Per Wikipedia:
The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as “to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with” and “to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment”.
Multiplayer footage for The Last of Us hit the web today. You can check it out below.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Naughty Dog responded with a largely boring, uninspired trailer to… I don’t know. Prove a point? Capitalize on the hype?
Click here to view the embedded video.
Both videos show a game that looks boring.
It looks derivative.
Multiplayer for The Last of Us reminds me a lot of Gears of War. Been there, done that. Maybe the Playstation faithful haven’t, but from what I’ve seen of the footage, coupled with Naughty Dog’s MP trailer, it doesn’t really instill a whole lot of confidence on my end. Is this what triple-A shooters have become on the multiplayer front? Regenerating health? Come on!
There’s some fascinating concepts hinted at in the MP trailer. A Battle for Supplies? Surviving 12 weeks? A marauder attack? What’s all that? Sounds awesome!
The gameplay footage (first video) even shows a guy scavenging a corpse for ammo. That’s cool. Not original, but certainly neat. And I dig the crafting system. But we’ve seen upgrades, we’ve seen the freaking bloody screen when you get shot. This game looks pretty. But I’m almost seeing a third-person Call of Duty. Multiplayer for The Last of Us may not be as fast as CoD, but it certainly seems similar.
And how about the chick reviving a downed team mate after he’s taken a sniper rifle shot in the chest? LAME. Maybe that excites some people. It doesn’t do a thing for me.
But wait, it has clans! Yawn. You can also protect your faction! Zzz.
That may actually have meaning if there was perma-death or some genuine sort of meta-game. There may be. We won’t know until the title drops. But the jaded gamer in me is doubtful.
There are some other interesting things though.
Scarcity of ammo and listening for your enemies certainly sets The Last of Us apart from the rest. But in my mind, it looks like a slower paced Call of Duty or a rehashed Gears of War, just covered in a different coat of paint.
I’ve written many a time about how violence has permeated our culture (or maybe that it’s always been there). And I’m not against that. I can openly admit it’s entertaining. But so much of this looks like torture porn. The player-models, the voice acting – it mirrors reality and brings the whole thing home a bit more than other titles. With Gears of War, the characters and setting were over the top. So when a character rams a chainsaw up another’s ass, it was more hilarious than disturbing. But this… I feel like violence is being used as a gimmick to gain more attention. Violence can be artistic and even have meaning. Depending on the use of violence, it can impact our gaming experience in multiple ways. But it has to have context.
I think we’ll see that in the single player portion of this game. But for the multiplayer, it seems hollow. Without meaning, or creating attachment to the player and the experience, no real purpose is created. And the violence is nothing more than going to the Coliseum to watch gladiators beat one another to death. To me, that’s just not fun. Especially when I know nothing about the gladiators.
Seeing this disappoints me because even though I’m sure the multiplayer experience for this title will be entertaining, I think that’s all it will be. The concept of this game, particularly its story, is testing the waters creatively. Personally, I think The Last of Us will deliver a memorable, amazing story with tight gameplay – at least on the single-player front. But the multiplayer. It seems more of the same. And that’s a damn shame.
-ty