UPDATE: 'The Last of Us' adds new interrogation mode

-----------UPDATE------------

The new patch, 1.03, including the interrogation play type for "The Last of Us" was released today.

Interrogation mode plays out similar to a capture the flag mode crossed with the execution mode from the "Gears of War" franchise. The flag part is finding the safe and the execution part is interrogation.

The match is 15 minutes long. To find the safe and code, players must interrogate five enemies. The interrogations last about five seconds and if a player is shot at during the process, the interrogation does not count.

Interrogations are needed to find the enemy safe.

Once the five interrogations is reached, the safe is located and players can go to try and open it. There are three tiers to each safe. Once one tier is passed, it is saved so if it isn't finished, you don't have to start from the beginning.

As the match goes on, the safe cracking gets faster and faster until the timer runs out. If no safe is opened after 15 minutes, the match ends in a tie.

Interrogation mode is much more team based then the other two modes. It's easy to get the interrogations, but it takes a team to attack the enemy safe and protect your own.

Different strategies can be employed like setting up bomb traps around your safe or having a dedicated defender protecting it.

Interrogation is a fun game type and a welcomed addition to an already fun online experience. Try and play it with friends, as its more fun and rewarding to work with friends to win in a mode like this.

Other additions from patch 1.03 include: matchmaking fixes, stopping a person from an execution and having your teammate still alive, less time to revive someone and being able to revive a teammate from a further distance.

Hopefully this isn't the last addition to "The Last of Us" but this patch should satisfy many players for the time being.

PlayStation Multiplayer Needs Help

The PlayStation 3 has seen a huge rise since it's troubled start back in 2006. Now, the PlayStation 3 is on par with the other major consoles and even excels in some areas like graphics and original games.

However, one area the PS3 still struggles with is multi-player accessibility.

I was playing my PS3 and wanted to play "Tomb Raider" with a friend. I thought it would be easy to just get into a lobby and search for a game: Wrong.

For Tomb Raider, there was no option to create a party with friends. The only place to make one was to create a private game where you can't play other people, only friends. It shouldn't be this difficult to play a simple online match with a friend.
                                
It's possible to invite a friend to a game if there is room, but the process of inviting a friend takes too long, and when you finally send the invite the spot is taken. It's a ridiculous process and really takes away from the fun.

This isn't the case for all PS3 games thankfully. "The Last of Us" makes it a simpler process to create a party before venturing out into the online realm. The same is for many of the sports game as well.

For consoles, the best online experience comes from the Xbox 360. It's easy to join a party outside of a game and chat with friends. It's easy to join a friend in a match, so easy it only takes one button. For the PS3, it's a like a checklist: You have to go to the home page, find the friend, create a message and then the invite is sent.

If this problem of making a party in the game to find matches were the only problem, then it's really not that big of a problem, more of an annoyance. But the real problem is how hard it is to communicate with someone outside of a game.

The Xbox 360 really spoiled me on interacting with people online. It's so easy to make a party and talk with friends then go into a match. I was expecting it to be that easy with the PS3, but it's not.

There is a party chat function on the PS3, but you can only use it in the home page area and it only supports one-on-one chat. It also is only available to people with video cameras. If no video camera is attached, you can only text chat, not voice chat. If you want to bring the conversation into a game, you need to form another party in the game.

The PS3 loves to boast how advanced it is. That it's not just a game console but much more. So I don't understand how hard it is to make a chat function and invite system that is user friendly and make it easy to play with multiple friends. It really makes playing multi-player games on the PS3 a hassle.

Hopefully the PlayStation 4 will fix all of this. It really doesn't seem that hard to fix honestly. Still, Sony has promised and new and better way to play games so it's time to stay optimistic and hope Sony pulls through.

An Ode to Sonic CD

Sonic the Hedgehog has been my favorite game series since I was a kid. The First game I can remember playing was "Sonic The Hedgehog 2" when I got a Sega Genesis for Christmas when in elementary school.

Since then, I've played almost every Sonic game I can get my hands on. One game always seem to elude me however, "Sonic CD." Thankfully, Xbox Live gave me the opportunity to finally play this game, and it was worth the wait.

I always thought "Sonic CD" was released a year or two after "Sonic & Knuckles," but it actually was released a year after "Sonic 2." Back when there wasn't the internet at my finger tips, I had no idea that the two major people responsible for the first sonic game couldn't agree on the second. So they broke up and decided to make their own sonic games.

Since the Sega CD console wasn't cheap, more people played "Sonic 2." However, "Sonic CD" was released to good acclaim and became a hidden treasure. I never knew why, but after playing it the past week, I see why it is.

"Sonic CD" in the grand scheme of old sonic games pretty much embodied the trend in the videogame industry at the time. Sega was in an arms race with Nintendo for video game supremacy. Both companies were trying to one-up each other with games and gadgets. So "Sonic CD" took the first sonic game and tried to do as many new things as they could leading to the story, game play and atmosphere being innovative.

When you think of a Sonic game, the story is pretty simple. Sonic defeats the mad scientist Robotnik and his machines to keep the world clean and natural. "Sonic CD" actually played that out without anyone having to read a manual to understand it. The opening cinematic sums up the story well enough. Sonic finds a small world Robotnik is trying to control.

The player then finds out the new game play mechanic that makes this game special. Sign posts throughout the game labeled "past" or "future" allow sonic, when traveling at a constant high speed, to go into the past or future of the level.

This added a completely new angle to playing sonic. Sure, getting through the level as fast as possible was still there, but it came with a cost. It would lead to the "bad future."

This leads to the atmosphere. With Robotnik and his robots on the planet, he wants to turn the world into one huge industrialized mechanic nightmare. If player's reach the bad future, the background and level become polluted with smog and poisoned water. The level's music even gets somber and more mechanical, destroying the once beautiful land.

However, going to the past, the level is prehistoric, untouched by modern technology. The music is simpler and there are less hazards and enemies. There is a machine creating the robots, and if Sonic destroys it, it makes the good future where the world is in perfect balance with machine and nature.

It makes finding the past sign posts, and avoiding the future ones a challenge. No other Sonic game from the Genesis era played like this. Most levels followed a linear straight forward path. "Sonic CD" challenged that and made huge levels to explore. It's a nice mix of speed and exploration, a unique experience in a retro Sonic game.

It's also fun to see each level in the past, present and good/bad future. The same level can look drastically different. Another level, tidal tempest, is a water level at the foot of a volcano in the present. There are structures in the background resembling a shrine.

In the past, the level looks as if it's now in a cave of a volcano, before man has changed it. In the good future, the level now looks like a clean futuristic temple. The rock formations blend in smoothly with the added metal, like it belongs together. In the bad future, no more natural rock remains, replaced with decrepit structures and Robotniks face everywhere.

The attention to detail was second-to-none and it really makes "Sonic CD" stand out. This game also brought us Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, two characters represented in the modern Sonic games.

It's amazing to look back and see what game developers accomplished with the limited technology they had. Playing it now, it really doesn't feel like the game has aged. I felt that rush of playing a new game, even though it was released 20 years ago.

I'm glad I've been able to play and appreciate this game. There are still a few other Sonic games I need to play, but being able to cross this game off the list has been a rewarding and entertaining experience.