The Last Of Us, Is It Worth Its Salt?

Let me start out by saying that The Last Of Us (a game about a zombie outbreak) is no perfect game, but the story, and how each part of the story is laid out makes this game close to being perfect. The game has it's faults, one of them being the game mechanics, where Joel sometimes feels like a stiff moving board walking about the screen. But the story is so engaging that, even this fault becomes more of an after thought, and starts feeling more like a mannerism of Joel's (and sometimes other characters) then a fault in the game. Which again speaks to how good this game really is. The next fault I have with the game is more of a personal one, which is the language. Now you can say "hey, the game does warn you about the strong language" but it's not that I particularly mind bad/strong language it's just sometimes they use it so overtly and so frequently that it feels a little too much or sometimes that it is something cool for a fourteen year old to do (which, in my opinion its not). But leave those two faults behind and what The Last Of Us offers you is something special. A game you can't walk away from once you've started.

Now developer Naughty Dog has a way of designing their games to always make you feel like you're apart of the story, and that you really have something at stake with their character's. I don't know many games that after you're done playing them for the day, your still thinking about them and the predicaments you left your character in. In fact the top five games that I can think of 3 of them belong to Naughty Dog's Uncharted series, one of them to The Last Of Us, and the last one belongs to Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain and am not listing those in any particular order. But it does speak volumes on how much they put in to their character development that I feel like a character's life hinges on me making the right decision. In the case of The Last Of Us, do I have enough material to get Joel and Ellie out alive. 

Most games in this past decade have been really big on automatically regenerating your playable character's health. Some say it is a way of rewarding players for taking risk, I on the other hand feel like there are ways of rewarding risk takers while penalizing foolish gameplay. I can get into a whole thing about how most games don't usually get it right on how to balance how quickly a character rejuvenating, especial in response to the NPC's/COM's player who don't usually have the same magically regeneration power as the playable character. But The Last Of Us does not take a automatic regeneration approach to their game. If you hurt your character Joel then your responsible for fixing him. For a survivor game (and to be honest any game no matter what genre) this is key in making every decision have weight to it. But The Last Of Us takes it one step farther by saying not only are your responsible for your character health but you have to find the items to heal him, and it won't be a quick fix, encouraging players to not heal themselves in dangers situation because it will take time to bandage yourself up. The Last of Us doesn't only take that approach with Joel's health, but it also does it with its weapons, requiring you to find your own bullets, make your own molotov, shiv and anything else you use. It makes every item you find in the game whether laying on the ground or on a corpse important. Add the engaging story that keeps diving home the point that humanity is on its last leg and you hold the hope for humanities future and you will start to see why this game is special and a must play.

We haven't even gotten to the graphics of the game or the sound. Both push the PS3 past anything we have ever seen. The lighting effect, and even the sound of a leaf  hitting the ground is spot on. There is no frame or sound that pulls you out of the game, The graphics and sound surrounding this game only serve to push you farther into the game. Hearing the sound of a clicker (which is a type of zombie) makes your heartbeat increase a uptake. There are times when you have to remind yourself its just a game, and that is just because Naughty Dog's design and sound team poured there hearts into this game. And they deserve due credit. So when you buy this game, which if own a PS3 you literally have to, take time to pay attention to the names rolling down the final credits. 

Below is a video of my first impressions of The Last Of Us, and I can truly say it pales in comparison to what this whole game has to offer.In the comment box feel free to let me know how you felt about the last of us. And if you would want a let's Play/Walkthrough/Tips for the game

Borderlands 2 Free for PlayStation Plus Members

Today Borderlands 2 will be free for PlayStation Plus members. This is a great deal seeing as Borderlands 2 is one of the best games of 2012 and it offers a lot of loot, guns, and co-op fun. I have a full review here, where I tell you the good and the bad about Borderlands 2.I can tell you it has never been better to be a PlayStation plus member. Sony has been giving away some awesome titles of late. And not just any title but titles that gamers actually want to play. When I first heard that PlayStation Plus was going to be giving away games I thought it would be for older titles that already have better counterpart on the market or for some unheard of title that has already become irrelevant. But Sony is not holding back at all, they are giving away A list games, on top of the discounts for poplar games and 3GB of online data storage.  

Borderlands 2 a Gamer Girl's Review

Borderlands 2 was the much needed upgrade to the classic and well loved Borderlands 1 game that came out in 2009. If you have no idea what borderlands is or what the game is about, here it is in a nutshell. Borderlands is a first person shooter, with rpg elements, and a lot of loot. The things that made Borderlands 1 and now Borderlands 2 stand out in a sea of first person shooters is that cartoon art style (cell-shading) and the level of randomized loot that is in the game.



The Good

Guns
Let just start out with the good, and why I've spent hundreds of hours, playing and replaying Borderlands 2. The loot, the game boost that they have somewhere in the bazillion mark of available weapons in the game, if bazillion is even a number. And they are right, I have played this game through with every character more then twice and there are a lot of guns and grenades. If you want to snipe they have sniper rifles, if you want to mow someone down you can  use a sub-machine gun or rifles, if you want to blow something up they give you grenades, rpgs, and shotgun. Borderlands 2 basically has everything you could ever think of, which is what really made this game fun for me. I can play with any play style I want, and I can change my play style at any time to fit any situation.

Leveling
Who doesn't like rpg's? Well maybe I shouldn't say that, but if you like rpg's Borderlands 2 has enough rpg elements to make it feel like you are really turning your character into a kick-ass gun toting, powerhouse. The game starts you off with four characters, that have there own special abilities, making each one unique. (there is DLC currently out if you want to get an additional two characters.) Each character has there own skill tree with three branches, which allows you to make your character more offensive, defensive, or a little of both. The skill tress are well balance so you don't feel like you're playing at a disadvantage if you pick one character over another or if you pick one skill tree branch over another. Another plus to the leveling system is that you can reset the points you put into a skill tree branch at anytime. So if you started down one particular skill tree branch and wanted to relocate your points to suit how you are currently playing or just because you want too you can do that. It gives the game more replay value.

Art style
Not everyone is a fan of the cartoon art style. In fact I have friends who refuse to play Borderlands just because of that one reason. But the art style fits the game, and here is my reasoning behind that. If  the game had a more realistic art style it would be hard to buy into the fact that it takes over 100 bullets to kill a boss sometimes. People would be expecting one-shoot kills and etc like as if they were playing Battlefield or Call-of-Duty. Secondly the art style lends itself to the playful nature of the writing team. The jokes in this game wouldn't be half as funny if they were delivered in a more realistic art style game. Now onto how the game looks. It looks beautiful. The first borderlands game what literally stuck in brown, and neutral colors. But Borderlands 2 changed all that, and actually give us colors (red, deep blues, etc), and the cell-shading looks better then what it did in the first borderlands game, which already looked good.

The Bad

Character Customization 
This is the only thing I can really fault the game on, besides one other thing (but the other thing is more of a personal matter then a actual flaw I see in the game). Borderlands 2 offers character skins. Its Gearbox's way of letting people customize there characters. But it doesn't really work. Yes you can change you characters clothe with preset outfits, but all the outfits look the same, except they changed the colors. I'm sorry but that is not customization or at least not the customization we expect form a game developer like Gearbox. When we think about being able to customize our character we are thinking size, height, skin color, eye color, nose orientations and etc.I am not saying that this takes away from the game. You are in first person view, so its not like you can see your character beyond there hands, but this is the touch that Gearbox is missing out of there Borderlands 2 game. With all the different types of guns, and grenades, and locations that are in the game it would have been nice to have all different types of characters too.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
This is a wash, rinse and repeat type of game. But I wish it was more then that. You have to play the game twice just to max out your character, so i feel like you never get to see your characters full potential unless you repeat the game again. Which means playing and listing to the same content over and sometime over again. Now when you play it over again it is on a harder difficulty level, but after a couple of hours, due to the fact that you get better and stronger guns, you are basically just playing the game over and over again. Now this is more of a personal matter, since the game is meant to be repetitive to a point but playing a game 3 times with 4 or 5 and yes sometime 6 different characters is over kill.

Overall Score: 9/10

Hey this game provided me with so many hours of fun that it deserved the high score. The bad things that I did mention about the game never took away from the game play. I didn't even talk about the hours of fun I had playing co-op with family members, friends, and other random players online. There is no other game on the market that makes playing co-op this fun, and with such great game mechanics, letting other players drop in and out of your game, without messing up your game missions, or save file.        

2013 Games You Should Have Played Part.1

Since most people can't get there hands on a next generation console, lets talk about the games we can currently play right now and over the holiday season.This is a huge topic, since there are so many games that should have been played, at least once before we leave them behind. Now these are not my full reviews, I will have those up later, but these are just a quick look at some of the games I have loved and will lose since Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are both not backwards compatible. This is not ranked by order, but by the first things that pops into my mind when I hear: what should I have played on the Xbox or PlayStation.

2013 Games You Should Have Played Part.1

1. Borderlands 1 & 2
- Now Borderlands 1 was so much fun, that I can not, not recommend you give it a play through. You can get the Game of the Year edition for $24.00 on amazon, and the characters that where in the first Borderlands also show up in Borderlands 2. Its hard to described how it feels to see a character that you have spent so many hours playing with, show up one more time.Now I will say this, its a known fact that the ending of Borderlands 1 was not so great, but it does set up the Borderlands 2 story plot a little and makes how well the second Borderlands game ended, stand out. The reason why I am recommending these two game is because of  the Co-op. It is rare to have a co-op game that allows others in your living room to play too. I know there are games like Splinter cell, and Army of Two, but the way that the loot system works to make others play cooperatively (or not play so cooperatively), has never been done, excluding maybe Diablo. So pick these two games up, especial if you're having people over for the holidays and want them to feel include in your gaming. You can catch my full review here I give you the good, the bad and my overall score.

2. Drake's Uncharted Series [ All of them]
- This is a Sony exclusive, so if you have a PlayStation 3, you should play all of  Drake's Uncharted series. The first Uncharted was fun, because of the efforts of Naughty Dog's writing team. It was witty, it was funny, it was sentimental, and it was just spot on, so spot on that i felt like i was apart of Drake's life. Scary, I know, right. Well it got scarier with Uncharted 2 : Among thieves, giving us online multiplayer, another great story, and they added more characters to the story line. After Uncharted 2, anything Naughty Dog came up with, was just going to have to be beyond amazing. Now I can't say that Uncharted 3 : Drake's deception was that, but the graphics, and the glimpse into Drake's childhood made Uncharted 3 a must play, right along with the other two uncharted games.

3. God of War 3
- Who says girls don't like violence. God of War III let me cut off the heads of mystical creatures. This is another PlayStation exclusive so if you have a PlayStation you should check this game out. The graphics look so good, the blood, the texture, everything just made me pick my mouth up several times through out the whole game. Add the sounds of Kratos ripping and tearing monsters apart and I felt like I was on a blood feud with the gods. The game is not just purely violence even though there is a lot of it, it also has some puzzle elements to it, allowing you to put away the button mashing mechanics from time to time. There isn't much else I can say about this game besides it has been years since I've played it and it still comes to mind.    

4. Skyrim
- I really enjoy playing RPG's, taking a character from nothing to something, always feels good. Give me a good story line and I can lose hundreds of hours playing. And to make it seem like I have a social life, I'm not going to tell you how many hours I've spent playing skyrim. With the the Legendary edition out, which is basically Skyrim 's Game of The Year edition, it is a good time to pick this rpg up. It has everything from dragon crawling, open-ending quest generator, DLC, and some fun quests lines for different guild frictions. Skyrim is a huge game, so if you want a full in-depth- review on why you should pick it up. You are going to have to check out my full review later. But again if you have a thing for knights, mages, or thieves, and you have a lot of time on your hands then you should pick up Skyrim.

Now this is only part 1, and there are so many games out there that should have been played at least once before we move on to a next generation consoles, so look forward to more of my quick options and full reviews. I have some other posts online, one is about the PlayStation 4 and why gamer girls should be interested in picking one up. The next is PS4 and Girl Gamers which is more about the PS4 and female gamers.

What Makes The Playstation 4 Special To Women Gamers

The Body

Lets just start out with the PlayStation 4 , is striking in a gorgeous way. It's just plain unique, I haven't had a system that wasn't just one slab of brick in my lifetime. Granted the PlayStation 4 is just two slabs at a angle making a parallelogram of sorts, but it is still different enough to make people take a second look. The glossy finish up top, the matte black finish on the bottom and the blue light in the middle they just make a statement. I look good, and I know I'll be noticed among your other boring electronics. Why is that special to a female gamers? I live in my living room, mostly. If I am not in the kitchen making something so I can get back to my living room, or in my bed room sleeping, I am in my living room. When I have guest over, they are in the living room. So to have something that attracts such good attention. and takes very little effort on my part is golden.  The PlayStation 4 has a stand that is sold separately that make's the PlayStation 4 stand up at attention. Putting all of it's three great design qualities on display, but the PlayStation 4 also looks good laying down too. This console has a subtle attention grabber quality too it, no matter how you stand it, place it, or put it. It is rare that I ever have a console in my living space that helps it look good, let alone makes my living space look a little more unique. So Sony Design Team, I'm giving you a 1up for actually making a console body I can enjoy living with.Add the fact that console is quiet, except for when playing video games for several non-stop hours or loading a game disc into the system and I dare say I can live with this console for the  5 to 8 year period that is requited before the Next-next-generation consoles come out .

(c) 2013 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All right reserved. 

Design and Specification are subject to change without notice.

The Brain

At least for today I don't want to get into the technical parts of the PlayStation 4 's 64-bit APU. I am  just going to say that the PlayStation 4's brain is sexy. And why is that important to a girl gamer? Because brains are important. One of the best parts about the PlayStation 4 is that it is so easy to take apart. If you go to this link here it will take you to Polygon.com where you can see the director of PS4's mechanical engineering team Yahuhiro Ootori take the system apart, bit by bit. There are 4 screws to open the PS4 and then only 1 screw to get to the hard drive. I'm trying to stress how easy it is for anyone with no tech skills at all to open the PlayStation 4 and upgrade it. You need a screw driver and a new hard drive. If something breaks, you can fix it, just order the part and replace it yourself. It has never been easier for women to get dirty with there console's internals since, ...  since never. 4 screws people 4 screws.

The Eye

The PlayStation's Camera has been a so, so peripheral. And to be honest I rarely use my PlayStation's Camera with the PlayStation at all but instead I use it as a webcam for my home desktop. It has good audio quality, or at least good enough audio quality for programs like Skype, or Google's hangout. But the games that involve using the PlayStation Eye camera has been so lack buster that I've never taken out my pocketbook to buy one. Now if something is free on the PlayStation store, I will get it, like the CreateEye game, which is more like a video and audio editor then a game. But now that the PlayStation 4 is here that means a small upgrade to the PlayStation's Camera (Eye) or should it be called Eyes since the Camera has a dual lens. Anyway I would be interested in upgrading my Sony's camera if  they can get me something like U-fit that works properly , and if I can play a classic game like duck hunt or something. Now the PS4 does have Twitch which lets you put your image in the top corner of the screen and have audio while enjoying you game play but again until Sony gives me something worth playing with the PlayStation Camera I can't shell out the money to get one.  

P.S Thanks everyone for reading my blog post you can find my other posts here.