for those wondering what difficulty to play it on, i'd suggest normal for your first run
no doubt, it's not very hard if you've played this sort of game before, and you'll only tend to die through dumb mistakes and impatience, but things change up a bit later on that i won't spoil - but it gets hard, and there's a reason for it getting hard, and if you were playing a genuinely hard game all along you might miss an emotional moment or two
i'm a die-hard uncharted fan who beat the thing on crushing several times over, and i absolutely can't wait to unlock the survivor mode in the last of us. i had been thinking i should have done the whole thing on hard, but i've changed my mind. the default difficulty is pitched where it is for a reason.
There is a scene about an hour before the end that got me seriously, seriously misty-eyed.
That scene with the giraffes was just transcendent. Like they've just been crushed down by so much grimness and despair and tension, and then you turn around a corner and it's just this suddenly magical, beautiful moment, like they've stepped out of time. I seriously didn't want to keep going for a while, just let them stay in the moment.
Also this game has one hell of an ending. Like it's the opposite of the ME3 ending, I don't think there could be a more fitting, morally complex, perfect ending to the game.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Bale: you are the leader of a small group of either hunters or fireflies. Every round you play of multi counts as a day. Your group requires a certain amount of supplies to remain healthy daily. You get those from picking them up in world off bodies or by winning the round.
If you succeed at earning your daily supplies, your chance of growing the population increases. If you don't, you'll lose members.
There are two types of missions that affect your population as well. Regular events allow you to earn new clan members and powerful in-game boosters. They last three rounds and you get to pick what you want to do.
Cataclysm events are things like infected attacks. You will always lose a portion of your population at the end of the three days. Perform better to lose the least amount possible.
The meta game lasts 12 weeks (84 multi matches) if you can make it to the end of the 12 weeks and still have some of your population, you've essentially "won" the meta game. It's tougher than it seems though.
I'd love to hear all of your feedback on the clarity of this system. I'm currently reworking some screens with the multi design lead for a future patch!
Edit: oh and connect to Facebook! It doesn't post anything it just pulls your friends names and pictures so they populate your clan. It makes it more intense when it's like "your mom is going to die if you don't win this next round" haha
Like I appreciate the humor of it, and multiplayer is sort of inherently a silly thing anyway so fair enough, but to me that doesn't make it more intense, because every time your sister's boyfriend's brother who's kind of a dick dies and you see his name pop up it takes you out of the immersion, and you know he's not REALLY dead. As opposed to a randomly generated fictional character, who dies and stays dead forever.
Like for a contrast, look at XCOM, which manages to get you super invested in your squad despite their utter lack of any personality at all except for what you mentally ascribe to them. Giving them Avenger theme names or naming them after PA forumers reduces your anthropomorphism of them. I don't regret the deaths of the roughly 5 zillion forumers I've let down (and/or die because they can't make a goddamn 95% shot), but losing Captain Flynn Johnson, Badass Dude? Still a little bummed about that one, he died so the squad could live.
EDIT: The facebook thing seems especially out of place in THIS game, which is so clearly all about removing as many "game-isms" from between the player and the world of the game. Very little HUD, very very minimalist designs, no quickly accessed overhead map or "go here" shining beacons.
Anyway that's just more of a philosophical disagreement, this game is goddamn amazing and at some point I'm going to write up a long post to fellate it properly.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Let me note that I wrote that on 4 hours of sleep and no food today
So I sort of took a random goofy comment and got all blah de blah on it
which now that I've got some food in me I'm mildly regretting
Although I do think it's a weird choice for a game like Last of Us to have a feature like that
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
heart of darkness has been my favourite story since i read it, and this isn't that, but the ending hits the same note - modernity necessitates that we lie to ourselves. in a narrative that goes to such brutal depths as this, that's the only way you can really end it without the big questions still lingering. it all comes together so naturally that you understand that this was a game created to support a story that had to be told - even if it's been told before, though not often - rather than a story created to support a game. i mentioned previously that this may be the best videogame yet and for me that's no longer in doubt, but at the very least it represents a peak of using the medium to communicate something.
they could have gone all HBO, used this for a blunt, fashionable, cut-to-credits cliffhanger ending and people would have still largely lauded it. that would have been a good ending, but this game doesn't have an ending. it has the whole damned story, which is rare at the moment.
So I was going to wait until I finish my backlog to buy this. But I'm selling my magic cards and pricing them I'm already at over $600 in net worth of rares alone. Therefore I am buying this game after I unload these damn cards
I've just been watching day9 play this since I don't have a ps3.
Man, that intro sequence. I hope one day some company makes a survival horror where you principally play as a scared little kid, because that entire sequence was super powerful.
hey beavo i don't know if you had anything to do with this but i really appreciated that i only ended up getting, what, one trophy? through the single player campaign. it is a game that thrives on its immersion and the balance of peripheral elements works finely enough that trophies would probably be a bother. besides, the game's too damned good. i can hunt the rest out in the coming days. weeks. decades.
So I was going to wait until I finish my backlog to buy this. But I'm selling my magic cards and pricing them I'm already at over $600 in net worth of rares alone. Therefore I am buying this game after I unload these damn cards
good because i need peeps to play sick nasty multiplayer games with
I've just been watching day9 play this since I don't have a ps3.
Man, that intro sequence. I hope one day some company makes a survival horror where you principally play as a scared little kid, because that entire sequence was super powerful.
I'm just kind of holding off on even writing anything much about the ending until most people have beat the game
But man I'm really looking forward to those conversations
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Several species of Cordyceps are considered to be medicinal mushrooms in classical Asian pharmacologies, such as that of traditional Chinese[3][unreliable source?] and Tibetan medicines.
i'm not saying this game needs a prequel, naughty dog, but you do have those nice himalayan assets already made...
I thought this game was a little unsettling but not scary. Cause I was playing at my girlfriends house
got back home. With the big tv and surround sound. And oh my god that was one of the scariest things I've ever played.
Hotel basement type thing with the bloater and lots of enemies. So god damn tense and scary
oh man, the hotel basement:
As soon as I turned on the generator and I heard stuff spawn I thought to myself "well okay, I've got almost a dozen shotgun shells, i'll just crouch here and mow them down as they charge me."
Then the first thing to turn the corner is a bloater so I said FUCK THAT and just sprinted to the card reader.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
+2
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ArtreusI'm a wizardAnd that looks fucked upRegistered Userregular
I thought this game was a little unsettling but not scary. Cause I was playing at my girlfriends house
got back home. With the big tv and surround sound. And oh my god that was one of the scariest things I've ever played.
Hotel basement type thing with the bloater and lots of enemies. So god damn tense and scary
oh man, the hotel basement:
As soon as I turned on the generator and I heard stuff spawn I thought to myself "well okay, I've got almost a dozen shotgun shells, i'll just crouch here and mow them down as they charge me."
Then the first thing to turn the corner is a bloater so I said FUCK THAT and just sprinted to the card reader.
Wait did you find the card first? Because I think the generator was one of the first things I did. Which, was kind of stupid in retrospect. So I had to pick the guys off one by one and just avoid the hell out of the bloater, all while frantically checking every place I could see for the dang card, having died trying to open the door previously.
I thought this game was a little unsettling but not scary. Cause I was playing at my girlfriends house
got back home. With the big tv and surround sound. And oh my god that was one of the scariest things I've ever played.
Hotel basement type thing with the bloater and lots of enemies. So god damn tense and scary
oh man, the hotel basement:
As soon as I turned on the generator and I heard stuff spawn I thought to myself "well okay, I've got almost a dozen shotgun shells, i'll just crouch here and mow them down as they charge me."
Then the first thing to turn the corner is a bloater so I said FUCK THAT and just sprinted to the card reader.
Wait did you find the card first? Because I think the generator was one of the first things I did. Which, was kind of stupid in retrospect. So I had to pick the guys off one by one and just avoid the hell out of the bloater, all while frantically checking every place I could see for the dang card, having died trying to open the door previously.
I found the door first, then the card, then the generator
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Just stopped for the day partway through Bill's town, just before the school
Am I the only one who hopped into the pool outside the house right after you climb over the RV and before the school, just in case there was a Marco Polo callback?
hey beavo i don't know if you had anything to do with this but i really appreciated that i only ended up getting, what, one trophy? through the single player campaign. it is a game that thrives on its immersion and the balance of peripheral elements works finely enough that trophies would probably be a bother. besides, the game's too damned good. i can hunt the rest out in the coming days. weeks. decades.
That was all the game and creative directors. They were very anti anything that broke immersion.
hey beavo i don't know if you had anything to do with this but i really appreciated that i only ended up getting, what, one trophy? through the single player campaign. it is a game that thrives on its immersion and the balance of peripheral elements works finely enough that trophies would probably be a bother. besides, the game's too damned good. i can hunt the rest out in the coming days. weeks. decades.
That was all the game and creative directors. They were very anti anything that broke immersion.
Yeah, I really noticed... well, not noticing any of that stuff.
It's especially welcome considering how lately most games have been like CHEEVOS MUST HAVE CHEEVOS OR THEY WON'T PLAY OUR GAME
It usually just annoys me
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
At the first real part with the infected and I keep dying dangit
Stealth is mad OP, but it is fleeting.
My advice; eliminate the more mobile enemy AI first if possible. Sleeping guys will remain asleep as long as you don't do anything to wake/alert them or the other enemies in the area. Capitalize on this by choking out out more dangerous ones first and then return to the sleeping ones before you say, start combat or do some other risky gameplay.
At the first real part with the infected and I keep dying dangit
Stealth is mad OP, but it is fleeting.
My advice; eliminate the more mobile enemy AI first if possible. Sleeping guys will remain asleep as long as you don't do anything to wake/alert them or the other enemies in the area. Capitalize on this by choking out out more dangerous ones first and then return to the sleeping ones before you say, start combat or do some other risky gameplay.
You can do it!
It's also really hard to cleanly stealth everyone in that section. Best to learn to move in and out of stealth as needed, you're going to need that.
that awkward moment when you're holding your pistol to a struggling hostage's head - five or six guards with their own guns aimed at you - and you ruthlessly pull the trigger to hear a hollow click.
This is the first game I've played - ever - where I will accept "it's not fun" as a valid argument for a well-made game
Because this game isn't fun, at all, honestly
Either I'm sneaking through a room full of Clickers and I hate my life because I know one of them's gonna fucking grab me
Or I'll try taking out a room full of dudes in various ways and I will inevitably fuck up somewhere and when I am caught it is exhausting and tense but never annoying
Like basically they made a game using the trial-and-error Hitman model that's actually good instead of just stupid bullshit
EDIT: Maybe that comes off a little harsh. Maybe this is just a different kind of fun, like enjoying a horror movie. I've never seen a horror movie I enjoyed because they're usually just poorly-made and not actually scary.
Whatever. Point is, I like what this game is doing.
Also a first for me, I pretty much never do hard mode first. Typically I'll start on easy, and if I enjoy it, ramp it up each time on multiple playthroughs.
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Hi five me too
http://www.audioentropy.com/
no doubt, it's not very hard if you've played this sort of game before, and you'll only tend to die through dumb mistakes and impatience, but things change up a bit later on that i won't spoil - but it gets hard, and there's a reason for it getting hard, and if you were playing a genuinely hard game all along you might miss an emotional moment or two
i'm a die-hard uncharted fan who beat the thing on crushing several times over, and i absolutely can't wait to unlock the survivor mode in the last of us. i had been thinking i should have done the whole thing on hard, but i've changed my mind. the default difficulty is pitched where it is for a reason.
Also this game has one hell of an ending. Like it's the opposite of the ME3 ending, I don't think there could be a more fitting, morally complex, perfect ending to the game.
If you succeed at earning your daily supplies, your chance of growing the population increases. If you don't, you'll lose members.
There are two types of missions that affect your population as well. Regular events allow you to earn new clan members and powerful in-game boosters. They last three rounds and you get to pick what you want to do.
Cataclysm events are things like infected attacks. You will always lose a portion of your population at the end of the three days. Perform better to lose the least amount possible.
The meta game lasts 12 weeks (84 multi matches) if you can make it to the end of the 12 weeks and still have some of your population, you've essentially "won" the meta game. It's tougher than it seems though.
I'd love to hear all of your feedback on the clarity of this system. I'm currently reworking some screens with the multi design lead for a future patch!
Edit: oh and connect to Facebook! It doesn't post anything it just pulls your friends names and pictures so they populate your clan. It makes it more intense when it's like "your mom is going to die if you don't win this next round" haha
Like I appreciate the humor of it, and multiplayer is sort of inherently a silly thing anyway so fair enough, but to me that doesn't make it more intense, because every time your sister's boyfriend's brother who's kind of a dick dies and you see his name pop up it takes you out of the immersion, and you know he's not REALLY dead. As opposed to a randomly generated fictional character, who dies and stays dead forever.
Like for a contrast, look at XCOM, which manages to get you super invested in your squad despite their utter lack of any personality at all except for what you mentally ascribe to them. Giving them Avenger theme names or naming them after PA forumers reduces your anthropomorphism of them. I don't regret the deaths of the roughly 5 zillion forumers I've let down (and/or die because they can't make a goddamn 95% shot), but losing Captain Flynn Johnson, Badass Dude? Still a little bummed about that one, he died so the squad could live.
EDIT: The facebook thing seems especially out of place in THIS game, which is so clearly all about removing as many "game-isms" from between the player and the world of the game. Very little HUD, very very minimalist designs, no quickly accessed overhead map or "go here" shining beacons.
Anyway that's just more of a philosophical disagreement, this game is goddamn amazing and at some point I'm going to write up a long post to fellate it properly.
So I sort of took a random goofy comment and got all blah de blah on it
which now that I've got some food in me I'm mildly regretting
Although I do think it's a weird choice for a game like Last of Us to have a feature like that
It's important to get feedback like this. We do this stuff in our little bubbles
they could have gone all HBO, used this for a blunt, fashionable, cut-to-credits cliffhanger ending and people would have still largely lauded it. that would have been a good ending, but this game doesn't have an ending. it has the whole damned story, which is rare at the moment.
i'll shut up.
Man, that intro sequence. I hope one day some company makes a survival horror where you principally play as a scared little kid, because that entire sequence was super powerful.
good because i need peeps to play sick nasty multiplayer games with
Among the Sleep is exactly that
But man I'm really looking forward to those conversations
i'm not saying this game needs a prequel, naughty dog, but you do have those nice himalayan assets already made...
I think I'm gonna take it back to Redbox and force myself to actually buy a copy if I wanna see the rest
got back home. With the big tv and surround sound. And oh my god that was one of the scariest things I've ever played.
oh man, the hotel basement:
Then the first thing to turn the corner is a bloater so I said FUCK THAT and just sprinted to the card reader.
so bad at this game
"One time I texted the girl who did the ui on that game"
People will want to touch my cel phone.
"Also she voiced a zombie."
People will want to touch me
That was all the game and creative directors. They were very anti anything that broke immersion.
Yeah, I really noticed... well, not noticing any of that stuff.
It's especially welcome considering how lately most games have been like CHEEVOS MUST HAVE CHEEVOS OR THEY WON'T PLAY OUR GAME
It usually just annoys me
Stealth is mad OP, but it is fleeting.
My advice; eliminate the more mobile enemy AI first if possible. Sleeping guys will remain asleep as long as you don't do anything to wake/alert them or the other enemies in the area. Capitalize on this by choking out out more dangerous ones first and then return to the sleeping ones before you say, start combat or do some other risky gameplay.
You can do it!
Oh, hey, I didn't know that! Where exactly? (Gimme those spoiler tags.)
It's also really hard to cleanly stealth everyone in that section. Best to learn to move in and out of stealth as needed, you're going to need that.
Because this game isn't fun, at all, honestly
Either I'm sneaking through a room full of Clickers and I hate my life because I know one of them's gonna fucking grab me
Or I'll try taking out a room full of dudes in various ways and I will inevitably fuck up somewhere and when I am caught it is exhausting and tense but never annoying
Like basically they made a game using the trial-and-error Hitman model that's actually good instead of just stupid bullshit
EDIT: Maybe that comes off a little harsh. Maybe this is just a different kind of fun, like enjoying a horror movie. I've never seen a horror movie I enjoyed because they're usually just poorly-made and not actually scary.
Whatever. Point is, I like what this game is doing.
Yes
Also a first for me, I pretty much never do hard mode first. Typically I'll start on easy, and if I enjoy it, ramp it up each time on multiple playthroughs.