status 2013 July

Since watching The Last of Us, I haven't done much. Mostly just plodding through Age of Empires 2, just so I can finish and be done with it.

Starcraft 2 expansion (Heart of the Swarm) went on sale, $10 off. Blizzard hardly ever has sales, until the product is years and years old, so I bought it. The reviews are not good. But its a Blizzard product - so I have to buy it! But I didn't buy Diablo 3, because of all the bad reviews, and I'm still not regretting that.

I better stick with the game plan though, of finishing off the oldest games first. At least, I better finish AOE2, or I never will.

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Some weeks later, and I've chipped away at AOE2 for so long that its gone. It definitely made a pleasant diversion here and there, but it was starting to wear thin. I can say I'm well and truly done, except that they re-released the game in HD. I guess I'll check that out some day if it is on a good sale.

What do I do with the AOE2 Gold Edition box and cd? I think I'll start a new box called "SELL", and later when I have more downtime, I'll sell off all my retired games.

But now where do I go? Something recent, like Starcraft, which I've paid good money for and is just sitting there waiting for me on my hard drive, or keep on going through those old games?

BTW, I still think about The Last of Us sometimes. Its the sign of a good game, or at least the sign of a game with good hooks, that you're still thinking about it weeks and months later. And I didn't even play it, I just watched a playthrough. This is about as close as I've ever come to wanting to get a modern console, even though I know I would probably be endlessly annoyed by console issues.

The Last Of Us (2013)

I didn't plan on watching a playthrough of Last Of Us, I just fell into it and couldn't (didn't want to) get out. I normally avoid playthroughs unless I am forced to by technology or circumstance. Walkthroughs reek of spoilers and laziness, but sometimes you have to hold your nose and push through to salvage what you can of a gaming experience. The Last of Us is PS3 only, and will likely never be on PC, so normally I would just put it out of my mind, but the beautiful post-apocalyptic environment, and the non-traditional protagonists (all according to the box art, at least) kept calling to me.

Console games rarely make it to PC, and usually when they do, the conversion is so bad you wish they didn't bother. And by bad conversion, I mean little to no conversion at all; instead of adding depth to the controls and graphics, it will still feel like a clunky cartoonish console game. The Grand Theft Auto series provides examples and even some counter-examples of how to do this. So even if The Last of Us comes to Windows, it will be probably late and inadequate.

With this in mind it was easy to start watching a playthrough. First, I had to find one where the player would stop narrating. Most people are nowhere near as interesting as they think, and it ruins the playthrough to hear them babbling. A successful playthrougher must be a transparent layer between the viewer and the game. I watched the 52 part playthrough by "HassanAlHajry" over the course of a few weeks, and it felt like watching a mini-series on TV. And it stayed with me for days afterwards. It's been a month since I first started watching, and I'm still thinking about the ending.

*spoilers*

At first, it seems as if our hero is making a selfish decision at the end, but more layers develop as he carries it out. Whatever you might think of the ending, it is debatable why he did what he did, and why he thinks he did what he did. Also debatable are the consequences. I really hope they don't make a sequel here, because this is a really thought provoking place to stop the story.

After thinking about it a while now, most of the questions have collapsed into themselves, and the ending doesn't seem so controversial. First and foremost - was Joel acting selfishly, not wanting to sacrifice his surrogate daughter, humanity be damned? To some extent yes, but it doesn't matter. The Fireflies might have thought they were the good guys (everyone thinks they are the good guys), but they were hardly any different a force than any of the other savage tribes that only speak the language of violence (Hunters, Cannibals, Army), all of which Joel had to fight and defeat to survive.

OK, so the Fireflies are assholes, but that alone doesn't mean they need to be put down. Their crime is being idiots. This is foreshadowed early by one of their supposed scientists releasing test monkeys, getting bitten and infected, which forced the closing and evacuation of the their base. This is a big indicator that these people do not know what they're doing, and are fooling themselves that they are the scientists who can save humanity. And when they finally get their hands on the holy grail, an asymptomatic carrier, their first thought is to kill it and study the remains for an answer. Does this sound rational, or the least bit scientific? Killing your only only live specimen is the last possible test you try, if at all, and yet these idiots couldn't wait to jump into it. This might be their last chance to save humanity, and they were in a hurry even though there was no time pressure. I have little faith that these buffoons in lab coats would have discovered anything of value. Maybe some day Joel and Ellie will find some real scientists, and she can fulfill her destiny, and hopefully in a non-destructive way. Joel saved her from those hacks, so at least humanity still has a chance.

The ending seems almost deliberately muddled by the artificial crisis created by the Fireflies bloodthirstiness to kill the only known immune. If they had calmly and rationally explained to Joel and Ellie - which they probably would have had to do at gunpoint - they may have convinced them that this was for the best, and they might even have submitted to it. Of course, this might also have allowed Joel and Ellie to think for more than a minute and realize that there's plenty of work that can be done before anyone needs to die. The Fireflies seem to know they are doing something wrong, by their deliberate haste, and richly deserve the ass kicking that Joel dispenses. I can't decide if the ending is deliberately good writing or not, but its the ending we're stuck with. If only they had made the Fireflies plan seem more likely to succeed, they might have given the game that ambiguous moral ending. But the way they painted it, there is no ambiguous ending, which seems to sour the story with a little last minute incompetence, in what is otherwise a largely competent story.

Let me rephrase all that if it isn't clear - the game does NOT conclude with a morally ambiguous ending at all. The Fireflies were poor scientists at best, and the only right thing to do was not let them destroy what was humanities possible last hope. Joel was absolutely correct in killing them as much as necessary to save humanity's last hope, so at least there is some chance of trying again later. And yet the game seems to push the trappings of a morally ambiguous ending (the white lies, the self doubts, the unacknowledged acceptance of those white lies, etc.), which makes me doubt the authors knew what they were doing. What a wonderful mess.

It's easy to dismiss all that, because the game leaves you with some deep emotional impressions, that last quite a while. The atmosphere, the characters, the world, it adds up to a powerful whole, and nothing more needs to be said.

I hope they don't make a sequel.

Grand Theft Auto 4: wear this yoke

I couldn't get past a helicopter mission with the keyboard. I've always been able to muddle through before, but I can't handle the helicopter for flying and fighting at the same time. I've been putting this moment off for as long as possible, but its time to break out the console controller.

I have an old "Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows" with a controller. Download drivers, install. Restart the computer!? While I'm rebooting, might as well change the batteries; its been years since I touched this thing (why did I even buy this thing?) OK, I'm back.

Is this thing on? I press the big Xbox logo ball, and get some lights. I'd like to test this thing before I start. Maybe there's some simple utility or game I could try. I read around. Try running "joy.cpl", the built-in calibration tool either doesn't work or doesn't make sense. Maybe I should just try the game and see what happens.

OK, with the controller I can run around and do a lot of basic actions. It's actually a pleasant way to just walk about. Driving is a whole 'nother thing. Especially if I want to do anything other than drive, like shooting. But who cares, I'm still going to stick with the keyboard for everything but flying. Time to go try this out on a helicopter. Maybe I should just go jack a sight-seeing helicopter first, before even trying the mission.

Important safety tip: don't press that yellow Y button, you'll bail out in mid-air, no matter how high are you up. It startled me a little when I hit the ground and my hand vibrated - I forgot this controller has a little bit of force feedback.

Now this makes flying actually fun. I feel like a jerk for ever even trying to use a keyboard to fly. As easy as this now is, I still need practice. I switch to first person view - and holy shit I'm flying. It really feels like I'm flying. This is like a whole new game now! This is all I'm going to do from now on is fly!

OK, yeah, I need some more practice.

I tried the mission again, stealing the small military helicopter for that blowhard, and it went much better this time. Well, I strafed the target for a while without ever hitting it, and I eventually fell into the sea, but it was a lot more fun. It makes me want to go back to the GTA 3 games and try those helicopters again with the controller.

I realize something as I went to reload. My previous mission was to drop my boss off at Gracie's house (nice tie-in to Niko's story), and go to the internet cafe and write a post to a nasty blogger. That's it - drop someone off and then post something. Mission accomplished. My very next mission is to steal a helicopter from arms dealers, then use it to kill them. Is there something a little bit off about the pacing here?

We were there when it happened, when gaming went video.

We were playing pinball, and board-games, and role-playing games, but it wasn't enough. Then came arcades, and consoles and computers cheap enough to have at home.

We were the first, and now we are the last of the original video gamers, and we are still gaming.