trivard676There have been rumblings of a major Playstation 3 exclusive title headed our way. A lot of people thought it was the Playstation-themed Super Smash Bros, but that possibility was shut down by several people in the industry. What we’re left with might disappoint fighting-game fans, but it has certainly piqued the interest of horror fans.
The Last of Us. We don’t know what it’s about, we don’t know what it’s going to look like and we don’t even know what kind of game it’s going to be. Regardless of all of that, the internet is already hard at work in an attempt to figure it out. The developer of the game has offered some little tidbits of information for us to piece together, but the most telling of these clues comes in the form of a tag on the trailer’s official YouTube page.
I’m not going to even pretend I’ve ever heard what cordyceps is before now. Thanks to Playstation Lifestyle and the good Sir David Attenborough for pointing me in the right direction. If you head over to the official web page for The Last of Us, you’ll see something similar to this video.
I kind of wish I still didn’t know what it was…
If watching videos isn’t your thing, here’s the gist of it: cordyceps is a parasitic fungus. The fungus’ spores will grow inside of their host, altering its behaviour and eventually killing it. When the host dies, the spores will continue to grow, erupting into a spore-spewing plant…with the host still attached.
In the video, it’s shown wreaking havoc on ants, but it also affects other insects as well. A video game about ants isn’t all that interesting…especially for a horror fan. Judging by the actual teaser video, this kind of cordyceps goes after something a little bit bigger than an ant.
Not much about The Last of Us is known right now – but like the rest of the gaming world, RoH is blazing at the bit to find out. We’ll have to wait until the VGAs to find out whether or not this is a horror title or not. And we’re hoping it is…we always hope it is. With tags like ‘humanity’ and ‘end of civilization’ we might be onto something here.
But what makes Cordyceps so scary?
*shudder*
Cordyceps is a real fungus with real affects on living things. Did you see what it was doing to that ant? See what it did to that spider up there?
I’m no insect psychologist here, but that behaviour was kind of weird. And I’m pretty sure that tarantulas don’t grow tentacles in addition to legs. Other ants will actively try to remove the ant from their colony, taking it as far away as possible from the rest of them – the infected ant is behaving in a way that the other ants know that there’s something wrong.
In addition, Cordyceps is actually used in medicine. It’s connection to fighting cancer is a well-researched topic in the medical community. Meaning people are working on ways to use Cordyceps in different medicines right now. The T-Virus was created by humans as well – albeit for a completely different purpose, but it goes to show that things were just fine until science got involved.
Seeing as how the actual game teaser is full of people and not ants, we’re guessing that this particular type of cordyceps has a similar affect on people. How would these people be acting differently? I can’t say. Will they turn into plant zombies? Again, there really isn’t enough information available to say. Regardless of what happens to a Cordycepped person, other people will react like the ants and start ‘removing them from the rest of the colony.’
Except we’d probably just start freaking the fuck out. Like we typically do.
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