More On Video Games

Having made it through The Last of Us once, I'm now about halfway through the second time around, still playing on normal difficulty. I'm still getting killed, but not as often and really only when I make mistakes on especially hard encounters. More often, what's happening is I make it through an encounter but I take a lot of hits and my health goes down.

Playing this game has me really thinking about this whole world of video games and how they have emerged as a new and in many ways more immersive entertainment experience than books, movies, or TV. The Last of Us, in particular, immerses the player in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future similar to The Walking Dead, where humans live in quarantine zones or quasi-sovereign settlements, and where other humans are just as dangerous, if not more so, than the zombies, or in this case, the infected. 

End of the world scenarios seem quite popular these days, though I don't think that's a new development. The idea of the end of days goes back to early Christianity, and probably much earlier than that. 

Video Games

I've jumped into the world of video games by purchasing a Playstation 4. In the last 10 days I've spent about 50 hours playing The Last of Us, which is a tremendous game. It's gotten rave reviews and won tons of awards and a movie based on the game is in development. I finished the game last night and tonight I'm hoping to start a new one. I'm split between Call of Duty: Ghosts and Sniper Elite 3, but leaning towards the latter since it seems to have a better single-player experience. But the Call of Duty series is a big deal with legions of fans that play it obsessively in multi-player mode. As I understand it, the single-player experience is pretty dumb, but is there to help you learn how to play. Once you get good in single-player, you go online to join matches.  

One reason I wanted to buy the console was to figure out what the deal was with the current generation of video games. I felt like I needed to understand what the experience was. Now that I've experienced it for myself, I feel like I get it and holy cow do I ever have ideas for games!