Skip to main content

Computer game character

When my nephew was little I remember him showing me how to use his playstation (ps1, probably) and after he'd gone to bed - leaving it switched on and with the disk loaded for me incase I couldn't figure it out -  I stayed up half the night playing virtual golf, at a level that he'd moved on from in probably 15 minutes - and determined afterwards to continue instead to waste my time in my more routine and less techy ways, as before.  I did good. 

In the last few years, whenever I'd come across TV or online ads showing game footage, it was a bit worrying that virtual worlds had probably become the truly great art works of this generation. That was a bit of a bummer, really.

Last week I saw the last ten minutes of Charlie Brooker's two hour countdown of the Videogames That Changed The World and may be about to succumb to a second interaction.  Being Charlie Brooker, and brainy, Twitter was named as the number one game of all time.  'The Last of Us'  was in runner up spot, a game which has sold hundreds of thousands of billions of copies, and is noteworthy for an impressively visualised dystopian future (a staple of computer realities) and its key characterisations (Joel and Ellie).  It kinda looks like the kind of falling-apart place I'd like to spend some quality time.  ...In a way I already go to those kind of places, on my days off work, to take photographs.  And not just days, moonlit nights, too.

The ideal version of The Last of Us, for me, would have the option to 95 per cent disable the whole zombie attack narrative and simply retain the two relationship elements - that existing between the two protagonists, and, more significantly, the wrecked world they occupy.  A slight zombie threat level might keep things interestingly tense (like keeping an eye out for on-site security) while wandering around exploring, but mainly there would be no need to shoot anybody, even if they do have weird virus infected heads and are psychopathic and flesh-hungry.  Really, the only things that I'd want to shoot at, and only on rare occasions to conserve my ammo, would be burnt out cars, broken TV sets and possibly, (referencing Neil Young, Tired Eyes), mirrors.