The Last Of Us (2013, PS3) is a thrilling survival horror adventure with a highly emotive and engaging story from Naughty Dog, creators of the Uncharted, Jak and Daxter, and Crash Bandicoot series.

When a virus outbreak occurs in modern society, Joel (Troy Baker), a single parent, loses his daughter, Sarah. 20 years later, civilisation has fallen and humans mutated by the virus have overrun the world, keeping human settlements small and sparse. Joel and Tess (Annie Wersching) are smugglers who, when trying to retrieve their goods, become caught up in trying to save Ellie (Ashley Johnson), a 14 year old girl who was bitten by a runner and hasn’t mutated into one of them. Since she may hold the key to restoring humanity, it’s the player’s job as Joel to protect her while locating the Fireflies who can use her genes to develop an antiviral agent.

While the plot is hardly original, the way the story is presented is very effective. Joel is a very gruff, emotionally reserved man, while Ellie (who bares an uncanny resemblance to Ellen Page) is curious, loving, and emotionally open. As the story unfolds, the interaction of these characters is very engaging. Ellie’s effect on Joel and their growing bond develops in unexpected ways and is part of the story’s charm and effectiveness.

Characters are motion captured, so look and move in very realistic ways. The environments, too, are beautifully crafted, from the dank and dirty city streets of Boston, to lush forests and snow-covered environs. Voice acting is fantastic, sounding realistic and believable. The beautifully rendered background music enhances the story’s atmosphere and heightens the in-game action.

Gameplay draws on familiar elements from the Uncharted series, giving players large environments to explore and make their way through while solving environmental puzzles and avoiding or disposing of enemies. In The Last of Us, however, the gameplay is refined. Players can shoot their way through enemies. Given the lack of ammo throughout the games and the tendency of opponents to swarm the player, more of an emphasis is placed on stealth kills and avoiding foes altogether. The latter is not always possible, however. Runners and humans will react to the sight of the player and generally attack in swarms. Players should use a few shots or hand-to-hand combat to kill them. Clickers react to noise and are very hard to kill unless players have a shiv. Thus, the best strategy is to creep past them. Bloaters are inescapable and are very hard to put down.

The game’s environmental puzzles are well crafted and, like Uncharted, require players to climb, crouch, or run through each area to progress. However, several crafty puzzles play on there being at least two people in your party Ellie’s inability to swim. Once players get used to the puzzle types, however, progression is fairly straightforward.

Since the game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, players need to scrounge around the environments for items that allow them to survive. As well as ammo, players need to search for scissors, nails, bottles, water, rags, and so on so they can craft new items, such as health kits, bombs, and melee weapons. Most objects can be used to create at least two types of items, meaning players are forced to choose which item they need most. Gear points and health capsules can also be located, enabling players to upgrade the myriad of weaponry throughout the game and enhance the player’s abilities.

The gameplay and story are really well paced, giving players long moments of silence as well as frantic action sections. While the gameplay has innovative features, it’s the emotional story and the bond that forms between the characters that will keep players pushing through the end. The only thing keeping The Last of Us from getting five stars is a few moments of clunky dialogue and one or two areas where progression is not clear (Ellie’s encounter in the restaurant, for example). Still, I highly recommend The Last of Us to all games players.

4 ½ stars

Pitting players against the greatest obstacle in life – the choices we make – Life is Strange is an interactive story with powerful themes and effective emotional scenarios.

Set over five days, the game focuses on upcoming photographer Max Caulfield (Hannah Telle) as she returns to her hometown, Arcadia Bay, to study photography under superstar photographer, Mark Jefferson (Derek Phillips) at Blackwell Academy. Only, after a nightmare that destroys the town, Max wakes in class and learns she has the power to rewind time when she saves Chloe (Ashly Burch), her estranged best friend, from being shot in the girl’s bathroom. Later, the former childhood friends reunite and, over the course of five days, set out to investigate the disappearance of Chloe’s friend, Rachel Amber. This leads them to discover many things about Arcadia Bay, Blackwell Academy, the people that populate it, and themselves.

Gameplay focuses on Max’s interaction with the people that populate the town and school. Through this, she learns more about them and the greater mystery at hand. The level of detail about each character and their lives is immense and creates a sense of Arcadia Bay being a living breathing world. Throughout the game, players are offered choices, stemming from simple conversation prompts to story changing actions. In this way, Life is Strange is little more than an interactive story. Yet, the story is so engaging and well-conceived that only players who dislike story-driven games will be disappointed.

In theory, the diverging storylines provide high replayability, since decisions effect the way the story plays out. However, in the end, players are only offered two conclusions, which detracts from the effect of previous choices. Fortunately, within the game, players do see the effects their choices create.  

The game’s rewind mechanic allows players to undo actions within a scene letting them test which response responds best with their nature and which one provides the best player outcome. With the exception of one scenario near the end of episode five, where the game is so dark players can’t see what they’re doing, the gameplay is free of frustration.

The story itself is a mix of genres, ranging from a teen melodrama as Max becomes involved in the lives of other students, to a mystery as Max and Chloe investigate Rachel’s disappearance, and a love story when it focuses on their friendship and history. It’s also a psychological thriller because of moments of tense action and anxiety and the way player choices affect not only the game, but how they react to it. The story also confronts some important themes for teens and adults, , such as suicide, and deals with them in a mature way. The developers aren’t afraid to show their science-fiction influences either, with nods to Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Planet of the Apes, amongst others.

For the most part, the story is well paced, ranging from inner school conflict to tense run-for-your-life moments. That said there are a few lulls close to the climax when the story should be at full-pelt. Still, this doesn’t ruin the game. Surprisingly for a game, dialogue is well written and delivered even better by some fantastic voice actors. It readily captures the urban slang of teenagers, and while there are a few moments of duff dialogue, these moments are rare.

Delivered over five episodes, each one has a unique tone, focusing on different aspects of the story. Each episode feels fresh, except the final one, which rehashes a lot of dialogue players have already heard, perhaps in an attempt to catch up players who haven’t played for a while.

The game has a cinematic quality to it, helped by the beautiful motion-captured graphics. Characters look and behave with life-like mannerisms and the environments portray a convincing town and school. The audio design plays a large part in this, offering atmospheric cues and music appropriate for a game based on the life of a teenager. This helps players further immerse themselves in the experience.

Overall, Life is Strange is an immersive experience and its few flaws are never enough to ruin it. Unless you dislike story-driven games, I highly recommend everyone experience Life Is Strange. It demonstrates the power video games have as a storytelling medium.

4 ½ stars

The title of the game, SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, is misleading. “Ultimate” implies the pinnacle. The forty or so games collected here, while some of SEGA’s best Mega Drive games, don’t encompass the term ultimate. Rather, what you have is most of SEGA’s software output on the Mega Drive plus a few arcade and Master System titles thrown in for good measure, omitting many awesome third-party titles, like Konami’s Rocket Knight Adventures, Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes, Electronic Art’s Road Rash series, and many more.

That said, this is a fantastic collection of classic Mega Drive games, from arcade favourites, such as Golden Axe, Shinobi, Altered Beast, and Streets of Rage, to the role-playing stalwart series, Shining Force and Phantasy Star, and, of course, every Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog game, except the lock-on capabilities of Sonic & Knuckles, which is strange, given it only takes a line of code to access the lock-on titles from the Sonic & Knuckles ROM.

So what you have here is an excellent, rather than ultimate, collection of games. All are presented in 720p and they look amazing for games that are now over twenty years old. For the most part, the games sound as good as they did back in the early 90s and they play just as well. Players are given an onslaught of options, from saving games mid game, improving the graphical capabilities through some simple graphics filters and stretching algorithms, and customisable controls. There is a slew of unlockable extras, from games, to interviews with the developers, and it’s all presented in a very slick package. It loses points for not including enough games to earn it the title of “ultimate”, but what’s here is so good you will hardly notice. Highly recommended for 80s and early 90s retro gamers.

4 Stars.
 

Lara Croft: The Guardian of the Light is an interesting take on the Tomb Raider series.

Although it includes the usual puzzle solving, platforming, and shooting action typical of the series, the action is viewed from an isometric perspective. This creates a unique atmosphere and allows for some fiendish puzzle design. The puzzles are very interesting and many later in the game will test your intellect. However, for the most part, they aren’t too difficult.

The story involves one of Lara’s rivals awakening an ancient evil that she, and an ancient guardian, have to stop. And that’s about it. While other Tomb Raider games have interesting stories, Guardian of the Light’s narrative is very shallow, and, at times, laughable.

Lara, and the Guardian, if you’re playing in co-op mode, has to traverse the tombs and levels while staying alive, and killing any enemies, who range from soldiers to undead creatures. Again, it’s very standard Tomb Raider fare, but it’s also very enjoyable.

Each tomb has optional objectives to complete, such as collecting all ten red skulls, completing the level within a short limit, and other level-specific objectives. Completing each earns the player with a reward – usually a new weapon. There are also ammo and health upgrades to be uncovered in each level. These objectives give the game more of an arcade feeling, which heightens the game’s intensity, even if players don’t set out to complete all of them.

Levels also include ‘puzzle rooms’ in which Lara has to solve a visual-spacial puzzle in order to obtain a powerup. These challenges range from overly simple, to frustratingly hard.

This leads to one of the game’s flaws – the difficulty curve is erratic. While early levels are well balanced, later ones range from easy to difficult with no real middle ground. Further, although early levels are filled with interesting puzzle designs, later levels rely on impossible-to-kill enemies to ramp up the difficulty, ruining the puzzle-shooting balance.

Still, the controls are unique, using the triggers to fire weapons, the d-pad to change between weapons, the face buttons for different skills – bombs, jumping, running, and actions – and the second analogue pad to aim your weapon. This seems odd at first, but soon becomes second nature and is quite intuitive.

Lara is gifted with a throwing spear from the Guardian of the Light at the beginning of the game, which becomes the default weapon when you run out of ammo. It is also used to overcome some puzzles in intuitive ways. Other weapons range from Lara’s standard pistols, to heavy machine guns, and grenade launchers, most of which need to be located or earned and all are dependent on finding ammo packs around the levels, which work on a one-serves-all basis.

Players can also earn or locate several artefacts to enhance of lessen in some cases, Lara’s abilities. Finally, Lara has a grappling rope she can swing on, which is useful for solving puzzles and collecting hard-to-reach items. However, this is mostly forgotten in later levels.

Each level features mostly ambient music that enhances the atmosphere, with a few more upbeat tunes for a few levels, like the swamp, which add to the intensity. Sound effects are standard Tomb Raider fare, while the dialogue is well-voiced despite some laughable lines.

Levels are an interesting mix of tombs, caverns, and outdoor areas, although towards the end the lava-filled caverns become monotonous. Graphically, the game is beautiful to look at, and although a few of the later levels feature some minimal slowdown due to the intensity of the graphical effects and on-screen action, it’s never enough to spoil the game or effect gameplay.

Overall, Lara Croft and the Guardian of the Light is a unique Tomb Raider experience that offers more of the same but from a unique perspective. While it won’t win any awards for story or level balance, it’s is a well-presented package for a bargain price, with plenty of puzzles to test you brain, lots of shooting action to test your reflexes, and a good challenge. Tomb Raider fans should enjoy it and I encourage other gamers to give it a go unless you detest this style of gameplay. With currently two downloadable level packs, this game could potentially offers players with a lengthy challenge. It comes highly recommended.

4 stars.

Back in the mid to late 1990's I was a huge fan of the SEGA Saturn videogames console and its library of fantastic and underrated games. 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the PAL (European and Australian)  console's launch, and to celebrate this, I've created a 14-page document celebrating the best 20 games available in PAL territories. I designed it as a homage to SEGA Saturn Magazine, who were staunch supporters of the system during it's lifetime and ran a similarly designed Top 50 SEGA Saturn Games feature in issue #28.

SEGA Saturn Top 50 PAL Games

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