Last Friday, the 1001-Up.com team attended a lock-in event at a GAME UK store in Camden, London to promote the upcoming release of The Last of Us by Naughty Dog.
The lock-in was held in partnership with Sony and similar events are currently taking place in 75 stores around the UK. The organisers treated us to a previously unseen section of the game and plenty of pizza to go around.
We were the first people to turn up to the lock-in and our very own W1ngman managed to become the first player of the night, making his way onto Twitter. He got stuck into the game and was promptly slaughtered by a Clicker, an infected person who has had a prolonged exposure to the fungus and is totally blind but able to “see” using echolocation (see our original article for more details on the storyline). These creatures are savage and don’t take any prisoners; if you let one get close enough you’ll quickly find yourself watching a gruesome death scene followed by a trip back to the last checkpoint.
As the death screams went on in the background from W1ngman’s attempts at survival, Kimmy and I got to know the Sony marketing field representative to hear some more background behind the game. Unfortunately we didn’t get his name, so for now we’ll call him Keith. On the subject of the infected, Keith explained the origins of the idea: “Naughty Dog watched a BBC documentary about cordyceps unilateralis which affects ants. You start to see spores coming out of different parts of the body, so ND thought: what would happen if humans could contract it?”
The enemies in The Last of Us are at varying stages of infection as well as still-healthy humans who will do anything to survive. Both provide a challenge, with the early-stage, fast-paced Runners being just as deadly as armed survivors looking to take whatever salvage you have at any cost. A question Kimmy had that unfortunately couldn’t be answered was: “Where are the fat Clickers? Does the virus only affect the young and beautiful? If so, then we’re in real trouble.” She can however speak for herself on that one – I on the other hand would be doomed.
A jump scare involving a Clicker occurred, prompting Keith to tell us about a recent experience when showing the game to people for the first time; it actually caused one person to run out of the room because they jumped so hard. W1ngman came to a stealthy section of the game where he was having difficulty sneaking around an enemy, throwing bottles and bricks to divert its attention and open a path. While it sounds easy, it isn’t so much in practise according to W1ngman: “Gameplay is very easy to pick up but I’m finding it hard to sneak around the Clickers.”
The Last of Us isn’t just a lesson in combat, but also in survival explained Keith: “You pick up items in a survival technique – for example, pick up certain items and turn them into either weapons or health packs – so if you find a syringe, do you use it as a weapon or to heal yourself?” He added: “People compare the game to Uncharted so they think they can go in all guns blazing, but they need to be more strategic.” This is definitely the case in a particular part of the demo, where most players burst in shooting all the infected but quickly run out of ammo. It’s often best to stop, crouch and sneak around the room to the exit while pausing whenever a Clicker gets close; only when a Runner, who can still see, suddenly notices you is when all hell breaks loose and you need to bring out the guns and melee weapons to resolve the situation.
The melee attacks are sight to behold: they’re brutal, and if you take a run-up to the enemy and swing at the right time the blow can be devastating. It’s these moments and the overall look of the game that adds to the drama and may well be the reason for the release delay. “They delayed the game but added in stuff to make it more dramatic. It’s also coming out during a quieter time in the year to give our gamers something to play,” according to Keith.
The story revolves around Joel, tasked with transporting Ellie across America for a currently unknown reason. Keith asked: “Earth is reclaiming back what was taken from it. Ellie doesn’t know what to expect because she is young. She’s been given to you as a package and you’ve got to get her across America, but why?” He then went on: “Characteristics develop throughout the game and things get very tight, very serious, very quickly. Without giving anything away it’s going to get very tense and heart-breaking.” This is refreshing to hear as titles these days always seem to have happy endings; a bit more drama is always welcome.
It wasn’t long before other players made their way into the store for the pizza and PlayStation, filling up the room and gathering around the PS3 pods. Keith left us to it while he went to chat with the newly arrived-gamers so we had another play through the demo to take a closer look at the game. At first it’s definitely very similar to Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (review coming soon) in the way that it plays, although it’s a lot more about survival – which seems to be a trend in gaming at the moment, with the recent Tomb Raider reboot and thanks to survival-horror titles such as Day Z. It’s definitely better to use a stealth approach wherever possible to preserve ammo, and there’s a crafting system where you can create medpacks, batteries and melee weapons from various everyday items scattered throughout the devastated city.
As with previous Naughty Dog games, there are collectibles to be found on each level including hidden notes, comics, and what are called ‘Firefly logos’ that weren’t present in the level we played. The notes found on corpses and in the rubble are actually 3D objects that can be rotated even if they are simply pieces of paper. We hope that like in Tomb Raider you can reveal secret information on these documents by looking at them more closely, to add a bit more depth to the experience rather than just hoping for an achievement by collecting them all.
There were two other characters onscreen in the demo: you play as Joel throughout the game and Ellie tags along, but we also had a third person along for the ride (who we’re guessing won’t be around for long considering all footage shown so far only includes the former). The uncontrollable characters appear to not be phased by enemy attacks and, while they will shoot and attack the Clickers when you do, they’re invisible overall and rarely contribute to take enemies down. W1ngman decided to throw a Molotov cocktail at Ellie “because I wanted to test what will happen”, and was disappointed when she didn’t explode into flames.
Overall I found the game simply to be Uncharted but with more stealth, which isn’t a bad thing as that series of games has a very high production value which The Last of Us appears to continue with so far. Looking at the other gamers there, they were having a great time and were enjoying the pizza; W1ngman got to know another attendee from The Manic Zone and they spent some time discussing the title.
The event was a great opportunity for us to make our first outing as the 1001-Up.com team with many more to come; we enjoyed getting our hands on the game a month before release and to mingle with some fellow gamers. We asked Keith if he could tell us about any other similar events in the near future and, while he couldn’t tell us what the next game would be, he at least confirmed there will be more lock-ins to come.
Get ready for the release of The Last of Us on 14 June 2013. If you attended the event at GAME in Camden, or even appear in any of our photos, leave us a comment below!
