The Last Of Us Part II

July 25, 2020 by Ronan Wills in Video Games

Note: This was going to be longer and more in-depth, but unfortunately migraines

The Last Of Us Part II (it’s called “Part II” instead of “2” because this is a Serious game) arrived with a lot of baggage. The first game was a beloved classic that many people--myself included--were deeply skeptical about the idea of a direct sequel to. The game’s developer, Naughty Dog, had its abusive working environment laid bare earlier this year in a devastating expose by Kotaku, leading many to question not just whether the game is good but whether it’s worth the human toll of its development. And finally, some of the game’s cut-scenes leaked in April, and while some of the story conclusions people jumped to on the basis of that turned out to be incorrect, the content revealed in the leaks turned a lot of potential players off.

I think the final product would have been divisive either way, but maybe these circumstances contributed to the polarized response it’s received since release. Some people truly hate this game, while others are proclaiming it as a masterpiece. Personally, I’m floating somewhere between those two extremes. TLOU2 is astonishingly, masterfully good at most of the things it tries to do; I’m just not always sure if the things it tries to do were worth doing to begin with.

Spoiler warning: This game was released under a ridiculous veil of secrecy, wherein reviewers were forbidden under pain of being fed to clickers from talking about core elements of the story, like the inciting incident of the plot or the game’s basic structure. I’m going to “spoil” those things because it’s impossible to talk about the game meaningfully otherwise, so if you want to experience the story like the developers intended then don’t read any further.

The Last Of Us Remastered and Revisited

June 24, 2020 by Ronan Wills in Video Games

The Last Of Us Part II (henceforth referred to as TLOU 2) came out recently, and the internet has been positively abuzz with chatter about Naughty Dog’s latest fungal zombie adventure. Everyone, relax: I’m going to play the game soon and review it, and then the matter will be settled for all time.

But before I do that I decided to replay the first game, which I haven’t revisited since it came out in 2013, via the PS4 remastered version. This isn’t going to be a full review since I already did one of those ages ago on the old blog, but rather a look at whether the game still holds up today.

Spoiler warning for the entire first game. Also please note that I haven’t looked at any of the leaked plot details of TLOU 2, so don’t talk about them in the comments.

Play my Mario Maker 2 levels

July 31, 2019 by Ronan Wills in Video Games

I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Maker 2 for the Nintendo Switch. Here are some levels I made.

Airship Infestation - YLK-8W6-5HF

A fleet of airships has been infested with dangerous spiky bois! Can you survive to the end? Short and slightly tricky.

Mysterious Pipe World - MCV-9K3-WJG

Enter the mysterious world of pipes and uncover the many wonder contained therein.

One small step for a plumber - 0MW-TPQ-XGF

A hitorically accurate recreation of the Apollo 11 mission. Defeat the low-orbit space turtles that guard the upper atmosphere and dodge lunar squid to plant your flag.

Have you been making Mario levels? Leave your level codes in the comments if you have!

E3 2019 vs the looming dystopia

June 19, 2019 by Ronan Wills in Video Games

E3! 2019! It happened! Like last year! Let's talk about it!

Expectations were low for the show this year. Sony, one of the Big Three, announced ahead of time that they were going to skip it entirely, and with the next generation of consoles coming we're officially in the liminal space where not a lot of games get announced since developers are all making stuff for the new hardware that they can't talk about yet.

Maybe it's because my expectations were so low, but I found this year's E3 more satisfying than the last several. There wasn't a whole lot actually new, but we got better looks at exciting projects and it's become clear that the first quarter of next year is going to be absurdly stacked with promising-looking games.

E3 2018 and the quest for #GayOnStage

June 15, 2018 by Ronan Wills in Video Games

It's once again the most videogamingest time of year, and the big pre-show press conferences have concluded. We saw new games and already-announced games, we saw an awkward white guy in sandals play a flute for what felt like an hour, and most importantly, one intrepid field journalist embarked on a mission to make E3 the gayest gaming show of all time.

It was a journey for that most elusive of beasts: gay, on stage. You might almost say it was #GayOnStage.

Far Cry 5

May 29, 2018 by Ronan Wills in Video Games

Picture this: an underground bunker, stuffed full of military-grade weaponry and bedecked with American flags. A middle-aged man with a beard sits at a table, pouring over maps. Red lines and circles criss-cross the maps; targets, avenues of attack. A radio mutters quietly in the corner.

How do you react to this scene? What kind of emotion does it instill? Fear? Uneasiness? Is the idea unsettling? Or do you identify with the bearded man and his bunker? Does this image fill you with patriotic fervor and resolve?

If your answer is “Who cares, let’s go WRECK SOME SHIT DAWG HELL YEAH” then congratulations on your new role as a Ubisoft employee.

Historical accuracy in video games

May 24, 2018 by Ronan Wills in Opinions, Video Games

The first trailer for Battlefield 5 (or V) released yesterday. In case you're not familiar with the series, it's considered to be the somewhat more complex, "realistic" counterpart to the Call of Duty games, emphasizing team and squad-based tactics over personal glory. The last installment in the series, Battlefield 1, went back to WWI. The sequel (Battlefield 5, are you confused yet?) is set in WWII, that conflict which is famously under-represented in video-game shooters.

Cue the trailer, which features four outlandishly-dressed super-soldiers leaping through windows, getting shot multiple times without apparent injury, blowing up a plane with an enemy grenade, and other ludicrous acts of cartoon violence. At the end, a British women with a Furiosa-style prosthetic arm clubs a Nazi to death with a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire.

Can you guess which part of that has The Gamers all riled up?

The Long Dark

August 15, 2017 by Ronan Wills in , Video Games

My video game options have been severely limited over the last seven months by medical issues that make it hard to concentrate on anything with too much difficulty or complexity (or story), so I've been gravitating towards games that don't ask a lot of the player in terms of mechanics. In practice this means I've been playing a lot of games where you walk around and look at things and/or where you walk around and collect things.

Enter The Long Dark, a sandbox survival game that recently left early access. The premise is that a mysterious electromagnetic storm disables all of humanity's technology, instantly plunging the world into a "quiet apocalypse". Your character had the misfortune to be flying over the northern Canadian wilderness when this happened, and now you've got to survive for as long as you can by scavenging abandoned human habitations and bending the hostile landscape and wildlife to your will. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion and temperature all have to be carefully managed, and death is permanent.

There's also a recently-included episodic story, but I've only tried out the survival mode so far. Unfortunately, anything higher than the lowest difficulty setting proved too taxing for me at the moment, so I'm probably not getting the experience the developers intended. Playing on "Pilgrim" mode tones down the survival mechanics to the point where they're not particularly challenging, but preserves them just enough so that they become a nuisance. Playing like this, the game also throws so many items at you that managing your rapidly-expanding inventory becomes a bigger hurdle than surviving the elements.

But I recognize that this is a particular quirk of my personal experience. Even with those caveats, the game has a lot to offer, including some beautiful stylized vistas (as seen in the gallery below) and a lot of atmosphere. The way electric lights flicker weakly to life whenever the aurora appears overhead is a nice touch, both lending a bit of creepiness to interior locations and giving the whole game the kind of mournful quality that a lot of post-apocalyptic stories reach for but never quite achieve. In that respect, The Long Dark reminded me a lot of Cormac McCarthy's The Road despite deliberately not featuring any of the brutality and cruelty of that story (which perhaps suggests that The Road's many imitators were missing the point).