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‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 So Far

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By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.

WARNING: Possible Spoilers ahead!

It seemed everyone universally thought the second episode of this new season of “The Last of Us,” titled “Through the Valley,” was incredibly dramatic. It was what diehard fans of the video game franchise were dreading, but knew was coming eventually on the hit series.

I don’t see how anyone who enjoys episodic television could’ve disliked the second ambitious episode of this new season. Pedro Pascal’s character, Joel, isn’t in the episode very much, but when he is, it’s intense and heartbreaking.

The third episode of the season, titled “The Path,” was much slower than episode two, but it was a good “come down” episode. I liked how fast Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) arrived in Seattle to avenge Joel’s death. We didn’t need a long journey from Jackson, Wyoming to Seattle. I’m fully invested in how Ellie will get her revenge on Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), Joel’s murderer. I have a feeling there are many twists and turns ahead. Like other great HBO television shows, “Game of Thrones” and “The Sopranos,” you never know how the season will play out. So far, the writing has been excellent and tight.

In the second episode, when Abby was crawling along the fence line as the zombies were attacking her was nightmarish and thrilling. It’s one of the scariest moments I’ve seen on a television show or film in a few years. I never played “The Last of Us: Part II,” so I don’t know if the terrifying scene is from the video game, but it was shot and executed perfectly.

Some of the marketing for the new season was somewhat misleading. Almost every commercial or trailer for the second season showed a great deal of Pedro Pascal as Joel. I get why they did that, but we only got the character for the first two episodes. And he didn’t appear on screen in the second episode until the 21-minute mark.

 

Playing ‘The Last of Us’ Again

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By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.

After watching the HBO smash hit “The Last of Us,” I think I’ll go back and play the original game again. The popular series tells the story of a smuggler and a teenage girl in a zombie-infested world.

When I first played “The Last of Us” when it was released in 2013, I thought the action-adventure, survival horror game was captivating and enjoyable, but I wasn’t into it that much. I played it like crazy for about a week, and then I moved on to something else. I did start a new job around the time I bought the epic game, so that might’ve contributed to me losing interest.

The HBO series has an incredible production budget, and it unquestionably shows. You are in the series’ post-apocalyptic 2023. The attention to detail is impeccable. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve played the game; breaking the game out again after watching the show sounds fun.

The show has done an amazing job creating the look of the blind infected, the “clicker” zombies, from the video game. I can see several award nominations for the series on the horizon. They are even scarier in the television series. In Episode 2, when Joel fought with one of the “clickers,” the choreography was taken directly from the massively successful game.

“The Last of Us” television show has knocked it out of the park since its debut on HBO. I thought the zombie genre was sort of getting stale, but “The Last of Us” feels like a fresh spin on the genre. The cinematography of the first three episodes has been visually flawless.

According to the industry website gamesindustry.biz, the television series is drawing in new “The Last of Us” game players, too. After the show’s release, sales jumped in the United Kingdom. Sony has already sold 37 million “The Last of Us” themed video games since the release of the original.

With only a small sample of three episodes, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Season 2, in 2024 or ’25. By then, time allowing, I can be caught up on playing some of the franchise. It’s a rich world that the developers of “The Last of Us” series have created for new, different mediums.



A Video Game or Pinball Machine Based On Miller’s ‘Furiosa’?

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By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.

This summer, legendary director George Miller, at 77-years-old, has been working on “Furiosa,” his fifth film that takes place in the “Mad Max” movie universe.

Will we get a pinball machine or an epic video game when the film is released in 2024? When Miller’s masterpiece “Mad Max: Fury Road” was release in 2015, a video game was released along with the hit film. Was Avalanche Studio’s “Mad Max” any good? I found parts of the game fun, but other parts extremely boring. The graphics were amazing, and the driving gameplay was the game’s highlight. What’s not fun about vehicular combat, “Mad Max” style?

I watched “Mad Max: Fury Road” again the other night, and as I was watching it, I asked myself, “How the hell did George Miller not win the Academy Award for Best Director for this iconic film?” It’s easily one of the most visually stunning motion pictures I’ve ever seen. There’s really not that much story; the film is a big chase, and then, a chase back from where they just came from.

image sources: Flickering Myth – Cinema Solace on Twitter – Films Newsfeed

Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa was phenomenal. Anya Taylor-Joy will play a younger Furiosa in the 2024 film. I’m okay with the casting change, because Anya Taylor-Joy has been terrific in so many recent films and the Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit.” I hope Charlize has a cameo; or perhaps the Oscar winning actress narrates the film?

George Miller is one of the greatest filmmakers who’s ever peered through a viewfinder and yelled “Action!’” When I was little, I must’ve watched “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior,” an action film that influenced a generation, five times in a row when I first watched it. “The Road Warrior” and “Fury Road” are masterpieces. You can say the same for 1995’s “Babe” and his segment of 1983’s “The Twilight Zone; The Movie,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” “Nightmare” is a remake of an episode of the original “The Twilight Zone” series, written by the great Richard Matheson. Playing the frightened passenger, John Lithgow gets the slight edge over William Shatner in acting. The segment in which a gremlin is on the wing of a commercial airliner during a thunderstorm, is still terrifying and suspenseful.

One of Miller’s great gifts as a director: he always knows where to put the camera when the tension is palpable. There are shots from “The Road Warrior” that I still don’t know how he captured. His signature chase sequences seem chaotic, but Miller has meticulously crafted them so well using storyboards and models, they become beautiful, choreographed anarchy.

If we get a pinball machine out of Miller’s “Furiosa,” I’ll be satisfied, but a video game…Miller will surely create an immersive world to play in.

The Homebrew Mad Max pinball machine is awesome. A commercial Furiosa pinball machine would be even better!



The Internet Archive Console Living Room

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If you don’t want to stuff around with finding, downloading, configuring and tearing your hair out in making video gaming emulators work on your computer, then check out the Internet Archive’s Console Living Room.

The Internet Archive Console Living Room harkens back to the revolution of the change in the hearth of the home, when the fireplace and later, the television, were transformed by gaming consoles into a centre of videogaming entertainment. Connected via strange adapters and relying on the television’s speaker to put out pew pew pew sounds, these games were resplendent with simple graphics and simpler rules.

Via the use of the JSMESS emulator system, this allows direct access to different emulator programs in your browser with no additional plugins or settings, meaning that these games can be enjoyed again without mucking around in looking for emulators or games. Simply click on the screenshot or “Emulate This” button for each individual cartridge, and on modern browsers the games will just start to run. As nostalgia, a teaching tool, or just plain fun, you’ll find hundreds of the games that started a billion-dollar industry.

NOTE: These games are best enjoyed in an up to date version of a modern browser. Currently, there is no sound in the games, although that feature will be added soon.

image source: Internet Archive – Console Living Room



Review: Hand of Fate 2 – Nintendo Switch

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Hand of Fate 2 is yet another demonstration of how good the Nintendo Switch can be, it is the perfect game to sink your teeth into at home with the console docked to your TV, then pick it up and continue the adventure when you need to be on the move.

Having never played or even heard of the first game, Hand of Fate 2 for the Nintendo Switch has been a pleasant surprise for me. The best way I can describe the game is that it is a hybrid action RPG card building choose your own adventure game (yes, seriously). The basic premise involves pitting the player against a mysterious card dealer across 22 missions, with each mission containing various encounter cards which the dealer reveals as the player traverses across them. Each mission is essentially a mini text story driven adventure with various end and bonus objectives to complete. One involved rescuing residents of a town ravaged by zombie-like plague monsters, while another tasks the player to recover four artefacts, with each inflicting a ‘curse’ condition on the player so it becomes more difficult as more artefacts are recovered.

As the player advances through the story missions, you are rewarded various cards (depending on how well you do), including encounters, equipment, resources and companions with which the player then can effectively build a custom deck to use for each mission. The game has the option of auto building decks but I found customising card decks to be much more fun and makes each mission unique and interesting; bring the card that rewards the armour that grants additional food resources for every other resource card received or just bring more encounters that dish out gold and health as rewards and a high damage sword reward card instead, the choice is yours.

However, even with careful planning, many encounters can still rely on chance. There are several mini games within encounters that help determine their results, such as throwing dice to match or exceed a target number, timing a laser pendulum to stop on a tiny moving box or spinning a wheel of cards that grant or take away valuable resources. I feel this mechanism adds to the excitement of the game and introduces a much-needed unpredictability given the player is usually well aware of what’s coming should they have constructed the decks to their liking for a particular mission. The tension of trying to execute an impeccably timed button press to escape starvation (effectively avoids restarting the entire mission) and the resulting joy of actually pulling it off is what makes this system so great.

When combat is the only way to influence encounter outcomes, the game whisks you away from the card table and into a ring-fenced battle arena for some real time combat utilising a system not too dissimilar from the Batman Arkham games, with an emphasis on building hit combos for a weapon specific special move whilst dodging and blocking enemy attacks. Here the game tosses in a diverse set of enemy and weapon types as well as companions (all with unique abilities). Although challenging, these scenarios play out much the same and proved to be somewhat a distraction from the card table, which I felt was by far the more interesting part of the game.

Presentation wise, Hand of Fate 2 is top notch, from fantastic voice acting (card dealer especially) to the beautiful Game of Thrones like campaign map to the well-designed character models, it is an impressive showing on the Nintendo Switch, especially in handheld mode. The only complaint I have here is the rather long load times when transitioning from the card table to a combat arena.

Since starting the game for this review, Hand of Fate 2 has become one of my personal top 5 games to play on the Nintendo Switch. Once the somewhat steep initial learning curve is overcome, it becomes simple to pick up and play but very difficult to put down. Highly recommend that you all add this title to your Switch games library.

image source: Defiant Development

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House
House plays pretty much anything and everything but has almost time for nothing. A devout beat’em up fan, House enjoys a round of captain commando every now and then and can never forget spending hours in dark arcades playing warriors of fate after school. Oh yeah, his favourite console of all time is the original Famicom!

 

 

 

Going For A Spin on the Switch: Mantis Burn Racing

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What do Super Sprint, Super Off-Road, Micro Machines, Circuit Breakers, Super Cars and Over Top have in common? Ok, not Over Top, but the rest are all classic overhead or top-down racing games. Well now you can add VooFoo Studio’s Mantis Burn Racing on the Nintendo Switch to this illustrious list. Mantis Burn Racing (MBR) is an instant classic!

As devout retro gamers, of course we are going to compare contemporary games with games we loved playing many decades ago. Mantis Burn Racing gives us the same thrill we felt when we played Super Sprint – a massive rush of adrenaline while drifting around corners and jostling for that lucrative first place. The thing that MBR has over some of the top-down golden oldies is that it is feature rich and can be played in various ways – docked, handheld and tabletop! Imagine if MBR could have been played with a steering wheel – that would have made it pretty much perfect.

So what’s MBR all about then? Well, let us tell you – it’s an immersive modern top-down racer that combines exquisite physics-based gameplay with intuitive arcade racing where your driving skills are put to the test in 12 stunning tracks (of varying environments) with five unique classes of vehicles over an 11-season single-player career with more than 150 events and 13 event types! There is enough here to keep you playing for ages and to totally bling out your vehicle to ensure your ongoing podium success.

Talk about being packed to the rafters, MBR’s feature list on the Switch is an embarrassment of riches, which include:

• Split-Screen Multiplayer – Compete on one console in classic couch-style split-screen races for up to 4-players.
• Go Head-to-Head – Take on friends in 2-player local split-screen races using individual Joy-Con™ controllers with players sitting ‘cross-table’ at opposite sides of the Nintendo Switch™.
• Local Wi-Fi Multiplayer – Connect multiple Nintendo Switch™ consoles and race together without the need for a connection to the internet.
• Cross-Network Play – Take the competition online with up to 8-players and race against opponents on other platforms with Cross-Network play.
• RPG-Style Upgrades – Fine tune your vehicle’s handling and performance via a RPG-style upgrade system that presents players with deep tactical choices.
• Consistently Smooth 60fps – in both TV mode and Handheld mode.

Oh yeah, we can’t forget to also mention Robert Allen’s mesmerising audio tracks, from Mantis Burn, Appetite For the Finish to Kicking Up Salt, Welcome To The Big Time and Closing The Gap – they all compliment the game perfectly.

When it comes down to why we love MBR we can pinpoint a myriad of things; from its excellent physics drift engine and vehicle control, its awesome vehicle upgrades, to its career mode that provides depth and replay value and last but not least, playing against other humans, either local or online always provides immeasurable fun (as long as you win!).

Mantis Burn Racing on the Nintendo Switch is highly recommended and we reckon it should be on your list of must have games. Go and grab it and let’s race!

image source: VooFoo Studios

Mantis Burn Racing was provided by VooFoo Studio for this review.