The reviews for the The Last of Us HBO show are in, and things are looking bright for this bleak show. On GameSpot sister site Metacritic, the show’s current rating is an 84 with 23 reviews. GameSpot’s Mark Delaney gave the first season a 9 out of 10, stating that, “[The Last of Us] feels like a vital expansion of a fictional universe I love so much. There are things that only the video game can do, like put players in the boots of Joel, but there are things also unique to television, and The Last of Us shines brightest when it recognizes and leans into these opportunities. Make no mistake: The Last of Us on HBO feels like the beginning of a new era for live-action video game adaptations.”
I myself have watched the first episode of the show and mirror Mark’s feeling’s exactly: it’s incredibly faithful to the original game, but replaces the time taken up by gameplay by adding meaningful and true to the experience wrinkles to the characters and story. I think fans of the game are going to be really happy.
A somewhat unpleasant surprise is that Xbox has finally announced what is coming and going from its Game Pass service this January, and the answers are… Underwhelming.
On the one hand, the releases for the subscription are excellent, including Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Monster Hunter Rise. On the other hand, not only are those simply ports of games that have already come to other consoles (albeit a much easier option to play the two Persona games) but we already knew that these games were coming to the service this month.
What’s perhaps more interesting is what is leaving. While none of the games saying goodbye to Game Pass are massive, must play titles, one of them is curious as it’s developed by an Xbox Game Studio.
We Happy Few from Compulsion Games released in 2018, which was the same year that the developer was purchased by Microsoft. However, the game already had a publishing agreement with Gearbox, which may be why it’s leaving Game Pass nearly five years later. Xbox would likely need to keep paying Gearbox to have it on the service, and Game Pass numbers are likely showing that that wouldn’t be worth it.
Head to GameSpot dot com for the full list of games leaving Game Pass this month.
