Top 10 Video Game CS/Play Movies

01. The Last of Us

Every now and then a game comes along that finds the right story and the right way to tell it to the point that it can lay claim to the hearts and the minds of the gamers who experience it.

The Last of Us is just such a game - in fact it instills a surprising measure of loyalty and like in the gamers who have played through its story in a manner that is difficult to describe. It is not simply that the player quickly becomes emotionally invested in the story as it unfolds. Or that they can believe what they are seeing because, hey, it is actually based on real organic science.

What it may very well be is this: strictly from an entertainment point-of-view, the game - and the movie that was made from it - has both a value very similar to that of a motion picture and an even greater value because in addition to allowing us to relive a story we already know we love, it reveals aspects and elements we missed.

Now compound that with a clear and immediate set of goals, a compelling story of a quality and depth that you expect to encounter on TV or at the movies, and then add in the sincere desire to fight for life, and we get close to that secret. But there is a bit more to it than that.

Here is the thing... Even if you honestly believe that the Zombie genre (and yes, in recent years and thanks to a plethora of successful games Zombie has become a core video game genre in its own right) has fully run its course, and you simply cannot stand yet another Zombie-based game, TLoU still has so much new to offer that it is the exception to the rule.

Start with the environment that was created for the game. The biggest issue with most Zombie games is that the action starts and concludes in one small area or town, with a quickly introduced and small cast of characters, and a Zombie threat that is quickly marginalized and generic.

In TLoU none of that applies! The game starts in one place and quickly moves on to another, bigger, more dangerous, and conflicted place. The usual failure of government to respond is supplanted by a government that responds in the worse way imaginable!

The cast of characters is huge, spreads out over an entire continent, and revisits. Along the way entire new sets of adversaries are introduced, and the literal problems of staying alive and not becoming Zombie chow are compounded by a set of moral choices that often cause you to stop in wonder as to just who is the brutal and evil enemy here - the Zombies? Or the Humans?

Another massively important element here is the relationships between the characters - and not just the protagonists mind you, but the characters who briefly interact with them and who might otherwise be experienced as peripheral and temporary people who end up having far more impact both as threats and as emotional sounding boards than otherwise obvious.

This is not a formula story. Having a gun - and ammunition for it - is often far less an effective means of dealing with a threat or a problem than having a clear head and the willingness to think your way out of danger is! Oh, guns are important - so are knives, clubs, and anything else you can beat a clicker to death with when the action goes hot and heavy - we're just saying that it is not always so clear.

Sometimes there are reality-distorting elements that break immersion - and that is a serious flaw in this sort of story to be sure.

For example the primary protagonist team is made up of Joel and Ellie - what begins as a reluctant pairing that is created by circumstance and tragedy, but that appears to hold the answer to the question that is very likely going to drive humanity to extinction - and considering it is already on the brink of that condition anyway, that is saying something!

But while Ellie almost always presents as the typical 14-year-old woman-child that she is meant to be (though a 14-year-old woman-child who seems to channel Chuck Norris, Fred Bear, and Ted Nugent as needed) there are points where someone screwed the pooch and she does things that make you react with a solid 'Waaaaaahhhhhhhttttt?!'

We hate it when the developing side of a game screws around with immersion, because when that happens it is almost always five-times-as-hard to find that golden moment that sucks you back into the story than is otherwise the case.

The underlying strength of the story is the shared pain, and they could just as easily messed that up in any of a bazillion ways, but what Naughty Dog did in creating the game and its story-arc was to take one clever step that nobody naturally expected, and that worked amazingly well: the made Ellie a playable character.

Man, that NEVER happens in games. By all rights Ellie should have been the tag-along sidekick; the damsel in distress; the weakest link and the character you are constantly needing to save or get out of some mess that she carelessly got herself into.

Instead what we get is a capable and involved girl who is just as serious about her own survival - and yours - as you are!

More significant is the fact that the code wizards who created TLoU chose to chuck the standard formula for this sort of story right out the window, and in so doing transformed the pairing of Joel and Ellie into a formula whose value far exceeds its component parts.

That they are both human - in spite of Ellie's condition - is a fact that is clearly burned into the psyche of the player. That they must rely upon each other? That goes without saying.

But perhaps the most important part of this is the part we cannot see until the bitter end of the story, when we finally come to understand what was truly motivating both Joel and Ellie. And no, I am not about to tell you that - because if you have not played this game, doing so would be justifiable grounds for you to hunt me down and stick an arrow up my.... Well, you get the idea.

The Last of Us made it as our Number One game for this Top Ten. We pulled no punches - we can't do that - but on the other hand what we can do is give you this advice if you have not yet played the game: STOP watching the movie when the timer hits 18 minutes on the movie. That gives you enough of the story to understand its attraction, but not so much that it can possibly spoil anything for you.

Once you start to experience the events past that point you will quickly come to appreciate how the take that the director took - and the story itself - grows legs long enough to see this game as the clear GotY contender that it is.

Posted: 20th Nov 2014 by CMBF
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