Week 26 - Zeds Everywhere

I've finished a bunch of pending stuff this week. Yay!

As I've written about last Wednesday, The Last of Us was a blast. I'm not looking into playing its multiplayer mode - the campaign is worth the price of admission on its own, and then some.

I've also finished Dead Space 3: Awakened. It's a lot harder than the rest of the campaign for some reason (although the game is pretty easy to begin with). There will be a fourth game, quite obviously - and this time it's on Earth against the Brethren moons! Knowing EA, this reeks so much of Mass Effect 3, in the sense that they're writing another seemingly godlike enemy in the moons. Thankfully, a messed up ending is not out of the question in Dead Space. After all, we don't really know if good old Isaac is still sane after the first game. He's definitely an unreliable narrator.

Lastly, World War Z is down. Pacific Rim should be coming up in a couple of weeks.

So yeah, this week was nothing but zombies, infected and Necromorphs. What a (purely coincidental) theme.

Later!

Overthinking : The Last of Us

Serene moments such as this are rare and a welcome breather.

"Swear to me. Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true."
"I swear."
"Okay."
- Ellie to Joel, The Last of Us (Epilogue)

Post-apocalyptic videogames are a dime a dozen these days. A vast majority of them (and I'm looking at you, Left 4 Dead) place a higher emphasis on the action over storytelling. After all, everyone secretly wants a zombie apocalypse. It's hard to concentrate on a well-written narrative when you're surrounded by thousands of mindless undead looking for food.

Naughty Dog's last game for the Playstation 3, The Last of Us, begs to differ. I never thought it would be possible for something of this genre to be compelling without bringing too much drama to the table, but this game succeeds - and is a worthy swan song for the seventh generation of video game consoles.

In a nutshell, The Last of Us is a story set in a world that is twenty years into an apocalypse brought about by the mutation of the cordyceps fungi (rendering it capable of infecting human hosts). Joel, a smuggler harboring a painful past due to the brutal loss of his daughter during the outbreak's early days, finds himself tasked to deliver the most unusual cargo in the form of the fourteen year-old Ellie - a young girl who appears to be immune to the virus and may hold the key to a long sought after vaccine.

Together they must travel westward from Boston to Colorado and eventually Utah, where a group calling themselves the Fireflies hopes to manufacture the cure. Along the way they are beset not only by the elements but also by the infected and Hunters - people who chose to stay outside the relatively safe (but harshly governed) quarantine zones and instead live on the outside despite the danger.

It's important to note that the game rarely pits Joel and Ellie against hordes of infected and bandits. On the contrary, a lot of the more memorable scenes feature the lonely desolation of their surroundings and nature's eventual reclamation of a world no longer ruled by humanity.

The Last of Us, like a lot of media which feature the breakdown of society due to some outbreak (zombies or otherwise), has tabula rasa as an over-arcing theme. It's a sad pondering of a different kind of clean slate which raises the question - how would people act when the constraints of society are suddenly removed and they are able to act without consequence?

Even more important than this, however, is the fact that The Last of Us is a bildungsroman of sorts - not just for Ellie but also for the grizzled Joel. Their adventure isn't the conventional coming-of-age story as well, although there is no lack of such, but also of the growth of their relationship - one that starts from being apathetic strangers (where Ellie is just another shipment) and ends with one that I could say is as good as a father-daughter bond. This is highly emphasized in the ending where Joel chose to save Ellie's life over the chance for a cure (and humanity's resurgence).

It's a bittersweet conclusion, but it doesn't lean on the negatives too much. On one hand the Fireflies' cause, noble as it may seem, is effectively ruined with the death of their leader and the escape of the cure. On the other a young girl's life is spared from death, even if it was for a desperate cause, and she is given the chance to live a full life with people who won't abandon her (or die). It's certainly easy to justify Joel's actions, especially since their world has already gone to hell anyway and many of the people left are either spending their lives in relative safety or bandits who have eschewed any semblance of morality, choosing to live savage lives amongst the infected.

Overall, The Last of Us is more than a game. It is a strong example of the long-standing (but still unaccepted) notion that video games are as powerful as storytelling mediums as any good book and tries to make a case that they should be seen in a new light - as pieces of art.

The Undead, the Infected and Everyone Else

"It's just not something you ever expect to have to say on air: removing the head or destroying the brain. Extraordinary."
- Jeremy Thompson, Shaun of the Dead

It's official: gone are the days of Romero's slow, plodding undead.

Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead was the first zombie film I ever watched, and it has been my yardstick for films of the genre ever since. There was something engaging about it despite its simplicity (and age at the time I watched it). Perhaps Barbara, the film's protagonist, says it best at the film's conclusion:

"They're us. We're them and they're us."

Debra, from another one of Romero's films (and my second favorite) - Diary of the Dead, expounds on the notion seventeen years later:

"Are we worth saving? You tell me."

I've always thought that the best zombie (and I use the term very loosely) media are social commentaries and should give the viewer something to ponder on about humanity once the horror fades away. Then again, all good stories have that.

Anyway, these days people have gotten smarter. It's no longer believable for a shambling corpse to catch up to a perfectly healthy (or even slightly unfit) person, much less someone who has the benefit of plot armor in a film or video game or book. I guess it all began with 28 Days Later, whose Infected distinguished themselves from the rest of the genre by being portrayed as fast, violent and relentless - something that matched the extreme virulence of the films' Rage virus. It was a huge hit and the concept of the more agile Infected (as opposed to the zombie) quickly spread across all forms of media from video games (like Dead Island and The Last of Us) to comics (The Walking Dead) to films (such as the sequel 28 Weeks Later).

The film adaptation for World War Z veers away from Max Brook's book in the same manner - probably to appeal more to the modern audience. The virus was nothing like Solanum as described from his works but appeared to be a more potent version of Rage. It's interesting to note that they concluded the film by using deus ex machina (which I won't spoil) rather than the Redeker Plan or the Road to New York.

And I still want my Battle of Yonkers. I can't believe they took that out.

Week 25 - And There's One

Busy work week. Meh.

I missed the opening of World War Z, but we're going to catch it next week. Hopefully, I don't get any spoilers before then. I have a feeling that they'd detract a lot from the book, although I'm looking forward to seeing the Battle of Yonkers in film.

I've finished The Last of Us, and I have to say it's one of the best games for the PS3. It's a fitting swan song for the system - whose successor should be coming out later this year. I'm looking to have Speaking of which, I'm probably going to wait for the PS4's second generation before getting one. Stability issues and all that. One more game left, or rather a part of it - Dead Space 3's Awakened - and then I'm off to finish my books.

Later!

Quick Note

Heya Mister,

You know what? Forget what I said. You're doing just fine.

Cheers,
Future You

Week 24 - Sen-No-Sen

"Your silly songs made me laugh, and in the evening, you'd enchant me with your stories, lying on your back beside me. Even then my heart was yours."
- Jenny Scott, Love Song of Night and Day

The rains have finally arrived. I've been waiting for this gloomy weather for months (although it's still boiling hot during the mornings).

In other news, ToyCon PH is happening this weekend - although I'll probably skip it this year. Getting a 2005 Convention Dark Phoenix has been somewhat a lost cause (and I should have bought it when I had the chance years ago) - and only good old eBay could probably accomplish that by now. At any rate, the brother attended it and bagged an Uncharted board game. We'll give it a whirl one of these days.

UPDATE: We did manage attend Day 3, despite several weather-related hijinks. It wasn't quite as I expected - or perhaps last year's Toy Expo at SMX set my expectations way too high.

Speaking of which, the PS3 is getting decommissioned this year - although it is going out with a bang. It's been an awesome four years, and the system's swan song (for me, at least) has finally been released - Naughty Dog's The Last of Us. Gripping isn't a term that does the story justice. Knowing Naughty Dog (who also made the Uncharted series), it will be one heck of a post-apocalyptic ride. The introductory chapter is tragically moving - and they killed off a kid. I have a feeling that the game wasn't meant to be played on Hard. The frequent deaths somewhat ruin the narrative flow and the checkpoints often seem so few and far in between - especially if you try to play it stealthily.

Lastly,the Droid's text messaging software got a nifty upgrade very recently. It surely feels like something they borrowed from iOS.

Later!

Week 23 - Portent

It's funny that I often remember my dreams, although a lot of them get lost in that hazy period between deciding to get out of bed. Even fewer are the ones which make their mark known for a long while (and I'm talking about clawing amongst R'lyeh's monoliths to avoid drowning, which isn't exactly a pleasant or symbolic one). Last Saturday was even more odd, because I dreamt of losing teeth and being lighthearted about it. They say dreams like that are symbolic of outside perspective (being that people consider teeth as a huge part of their physical appearance or something) - and the kicker is that the context wasn't revealed until the following evening.

Good times.

I managed to beat Dark Arisen this week. I'm told that Bitterblack Isle gets more difficult on subsequent runs, so I'm looking forward to taking on Daimon's second form in the near future. Bitterblack's lower strata remind me so much of the Tower of Latria, which is arguably my favorite setpiece in a fantasy game. There's a deep sense of immersion when my Arisen wandered its unhallowed halls - although there is little room for awe when your character is surrounded by death (or sometimes literally Death itself) at all times.

Lastly, huzzah for working weekends.