Helmut said
They run into problems with the combat. I don't have any issues with the normal questing interaction, but now that they're doing so much more combat, that's where it's noticeable. It's the 3rd party strafe equivalent that causes the problems. The camera is locked on the targets, so trying to slide sideways to get a shot always makes Laura turn sideways and lurch out into the open. Does that not happen with a controller too? 

She does (I'm on the 360). I've been killed more than once because Lara steps out of cover too far in order to fire. She doesn't seem able to fire (gun or bow) from a crouching position. Yet she does, in fact, crouch behind cover. Until you aim.

On the other hand, having the camera auto-target is gravy for me... when it works.

Helmut said
They run into problems with the combat. I don't have any issues with the normal questing interaction, but now that they're doing so much more combat, that's where it's noticeable. It's the 3rd party strafe equivalent that causes the problems. The camera is locked on the targets, so trying to slide sideways to get a shot always makes Laura turn sideways and lurch out into the open. Does that not happen with a controller too? 

Probably.  It's been six months since I played so I don't recall the particular nuances of the controls, but I wasn't ever frustrated with them.  I may just be used to a controller and/or the third-person cover shooter genre enough that such quirks struck me as normal rather than problematic.  I played on the PS3, for what that's worth.

Even with a controller, I tend to find PC third-person games...stiffer?  I'm not sure.  I could be imagining that.  I've been playing Sleeping Dogs these last few days and Wei's movement feels a bit stiff to me, but maybe that's just the game, not the platform.

Dix, I certainly came late to the Infamous party; I have one friend in particular who loves, loves, loves the series and I just wasn't infatuated with it. Maybe it's aged a bit weirdly...Infamous 1 was what, a 2008/09 game? Not that long ago, but I guess half of the console generation cycle so..who knows.

My take on it also comes from someone who doesn't really get heavily into superhero stuff, so while I still can get behind the idea of some new/previously unknown superhero it's not like that's a dream I've always had. I can see Infamous meeting criteria of what many people may have had in their minds long ago as the perfect kind of game (-Open world, -Pretty cool superpowers, -Scaling challenge and bad guys to fight). Admittedly, surfing along train tracks and power lines is a pretty neat way to travel. But some of the over-stickiness also prevented me from harnessing that ability to its fullest; I may have needed more practice.

I'll wait to hear reviews on Second Son from some people who were not in love with the first game. That could determine whether I continue on with the series.

Botch, The Last of Us! Yay!

I'm conflicted about the difficulty levels of the game. Here is why: I played it twice in June/July on Normal then Normal NG+; I loved the scavenging and crafting but was never met with too many difficult decisions about what to craft, what to leave behind, etc. Every single shiv door should be opened, at least on Normal difficulty.

Now just a few nights ago I wrapped up my third playthrough which I did on Survivor+; there are a few frustrating encounters in the game where you will almost certainly have to restart a whole bunch of times (the subway in Boston, the first clicker encounter (this one is just broken and sucks) and a few others I won't spoil for you). On one hand I can see just wanting to play on Easy to enjoy the story of the game, but on the other hand after playing it 3 times now I think I would recommend anyone new to the game play it on Survivor for their first time. And here is why I say that:

• On Survivor difficulty Joel doesn't have his super hearing ability, which I came to rely on a lot, but I got along fine without it, and it didn't add that "cheap" element.
• The difficulty levels are done right in TLoU: whether on Easy or Survivor, a headshot (to an enemy without head protection) will kill. Enemies will not absorb more bullets on Survivor. As far as I can tell there are three major changes, all good: Joel loses the super hearing, as I said; Enemy AI is actually 'turned up' ... best way to describe this: clickers are even more sensitive to sound; basically you can never sneak up on them, save for a few situations. This didn't become game-breaking for me at any point; lastly, items are incredibly scarce; so scarce that the world feels more realistic in that it is more picked at, which it should be for a world 20 years into an epidemic. All the same drawers/cupboards/lockers/etc. still open, but they will rarely have anything in them. For example, there are no longer medkits just laying around which you can find; you can still craft them of course, but there are none just laying there in the game (except for one late game part where it makes sense). Since I really liked the scavenging element, I thought Survivor mode brought that to a new extreme height. But the most frustrating parts of the game itself are not harder. You'll just have way less ammo and supplies to get out of situations. Ultimately what this amounts to is that you will use bottles and bricks much more often to either distract or kill enemies. I went through situations where on Normal I killed all the enemies or killed a few choice enemies so I could sneak by others, whereas on Survivor I just picked the best route through an area to avoid all the enemies, except for some unfortunate scenarios where you have to kill everyone; those still kind of suck.

tl;dr - The Last of Us - Survivor mode is satisfying because it gets difficulty increase right (whereas, for example Bioshock Infinite, gets it so so wrong).

I decided to finish it off this week to get a bit of a refresher for game of the year talk; in a way I wanted to really make sure it was my favourite game of 2013, instead of my short but sweet romances with State of Decay or Metro: Last Light. Verdict: confirmed.

Yeah, Clickers are tricky.  They come so early and strike fear into one's heart because they're dangerous and tough to kill.  They're why I took all the shiv upgrades ASAP and stand by my belief that they are the best/most crucial upgrades to purchase.

Once you realize that Clickers are both blind AND stupid, though, they're pretty easy to sneak around.  They are most dangerous when something else starts attacking you and you have to have a noisy fight.

One of my design gripes about The Last of Us is that most of the supplement upgrades didn't seem that useful.  The obvious ones - extra health, extended listen range, etc - didn't strike me as making that big of a difference.  The shiv stuff was extremely useful, though.  Extremely.