Jan van den Berg

j11g.com

Category: Games

  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Red Dead Redemption 2

    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Red Dead Redemption 2

    It’s been over a week since I ‘finished’ the most anticipated game of 2018 (or maybe even of the last five years); Red Dead Redemption 2. I say finished in quotes, because I clocked in around 50 hours in a little less than three weeks just to finish the main campaign, but the more I learn about the game after finishing, the more I become convinced I haven’t even seen 10% of what there is to do and see in this enormous game. Still, I have some thoughts on this game, especially compared to the original Red Dead Redemption, which is among my favorite games of all time.

    So let’s dissect in true Western fashion, here’s the Good, Bad and Ugly of RDR2. (Beware, major spoilers are ahead).

    The Good

    Let me just start by pointing out that there is very little wrong with this game. This is a triple A game by a triple A studio who actively tried to push boundaries with their latest title and succeeded. So you can call it a quad A game if you like, I will not argue with you.

    • Details

    What every blog, vlog and review has already pointed out, is that the attention to detail in this game is just off the charts. There are many moments where you think “wait, they really thought about that, that is insane!”. My default mode is already that I am perpetually in awe by open world games. I always think that every piece of grass, every rock, every doorknob has been designed, created by someone and put there specifically. And considering the scale of most open world games, it never ceases to blow my mind. And what RDR2 does is take this to another level. Not just the size of the game (I mean the entire map of RDR1 is playable, are you kidding me?), but also the decisions and possibilities seem endless (everyone plays as Arthur but nobody looks alike, the combination of clothes and hairstyles seem infinitive). It is absolutely mind-boggling to me to think that people have created this, translated it to zeros and ones, put those on a disc that you can buy and put in a magical device which allows you to enter and participate in an entirely made up world. Just to get an idea of the level of detail, you can watch this video or many others about (hidden) details in this game.

    • Music/Soundtrack

    This game has at least three original songs that could easily chart by themselves. But apart from these very well placed songs in the game story, it’s the instrumental songs in fight missions  where I think I had the most fun. Running, shooting, horse riding while the most classic Western cowboy tunes you can think of accompany your actions. I love it.

    Check out That’s The Way It Is by Daniel Lanois (number 1) and May I? Unshaken by D’Angelo (number 6) from this list:

    Or, Cruel, Cruel World by Willie Nelson:

    • Combat system

    The original combat system from RDR1 is more or less unchanged in RDR2, which is the right decision. This system offers great balance between story and action. Meaning the game itself is not particularly difficult, and that is a good thing. Countless reloading of end-boss missions as most games do is tedious and frustrating and does damage to the story immersion. RDR2 does this just right.

    • Story 

    Games I enjoy the most, tend to be immersive story games. This is the reason why I like RDR1 so much. RDR2 has another great immersive story. It is not specifically unique, but it’s deep and broad and interesting enough to keep you engaged for 107 missions. And that’s quite a feat.

    • Characters

    There is no other game where so much attention has been given to the NPCs. They really seem to have their own life, particularly the fellow gang members. Usually great games, at most, have a partner backstory to the protagonist/ antagonist story. But not RDR2. Everything seems to be full of life and people and animals minding their own business. Things happen without you having anything to do with it. You are not playing the game so much as you are participating in the story.

    These five good aspects combined I’d like to argue that RDR2 is not a game in the classic sense, but it is not a movie either. It is something else. With lack for a better word it is a hybrid of a movie and a game. Playing RDR2 means you participate in a life-action movie where you are the director. It is a unique experience.

    There is a great NY Times piece, that more or less states the same, titled: Red Dead Redemption 2 Is True Art. I recommend reading it.

    Bonus: personal favorite part

    As a big fan of the first RDR, the part where John Marston gets his outfit from the first game was a goosebump part for me.

    The Bad

    • Arthur dies

    It’s pretty clear from the beginning, Arthur will die. And if you played RDR1 you know this for a fact, because there is no Arthur in RDR1. And maybe that’s part of the reason I never really felt as emotionally connected to Arthur as to John Marston from RDR1. It wasn’t until towards the end when Arthur falls out with Dutch that I started liking him more, but I think it was too late by then. Because not soon after, Arthur dies. But even before that, Arthur could sometimes be quite the asshole. In missions where he has to beat up some poor dad in front of his wife and kids, I particularly didn’t like that I had no say in this and it certainly didn’t help to increase his likeability. Also the backstory for Arthur is unclear (to me), how did he and Dutch meet, what happened there? So, even after spending 50 hours with Arthur and of course generally liking him and feeling bummed out in how he died (why!?) I didn’t really miss Arthur after that, like the first RDR. I remember after finishing RDR1 it struck a chord and I thought about it for a couple of days.

    • Redemption?

    And this is where the comparison with the first RDR comes in. John Marston from RDR1 is one of the greatest game characters of all time. He is the torn and wounded protagonist who is trying his best to put his bad past behind him. He is looking for redemption! It was just that bad luck (or bandits) seemed to follow him around. This context provides a great and rich story and character paradox. As stated above, with Arthur the actual redemption part is short-lived and a bit unfulfilling.

    The John Marston of RDR2 comes across as a young loose cannon, with his heart in the right place nonetheless. So that seems to fit with the first RDR which, in timeline, follows after RDR2. Because he is just a little bit older and wiser and determined to do the right thing. So the John in RDR1 is much more grounded in what is good and bad (and therefore more likeable).

    Speaking about great game characters!

    The Ugly

    • Finale: choice

    Throughout the game there is plenty of freedom of how to go about it. Sometimes there are choices that might or might not impact the outcome of a (side)mission, but they all seem to be insignificant (no great impact on the main story). So I was rather surprised when in the final mission of the Arthur timeline I had to make a REALLY CRITICAL decision. To go with John or to go back for the money. I thought this was really unbalanced with the rest of the story. Because what happened was that during the following scene part of my brain kept thinking: have I made the right choice, what would happen if I had chosen the other option? And that’s not really what you want to be thinking about going into the final mission. I don’t understand why the game/story designers put this there. I did however make the right choice, so much became clear after googling the horrible alternative ending (do so at your own risk).

    • Dialogue

    These rampaging gang members and their criminal ways seemed to cause less of a problem for me than the potty mouthed conversations. There is a lot of comedy and character development within the dialogue, which is certainly a strong suite of this game, but the swearing for swearing sake? For a game with this level of attention to detail (and accents, clothes and horses etc.) I would think that this is not how they talked back then. I am not a big fan of gore and violence either, but to a point I can understand what’s needed for a game like this. But the dialogue was sometimes just unnecessarily over the top with profanity.

    • Trees

    So here is a nitpick. I did not like the trees, I said so from the first minutes, and I still thought so when finishing the game. The game is gorgeous and the level of attention to detail is astounding, the shoes, the spurs, the saddles, the faces, the fingernails, I have never seen it before in a game. But the trees? I think I’ve seen better.  So maybe in RDR3 they’ll fix that?

    As we await RDR Online, there are still hundreds of possible gaming hours left in this incredible game, I mean I still have to explore all of New Austin (and I will get to it as soon as I finish Undertale)! So, to point back to the NY Times article about RDR2, it features this great quote: “As a technical achievement, it has no peers.” I strongly agree. But from an emotional engagement point of view, in my memory I still think the first RDR has one up on RDR2.

  • Super Mario Odyssey

    Super Mario Odyssey

    When the first trailer for Super Mario Odyssey came out it underscored the magic all Mario games seem to share. Because my four and five year old, who have no prior sentimental knowledge of Mario, made it vocally very clear this was the game they wanted (well, a T-Rex in the trailer also helps). So we got a Nintendo Switch, specifically for this game. And we’re two weeks in, so lets find out if it was worth it.

    Every new Nintendo platform has its own (proper) Mario game. So when they bring out a new console, as is the case with the Switch, you know Nintendo will poor every bit of creative ingenuity into the game because of the legacy of Mario. And they certainly did it again this time.

    The gameplay for Odyssey is deceptively simple in its options. There are basically only three things you can do: you can walk, jump or throw your cap. And this last action is where most of the games’ magic is. By throwing your cap you can become other characters or control items. Not to spoil too much, but the creators use this specifically to open up many fun and wonderful experiences. And this is where Mario Odyssey shines. The game is filled with just so many creative little sheer moments of fun and joy. It is all about putting a smile on your face.

    We finished the main story in a week (I play the end bosses, the kids everything else). But this is irrelevant. The game makes no pretensions about this. Following the linear game story is just to get this out of the way to start the real fun! So we are long from finished. There is more to explore! When you start out the kingdoms seem pretty straightforward, or even small, but when you go back and really start exploring (finding those moons) you notice there are many more secrets to discover in those carefully crafted kingdoms.

    Super Mario Odyssey is incredibly fun because the game keeps coming up with new and creative ways to bring joy and tickle your imagination. You get the sense that, for whoever worked on this game, this was a labor of love and dedication. The game feels finished and complete.

    Mario is his trunks on a scooter being chased by a T-Rex wearing pilot goggles. I mean…

    Nintendo also managed to cater to different levels of experience with one game. My kids can enjoy the game while running and jumping around and maybe missing most of what’s possible in a kingdom. But, if you want a challenge there is a richness hidden in those maps that even more skilled gamers will enjoy. This is a rare feat.

    My only critical remark is about the two-player option. In effect it just breaks the controller in two, while giving both players less control. So they either should have kept it out or tried for a Lego games approach. We tried it a few times, but now we just use one controller and the pomodoro technique.

    Apart from the game itself the Switch platform experience also adds to the joy. The option to switch between play modes is not a gimmick. We switch all the time. Also, we keep the console in standby mode so it boots instantly (no load times) and you can play within seconds. And in the game itself there are no long nagging load screens or repetitive things. Nintendo seems to really understand the not-so-fun parts of gaming and tried its best to eliminate those elements and by doing so demonstrates they are still undefeated when it comes to making fun games. So, yeah, worth it!

  • Best of 2016

    Best-of lists signify another year is coming to a close. People feel a need to sort and order things to make room for what is to come. Or something like that.

    So here is an assorted list of best new things I found in 2016. Things can be anything, as long as it was new to me in 2016. Feel free to share your list in the comments.

    Best new app

    Google Photos turned out to be a real improvement in photo management. It saves space on your phone and, more importantly, you can search trough photos because Google AI indexes them (and every face on it) for you. Picture of that meeting last month? Coming up! Picture of your kid on a swing? Say no more fam, I got you. You should give it a try, it works pretty great. (Be sure to read the T&C if you have privacy doubts).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEK37MBTUPk

    Best new podcast

    I have listened to 316 podcasts this year. I ain’t lying, it was kind of my thing this year, I even started my own podcast with a friend.

    But apart from that, the “How I built this” podcast is hands-down the best new podcast I found this year. Every episode is interesting. No duds so far. It’s always a great story of one or more entrepreneurs on how they got started. And there has been a wonderful selection of guests already. This show is fun and you really learn something every time (but learning is fun ammirite?!).

    Best new music

    Usually I compile a list of best new music discoveries. I might still do that. But for now I’d like to point out one genre, that was newish to me: Dark Wave. Taking new wave a bit further. Not for everyone, I know.

    Best book

    Even though I just started this one and so I haven’t finished it yet, I still think Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike will be my favourite book of 2016. Boy, this is something else. And right up my alley, life-lessons, entrepreneurship, sports, passion. It speaks to me. You learn something, you feel you understand things better after reading. At least so far, I might blog about it after finishing (or you know, podcast about it)

    Best game

    Probably Sniper Elite III. I only played a few games this year, but this one was fun. Sneaking and sniping Nazis in the African desert. Not too much backstory or immersion, just what I like for now.

    Best movie

    The Big Short. A piece of recent real history portrait by great actors. Yes, in a Hollywood fictional sort of way, but that didn’t bother me.

    TV shows are missing from this list, because there just weren’t any that I think I’d like to recommend. But I have seen more episodes of Flip or Flop than you would guess. Probably because we bought a new house ourselves and did some work on it.

     Best article/site

    Not so much an article, as a guy who writes them. I think I must have stumbled on Derek Sivers and his braindump sivers.org a few times already before 2106, but it didn’t stick or I didn’t see the bigger picture. But this year it did, you can really learn a lot from this guy, who built and sold his company and didn’t keep a penny. He writes interesting articles, some have been compiled to read as a book. Highly recommended.

    (That reminds me, I probably also should start tracking favourite quotes.)

    Best video

    I watch and like a lot of YouTube but I have never liked (you know, like-like) a youtube video in my life. So picking one is hard because there is no log.  So this is a placeholder for myself to keep track of this. The same goes for gifs, also moving images. I probably have seen more gifs than videos, and that’s saying something 😉

    Best new gadget

    My Chromebook. I did a blogpost on it. But my Tascam DR-40 and Logitech MX Master are close runners up. Oh and I started driving one of these, which is also a nice piece of technology.

    Best tweet

    For this last one, I’m going to be unapologetically selfish. Yes, with all the political drama this year there were a lot of interesting or funny tweets. But this tweet is mine, non-political and my favourite:

  • My January timeline

    I’ve always loved timelines. Visually seeing where things are in time resonates pretty strongly with me. This love goes back to my earliest memories of the dentists’ office where a huge year-round calendar hung on the wall. It had 12 distinct vertical columns and every day had its own little box. Maybe it’s because of the physical pain that went with those visits, but this calendar is cemented in my mind. It’s what I literally see when I think of ‘a year’.

    For things that span multiple years I also tend to make timelines in my head. I plot everything from music history to computer science history and I make cross-references. So for me, the Beatles broke up around the time Unix and C were being developed. And MIT AI’s lab was getting a PDP-1 when Elvis was serving in the military. So yeah….there’s that.

    And I like to document everything. What I read, play, watch or listen to. Pretty much for the same reasons I think. So why not plot all that data in a nice timeline? So here you go, my timeline for January with 4 categories of things that I read, watched, played or listened to. I.e. books, movies, games and podcasts. Here’s the full screen version.

  • Masters of Doom

    On my last vacation I finally got around to reading Masters of Doom by David Kushner. This book from 2003 keeps popping up every now and again and people always rave about it. I put it on my Amazon wish list years ago (which holds 50 books atm). But recently I came across it again, so it was time.

    And boy, what an absolute pleasure to read, it was. From start to finish. It’s the story of id Software and mainly the two Johns (Carmack and Romero)  the 2 founders who, as the books’ subtitle states, transformed pop culture with their games. This is not a lie. id Software single handedly created the FPS genre with their Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake games and were responsible for introducing the PC in the 90s as a serious (gaming) platform.

    Wolfenstein 3D

    This is not a book review. Just read the book, trust me you’ll enjoy it. There are a gazillion (positive) reviews available. This post is just a list of things that struck me while reading this masterpiece.

    • Arcade machines ruled the earth. Before anything else. I myself am too young to have experienced this phase. And I never understood why that was. What makes an arcade machine so different. This books explain it a bit.
    • The Apple II ruled after that. It is striking how important the Apple II and its programming environment were for both young Johns. It is the spark set the flame.
    • After the first successes with id Software, Carmack was very keen on getting a NeXT computer (a machine created by, of course, Steve Jobs). He did most of his programming on this (Note: Tim Berners-Lee created the WWW on an NeXT machine).
    • But the Apple II and subsequent the PC were really expensive and unattainable for both Johns. Carmack was even arrested for stealing one (and did time), and even when they started to have some success and were (secretly) starting id Software they ‘stole’ PC´s from their employer because they still couldn’t afford their own.
    • Carmack often says how different the world is now: just get a cheap PC, internet and a Linux distro and you’re good to go. You can go and “create things from thin air”. But this is something we take so much for granted now, that the value of it seems lost. I can’t shake the feeling that being withheld from access to a PC for so long has solidified Carmacks’ appreciation, interest and relation with a PC (deprivement pushes innovation).

      Doom
    • Nintendo Super Mario Bros from 1983 was so far ahead its time, that it’s hard to put into perspective nowadays. Mario, a continuous sidescroller game, was never done before and it took John Carmack several years before he could emulate this on a PC. I never realised this. Nintendo was on another level.
    • When Carmack figured out how to do sidescrolling, their whole team recreated the entire Mario game in a weekend (!) and offered it to Nintendo. They were impressed but weren’t interested in the PC market.
    • So their sidescrolling technique turned into: Commander Keen. Which was a massive success. (I myself spent many hours playing Keen, it was my introduction to gaming).

      The first Commander Keen game
    • John Carmack is one of a kind. He invented so.many.things. He created the foundation of a stupendous amount of techniques that are still in use in almost every current game (lighting, shading, networking, multiplayer etc. etc.). And he was so young while doing all that (On the other hand: Linus was also just 21 when he put out a kernel: “won’t be big and professional”)
    • My respect for Carmacks’ technical abilities has only grown with this book. But I can’t deny he sometimes comes off as somewhat sociopathic. With little regard for other peoples’ feelings (especially when he was younger). He lives and cares only about the now and the future and programming. The past seems utterly irrelevant to him (he didn’t even keep copies of his first games). But hey, maybe that combination is what drives innovation.
    • What I really liked about him though was/is his stance on open source software and anti-patent views. The book Hackers (which I completely incidentally bought at the same time as I bought this book!) was a great influence to young Carmack and shaped his views on software. A lot of his techniques and engines are open sourced, but he also encouraged the modding and hacking of their games (I argue that this added to their success).
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    id Software
    • Shareware was also a large part of their success. Give away the first levels for free, and ask users to pay for the rest. This worked out really well for them, but this was before the internet that we know now where you can get anything (illegal). (Though Notch sort of did the same trick with Minecraft I guess). But I clearly and vividly remember that this is how I got Wolfenstein 3D myself as a 13/14 year old. It was a 3,5″disk attached to a PC magazine that I bought on vacation. Being very interested in anything WW2 related, this magazine stood out. And the game struck a cord with me, I played it many times on our 386SX and I always marvelled at how people could create something like this (3D!). (Fun and true fact: on the plane reading this book the guy in front of me was playing Wolfenstein 3D on his tablet. Such a surreal experience.)
    • When id Software was coming up, the internet was just getting started, there were newsgroups, FTP and BBS. But that was about it. Imagine the kind of  earthshattering experience the first networked multiplayer game must have been: Doom. (It was then that Romero coined the term deathmatch).
    • The board game Dungeons & Dragons is very very important in id Software history and game concepts. A lot of elements in their games can be traced back to D&D. All early employees were avid players. I did not know this.
    • Games push innovation. You might not care about games (Carmack himself grew disinterested in games as the company grew) but games are largely responsible for driving and pushing the PC where it is nowadays.
    • Virtual Reality was already a thing people were working on and thinking about, in the 70s, 80s, 90s. It never worked. Carmack left id Software 2 years ago to work on the Oculus Rift VR. This could be it. The time might be now. Technology might finally be ready. And if there would be only one person in the world that could pull it off then you can rest assure, that person is working on it right now: John Carmack.

      Do it, John.

    I could go on about the pizza and diet Coke addictions or the interesting relation/energy between Romero and Carmack, that they were a perfect match that pushed each other but also as they both grew, they grew apart. Or how Doom integrated in everyday life and was subject of critical outrcy following the Columbine shooting. But just read the book for yourself (or read about it here, here or here). It is ultimately a book about a couple of guys that started from the bottom and created a startup which in turn created an industry. A classic Silicon Valley rags to riches story.

  • The Minecraft timeline

    The story of Minecraft sounds like a great movie script. Notch as the protagonist genius programmer, who, from an underdog (indie) position, single handedly changed the game industry by just doing what he loved. And, making a lot of money along the way. And even more money when he was fed up with it all and sold Minecraft.
    But perhaps a movie is unnecessary, it is all very well documented already. And most people are familiar with the story. Partly because a lot of that story happened online. So we have the blogs, websites, forum posts, tweets and youtube videos. What we don’t have is a nice graphic timeline depicting the history (until now).I heard about Minecraft somewhere in 2010. And I started paying close attention to Minecraft and its creator. Because even then it seemed like a great story. One guy and his computer changing the world. My favorite kind of story! And I clearly remember being awestruck on August the 20th 2011, when Notch entered a game coding contest and livecasted the whole thing, which he did regularly. (Mind you, the link is a condensed version, the whole thing lasted 48 hours). This guy was something else! The wonders of game creation unfolded right before your eyes. Way too fast to get it all, but it gave a great sense of what it means to create a game. Just him, and his computer with Java IDE Eclipse and Paint.net. The same tools he used when creating Minecraft. (I later found out, trough that contest, that there are many more competent programmers like him. Not everyone strikes gold. But then again, like Notch, most of them are not in it for that reason).

    Minecraft is a unique story that deserves a nice looking timeline, and because I couldn’t find a decent one I made one:

    The information on this timeline is gathered from http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/

    Some noticeable things from this timeline.

    • Notch started working on Minecraft a few weeks before taking on a new job (at jAlbum: the software this site also uses!)
    • It took a year of development before he finally quit his ‘real’ job to focus on Minecraft. At that time somewhat 20.000 copies had already been sold! While the game was still only in alpha phase. Promising, to say the least.
    • The second half of 2010 and 2011 must have been insane. They created the company around Minecraft: Mojang, hired a lot of people, made a ton of updates to the game, released a second game (completely different), talked with Valve, organised MineCon, had a lawsuit on their hands, and amidst all that they sold millions of copies of Minecraft!
    • A lot of important Minecraft things seem to have happened on June 1 a couple of years in a row (this also happens to be Notch’s birthday).

    The Minecraft story isn’t finished yet. Minecraft is of course very much alive and still setting records. But where Notch and Minecraft once were part of the same story they are now moving into separate timelines.

    But whatever happens next, the story of Minecraft will always be an inspiring story and the impact on the game and entertainment industry will echo for years and years to come. That makes it even more special that trough the wonders of Youtube we have this video from 2009. Some unknown guy from Sweden showing a demo of something he built and that might turn into a game.

  • One year with the PS3

    This month marks one year of me owning a Playstation 3. What started out as a quest for an ‘easy’ Netflix device, ended in getting a PS3. Maybe it seems I am a bit late to the game, because the PS4 is, and was, already available of course. But for me this presented a great opportunity. Because the PS3 is almost at the end of its lifecycle, so it is easy to determine which games are actually worth it! And on top of that: most of these great games are cheap. So win-win. This post is about those games and working through the best possible PS3 games.

    Metacritic is my friend. This list is my goto when buying a game. So thus far I own and played 9* games from the top 12 of the Metacritic all time high scorers list (so all, but GTA IV/V and Portal). And I own or played 9 other games of the top 100. There are about 1026 PS3 games total: so my attention was mostly with the top 1% of games.

    * For some reason GTA doesn’t appeal to me, maybe because you’re so obviously the bad guy.

    This game is number 6 on the Metacritic list. Can you guess which one it is?

    For me finishing a game means completing the story. I don’t (didn’t) care about records or getting trophies or finishing levels in different ways.

    Games are for kids!

    What business has a grown adult with two three children playing video games? Yes, I understand that question. But this is not Candy Crush or Angry Birds. I have little interest in those types of games. The best PS3 games, and the games I’m interested in, tend to be entertainment experiences much like going to the movies or great TV shows are entertainment experiences. I’ll go a step further and say that videogames are pretty much the pinnacle of what humans can do at the crossroads of technique and entertainment (sorry about that sentence). I have a lot of respect for videogame designers. Some of these games take up to 7 years and hundreds of people to create. And it shows. Some of the worlds you enter are jawdropping in size, attention to detail and endless exploration opportunities. I never ceases to amaze me. How does this all fit on one little disc, who made this, how does this work?! Also it happens more than once that I rush some level and just stop to appreciate some crates or motif in the floor and I always think of that designer that cooked up that thing in a 3D modeller or Photoshop at some point and spent hours and hours working on it. Only for me to rush by it in 2 seconds. Videogames demand a lot of respect because of that (this respect grows when you watch documentaries on Youtube of how games are made. There are a lot. You should check them out!)

    Best games

    So what games did I play? I started of with Bioshock. This was a game that always stuck by me, because I once read a tweet and a blog post  from someone whose opinion I respect. I took a mental note of this and years later it made picking the first game to play a no-brainer. This game has a very very distinctive look and feel which make it unique. Just like any great movie, where you see one still frame you will know the name of the movie. Or with a song, when you hear three bars. The same goes for Bioshock. It is very unique. Also the gameplay offers variety. You can shoot up a bunch of things and not care much about the story OR you could decide to go and immerse yourself in the (very religiously themed) story and try to figure it out and have a deeper experience (say wat?!).

    This game is from 2007. Can you tell?

    More recently, I also played Bioshock: Infinite, which in its own right is a very distinctive game, but with a completely different style. Which speaks for the creator. Because even though the stories and worlds of the games are entirely  unrelated. (Or are they?) he apparently managed to pull off this trick twice. Infinite is probably the most gorgeous colourful world you’ll ever wander into. And they put a lot of time and thought in it. It was pretty easy to rush trough the Infinite world. But for no apparent reason the last level was stupid hard. Also, all of the explanation of the very complex and ingenious story was done after the game. You couldn’t really figure it by yourself (or maybe I couldn’t). That was too bad. Because it is a very well thought out story that I wish to have been able to unravel during the game myself (not after). But nonetheless, the Bioshock series is up there and rightly so.

    Gorgeous.

    But of all the games I played, only 2 stood out explicitly. The second game I played, is one of those two: The Last of Us. This game is something else. The more games I play, the more this is confirmed. It is also a pretty hard game. But the gameplay is excellently done, and the graphics are the best you can squeeze out of a PS3. But what makes this game stand out is the story and the connection the two main characters build between them (and with you). It makes the game an incredibly immersive experience. You get attached, you think about the game and the choices you made the next day and it makes you want to play again. While at the same time you hate playing it, because the world you play in is so messed up and depressing (I hate clickers). At one point I found myself worried for one of the characters. Also after finishing it, it took a couple of days to process what had happened. Of all the games this one really shows what a videogame can do that movies or TV shows can’t. It takes involvement to the next level (which makes me pretty excited for what is to come with VR tech). The Last of Us is one of the few games that I would play again.

    thelastofusremastered-1
    What do you think Ellie. Should we enter?

    The other game that really stood out for me is Red Dead Redemption. I often think about John Marston. He just felt genuine and believable. I also played Uncharted 2 and 3 (from the same makers as Last of Us): and the lead character Nathan Drake comes close but I would pick John Marston any day. I liked him, the same way you like a movie character. And I miss hanging out with him. RDR is often called the GTA of the wild west. As far as the open world (sandbox) free roam experience goes, this is correct. But the atmosphere, the music, the characters, the dialogues (the best), the countless missions, and the horses really make it something else. It feels complete. I love this game. This is probably the game I will most likely replay and do missions I haven’t done yet. That’s saying something. (And boy, there are still so many missions to play, even after finishing the story).

    I mean, look at this!
    Uh oh Drake, what have you gotten yourself into this time?

    Once I popped in Battlefield 3, I also finished COD: Modern Warfare, COD: Modern Warfare 2, COD: Black Ops right after one another. A good shooter is just a lot of fun, and there is no entry level. Just go. I understand why shooters are a popular genre. There is little (story) immersion, it is the essence of combat: kill or be killed. Most of the times, there is a story. But unlike RDR or LoU those stories are completely optional. But these games are so well designed that it makes it easy to play them and just have fun. And I know these games shine most in multiplayer which I didn’t play, just single player story mode. But I can see why these games are perfect for multiplayer. Story mode doesn’t really do them justice.

    Fire in the hole.

    I also played Batman: Arkham Asylum. I feel ambiguous about this game. This game probably took me the longest in gross runtime (some months). I think I understand why it is rated so highly, it is very well done and there are a lot of ‘new’ ideas regarding gameplay, but it didn’t really excite me as much as RDR does. It started of fun, but got tedious toward the end. I just wanted to be done. I also have the Arkham City game waiting. But I am in no rush to play it.

    Tuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuh Tuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuh Batman!

    ‘Honorable’ mentions

    I was handed ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Two (different) games from the same studio in one box. Highly regarded games and their fame preceded them (especially SotC). And maybe to a fault because I couldn’t get into neither of them… Maybe I’ll man up and “learn to play” one day. But so far these are the only games I started but didn’t finish. Maybe it was too Japanese for my taste. Or maybe they were just to hard and I’m not a hardcore gamer.

    Looks cool, right?

    Trophies

    Game designers awards trophies for different achievements in a game. Such an achievement can be, finishing a game. But more likely it is something like: kill three people with one shot. Or finish this mission without being seen. Or kill 18 grizzly bears. Trophies are a way to get more out of a game, and experience a game in different ways (after or while finishing it). Some games offer a whole number of trophies (up to 50,60) ranked by gold, silver, bronze for difficulty levels. But per game there is always only one platinum trophy. This trophy is rewarded for getting every other trophy. Usually a rare feat. And also a guarantee that you really got everything out of a game. When I started out I didn’t care for trophies. This gradually changed. If I can pick up a trophy now, I will. Some games are notorious for being easy trophy games. I took advantage of that by getting my first platinum with Megamind (hey, I liked that movie!). By no means a top 100 game. But you can finish it in one sitting and have yourself a platinum trophy.

    “So creepy crawly!!”

    So what’s next?

    So overall I think I used the PS3 more for games than Netflix ;). And when I had time to play games I had fun. There were also entire periods where I didn’t play, because of more important things (work/school). So I am not some kind of addicted gamehead. I do however enjoy spending my evenings, currently solving crimes on the streets of LA in 1947 (LA Noire) instead of watching TV. There are still of couple of games I have bought but not played yet. So I will play those before probably returning to RDR to get some more trophies. And looking at the Metacritic PS4 list there isn’t really a compelling reason to buy a PS4 (yet). I mean number 1 and 2 games are also available on the PS3! So I think I will enjoy my PS3 a bit more.

    Where do think she is going? Let’s tag her Bekowsky.