The Last of Us: Highway robbery edition

 Your money or your Remakes

Ah, another day another exciting remake the likes of which  will completely reimagine a game that we hold so dearly to our hearts, not just bringing it up to snuff with those rose-tinted recollections from the backs of our minds, but surpassing even our wildest dreams of what that game once looked like! Who could forget that incredible Resident Evil 2 Remake, or the genre bending Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Even the Demon Souls Remaster-style Remake truly pushed the boundaries of fidelity past their resting point! Truly we're in the age of the increadibly transformative remake! So what's up next? The Last of Us? The Last of Us Part 1? That's... not even an exciting sounding new suffix, it's actually almost insulting in how basic it is. And it's going to... what? Remake a game that was already remastered for the last gen? Why? What can you possibly bring to the game that wasn't already there? Is this another 'technical remake' where everything is functionally the same but they had to create it from scratch on a new engine? I'm feeling like it is.

Not to pour water on the people out there who are obviously going to be excited about this, but this feels kind of lack lustre. I know there will be fans, people would give their first born child to save The Last of Us 1, afterall The Last of Us Part 2 has people who sing it's praises to this day even with the numerous garish and whole-hog-fisted thematic choices that stink of 'look how clever and artistic I'm being!' (Yes Neil, you had a boss fight against two people wielding a Hammer and Sickle, truly your intellectual ingenuity knows no bounds.) Of all the games that really need a remake around about this time in the industry cycle of trends with Resident 4 and Knights of the Old Republic on the docket, does The Last of Us really deserve a place on that list? Is it going to earn a spot? I doubt it, somehow.

And it's not the only piece of Last of Us news which fell a bit flat. There's the show which, again, looks like actors in dress-up rather than anything with a heart and soul of it's own. And maybe that's the taint of having endured the abysmal Halo TV series which is making me see things that way; that show could convince me that the Godfather movies were on the same level as The Room which it's mind-addling awfulness; but I'm just completely not sold on this show and why it has to exist at this point. Then again, I have admitted to feeling that way about pretty much every videogame adaptation in production. Metal Gear, why? Mario- okay that casting still makes me chuckle so that might be entertainingly weird at least. Yakuza- wait is that real? Damn it's just talks about prospective production studios right now- that would be amazing, that's the only adaptation I approve of!

At least there's the The Last of Us factions game coming out which is, thank god, new content. It is ancillary universe stuff for a world which I don't necessarily think warrants genuine building beyond the trails of its title characters, but maybe I'm looking too critically at things. (I have a tendency to do that from time to time.) To be fair, The Last of Us was one of those games with a surprisingly decent multiplayer mode, and whilst we'll never get a full game adaptation of Max Payne 3's excellent multiplayer, this makes a decent enough consolation prize. Oh but here's a special bit of news; that Last of Us remake is coming to PC! Hark? Well that's such great news I can overlook the unnecessariness of it's existence. In fact, heck I can even justify it! Yeah, the original game was probably too tightly wound for a decent port, this remake was the only way the rest of the world would see a decent build of the game. Yes, this had completely turned the news around and there's nothing which could now put a damper on- wait, it's how much?

Okay. We need to have a chat about the utter SHENANIGANS that Sony Entertainment Studios is grinding on these days, because it has to stop. You too, Square Enix, don't think you can slink away with your head down and get out of this, you both have some explaining to do! What, in the stinking cursed depths of Merlin's soggiest posing pouch, do you think gives you the right to try and force the gaming industry to up the standard price of new games up an extra $10? Tell me true, because I don't wanna hear any of the lies again. I'm done and tired with the cow waste, now I wanna hear the facts! Because let me tell you, one and all, that there is quite literally no publicly presented excuse for this pathetic attempt at a price hike that can withstand against the slightest scrutiny of a critical eye, and I'm about done with stuffy suited saps telling me otherwise.

What's that they like to tell us? "Oh the price of video games hasn't risen with inflation for decades, it's just about time!" That's bull, plain and simple. If the price of games hasn't gone up in all that time then what the heck are special editions? $100 Collectors Editions? DLC? Microtransactions, subscriptions, lootboxes and all the other litany of extra revenue sources that can make a single game drain three figures worth of income out of some players? Whatsmore, how about a game that just came out, Diablo Immortal, that skewers itself on the pay-to-win spike so far that it turned the acquisition of power into a paid chances game where speculators have estimated it could cost around $100,000 to max out a single character. Don't turn around and tell me there were $100,000 games back in the 90's because there wasn't and you'd be arguing completely in bad faith.

And then there's the big one; oh games are so expensive, woe is us! That sounds a little bit like a *you* problem, not a consumer one. The trend of AAA development is to sink itself into this constant game of one-up-manship that just doesn't work with a qualitative metric such as art. Just take a look at modern movies and the stalemate they've met where pure spectacle films are reaping diminishing returns; this journey isn't sustainable. These games companies build themselves into a money sinking model and then try and punish the consumer for their own problems by charging extra for the games. No- this solution starts at you. As the market becomes more saturated with competition that is not the time to start upping your prices under the delusion that it makes you seem more valuable; it makes you look like an opportunistic arse, which may be truer to the point than we know.

$70 for a game is just too much, plain and simple. This industry makes literal billions and it sure doesn't sink all of those funds into development, not even close; so Sony and Square can get out of here with their silly excuses and justifications. And to try this on a remake- again! I can't believe I'm saying this, but these companies have somehow overtaken NINTENDO for the company that exploits it's legacy properties the most, because at least the big N only charges normal full price for twenty year old games. If you let them have this, give up and slap down a purchase, make no mistake that they will take a mile. What they want to establish is a sliding scale where games become steadily more expensive and we have the opportunity to buy less of them. I don't even want to get into the general world economy and wage stagnancy because I'm no economical professional and clearly neither are these games companies with the utter nonsense they're spewing! Nice try, Sony; but I think I'll look elsewhere for my fix.