/games/ - Games

I’ve been thinking about the last of us 2, a lot and something stuck out to me for why the game felt so different from so many others; there aren’t any spectacles at all throughout the entire game. For those that didn’t ready debords book, a spectacle is a thing to stare at, a thing to grab your attention. They exist everywhere, as billboard ads, celebrities, online variants of click bait, exaggeration in news headlines etc. Games have them too but they’re designed in a much subtler ways, typically through UI pop ups to reward the player with something they did. Achievements, damage text, shaky cam during action scenes, flashy combat effects, epic music. Tlou2 feels different, outside of a minimalist hud design the gameplay never feels like it’s trying to grab the players attention in anyway, similar to how dark souls 1 makes no attempts to impress the player with anything outside of what exists in the game world. It feels brutal, the music is subtle and is synced with the emotions felt by all characters in it, takedowns and fights aren’t overly flashy or stealthy like in far cry, they’re fast, vicious and filled with flaws. It’s strange for me to play something that makes me feel physically and emotionally exhausted, but I want more spectacle free games like dark souls, far cry 2, tlou2, and more barren in visual and auditory rewards. It makes me feel a lot more connected to the game as a game and helps sympathize with the crushing realities of the characters in them as they grow past their own problems.