PAX East 2013: Being the first of the Last of Us

So you’re at PAXEast and you really wanted to demo “The Last of Us” but didn’t want to wait in a 3 hour line?  Did you see the line and wonder what the hype was about?  I actually did get to play the demo:

Background

Last of Us is a new title from Naughty Dog studios (awesome company, you’ve definitely heard of some of their titles).  They brought a 30-minute demo to PAXEast and the line has been consistently 3 hours long all weekend.  The game itself is a survival-horror with some strategy elements (read: sneak up behind zombies and shiv them from behind before they bite you).  

Preparation

To be able to play the demo, we made sure to line up and be one of the first 30 or so people on the expo floor for the day.  I got up at around 5:30, got to the convention hall around 6am, made some awkward conversation while freezing in the cold, Boston style.  After waiting outside for 2 hours, we were let inside to wait in the “queue room” to sit and wait for another 2 hours.  So for those keeping score at home, that’s 4 hours of waiting for a 30-minute demo.  

The Demo

Once they opened the expo floor, there was literally a wave of people running towards the Last of Us demo.  Crowd control could do nothing against the horde of speedwalking (remember, no running kids — learn to powerwalk like a champ) nerds.  After getting to the demo, I was the last person to be let in for the first 30 minute set.  I felt somewhat bad about leaving my friends in the dust.  I got to my station, put on a headset, tried to memorize the controls (L1 to aim, R1 to shoot — not cool after getting used to the Borderlands 1 controls for the last month or so), and I was off.

The Gameplay

So it’s a 30-minute demo, and if you beat the demo under that time you win a shiny new stressball shaped like a tiny orange brick.  They gave you a shirt just for playing so I wasn’t too concerned about beating it but decided to try and go for it.  Make no mistake — this game was HARD.  If you remember trying to beat Metal Gear Solid for the first time and can remember how hard getting used to sneaking missions was (maybe I was the only person that had this problem because of my preference for the “run in and grenade all the things” strategy), this was like that except with somewhat wonky controls.  The first 5 minutes is basically a tutorial, but they really don’t tell you much about the controls aside from aim and fire.  The inventory and crafting systems aren’t really well-explained, so you’ll pick up items and it will tell you if you have enough for a weapon “recipe” but this is before you run into any enemies so I sort of ignored this.  What they don’t tell you is that you need “shivs” to shank (shank to shiv?) the enemies and you can “craft” new shivs which you need to do because they break after so many uses.

It Gets Harder

So the first troublesome area is where the tutorial tries to teach you how to sneak up on your enemies.  After about 5 tries, I finally snuck up on a zombie and shivved him.  Unfortunately, right after this point is a swarm of about 5 of these dudes that make a beeline for you.  I tried to “assassin” this point by hiding behind a wall and shooting dudes as they turned the corner, but I only had 6 bullets and each bullet traveled about as fast as the time it takes you to say “bullet”.  When a shot finally did land, it took between 3-4 headshots so the game was basically telling you this was going to be a sneaking mission all the way.  

Conclusion

So yeah I didn’t beat the game, didn’t even come close.  Some guy near me finally did it but he rarely used the guns.  All in all, I wish the game had more flexibility with regards to different play-styles instead of dictating how you were to defeat each area.  The storyline and the graphics were pretty awesome, and I’m sure once you get past the first area the gameplay probably gets a lot better.  Disclaimer: I really love Naughty Dog as a company and have fond memories of the original Spyro franchise (not a Naughty Dog title, but back in the day they shared offices, code and general dev strategies with Insomniac games).  

Basically, 4 hours for a decent 30 minute demo I would say was pretty worth it but I might wait until this one is on sale before I commit any money towards it.