Tomb Raider was an experience. Not the emotionally draining, perception-altering Experience that a developer or publisher would want you have with such a large budget major release (those few and far between), but a quiet, sometimes meditative, and often humbling experience shared between two people: myself, the practiced-hand "core gamer," and my wife, the silent observer and rare participant. I never truly understood her motivation for wanting to play the Tomb Raider reboot, really. I guess I never asked, now that I think about it. But what would have been a routine week or two controlling an English woman through a terrible coming-of-age ordeal (but a good one, the game was pretty great) became a study of, in my mind, game mechanics, accessibility, interactive storytelling, and in it's own way, marital politics. It was frustrating -on several levels- to watch my wife, a person unaccustomed to controlling both an onscreen avatar and the camera which dictates how that avatar operates, struggle to come to terms with modern game design.
There was an obvious cycle of development happening right in front of me not unlike a child's own evolution; mechanics were learned in a safe environment, were then tested, and consternation would set in right before abandonment, then followed by a noticeable mustering of drive to relearn and overcome the obstacles. My wife, in her own way not dissimilar to Lara Croft, didn't leave the Island of Misfit Cultists a pro, but there was certainly some self-discovery happening there from campfire to campfire. If there wasn't, she wouldn't have immediately requested to play The Last of Us.
So, it seems like she's into the more cinematic, big budget stuff out there. I'm chalking that up to being a gateway drug (I hope). Months had passed from completing Tomb Raider to now, but she was consistent in her interest in playing the game, which I found a little surprising. I honestly thought that it would be out of sight, out of mind and that if I didn't bring The Last of Us home, her interest would have waned. This wasn't the case, and now that it's close to the end of the year and every video game website on the planet is arbitrarily choosing what "their favorite game" of the last twelve months had been, we've finally started to play what will undoubtedly wind up being one of the contenders. The opening sequence did enough to show us why.
Yes, I suppose that in the spirit of full disclosure, this first entry does reflect our first time playing the game, but we've played it more since. It was a few weeks ago, late at night and ready for bed, when we decided that we would at least go through the intro to the game after I assured her that action games like this never have multi-hour opening sequences (like the dozens of JRPGs stacked around our apartment). We were not quite prepared by how hauntingly affective it was, though, which is something I choose not to spoil for you if you haven't played it yet.
These first 45 minutes or so did little to show us what the rest of the game would be like, though. Protagonist Joel could only mosey slowly through environments and interact with the occasional door or key item. For us, this was a good method for re-introducing my wife into using both thumbs in concert with what's happening in front of her. Occasionally, I could hear an exhale of exasperation until I would offer a gentle reminder that she should adjust the camera (we'll come back to this), but this fell by the wayside quickly enough in this first sequence. It was a fast 45 minutes with everything going on in the game, but it served its purpose, and the stage was set for what our next few weeks would become.
Like Tomb Raider, we're playing the game in short chunks of hour-long increments. Tomb Raider was, basically, a short season of Lost for us, and The Last of Us will probably be no different. It gives us a chance to play a little and regroup afterwords. During the day, we can send each other messages to parse through radical theories about the plots of the games and what the next sequence might be like, and this is a feeling I haven't had since, well, Lost left the air. It can make the wait agonizing for the next time we both have the opportunity and energy to play together, but the act of playing the game is all the more sweet because of it. That is, until you actually get into the game.
But let's talk about that tomorrow since this is getting long. Your homework is to read Playboy's interview with Rockstar co-founder and Grand Theft Auto mastermind Sam Houser. It's safe for work and fun read, if a little less illuminating than the first interview with a total recluse should be. Still worth it, though.
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