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

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

I'll save the Polygon review till after I beat the game.

they've set a precedent within their games to humanize all the extras or minor roles

Minor roles who get to interact with the protagonists in cut scenes, yes, but cannon fodder enemies, no.

- 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.

I don't think the either game argues that the protagonists of TLOU are necessarily good people! The series does, however, make us sympathize with killers.

But this game does seem to want to reverse our perspective on the cannon fodder enemies - the WLFs, at least. We see a lot about how they live, individual enemies call each other by name, they chatter about relationships and stuff while you're sneaking around, they cry out when their buddies are killed. It's a disturbing tension built into the fabric of the game, and I don't see an easy resolution. That's what I was trying to get at with "buying into" the depiction of violence; it's hard to take the violence completely seriously when it's also so constant and brutal, and it's also hard to understand killing hundreds of people in order to bring to a head the specific moral crisis involved in seeking revenge on one specific person. But I had largely the exact same anxiety about the first game too, and I doubt that the creators are unaware of all this.

The hotel that pops up in the flashback after the scope tutorial with Tommy seems heavily modeled after The Overlook from the Shining... was it also in the first one?

i just did this bit last night. the comparison didn't occur to me! now i wish i could go back and check it out.

Re: the polygon article, I actually mainly just really liked their breakdown of the gameplay. I agree with them that the sneaking and the planning is where the game shines and it's annoying when you get railroaded into a straight up fight.

After one too many times finding resources and seeing 'full' next to them I've finally dialled up resource difficulty in the settings. It feels a lot more balanced now. It's genuinely thrilling to find a blade, etc

And I really don't think this game wags its finger at you for being a bad person. At least that hasn't happened in my game yet. They make the feeling of sinking a tricked-out baseball bat into some fool's skull FAR too satisfying for me to ever believe that they don't want you to, in some way, feel good about it.

Oh absolutely, I had a wolf beg for their life and I was blithely and sanguinely, "LOL nah."

@Tracer, I googled and around 5min mark you'll see this hotel from Pittsburgh in the original game which I may have been remembering wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MTWUlDDQzw

I've played "Fade Into You" and "Just Like Heaven" on the guitar minigame,
if I could remember any other chord progressions I'd have given those a shot too.

slight spoiler..

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so i finally got to that scene with nora. when ellie comes back she says she got the info, but... how? nora refused! leading to the “moment of moral indecision” we see (which isn’t really, because anything else would be MORE cruel, given the slow gruesome transformation that awaits)

My interpretation below.
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Even though the scene cuts to black, I assumed she kept hitting Nora afterwards, who eventually broke, which explains why Ellie is so shaken when she's goes back to the theater. Up to this point, she's killed as a matter of survival, but never in such a cruel and calculated way where she's had to inflict pain and suffering. (The closest experience she's had was with David, and that was another horrible trauma that left its mark on her.) It's a heartbreaking scene for me, that she had to transform into Joel, and her realizing the cost on her when she was alone with Dina.

Right okay. Feel like those three blows would have finished Nora off toot sweet but you must be right.

Something this game is really good at is that the combat never feels like a shooting gallery. The enemies aren't amazingly bright but they're mobile and relatively unpredictable. The first game settled into a bit of a pattern of cover, wait for them to stick their heads out, pop them, move on - which we've all seen in a million games like RDR, Uncharted etc - but the gunplay here pretty much always feels panicky and cumbersome and not guaranteed. Enemies will just go ahead and walk around things and get behind your cover, or close in from multiple angles.

Oh boy I think I’ve reached the misery simulator part of the game.

Finished it.
I loved it, ultimately. It's not flawless - a thing this big with this level of sprawl, sort of, can't be by definition - but it worked for me. Calling it a misery simulator far too glib, like jmm said. The game is beautfiul and epic, and traumatic and miserable, but filled with moments of joy and humanity as well.
Does anyone else want a spoiler thread?

I haven't been playing it, just watching a full play-through on youtube in parts. It's amazing how thorough the set design is... They did a great job keeping models and layouts from looking recycled. There's some reused furniture models here and there but on the most part every apartment, house or unique space feels totally believable. It's so immersive and fun to try to imagine all the environments pre-apocalypse in a constant game of before/after. I love the way it snakes the player through it all as well; almost nothing is a one way in one way out. All sorts of zig zagging through a tunnel made up of random rooms or arbitrary sections of buildings and alleys/yards etc. all effectively contributes to the feeling that the city and yesterday's society is 100% ancient history. Every object or area is repurposed by the survivors as resourcefully as possible. Anyway they put a lot of meticulous care into designing the game universe. Thumbs up.

This is probably a really dim question, but some of the shops & locations in Seattle were also in the first game, right? I mean apart from the hospital. Like, there's a music shop with an upstairs where I feel certain I wrecked a few clickers one time in the first game.

Does anyone else want a spoiler thread?

We could use this thread, though we'd probably want to add a spoiler warning in the title:
No more pallet puzzles: THE LAST OF US PART II

Anyway, it's heartening to hear that Part 2 isn't just unremitting bleakness, though I'm in a section that's pretty light on levity -- the first game is unflinchingly grim too but has loads of beautiful and hilarious moments.

LOL, I was the last post in that thread and forgot it existed

I think the misery simulator is replaying the sex scene over and over as a Ludovico technique.

damn, Abby is JACKED.

Wait, are you talking about the gratuitous sex scene?

It's official: I've seen the start screen of this, which means I'll probably start "The Last of Us" this week. (I assume the title is a reference to the handful who have not played it yet.)

I played most of the first one but I found it so long that I eventually just looked up the ending on YouTube lol

I’ll also be starting it as soon as I can dispatch of the last twenty chapters of death stranding

Game on! It's interesting coming to this after "God of War," which refines a lot of the same gameplay (so far). But it's good. Funny that people want to make it into a movie, since it essentially is a movie. Again, so far. There's a lot more going on in this, plot and setting wise, than "God of War," I'll say that much, awesome as "God of War" is.

Also, I know that this is remastered, but it's still an old game. Interesting to see how the same uncanny valley issues comes into play compared to newer games. That is, there are fleeting moments of photorealism that are almost instantly undercut milliseconds later. It's kind of fascinating. I'm curious what the sequel looks like, though I won't get to it until it goes on deep sale. So, like, January maybe.

Still enjoying this, though as of yet intense though it may be I don't really feel much of a threat from it, which is fine, because I like the characters and don't need to feel totally stressed all the time. It's kind of like playing a Choose Your Own Adventure story.

Except you don’t choose your own adventure here!

And you will definitely encounter some high stress stages.

The game becomes exponentially more terrifying if you increase the difficulty.

Oh, I'm sure. I'm just not good enough at aiming and controls to get the most out of that. For example, I have "Doom" on Switch, and gyro aiming helped me immensely (even though I never finished it). Still, I repurchased it on PS4 for pennies, because the slowdowns o the Switch were getting to me, and the regular aiming was trouble enough that I had to start on a different difficulty level.

As I understand it part of the appeal of this particular game is the way the gameplay and strategy changes on different difficulty levels. Right now I'm on "normal," which is fine. As far as "Choose Your Own," I just meant that you can approach certain rooms and encounters different ways with different attempts for different results. At least so far. It's a testament to the design and writing that I like the "adventure" it has chosen for me so far. I'm way slower than most at these games, too, so I'm getting the most out of each challenge.

OK, hit a slightly more challenging part. This game is really about being patient, isn't it? And using your environment?

yes, and being an ice-cold murderer who rips fools’ skulls open. that too

I'm just starting this too. I like that health packs and molotovs are crafted from the same resources. Interesting idea.

The bad graphics makes the horror elements easier for me to take. I couldn't do Resident Evil 2, for example.

Dunkey called this the first "third-person strangling / ladder moving" game

Also running and brick throwing.

I just met Bill.

damn when you get cornered in that house at night and it’s just you versus the menagerie of infected and those two kids haven’t opened the door for you yet fuuuuuck. anybody beating that the first time deserves a diamond trophy or some shit.

What "bad graphics"? Honestly!

It looks pretty good to me.

I've not played any stealth games before, this is really making me shift gears after something as aggro as "God of War." At times it kind reminds me of "Alien: Isolation." Admittedly I moved on from that pretty early, not because it was bad but sort of because it was too good. Lots of stealth, no real cheats, that alien is going to eat you. And yet it lacked much of a compelling story, Alien film mythology aside. This game, though, advancing the story seems like more of a reward for doing some heavy lifting.

re: "bad graphics" ehh you know what i mean. You can make stuff look a lot grosser in 2020 than in 2013.

Oh, I agree with that, actually. Compared to the stuff in, say, the most recent Resident Evil, this might as well be Saturday morning cartoons.