Professor Layton and the Last Spectre / Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call

Despite a friend’s name being on the credits (woo!), I have to say that Spectre is the one and only title in the Professor Layton series that I have refused to buy (or, y’know, get someone to get for my birthday present!). I refused to spend money on it, instead waiting until I could borrow it because Nintendo of Europe put me off completely by hacking out a huge minigame included in the title called London Life. So I needed to get the US version in order to play this minigame – which was simple and rather lame, but worth playing – and the UK version in order not to hear that grating voice actor they have for Luke over there. And was I going to buy both? Nope.

So now, having finally revealed the, ahem, epic conclusion of London Life behind some magic wall of happiness in the London sewers in order to stop a meteorite hitting the Earth (and not a tentacle in sight), it’s time to write my thoughts.

Admittedly, we get a slight problem with Luke’s UK voice’s cheeky cockney inflection with this prequel about how he first meets Professor Layton – in his lovely home counties mansion where his father is the very well-spoken and well-respected mayor – which was there in a lesser form when we met his older self in the last game, but at least could be explained away by pointing to elocution lessons. It may seem like a point for the US version that Luke’s working-class London accent has been shown to be inappropriate, but at least it’s still a hundred times more appropriate than that appalling swing-and-miss attempt at a generic British accent that it replaces.

Anyway, in this game, a letter summons Layton and his assistant Emmy to the town of Misthallery, which despite looking like a nice little Cotswolds village (with an odd rope-bridge or two) has a rich history of excavation sites and mines, a huge dam and an abandoned factory. Quite impressive, really. Even more impressive is the town’s problem – it is being terrorised by a mysterious ‘spectre’, rampaging about the town when a thick mist falls and rending great gashes in the walls. Of course, there’s quite another explanation for the mystery, and though when it’s revealed it’s not exactly convincing, it is at least inventive and makes for some classic Layton finger-pointing. And the little animated portions are beyond doubt highlights. Layton thrives more than anything on charm – and there’s never any doubting that it has that by the bucketload.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

The star of the PS Vita launch, I was distinctly underwhelmed by the Uncharted demo, despite the undeniably gorgeous graphics for a handheld. It felt like I was being baby-walked through the entire thing, not just the initial guides, and ultimately it wasn’t until Gravity Rush and a little spree of imported rhythm games that I felt that anything on the Vita was worth playing.

Yet I’ve rushed through this one. Why? Because it was free. Well, it as free on PS Plus this month, and I had a free membership to Plus, so I thought I might as well!

Ultimately, I’m glad I played it – but also glad I didn’t have to play for it. It was a well-made game, but left me utterly cold, and of course was a bad game to play alongside its spiritual successor The Last of Us, which does everything much, much better and actually has a soul.

The problem here – beyond how obviously the series derives from Tomb Raider – is that I dislike Nate Drake. He’s the kind of character I always hated as a kid and have never grown to tolerate, bombing a dozen people and watching their dead bodies slump to the ground and the getting up to wisecrack, ‘Hot enough for ya?’ or something. I hate people who wisecrack and get smug, unless they’re a bit of a runt to begin with (like Spiderman) or end up taking as much as they give. But Drake just swaggers around being a sarcastic twatface who everyone stands around praising for his skills and knowledge and animal magnetism. Urgh.

The game is also a bit clunky. The story is that archaeological expert and all-around hero Drake is brought in to examine some unexpected remains of Spanish soldiers in Panama, with Visigoth symbols marking their graves. His dodgy partner Dante is revealed to be in league with local ‘generale’ Roberto Guerro, a huge cliché of a Central American drug lord and revolutionary soldier. Also there is the feisty young Marisa Chase, known as Chase, who is as annoying as Drake while also insisting on never using guns until at the end of the game she sees the light and discovers it is wonderful to shoot baddies in the face. As long as, y’know, they deserve it because they’re attacking first because if they don’t the drug lord is going to kill their families. (Probably.)

A mysterious amulet (yes, really) leads the way to Chase’s grandfather’s mysterious dig – which turns out to be connected with the Mysterious Cities of Gold. How original. Of course, they find one, it’s all very beautiful and underground and their security mechanisms still work centuries later, and though the gold is all radioactive, of course the bad guys still want it to flog on the world market.

Drake and his various allies – the only likeable one of whom is grizzly old Sully – either sneak about killing Guerro’s soldiers – and later, Dante’s hired mercs – or just go in all guns blazing, and generally the thing moves at a good old pace. Except when things grind to a halt to show off some gimmick of the PS Vita. You have to rub away at the screen to clean artefacts or take charcoal rubbing, reassemble jigsaws at length, and most annoyingly, to use the accelerometer to stop Drake losing his balance, which looks very stupid if you’re playing on a train (as I was). There’s also one part where you have to hold the Vita up to the light, which is quite cool, though whether the light matters or just the angle I’m not sure. Hmm, apparently it is light-sensitive. Impressive!

Anyway, these gimmicks generally got in the way and broke up the gameplay – which was largely kinda dull. True, it’s better to have all enemies believable real-world thugs rather than, y’know, living statues or mystical beings awoken in the tombs, but things do get repetitive. And it’s annoying how when you finally get your hands on a minigun it’s nowhere near as good for you as it was for your foes.

Ultimately, the experience feels hollow and careless. I don’t know if this is the case for the three games before this one, but in all honesty, after playing this one through I don’t much care to know.  

The Last of Us

When it comes down to it, there isn’t a whole lot of game in The Last of Us. There are only really four types of enemies, you mostly just do the same thing a dozen or so times and though it doesn’t feel like it, it’s every bit as much on-rails as the first half of Final Fantasy XIII but simply more adept at hiding it. If you hate the kind of game that feels mostly like a movie you can minimally interact with, you may not enjoy it that much. But in terms of sophistication, seriousness, a good story and just plain out-shining any Hollywood zombie film for many, many years (especially World War Z), you can’t go wrong with The Last of Us, and it does feel like a bit of a milestone.

On a superficial level, it goes for ‘lots of swearing, deaths that hit hard and plenty of gore must mean the product is grown up’, but it actually does back this up with depth, which is what counts. It explores a whole lot of difficult subjects, from grief to self-sacrifice, and is happy to end on a moral grey area that some could argue is so open because it’s gunning for a sequel, but I prefer to think of as bittersweet, making it clear that despite what Hollywood may tell you, always opting to save the innocent individual whose death may actually save many, many more may not actually have been wise.

Grizzly Joel has survived the zombie apocalypse and is making a living as a tough-guy smuggler, delivering products where they’re needed in the quarantined zones. One day he and his partner get mixed up with smugging a girl named Ellie – who perhaps inevitably may be the key to a cure. Soon he’s left alone with her, and they have to get through a series of difficult spots, brushing with death several times until they can reach the ‘fireflies’, the biggest underground organisation in the infected zones. Getting from place to place involves dealing with zombies, including the blind but fearsome ‘clickers’ and the foul and very dangerous ‘bloaters’, as well as soldiers and other human adversaries, snipers defending their homes and even a group of cannibals who want to make a ‘toy’ out of Ellie. Along the way they make some great allies, including Joel’s brother making his living in a hydroelectric dam, a grizzly but tough-as-nails recluse who may be the most awesome explicitly gay character yet in a video game, and a pair of black brothers who have a very sad story only outdone by the story of the people in the sewers (apparently obliquely referencing a book called Earth Abides) that unfolds only with notes and the clues left behind – including ‘They didn’t suffer’ daubed onto the floor in front of a blanket that doesn’t stop anybody seeing what it covers.

There are very uplifting moments, too – the best of them of course featuring giraffes, which will no doubt be one of the more memorable scenes the game leaves behind. There are some fun little references to other games, too, most obviously Jak and Daxter (Naughty Dog’s previous project), as well as Uncharted, which is this game’s most obvious forebear. There’s  even a newspaper claiming Justin Bieber will be playing Drake! I have to say, it does also continue to amuse me that the very last thing  you do as a player is to jump off a log, too.

This is a much, much better game than any Uncharted, though. It’s serious and demands some thought. Its stealth sections are much trickier and though occasionally frustrating, it always feels well-balanced, at least on the hard setting I played it on (one day I’ll probably tackle ‘survivor’). The only thing is that there’s not a whole lot making me want to replay, because rather than missing the gameplay or the challenge, I have the feeling of satisfaction of watching a brilliant film, though with some challenges along the way.