My experience at PAX East was a bit different this year. Instead of trying to grab a little bit of everything off of the activity buffet, I mostly gorged myself on the Expo Hall and Tabletop Board games section. As these two locations are right beside each other, I had a much more ample amount of time to try out more games.

So in an effort to fulfill the purpose of this blog, I present to you my thoughts on the various games that I played.

THE LAST OF US

I must confess to feeling a bit bad for Ubisoft and their game I Am Alive. Not only did they fail to reach their grandiose vision, but it looks like Naughty Dog is about to show them how it’s done with The Last of Us.

Let’s not get carried away with the hype machine, though. While I enjoyed what I played, it must be noted that it was a carefully chosen vertical slice. Last year at E3 Naughty Dog showed off combat against intelligent human A.I. and highlighted how Ellie, the protagonist’s young female companion, could help out in a fight. None of this was available in the playable demo at PAX East.

Instead, the demo focused on the infected foes and how to confront them. It’s not unusual for developers to tone down a game’s difficulty for a demonstration, but The Last of Us was surprisingly unforgiving. As I waited in line for my chance to play I watched several players dying repeatedly on the same encounter. It was startling as this could pose a risk, driving disinterest to those playing. Instead, it seemed to be viewed as a puzzle. “Okay, that didn’t work, so let me try this approach” seemed to be the response most of the attendees had. No doubt the quick reloading times helped out in this regard.

Changing your approach is key to The Last of Us. Not only when met with failure, but in how you play the game as a whole. The player is fragile in The Last of Us, but in a different way than most games portray their protagonists. Most stealth games provide the player a variety of powerful abilities in order to balance out their fragility. Mark of the Ninja is a brilliant example of the player feeling empowered despite how frail they truly are. Yet this isn’t the case with The Last of Us. You’re not fragile. You can take a bit of a beating. The problem is when you get surrounded by foes, or have to handle a much more rabid and ferocious beast like the Clicker.

What gives the player the edge are the tools available to them. There are a variety of resources scattered about the environment that can be used to craft weapons such as the stealth-kill enabling shiv, upgrades to melee weapons, or medical kits. Bricks and bottles are scattered about the ground to use to smash a foe’s head in or toss to a random corner as a distraction.

How some of the weapons are handled is a bit odd, though. Categories of item are separated by the D-Pad. The demo allowed the player to equip three different guns, suggesting you can have multiple sidearms and a rifle on your person. However, when grabbing melee weapons off of the ground, a player could choose between a brick or a two-by-four. Even though their uses are different and the two-by-four could clearly be strapped onto the player’s back, they could not hold onto more than one melee weapon.

It seems like an item such as a bottle or brick, which is scattered everywhere, should be an item that is only active as long as it is equipped. As soon as you switch to something else, that item gets dropped. A two-by-four is a useful thing to hold onto, especially if it has been upgraded, but the second the player chooses to pick up a brick as a distraction that two-by-four is on the ground.

This is perhaps the biggest inconvenience of the entire demo. It would make more sense to be able to hold onto a variety of melee weapons while limiting the amount of guns they could carry. This is especially true as melee weapons are ultimately more valuable. Ammunition is scarce, aiming is a tad clunky and foes are able to absorb a few bullets before dropping to the ground for good. Having an effective melee weapon is a lot better than having a pistol or revolver.

That complaint aside, the demo was solid. The environments were heavily detailed and great to explore. The city feels ruined and abandoned rather than a mere set of arenas put together by level designers. Puzzles have been cleverly constructed to take advantage of the environment, such as having to keep a heavy cabinet from sliding down the crooked floor and blocking access to the next room.

Even if The Last of Us doesn’t live up to the hype, it promises to be a really solid and clever game. The player just needs to make sure they recognize how violent and dangerous the world is, a brave step on Naughty Dog’s part that they’ve conveyed masterfully.

LOST PLANET 3

The demo for Lost Planet 3 is a perfect example of how a simple cut of gameplay can be damaging to a title’s sales. If the lack of a line to play this game wasn’t already a death knell for this franchise, the mediocre shooting elements are a choir of bells singing to the death of one of Capcom’s first new IPs of this generation.

The demo was divided into two separate sections. The first was the basic third-person gunplay, which was perhaps the most underwhelming that this franchise has ever had. The player simply marches through a linear cavern where one type of insectoid foe keeps appearing, beating its wings in a signal crying “hey! Hey! I’m the thing you’re supposed to shoot!”. About the only interesting aspect of the combat is rolling to the side to avoid the enemy’s attacks, which doesn’t always work out well when there are multiple foes lashing out at once.

Aim, shoot, move forward. Aim, shoot, move forward. It’s so by-the-numbers with nothing stimulating being done by the A.I. or environment. You just fall into a pattern.

Contrast this to the Lost Planet 2 demo that dropped the player into a battle with a giant monstrous creature that you essentially had to kill from the inside. The closest you get from the Lost Planet 3 demo is a sort of quick-time event that tries to imitate Dead Space. One of the monsters tackles you or lifts you into the sky, and you have to try and aim at the best while disoriented. The problem is the reticle seems to dance in the general region you want to aim, but skates and slides about with little precision. Meanwhile you keep getting jabbed in the stomach by this insect’s stinger, whittling your health down as if it were sucking out some metaphorical “enjoyment bar”.

Leaving the linear pathways of the cavern and venturing into the snowy waste should be a relief, but the environment becomes too open with little indication of the actual objective. Several structures stand out from the snow, none of which screams “Hey! Over here, stupid!”. It takes some wandering until the player discovers that the objective marker only appears on the HUD when you’re looking at your destination. If you’re turned away, there is no on-screen indication of where you should be heading. The player needs to know where to go in order to know where to go.

Fortunately things eventually do kick up a notch as a scorpion bursts out into the open to engage the player. The player must skillfully avoid the beast’s attacks while shooting at the weakpoint within its tail, a vulnerability that is not so easily available. The scorpion is constantly huddled into a defensive or on the offensive, meaning the opportunities are short. Yet the game feels fair in how it presents these opportunities. Once combat has lasted long enough the player is able to hop into the mech, or rig.

Combat in the rig itself seems to be more focused on executing patterns similarly to a quick time event. Four buttons control four different actions; blocking, striking, grabbing, or drilling. While the idea is to make combat cinematic and ultimately requires some level of timing, control is always in the hands of the player. The player will not progress until they get it right. Grab the foe’s claw at the right time, then manuever the drill with the right thumb-stick to properly aim it and dig into the meat of the monster. Once the tail was removed the game left the player to figure out what came next, suggesting these sorts of encounters could become a puzzle of inputs. What do you use at what time? Will there be proper indicators? Or will the game just instruct you each time? Uncertain at this point.

Which is, in truth, the problem with Lost Planet 3. What do we really know about it? What did this demo truly demonstrate? It spent more time convincing me the game wasn’t fun than getting me geared up for it. How many kinds of foe are there? How do they all interact? Why couldn’t I use the grappling hook, which is one of the tools that set the first game apart in the first place? How is it implemented? How often will you fight in the rig? Are there different types of rigs that you’ll be able to use?

If Capcom wants to see this game succeed, they’ll need to start showing all the cards. They’ll need to show players some razzle and dazzle, because what few glimpses of rig combat they’ve given is just not enough to entice players.