not that far away blinking in and out of existence as I was aiming at them. I am fully aware that there is a PS5 graphic upgrade available or coming that may have cleared that up, but I got the game for the PS4 so I was good to play that version.

The Last of Us Part II is another in a long line of great games from Naughty Dog, and even though the character motivations seemed to drift away from my own preconceptions, it was certainly an excellent storytelling experience, and a fun game to slog through. It is my sincerest hope that there is never a third game in this series, as the second part seemed to double the gameplay and game size and quadruple the depression. I'd be good with moving on after this chapter. 

2023 Year In Review

 While 2023 will go down as yet another crapfest of a year in our ongoing downward spiral toward the collapse of civilization, there was still a lot of fun to be had in the videogame world! Let's get on with my annual review of what I did in the year 2023:

Beaten in 2023:

Tenchu Z (360)

Horizon Forbidden West (PS5)

Fable II Pub Games (360)

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies (3DS)

Arkadian Warriors (360)

Dust: An Elysian Tail (360)

Light Crusader (Genesis)

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (One)

Alan Wake II (Series)

King's Quest (Windows/GOG)

Quake (One)

Games of the Year:

Winner: Alan Wake II (Series)

Runner-Up: The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

Runner-Up: Horizon Forbidden West (PS5)

Runner-Up: Dust: An Elysian Tail (360)

The Year in Review:

I beat Tenchu Z, an old From Software title for the Xbox 360. While long and repetitive, the stealth gameplay was a blast, so I finished it. I have my eye on their modern ninja title, Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, for a future campaign.

I started out the year with a shiny new Playstation 5 and spent three months on Horizon Forbidden West. Then, instead of pacing myself, I jumped right into The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and before I knew it it was late August. My break from Zelda is ongoing as of this writing, but I hope to return to it and finish it soon, unlike my playthrough of the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the Wii, which of course remains unfinished to this day.

I picked up a few Odyssey 2 homebrew games this year like Tunnels of Terror, but also completed my collection of the rare Brazilian Parker Brothers games by acquiring Frogger, Super Cobra, and QBert. I was amazed at how well they pulled off these arcade translations for the Odyssey 2.

For "unfinished business", I finally argued my way through Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies, a 3DS game I had started a few years ago and had played a little. While I missed the DLC and the other Phoenix Wright game on the 3DS, I was glad to hear that they are getting reissued for the Switch sometime soon, so that is good.

I pulled the trigger on an XBox Series X just in time for the unexpected release of Alan Wake II. I am now caught up on consoles. It was easy to set up, the interface is the same as the XBox One, and with Gamepass there are lots of games to try.

Speaking of which, there were lots of games I tried this year but not enough to write here about. I am currently playing Super Mario Wonder with the wife right now, but in 2023 I enjoyed Romancelvania on the PS5, Goat Simulator 3 and Like a Dragon Gaiden The Man Who Erased His Name on the Series X, Ark: Survival Evolved and Clustertruck on the One, Legends of War Patton on the PS Vita, and lots of XBox 360 stuff.

The XBox 360 still holds a special place in my heart, and on it I tried out Eets Chowdown, Aegis Wing, and Wing Commander Arena this year. In fact, I moved the 360 downstairs to the main setup again, so I could use the Kinect peripheral with it, and we even played Kinect Party on it again for the first time in a decade.

A lot of the 360 activity I enjoyed was because of the announcement that the XBox 360 would lose its online store in 2024, so there were some games I had to get before they disappear forever. One of the new gaming habits I picked up in 2023 was to watch for games getting delisted on this site, as the digital age means that downloaded games that one pays for can suddenly disappear for a lot of reasons. All the more reason to own physical copies of games.

The year ahead looks like total crap, but I know with my backlog of videogames in hand, I will be able to endure all of it until the power goes out for the final time. 

Beaten: Quake (One)

 While I try to beat one videogame from each decade every year, it's more of a guideline, so if I want to play more older games, I certainly can. Although I had played a 1990s Genesis game (Light Crusader) earlier in 2023, I decided to hit one more 1990s classic, the first-person shooter Quake.

Quake was Id Software's follow-up to their groundbreaking Doom games, expanding on that game's success with an eye on the emerging multiplayer shooter crowd. Quake was a very popular multiplayer game in those years, as evidenced by all the Quake players who I encountered in Ultima Online who were confused by all that roleplaying crap.

I was not interested in the multiplayer (even the XBox One remaster I played has it), but rather the single player campaign. Like Doom, Quake has the player running fast through multiple levels stuffed with monsters and secrets, rarely with more than enough ammo to make it past the next encounter. I got a taste of this old school simplicity a few years ago when I played Marathon: Durandal on the 360 and was wanting some more, hence Quake.

At first, I was not resolved to beat the game, but rather to try out a few levels as a change of pace from other games I was playing. I found myself having so much fun that, after finishing the first of four parts, I decided to keep playing to the main campaign's conclusion.

The gameplay was all that familiar refrain of running, shooting, searching, and dying, with a few variations like a low gravity level thrown in. One can save anywhere, so I developed the smart habit of not only saving frequently but of saving at the beginning of the level in case I wasted too much ammo and needed to replay the whole thing.

The music was provided by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, and I am grateful that this XBox One remake retained that soundtrack, as it is moody and epic.  Differing from Doom, the final level had an interesting boss fight that took me a few days/attempts to figure out, but was really satisfying. Quake has its place in history, and I am glad I finally got a chance to play it and see why.

Beaten: King's Quest (Windows/GOG)

 I was feeling so smug in the summer of 1985, having just procured a Commodore 64 computer and the requisite 1541 Disk Drive, as I was finally able to play state-of-the-art computer games. And oh, those games flowed that summer - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Adventure Construction Set, Nine Princes in Amber, and on and on.

However, I was quickly shown that I was not really state of the art, as a few games had emerged that required more computing power. One such game that looked really good but was out of reach was King's Quest for the emerging IBM PCjr and other more powerful computers.  It didn't slow me down too much, though, as the Commodore 64 was at the height of its popularity and was getting all sorts of great new games.

I try to complete at least one game from each decade every year, so this year I choose King's Quest for my 1980s game, and found it available for dirt cheap on Good Old Games. I broke out a pencil and paper, too, as these games did not hold your hand nor have built-in mapping. 

King's Quest has the player control a character by using the mouse to point and click at places on the screen to move. The player also types in commands like GET DAGGER to interact with items and things on the screen. The game world is pretty big for the time, with over 50 screens to explore.

Remembering that era fondly, and knowing what was possible in gaming at the time, allowed me to be blown away by the graphics in 2023 as I would have been in 1985. Each screen in King's Quest is gorgeous, bright, colorful, and memorable. The screens connect in all four compass directions and wrap around if one keeps going in a certain direction.

Gameplay is exploration and experimentation, and my first task was to map out the world as much as I could, and pick up any items I found. I was a few days into my playthrough when I noticed the command bar at the top of the screen, which showed me there was a jump command and a swim command that one could enter on the keyboard. That was a game changer, as the jump command especially was crucial to beating the game and the swim command kept me from drowning and allowed me to cut across lakes. Some rivers, however, cannot be crossed by swimming.

The puzzles were good, too, with some having multiple solutions. The game has a score number, based on actions and acquisitions, so the solution the player chooses might not be the best one. Using a treasure to bribe the troll to cross the bridge might work, but at the loss of the points one gained by picking up that treasure. Finding the better solution will save those points.

Once the trial and error of exploring the world was done, it was a matter of figuring out which item to use when and where to get to the ending with the most points. The actual quest the king gives sends the player looking for three treasures. One was pretty easy, the second required the only use of the jump command I found, and the last one required trying out a new text command that had not come up before.

King's Quest is a fantastic game with great gameplay and gorgeous graphics that took the old school text adventure with a graphic background and, using the mouse control as well as text commands in 1985, set the pace for the genre throughout the rest of the 80s and into the 1990s. I will definitely look at more King's Quest games down the road when I am getting that point-and-click adventure itch.

Beaten: Alan Wake II (Series)

Long ago, in the age before the internet, videogame release dates were not really known. Thanks to magazines at the time, we knew that Atari had licensed Pac-Man for the 2600, but not when the game was coming out. Also, the lead time on magazine articles often meant that by the time the magazine had news or even a review of an upcoming game, it was showing up in stores.

As gaming got bigger, game releases became an event, such as camping out at Gamestop for a midnight opening. We watched the internet for trailers and release dates and couldn't wait to get a copy of the new game in our hands. Maybe some still do that, but for me, I just don't get hyped up for a game these days like I used to. 

So when I heard that Alan Wake II was finally in the works, I was nonplussed, thinking "Yeah, so is a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil". I paid no attention to any release dates, as those are frequently optimistic and/or inaccurate, and I did not scrape the internet for tidbits. I just heard about the game's imminent release a few weeks before it came out, watched the trailer, and decided that it looked good enough to purchase a new XBox Series X console.

The first Alan Wake came out the same day as Red Dead Redemption, so it was not a commercial success for Remedy, the company that created it. Microsoft did not want a sequel, so the few of us who were hoping for one were told it is not coming. Remedy moved on to other projects, like Quantum Break (which I hated), and then Control (which I haven't tried), which was not only a hit, but was apparently set in the same universe as Alan Wake.

This apparently was what the company needed to do to get where they could make Alan Wake II, and it was a smart strategy. Without any interference from anyone else, they were free to make the game they wanted to, and they really pulled it off.

Alan Wake II is a worthy sequel for the faithful among us who waited, and I'd certainly recommend playing the first game and its DLC ahead of this sequel. My fears that the big budget would transform the game into an Ubisoft-style endless open world (Assassin's Creed/Farcry) and that the combat would be less flashlighty and more bullety, were unfounded.

Everything that the first game had at its core, from mood to gameplay to graphics, has been improved. The world is bigger, including not just the first game's town of Bright Falls, but neighboring areas as well. The graphics on the XBox Series X are amazing, load times are fast, and the sound effects and mood music are all top notch.

This is a game that is mostly about story, though, and boy does it come packed with it. It takes the amount of time since the first game and owns it, and starts with a new character - an FBI agent - who is investigating serial murders in Bright Falls, which ties into Alan Wake's disappearance there all those years ago.

Play switches between this FBI Agent and Wake, who is trapped in some dark dimension thingy, during the game. The back and forth between the characters works really well and ties together at the end in an epic fashion. Exploring, combat, and careful item management are all a part of the gameplay and are carefully balanced.

Enemies called "taken" are back from the first game, requiring a blast from the flashlight to weaken them and sometimes reveal a weak spot, before the player sends bullets their way. It's a really cool and original combat style that is easy to learn and fun to execute. Batteries are as important as bullets in this world.

Did I mention the members of the band from the first game, the Old Gods of Asgard, are back and get plenty of time to shine as characters and as musicians. There is also the plot thread of Alan Wake's wife, who has been dealing with his disappearance. Night Springs, a Twilight Zone type of TV show, still airs on some TVs in the game, along with a set of crazy local commercials from two of the other characters the player meets.

As mentioned earlier, Remedy's previous release Control tied into the Alan Wake universe, and that tie is strengthened as members of the Federal Bureau of Control, whatever that is, show up due to the supernatural goings-on. It definitely made me want to go back and play Control at some point.

I only had one instance of the game locking up, but other than that it ran smoothly. Alan Wake II is an absolute masterpiece in every aspect. The story expands and continues, the gameplay is more fleshed-out and fun, everything cool about the first game is carried over, and the conclusion is much more satisfying than the cliffhanger at the end of the first Alan Wake game. I put over 50 hours into Alan Wake II and none of it felt tedious or unapproachable. 

To conclude, I'll just say that this is how you do a sequel.