The Last of Us

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[PS3] [PS4] The Last of Us

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Dec 2011 16:10

http://www.lastofus.com/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/sto ... 51851164/1

Bullshit unreadable article, but there's a money-quote at the end:

Like the Uncharted games, The Last of Us has a third-person perspective, in which you see the character on-screen, but it has a more realistic, cinematic look. "We're trying to move the medium of video games into an area elevated in the same manner of respect of film," Balestra says. "We want to redefine what our medium is even called. 'Video game' is not an accurate name anymore. It is not necessarily a game with rules and a winner and a loser. It's an experience."


I.e. not a game but a simulation, what I call "The Cinematic Videogame". But anyway, the dude's claims are highly dubious: these people can't even fucking DRAW a DECENT CHARACTER -- the idea that it is precisely THEY who will move this genre forward (a genre that already has such amazing titles in its ranks as Planescape: Torment, Shenmue, Eternal Darkness, and many others -- titles which these dudes are obviously treating as non-existent, in order to put themselves forward as some kind of ORIGINATORS of the genre) is ludicrous. The characters in this game are even uglier than those in Uncharted, how could they possibly manage to draw anyone but a subhuman with the aesthetic sense of a BAT into their world? I mean look at this shit:

6484012041_fb2ea22218_z.jpg
6484012041_fb2ea22218_z.jpg (137.97 KiB) Viewed 26944 times


How could anyone possibly want to be that dude? I'd rather play the little girl instead, and even she is not that cute.

Western devs should stick to first-person perspective, where at least you can't see the ugly mug they have designed for you. And it's more immersive anyway, which many of the "experience" evangelists seem hilariously incapable of grasping.
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Dec 2011 16:15

I mean you'd think they'd have realized by now why Clive Owen and Ryan Gosling are leading-man material in the movies, while great actors who are ugly, or even merely passable, are not.
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Sep 2012 13:04

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udVTD13FYwk

Items glow when you get close to them. Utterly destroys any kind of realistic atmosphere they were trying to create. This isn't Devil May Cry, morans. Cause in DMC the focus are the FIGHTS, get it? And if it's possible to remove the glow-for-retards option, chances are the items will be extremely difficult and boring to find (especially in all that post-apocalyptic clutter) because they won't have been created with this in mind, resulting in equally atmosphere-destroying adventure-game-like clickfests.

And then there's the constant chatter between the ugly protagonists, which would be very hard not to grow tiresome. They'd have to have some pretty good writers on board, and even they would be stretched, since the amount of dialogue would dwarf that of a movie.

I don't see how this could end well.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 Dec 2012 04:41

New trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_7Ry5rcpGs

It looks to me like a big budget version of I Am Alive, which I played recently for about an hour or so and found interesting but not very well executed, and therefore a little boring. We'll see.
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Unread postby David » 05 Feb 2013 13:49

lQHGvOJ.jpg

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http://www.edge-online.com/news/the-las ... allery-top

The zombie designs are disappointing. They're nowhere near as intimidating and gruesome as those in the Biohazard remake.
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Unread postby Tain » 06 Feb 2013 17:31

Two minutes of an encounter with "clickers": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jIK_cHF5c
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Unread postby Texas » 14 Feb 2013 04:22

http://gematsu.com/2013/02/the-last-of- ... to-june-14

The Last of Us has been delayed to June 14, Sony has confirmed.

Initially set to launch on May 7, developer Naughty Dog said the five week delay is to assure the game raises the bar even further.

Find the studio’s full statement below.

The Last of Us is an ambitious project. In many ways it may be Naughty Dog’s most ambitious project to date – brand new universe and cast of characters, brand new tech, brand new genre, not to mention it’s easily the longest campaign Naughty Dog has ever made.

As we entered the final phase of development for The Last of Us, we came to realize just how massive Joel and Ellie’s journey is. But instead of cutting corners or compromising our vision, we came to the tough decision that the game deserved a few extra weeks to ensure every detail of The Last of Us was up to Naughty Dog’s internal high standards.

As a team we pride ourselves on setting a very high quality bar for every aspect of our games – gameplay, story, art, design, technology and more. We want to make sure The Last of Us raises that bar even further – for ourselves, and most importantly, for you, our fans.

The extra wait will be very short and your patience will be rewarded. Update your calendars. You won’t even have to change seasons. The Last of Us will be available June 14th, 2013. Until then, know that we will be working extremely hard to deliver an experience that matches your high expectations.
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Unread postby dinopoke » 01 Mar 2013 05:09

Development Series Episode 1: Hush: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ICRQYIoORg
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Unread postby movie » 10 Mar 2013 01:51

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Unread postby Heell » 01 Apr 2013 09:07

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Unread postby Heell » 09 Apr 2013 11:29

Development Series Episode 2: Wasteland Beautiful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mty2wE--yw8
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Unread postby mothmanspirit » 04 Jun 2013 00:19

Interview about multiplayer: http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_l ... layer.aspx

Recently, we had a chance to speak with The Last of Us lead multiplayer designer Erin Daly about the game's unique approach to multiplayer. Also, Sony sent us some new multiplayer screenshots.

The Last of Us, in single-player, is far from a run-and-gun shooter. So, when you approached the multiplayer component of the game what was your philosophy of how you would weave that into the structure of The Last of Us?

Erin Daly: The key of the process is really to capture that essence of survival and explore the tactical gameplay that you get in the single-player. You can use lots of different tools to accomplish your goals. It's not all about, like you said, running and gunning and having the best team. And obviously, in the multiplayer, PvP experience, it's really difficult to capture that. There's very few games that manage to achieve that kind of core-based tactical kind of feel and still be fairly accessible to a broad audience and still have a lot of core, kind of fun factor into it.

So obviously there's still some kind of core shooter gameplay in the multiplayer. If you want to, you can try to and play a run n' gun kind of game, but we really did a lot to try and ensure that the players who were playing more stealthily and playing more tactically would be at an advantage. We obviously leveraged a lot of the systems we had existing in single-player to manage that. So we had the crafting system obviously, the listen mode [a kind of "radar" view akin to Batan: Arkham Asylum's detective mode - Ed.] and then we layered a few new systems on top of that like the marking system, the radar- to really slow down the pace of the game. I think where the game really shines is in those little cat-and-mouse encounters where you spot the enemy and he spots you. You both know roughly where each other are, but you're not immediately shooting at each other because it's actually more of a tease to stay in cover, wait for the other guy to move first, and then try and pop out and shoot him. But if he's crafting - maybe he's actually preparing a bomb- he's going to throw a bomb at you or a Molotov or a smoke bomb or something like that. So there's just a little bit of those guessing games that can happen and we really tried to play those up and make sure we were delivering the essence of survival and tactics into the competitive space.

Talk about the marking and radar stuff because it does get to be a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game where you do have some information but it's limited.

Sure, I mean so our philosophy there was, like, we wanted to-just like you said- give you just enough information that you had an idea where the threats are. Because, obviously, threat detection is such an important part of the competitive experience. Especially when the lethality of the game is as high as it is- which it really needs to be to kind of deliver on the authenticity of this super-realistic kind of world, where it's a few gun shots and you're gone. So, it's kind of like we kind of need to strike a balance there between giving you some information about where the enemies are at and also forcing you to kind of move more slowly through the world.

So, what we do with the radar is: players show up on the radar when they're sprinting. That was a really big change we put in early on so that we could just slow the pace of the game down and force players to try and creep around a little more. And we put a range limit on that so if you're really far away from the battle you can still sprint just to get into the conflict, get closer to your teammates. But when you start getting closer to those battles, you start thinking, "Ok, maybe I should slow down a bit here 'cause if I'm moving quickly the enemy is going to hear me because I'm making these loud footsteps." That's the reason why you're showing up in the radar.

And then on top of that we added the marking system so that players who do spot an enemy but don't have enough time to shoot them can at least help their teammates mark them, get some parts for themselves with the in-game economy system and then give their team that awareness of where these threats are. On top that we kind of layered on a few other kinds of counters to that, certain survival skills you can equip to keep yourself from being marked. If you want to, [you can] make marking more powerful you can make it last longer or make enemies glow through walls, things like that. There are a few other little twists of that as you get deeper into the progression tree.

There's quite a bit in terms of stuff to either unlock 0r buy with the in-game currency. Talk about all the stuff there is to do in terms of load out and progression in the game.

Our philosophy was to create a really layered set of interesting choices for the player. So, the choice of, before you go into a match, what's your build going to be? And this is classic thing that exists in a lot of multiplayer games today. We really wanted to try and kind of take that to a little more of a kind of a RPG level by giving you a set of points to spend. And so what you do there is you start out with only load-out points and as you progress and gather more and more supplies you're unlocking more load-out points and those are going to let you equip more things on your guy to go into the game with. And so you've got your initial small firearm- pistols, basically. And then you've got your larger firearms which are the rifles and you can decide if you want to pick a more expensive rifle for example or one with a silencer that's going to cost you more load-out points. But the trade-off is that obviously you're giving up some of the survival skills because you won't have as many points to spend on those.

And then, of course, you've got your survival skills. There's quite a few of those, and each of them have different levels of upgrades to them which make them more and more powerful. And then you've got your purchasable log which lets you decide if anything, if you want to carry something a special weapon you're going to be able to purchase in maps with the parts that you're earning. So that was our way of kind of giving players access to these power weapons which are really pretty big game features. But not making it so random like, you know, in many games they're just kind of spawned on the map and they're cycled on a certain time limit. We wanted to add a little more determinism to it and make it a little more intentional. So players who like really want to play, say, a run and gun play style can say, "Okay, I'm going to take a shotgun, and so when I have enough parts I'm going to be able to buy that shotgun in-match. And it's going to turn the tide for me."

Basically, both the main modes are sort of variations of sort of a team death match mode- Supply Raid and Survivor. Could you tell our readers about Supply Raid and Survivor, what they are, and what the differences are there?

Sure. So, our philosophy there was, even though we don't have a very big breadth of game modes, is to kind of go for depth over breadth and try and create a deeper game experience. Like we mentioned, a little more layered and there's more of that depth there. So, we focus on just a couple of modes which are somewhat similar to most of the team death match experiences but those are also some of the most popular experiences that players are after so our philosophy was how do we take those core experiences that players love playing but put them, and take them into our universe and make them feel more survivalist and more weighty in terms of the tension of the match? So what we created was kind of a twist on the tedium where you're just kind of- where each team has a certain number of reinforcements. And that kind of ties into the fiction that there's these kind of warring factions going on. There are the hunters, the Fireflies, [and] they're fighting each other and they have a limited number of guys to bring to battle. So as you're progressing through the match, you're burning through your teams' reinforcements. And when you're down to just like the last four, we give you a special notification that tells you that it's sudden death now, this is your last life. And if you get down to being the last one standing you get a special notification for that. And we actually do it, play it with a little of the game rules at that point to kind of savor that last guy and give him a chance to come back. So if you managed to get one of the item stashes if you're the last guy we actually give you more resources at that point and give you a chance to kind of try and pull from behind, and pull out a win for your team.

In the other mode, Survivor, that the mode that really best exemplifies the survivalist aspect of the game. Because you only have one life, it becomes much, much more precious. And we have notes in our focus tests, initially players just kind of running out and having these really quick rounds where everyone is just rushing and quickly killing each other off and the round will be over. And, as they play for a little bit they realize, "Okay, if I actually just wait a little bit and use listen mode and try and get to a couple stashes and craft some stuff I'm actually being really effective in taking out the enemy team." So we start noticing players playing a lot more craftily. And that was cool because that's really kind of the vibe that we're going for is that more tactical play.

What are some of the tactics and strategies and ways that playtesters have been playing the game that have evolved in ways that you didn't anticipate or just that you thought were interesting?

One thing we've noticed that is definitely one of our goals was to try and support the different play styles that you see there in multiplayer. Some players really like to hang back and be a sniper, so we wanted to make sure we support that playstyle well. That's why we added some of those extra marking abilities to allow players to hang back but still help their team a lot. And of course the purchasing system allows the snipers to, you know, sustain a perch if they're doing well enough they can buy enough ammo to keep firing. We had players internally who [said], "Yeah, I love playing sniper. And I like the fact that I can hold my perch off for a little bit and hang back."

We have other players who really like playing support. So we made sure to try and, as we were developing we were like, you know, "We don't have enough things to let these guys help their teams." So we had a revised system which is a really core part of the core gameplay to make sure that there was a lot of teamwork there in terms of keeping their team alive. We didn't have enough other systems so, the feedback from those players we decided to just try and add some other systems to kind of support that play style. So we added the gifting system which you can do through one of the survival skills you can equip- I believe it's [called] "crafting master." And if you equip the higher level of that skill, every time you craft an item it gives you a percentage towards a gift. And when you've crafted two or three items you've now got this gift item you can give to your teammates. And so you might be able to give your team a free Molotov or a free bomb or a free smoke bomb or a shiv or something. We also added the ability for players to actually heal their other teammates directly- even before they've gone down. So if you're trying to play support style you can basically earn a lot of parts and help your team quite a bit using those abilities and kind of hanging back. It's kind of like the medic class in Battlefield but it's a little bit different because you've got to think about whom to try and support using your crafting and healing on the fly.


New multiplayer screens:

Plank attack TLOU MP.jpg

molotov throw TLOU mp.jpg

listen-mode TLOU MP.jpg

Flamethrower TLOU MP.jpg

Firefly pins Marauder TLOU MP.jpg

Fireflies TLOU MP.jpg

Execution pin TLOU MP.jpg

Elim2-One-life-per-round TLOU MP.jpg

Burning body TLOU MP.jpg

Bomb Throw TLOU MP.jpg
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Unread postby dinopoke » 05 Jun 2013 18:02

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Unread postby icycalm » 27 Jun 2013 23:37

Tim Rogers review, including some (probably minor) spoilers:

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopi ... 78#1280378

Tim Rogers wrote:i had a pretty good time with this game; it was super-dumb and a fair deal too long, though i appreciated the way it tries to meld together nuances of multiple genres, making it so it plays like a sort of real-time action shining force, or a point-and-click adventure with shooter metaphors! whatever it was going for, i don't reckon it quite got there, though it made me think about a lot of exciting game-shapes of the nebulous Future Of Video Games, so that is a good thing. also, i appreciated its buckets of graphics (nice color palette!) and scattered collection of individual dialogue moments wherein i thought, "it sounds like real people are talking inside my television". i liked the ending twist, and appreciate that a major video game developer was willing to mix it up tone-wise to such a drastic extent -- considering the vast library of happy endings modern triple-A games display (every color of the "just won the high school football game" rainbow).

the end of The Last Of Us is every bit as "a video game, essentially" as a more showoffy Bioshock Climax or a Metal Gear "turn the game console off now" moment, yet it is quieter and genuinely thought-provoking, so i liked that.

i'm left appreciating the game as a "nice gesture": it's a story about "zombies" by necessity -- because such a thing moves units with efficiency and because enough of the mechanics are pre-designed in neat packages -- and by deliberation it's an experiment wherein the designers thought their hardest toward attaching everything to "reality". i appreciate how densely they considered the logistics of a post-fungal-apocalyptic united states of america. i appreciate the game being a story about insane decision-making in the wake of apocalypse. i like a lot of stuff about it!

i like how the gunshots sound! i like how the closest we get to a post-headshot catch-phrase is the unmistakable (unmistakably performed?) voice of a fourteen-year-old girl spitting out "Fuck!" i like that it took me maybe two dozen choke-out kills before i realized i don't need to repeatedly hammer the square button to kill an enemy; i like that square initiates a visible struggle . . . and the eventual death carries no camera thump, no fanfare, no centered, screen-spanning "FUCK YEAH".

the game is at times ropy and loose, and i giggled a lot while duct-taping pairs of scissors to baseball bats as a blind zombie jerk approached me in a hallway while my flashlight shined all over it. i groaned with ferocity several times as the game asked me to pick up and carry yet another ladder, until, at the end of the game, when i had to pick up and relocate the same ladder five times in a single room, i realized i was being trolled -- and then realized i wasn't being trolled: they're just trying to space apart the story beats. when the game forced me to hang out in its world, i enjoyed hanging out in its world -- especially toward the end of the pittsburgh suburbs, with its many houses, each with a basement, a garage, an upstairs, a downstairs, a kitchen, and some variety of visual cues of the horror that defeated everyone inside.

my favorite moment of the game occurred in the pittsburgh stronghold: after stalking enemy bandit jerks for what felt like the length of a (weirdly paced) summer blockbuster, joel and ellie overhear two men talking inside a room in a building with a blown-out wall. one of them is clearly the leader. he's wearing a red jacket -- i think (he was far away) -- and he has a beard -- i think -- and a bald head. the man tells his henchmen to go find these assholes who are fucking up their camp. they sir-yes-sir him and trot off. then he stands there with his hands on his hips, at the brink of the blown-out wall. ellie says, "that guy on the second floor!" i shot him with an arrow; he died. i later ran through that second floor of that building -- i didn't even stop to look at his body. i like the comparatively subtle subtext: Post-Apocalypse, No One Is "In Charge".

my second-favorite moment was the ski resort -- just, the whole part where ellie is killing everyone. is that what the new tomb raider game was going for? i'm not saying the drama or the catharsis or what-have-you blew me away: i'm saying the level geometry was fantastic. i appreciated it as a sort of magnificent valkyria chronicles map with a weird new control scheme.

in summary, if action button dot net weren't inaccessible in google chrome because we link to a site that hosts malware, i'd (ask The Troops if he wants to collect his posts into a review, and then) write a review in which i give The Last Of Us four out of four stars because it's the first logical step toward a triple-A western video game that's almost as good as Raw Danger.

"Imagine a The Last Of Us . . . where all you do is carry ladders"

THE END
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Unread postby icycalm » 06 Jul 2013 03:40

http://heatherannecampbell.com/the-last-of-us/

Heather Anne Campbell wrote:If you haven’t played The Last of Us, don’t read this. Go buy the game and play it. Buy a PS3 if you need to. The first twenty minutes of the game are worth three hundred dollars. They’re worth a lifetime of waiting for this game to finally be made.


I'll take her advice and play the game (which is on its way to me now) before reading the rest of her entry, and posting it here. The screenshots she posted are the best screens of the game I've seen, by the way. All other screens I've seen make the game look like third-person mud-grey trash, but the ones on her page seem like they are out of some kind of gorgeous point-and-click adventure game.

The-Last-of-Us-Sunset.jpg

lastofus20345truckroadblock.jpg

The-Last-of-Us-VGA-2012-Story-Trailer_2.jpg


Still, let's not forget that this is the "psychological metaphor" tramp...


Edit: I skimmed.

Heather Anne Campbell wrote:The sound. Wow, the sound. I’ve played the game in 5.1, and also entirely in headphones. I can’t recall being so aware of such great and nuanced sound in a game. Even unzipping your backpack, or the rustle of your shirt against your shoulder is lush.


This is gonna be a bit of a problem for me because I don't have a decent speaker system set up here yet.


Edit 2: I skimmed some more.

Heather Anne Campbell wrote:Why is The Last of Us so good?

Because it believes in itself. And in games. It believes games can be something great.


Yes, and Far Cry 2, GTA3, Civ and thousands of other masterpieces did not believe in themselves and in games. Dumb slut. The only way any of those fuckfaces can find to praise something great is to shit on everything else that's great. And this game probably isn't even that great. So she shits on the great to praise the mediocre lol. Way to go for becoming a critic!
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Unread postby icycalm » 06 Jul 2013 19:44

1371000683511.jpg
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Unread postby ksevcov » 10 Jul 2013 05:48

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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Jul 2013 19:06

S.A. Renegade wrote:The Last of Us is a third person shooter on the face of it, but in practice not really. It's actually a very stealth-based game with some survival horror aspects and resource management.


There. In two lines he's made me understand what kind of game this is better than 20 paragraphs of Tim Rogers.

But you have to understand games to write these two lines.
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Jul 2013 19:09

The "survival horror" comment is of course ignorant fagotry. What he means is "adventuring"; he just started playing games with the PlayStation and simply doesn't know any other adventure-type game than Biohazard.
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Unread postby earthboundtrev » 10 Jun 2014 09:57

The Last of Us coming to PS4 as The Last of Us Remastered: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/06/ ... th-to-ps4/

You can find The Last of Us Remastered available in stores and digitally on July 29, 2014. If you pre-order now, you’ll get some great additional content.

The trailer is full 1080p and rendered in 60fps, which is what we’re targeting for the game. We’re working on various improvements such as higher resolution character models, improved lighting and shadows, upgraded textures, functionality unique to the PS4 controller and more. You’ll get the complete The Last of Us experience as the PS4 version includes the highest rated DLC exclusive to PlayStation, Left Behind, all difficulty modes (including Grounded Mode the newest, hardest difficulty level) for single player and both our multiplayer map packs, Abandoned Territories and Reclaimed Territories.

We recently announced that it’ll be a level playing field in Factions mode as player progress from The Last of Us PS3 multiplayer will not carry over to the PS4 version. However PS3 players will be getting a supply bonus to give their progression a boost. We can now also say that all current DLC content – head items, weapons, and survival skills – that you have purchased for PS3 will be available for you in the PS4 version. So check out the latest DLC if you haven’t yet.
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Unread postby El Chaos » 16 Jul 2014 17:46

The Last of Us Remastered Devs Discuss Making 60fps the New Standard in Games
We try out the Last of Us Remastered edition and talk with the developers about what makes this version of the game different (besides the graphics).
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-la ... 0-6421147/
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Unread postby El Chaos » 30 Jul 2014 00:52

Face-Off: The Last of Us Remastered
The double-dip dilemma. Should you buy the PS4 version if you already own it on PS3?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... s-face-off

Thomas Morgan wrote:A year later, and Naughty Dog brings its critical darling of 2013 to PS4 - a sturdy, if slightly under-embellished adaptation of a true last-gen classic that still manages to scale up beautifully onto Sony's new hardware. For those that haven't already seen through Joel and Ellie's adventure across a decaying clicker-filled America, there's no better time than the present - and this is undoubtedly the version to choose. But for those already warmly acquainted with the PS3 release, is it actually worth buying all over again? At its cheapest, the game can be acquired for £29.99 - stock permitting, but more generally prices are in the £35 region. That's a reduction compared to a standard PlayStation 4 release, but still a fairly substantial investment, with no discounts for existing PS3 owners.

From a visual standpoint, the 1080p boost and texture upgrades certainly go hand-in-hand to produce a cleaner, sharper looking game. The issue here is that actual efforts to improve upon the game's core are only occasional and demand close side-by-side inspection to really catch. Those expecting an overhaul to the game's visual setup - or even a limited once-over on the most obvious last-gen assets - may leave disappointed.

The fact that this release is indeed a pure remaster as opposed to something more akin to a remake tailored more towards the strengths of the PS4 hardware is likely to cause controversy. However, the ability to liberate the original game from the limitations of the PS3 hardware still produces a truly exceptional experience and having played through the game from start to finish last year, this second play-through was just as compelling as the first. Frame-rate issues were always the Achilles Heel of the PS3 version and despite some wobbles, the chance to play this enhanced release at 60Hz is irresistible. It's a transformative experience that works beautifully in the single-player game, but really comes into its own in the excellent Factions multiplayer, where the more consistent, tighter controller response makes all the difference.
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