Too old for violent games

I first became aware of The Last of Us series of games because I saw Jacksepticeye play through the Last of Us II on YouTube when it was first released. I was blown away by the story and visuals in this game at the time, so decided to seek out the first in the series and play it myself. I did this at the beginning of the pandemic and I wrote a post about that at the time.

This came back into my consciousness due to the excellent TV show adaptation of the first game, which was a scene-for-scene replica. It was immaculately made and captured all the brilliance of the game’s story. A brilliant story of love in a world of pain.

It’s got me excited about the franchise again and I felt reinvigorated to try playing through the sequel. I saw TLOU II as an offer for only £8 on the PlayStation store so purchased, downloaded, and started to play this game that I always wanted to get around to playing.

After about three hours of playing through, I felt incredibly fatigued by the amount of murder this game delivers. And the beginning of the game is kinda light on this to be honest, compared to how things progress. I get it, it’s the purpose of the franchise. You’re supposed to be in a post-apocalyptic world where civilisation has collapsed and it’s a dog-eat-dog survival society scenario where you have to be willing to fight in order to survive. But I just don’t have the stomach for it any longer. After 2-3 hours, I decided all I really wanted to consume was the story, so went back to watching Jacksepticeye play through the game from start to finish again, skipping over all of the endless fight scenes. The story, once again, is excellent. Much more tragic and depressing this time, but still excellent.

And so this has led me to conclude that I’m just too old for these types of games today. I’m not interested in violence in video games any longer. It put a bad taste in my mouth and I’ve got much better ways to enjoy myself these days. Much more fulfilling things in life that I could be doing, rather than trudging through what would have been 20 to 30 hours of endless murder.

I still love playing games, and I am not slowing down on playing Minecraft and continuing to make videos in that space. And I still continue to play other games regularly such as most of Nintendo’s really cool titles (eagerly awaiting the BOTW sequel) on the Switch, and of course, RTS games, such as Civilisation I love to play with my bestie.

So, for now, I think I can safely say that I am done with (person-on-person) violence in video games, and putting them firmly behind me moving on to what I hope will be a brighter future of playing video games that I actually enjoy.

Hats off to Naughty Dog; The Last of Us series was truly excellent. Incredible piece of storytelling made interactive. I just don’t have the stomach for it any longer.