The Last of Us - it's the time of the season

mainstream reviews are almost universally positive, but the sites I generally trust have much more mixed reactions (Polygon, Ars, Eurogamer)

Didn’t eurogamer give it an essential?

Overall positive yes

Are the problems reviewers have with the gameplay, or are objections related to thematic aspects of the story and presentation? The last high profile games I can think of that got some very mixed reviews were Rage 2 and Days Gone, and I guess Death Stranding, but fans really seem to have grown to like those second two, if not the first.

when the gameplay consists of brutally murdering people i don't think you can disentangle that from the thematic aspects in this case!

I guess, but plenty of games consist of brutally murdering people. Like, I remember hearing good things about Far Cry 3, so I watched a couple of videos and it seemed massively unpleasant, like, referring to women as bitches before stabbing them in the neck sort of stuff.

the kids can’t go to bed quick enough to suit me

idly mulling whether to start on “hard” once i get down to brass tacks later on

Yeah I thought about it but went with normal.

FWIW a few minutes and I murdered a bunch of kids, in a snowball fight.

A few minutes IN.

reading the reviews it sounds like this game spawned from the violence-in-videogames-what's-it-all-mean discourse that popped up every once in a while for a decade but the world has moved past that by now. maybe the world's also moved past naughty dog style cinematic experience games. in any case it takes a really long time to make a game

I caved and bought it. See you guys in a week or two.

that’s going to be the cleanest fucking fretboard in zombieland

lol Leee

in the walking bits i keep unconsciously trying to keep 6 feet away from everyone

i'm waiting to hear y'all's reports back b4 i buy this new but yr excitement is infectious

The first one is sitting in a drawer. Have to Finish death stranding first

i love everything about this so far.

Same. Not a whole lot different from the first game so far, except the narrative has been slacker, and the combat encounters seem more dynamic.

Oh and the trick of sitting on your upgrade vitamins until you're low on health to save on a health kit doesn't work quite as well because the health upgrade is the third level on a skill tree now.

Yeah i think i was expecting it to be a really different game somehow given various things i’ve read so i’m very pleasantly surprised that i still get to creep around and shiv monsters and snap fools’ necks. There’s a nice emphasis on scrambling and exploring. it feels more open somehow. and good god the first time you realise that your only move is to run? fuuuuuuuck

been watching some playthroughs. this looks incredible

Is expecting to binge the game this weekend, and after putting in about 8 cumulative hours yesterday, my hand started to hurt. 😟

I'm not sure why I like TLOU so much when I hated playing the Uncharted games.

cause it’s got heart? but also gameplay-wise it’s more MGS than uncharted imo

Hah, that sounds reasonable on both counts!

It’s also got heavy horror energy. Christ almighty. I’d sooner let my kids watch Alien than play this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tero0sRNi8U

I watched a full stream of Part 2. I don’t really want to pick at the flaws right now. This game takes big risks, and I think I need to sit on it for a while. I can appreciate what the Kotaku and Polygon reviewers are saying, but “misery simulator” is also (deliberately) glib. There’s a lot more going on than that. Themes that could seem trite on paper turn out to be far more absorbing when given time and a world in which to develop. A lot probably depends on how far you can buy into the depiction of violence, as well as the verisimilitude of the crazy lengths these characters are willing to go to. But it must have essentially worked on me since I was just really sad at the end.

wait.... isn’t it like 25 hours or something??

Yeah, I was stuck inside this weekend.

Oh I see what you meant. I meant a full playthrough, over a few separate streams.

Is there a stream you preferred? I don't think I could invest in the time to play it but I could have it on in the background while doing other things.

just a little light evisceration over dinner

Yeah the thing that strikes me as myopic (though I've been studiously avoiding reading reviews as a stringent anti-spoiler policy, so I may be missing some of the current context) is that the critics are forgetting about the first game. The gameplay loop is fairly basic, and resources are deliberately scarce. In other words, the not-fun qualities aren't new to Part 2, on top of which is overlaid a story that, on paper, is trite. But you get into the game, the polish and care and overall execution given to the conventions are notable.

I didn’t realise til yesterday that you can tweak a million individual difficulty settings using the “accessibility” menu. I’m considering slightly reducing the amount of resources I get but keeping everything else the same. Still haven’t come across my first roll of tape yet though!

Same here re: tape and blades!

The narrative slackness I mentioned earlier is, I think, caused by the semi-open worldness of some stages, with optional areas for you to clear, which don't really advance the main story and only offer some modest character building.

I’m super fine with it. Love taking down WLFs.

Hoo boy the stage before the movie theater is INTENSE.

man whenever you have to descend into some flooded basement it’s like “oh fuck”

but yeah I really enjoyed that whole pre-theatre set of sequences - partic the TV tower

i am completely in love with Dina, obv

The hotel basement in Part 1 is actually too much for me! It's one of the sections that I always dread going through because I can barely hold it together when I play it (suburb sniping is the other one that I dislike, but more because of how stressed it makes me).

The subway portion in Part 2 OTOH is intense but still fun.

agreed. it’s high drama. something great about moments when the high tension of sneaking turns into a firefight. you try to delay that transition as long as possible. not as fun when it’s just pure fight-dodge-figh.

not as fun when it’s just pure fight-dodge-figh.

AKA Uncharted!

I sat down to play this last night.. went through the whole theatre sequence, which was lovely, and then... I put it down. It's a little too much. I just didn't have the desire to get back into the ultra-panic. I'm sure that will change. But I need a break.

Yesterday I googled "the last of us scary moments" to see if anybody had video documentation of that portion of the first game where (I think it's in the school?) you finally come across a mushroom in full maturity, a seated corpse with full extended fungal bloom, I remember wanting to throw up. (It made a similar scene in "Annihilation" feel tepid in comparison)

i am REALLY not a fan of these dogs

this is a great piece, probably the most insightful review i've read:

https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2020/6/12/21288535/the-last-of-us-part-2-review-ps4-naughty-dog-ellie-joel-violence

I think the problem is really that it's a game and not an HBO show. That would make it easier to calibrate the level of violence the characters inflict against their stories/journeys to be more proportionate, understandable and selective. Naughty Dog wants to tell a story the way those famously gritty and violent comparable hit shows do. However, for it to be a game with content, they need to jam a considerable amount of encounters and situations for you to fight your way through. Enemy types are developed for the sake of variety of mechanics and increased strategy. When those varieties need to make sense in the context, one obvious idea for instance is including dogs, because obviously the military style enemy set would utilize them. And each enemy set comes with their unique play-style challenges, so this is a perfect idea for this category. On the mechanics side, the dogs create a challenge where the player needs to worry about being more easily tracked and found. OK, but all enemies need to be defeat-able. Therefore, merciless dog killing in a game that makes a great effort to look believable. That's a recipe for sadness. And the amount of human murdering- well, the need for there to be game content in between plot points means you kill hundreds of believable human beings with very peripheral personal involvement with the main characters. And rather than go "unsympathetic henchman" which is typical with the overly militaristic enemy trope, they've set a precedent within their games to humanize all the extras or minor roles, and they're doing that because popular gritty Golden Age of Television shows influenced them to tell the story that way. So the collision of story and gameplay content makes for a very disturbing combo imo.

And the amount of human murdering- well, the need for there to be game content in between plot points means you kill hundreds of believable human beings with very peripheral personal involvement with the main characters. And rather than go "unsympathetic henchman" which is typical with the overly militaristic enemy trope, they've set a precedent within their games to humanize all the extras or minor roles, and they're doing that because popular gritty Golden Age of Television shows influenced them to tell the story that way. So the collision of story and gameplay content makes for a very disturbing combo imo.

yeah, for sure. i don't experience it as "disturbing" so much, although i could definitely see how others would. it bothers me more that the relationship between the story and the player is non-sensical.

when a game asks the player to sympathize and care about the fate of games characters like they're real people, there are only a couple routes that make sense:

- the avatar can be a good person that doesn't kill people (unless necessary), and you're roleplaying a good person, or at least not an evil one.
- the avatar can be evil and kill people on purpose, and you're roleplaying an evil person.

games like this ask you to be a good person that kills dozens of people and carries on with their life. it's not revolting or wrong or anything, it's just weird

the more realistic the characters get, aesthetically and with writing/performance, the less the game makes sense