“The Last of Us” Official Website
Rated “M” for Mature; Reviewed on Playstation 3
This is a short review of the playable demo of “The Last of Us” released on June first. Here I’ll be focusing on the environments and characters. Visit our sister site, MoreBrains.com, for our thoughts on the game’s enemies. I had previously discussed thoughts on the first trailer for the game in E3 Comments: “The Last of Us”.
“The Ratchet & Clank Collection” at amazon.com
Rated E10+; Reviewed on PS3
The “Ratchet and Clank” series, along with the equally excellent “Jak and Daxter” and “Sly Cooper“, made the PS2 the undisputed king of action platform games. While the “Jak” series soon took on an epic gravitas and Sly Cooper expanded on its trademark cartoon heists Ratchet and Clank were always about having a good time with a massive arsenal of insanely fun weapons.
“The Unfinished Swan” at playstation.com
Rated E10+; Reviewed on PS3
“The Unfinished Swan”, developed by Giant Sparrow, is the latest game to come out of Sony’s incubator initiatives. Sony is making a habit of spotting and encouraging promising new development teams. While the PS3 definitely can’t rival the PC in the sheer volume of independent and experimental games, it stands well above the other consoles in this area.
“Papo and Yo” at playstation.com
Rated E10+; Reviewed on PS3
Games can definitely be art, something I’ve discussed before. Art, as anything, has a value range. It can be beautiful but vacuous, ugly but meaningful and any other combination that you can imagine. Any screen shot of the game will tell you instantly that Papo and Yo is far from a beautiful game, but is it meaningful?
“Costume Quest” at playstation.com
Rated E for Everyone; Reviewed on PS3
Twins Reynold and Wren are new in town on the most important day of the year: Halloween! Their parents, misunderstanding the serious business of free candy suggest that they use this as opportunity to socialize and make new friends. Unfortunately the monstrous Grubbins are well aware of how serious candy is and have infiltrated your neighborhood to steal it all!
Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 at Amazon.com
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3 and PC
The Mass Effect games represent a grand experiment in game design and story-telling. Instead of reviewing the games individually I’d like to spend some time considering the evolution of the trilogy as a whole. In this first part I’ll set the stage by explaining how much I’ve invested in these games and clarifying what they promised to deliver.
I first played Mass Effect on the XBox 360 shortly after it was released. During the course of completing the game I had to replace two consoles due to the “Red Ring of Death” issue that plague the early 360’s. Eventually I ended up replacing four separate units (and spending way too much due to the insulting 90-day warranty of the original units). I decided to simply never play anything on the XBox 360 again unless I absolutely had to.
There are few studios that produce such uniformly excellent content as Naughty Dog. Producing exclusively for the Platform since the beginning their work has, in large part, defined each generation of PlayStation hardware. Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter and Nathan Drake are truly iconic characters. Never ones to over-stay their welcome the studio decided against a fourth “Uncharted” game and instead have moved into more serious territory with “The Last of Us”. They presented the first gameplay trailer at E3 and it’s absolutely stunning.
As I discussed in my comments on “Beyond: Two Souls” the most impressive games from E3 this year have not been those attempting to carve out new territory but rather those that have decided to polish existing genres. For all their undeniable genius Naughty Dog has never been known for truly orignal games. Rather they excel, more than any other studio, at perfecting existing paradigms. “Uncharted” was far from the first pop-and-shoot adventure game – but it was the best one.
French studio Quantic Dream, the highly regarded studio behind the under-appreciated classic “Indigo Prophecy” and 2010’s highly successful PS3 exclusive “Heavy Rain”, has announced their next game, “Beyond: Two Souls.” Surprisingly for a new announcement the trailer is substantial (over five minutes long) and offers a significant look into the tone being set by the game.
Quantic Dream has always approached their games firstly from a cinematic view-point and this one is no different. Ellen Page’s acting, seen clearly and meaningfully through the filter of the studio’s updated motion capture techniques, is clearly the focus of the trailer. However it’s also clear that this game will feature more action than many have come to expect from this team.
Rated E for Everyone; Reviewed on PS3
The debate as to whether video games can be “art” is worth no more time than any of the multitude of similar debates that raged in the past. Popular music, movies, comics, animation – essentially all new mediums – have been accused initially of lacking some quality that raises them to the level of “art”. The debate is worthless because the answer is always the same: yes, they can be art but most often aren’t.
(The fascination for me on this topic is that film critics often incite this ridiculous conversation. People who can see plainly that “The Seven Samurai” [IMDB] is art and “Mega Piranha” [IMDB] is not but are wholly unable to see that parallel in other fields. Baffling.)
“Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” at Amazon.com
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3 and PC
Skyrim is the kind of game that people either love (and almost definitely already know they’ll love) or hate (and almost definitely know that they’ll hate). My time with Skyrim trailed off after just shy of 190 hours of playtime – to which category do you think I belong?
I had planned on playing the game on the PS3 but after getting the Collector’s edition on Christmas my son started playing it. Knowing that my time with the game would be indefinitely delayed I took advantage of Steam’s one-day 50% off sale and bought the game on the PC. This resulted in us playing the game in the same room most of the time.
