The Last of Us (Part) 2 [PS4]

[Arwin]

Spoiler

What was her motivation to claim the iron throne? How did she get there? How important did she feel bending the knee was? How fucked up is this series with good people getting the short end of the stick or turning bad or making terrible decisions etc? The attention to sadism and torture (which also turned me off and made that one of my least favorite episodes). It also totally underlines the ultimate plot, that monarchy sucks ass, and that too has been a theme from the beginning.

Long story short though ... This game is really not my cup of tea. I tried with part one and played through 30% before I just got fed up and this game world feels even more bleak, and comparatively that game looked nicer in some ways than this, here and there some true beauty. In this games the great graphics are used a lot to show really ugly and sad things. The killing of enemies really doesn’t feel gamey enough to be able to enjoy and the zombies are just depressing.

I am probably a hippie but I’d rather play a game where I had to choose between saving some and killing others depending on my skill and the situation, and be offered more options to distract opponents and just walk past them and see some kind of reward for that. And I would so change some of the filters on these graphics to make it a world that truly pops. That I think alone causes some of the dissonance - it distracts from enjoying the true and honest beauty of the world no matter how bad the situation is for humanity, that sun and those leaves will always keep looking the same way and in an ugly world that just becomes more painfully obvious.

And now that we’ve had covid, if anything that has shown me to be even more true: the skies have never been bluer than these last months, sunsets never as beautiful, and nature has never been more appealing to be in. The filters in this game feel cheap and false and are a big part of what I don’t like about the game.

But I am happy for the apparently very very many who love this, it’s definitely my loss and not anytime else’s.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Jim Sterling's review:

He points out the fact that the game is constantly trying to make the player feel bad for having done stuff that... the game forced the player to do in the past.
I already felt tricked when Specs Ops: The Line made a similar move, but that game did it once.

You're one foot deep in the "paid reviews" territory.

This is a dishonest attempt at dismissing the explanation I gave for my opinion on professional reviews.
If you want to argue those points then do so, but please spare us of this "you sound like a bad guy" rhetoric.

 

[London Geezer]

Jim Sterling's review:

He points out the fact that the game is constantly trying to make the player feel bad for having done stuff that... the game forced the player to do in the past.
I already felt tricked when Specs Ops: The Line made a similar move, but that game did it once.



This is a dishonest attempt at dismissing the explanation I gave for my opinion on professional reviews.
If you want to argue those points then do so, but please spare us of this "you sound like a bad guy" rhetoric.

On the topic of 'paid reviews' Alana Pierce (ex IGN with her own channel now) has a great video about it, and about "10 out of 10 reviews" in general, explaining that 'paid interview' are just not a thing that happens in reality:

 

[Shifty Geezer]

...explaining that 'paid interview' are just not a thing that happens in reality

"Paid denial."

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The one I posted from boogie.

I have to say I found this review difficult to watch. It's not a great start when you start out with: "So the game is currently setting a 95 on Metacritic, with a 4.4 user score, but let's talk about that 95 meta score because I can tell you why this game has that score. If you can be entirely objective as you're playing through this game and you look at the graphics, thee graphics are like nothing else this generation. The game is gorgeous; the animation is this game is absolutely top notch. So why did I not enjoy the game..".

His major issues are 1) that the game was not what he expected and 2) that he didn't like the structure.

The first point he attributes to Naughty Dog's trailers even though they never showed enough footage to give any indication what the story would be about, they just said that it was "a continuation of Joel and Ellie's story". Like a lot people, myself included, he saw the trailers which really only hinted at aspects of the story and filled 99% of the story blanks with his imagination. Like a lot people, myself included, he was 100% wrong.

His overarching source of disappointment with the game is that the story was not what his imagination conjured up and he couldn't seem you get past this because he keeps coming back to it: "this is not what I expected" - "this is not the story I wanted to hear" - "they decided to subvert [my] expectations. They're they ones who built my expectations." He is literally saying that Naughty Dog didn't deliver on the story he made up he his head and he's blaming them for this. Actually, not even just didn't deliver it, they make a conscious decision to fuck this guy over. Neil Druckmann, you are a cold, brutal bastard! It's worth reminding ourselves that when promoting the first game, Naughty Dog's team did pretty much the same thing even lying about Ellie being a playable character.

On the second point, the structure. I can understand why he didn't like it. I personally was expecting something like this because of this has been the direction the studio has been going with since Uncharted 3 (developed in parallel to The Last of Us), Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy. I'm also not a fan but I also cannot see a way to deliver on what they want players to experience without this structure - it just seems impossible. They could have cut back on some aspects and I as posted previously, I wish they had because some bits felt superfluous. They did nothing to advance the story or the plot, but there were few and far.

But this review includes so much inconsistency, literally like two people had written it. Here are some of his takes for your bingo card: "I play games for fun" - "I enjoyed the combat." - "the game is not fun" - "there are not enough unique characters" - "there are too many characters" - "this world is depressing" - "I would like to see more games set in this world" - "it's darkness, darkness, darkness with no light" - "there are moments of levity" - "levity is missing" "I loved the combat, I loved the diversity of weapons, I loved all of the gore and viscera that comes from these different types of kills" - "I wasted 25 hours".

If I genuinely felt all these conflicting things as once I think I'd have a brain aneurism.

The problem with gamespot, IGN etc. is that their obligation lies mostly with their gaming-related advertisers, invitations to events, industry networking for exclusive stories, etc.

The same people who gave Knack a five, Detroit and Days Gone a seven, The Order 1886 a six? While Sony is an advertiser on these sites, it's relatively small number of exclusive games making them a small potato advertiser next to EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc. It's also an advertiser that wants to reach the massive audience of these sites so has to advertise there regardless of what scores they give their exclusives.

Wow, this guy said it best. His first point is the only one I don't agree with. It boils down to "waaa waaa, I like this character and I think the game should have more of him, and I had a very rigid and specific expectation of who was gonna be in there and it didn't materialize, and I can't understand stories that have unexpected twists that go against my expectations" I don't give two shits to people like that.

Agreed, I very much felt he went in to this game with a very specific expectation and when the game deviated, he couldn't get past that and the ruined the rest of his experience despite the fact he really liked the game play. I learned room and grew out of this - sometimes a bit of apathy helps.

On the topic of 'paid reviews' Alana Pierce (ex IGN with her own channel now) has a great video about it, and about "10 out of 10 reviews" in general, explaining that 'paid interview' are just not a thing that happens in reality:

Yes, and she's not the only one who denied this is a thing. I'm sure that marketing and PR teams representing some publishers have pressured sites for good coverage and news stories, and not running bad ones, but in my experience all of the big sites carry all the news - good and bad - and when a site gets big enough, it's user base is such a desirable target for advertising that it shields the site from undue influence. Plus wouldn't an amazing story be 'Sony tried to bribe us to give The Last of Us 2 a good review'. ?

 

[London Geezer]

"Paid denial."

Sounds kinky.

 

[Daozang]

The same people who gave Knack a five, Detroit and Days Gone a seven, The Order 1886 a six? While Sony is an advertiser on these sites, it's relatively small number of exclusive games making them a small potato advertiser next to EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc. It's also an advertiser that wants to reach the massive audience of these sites so has to advertise there regardless of what scores they give their exclusives.

Besides, no one would put their integrity on the line, if they can get away with a 9.
A 9, is a great score.
Is it possible, that they gave it a 10, because they actually liked it?

 

[London Geezer]

Besides, no one would put their integrity on the line, if they can get away with a 9.
A 9, is a great score.
Is it possible, that they gave it a 10, because they actually liked it?

That's the point. A review is still an opinion, and a 10/10 opinion is just as valid as a 5/10 opinion. Every opinion is valid, when it is genuine.

 

[London Geezer]

Also, numerical scores in reviews are so passé, we should all move away from them. I don't actually consider the number if I ever read a review. I think Eurogamer's style is much better, where they have Essential, Recommended and whatever else. Much more in line with how our brains work than a 10/9/8 which in my opinion offer no real value or distinction.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Also, numerical scores in reviews are so passé, we should all move away from them. I don't actually consider the number if I ever read a review. I think Eurogamer's style is much better, where they have Essential, Recommended and whatever else. Much more in line with how our brains work than a 10/9/8 which in my opinion offer no real value or distinction.

Though true, human's naturally like assigning numbers for comparison. It's an invention that fits our comparator brains. I think the problem really lies in quantification not being qualified. A person rating a game 4/5 clearly felt it was a good game. You don't know if it'd be a good game for you if you don't know how similar your tastes are. But when more people give a numerical value, the statistical relevance of that number increases. What would probably be more use if people aligning themselves with a preferences type (let's say colours, so I'm Red and you're Blue) then you could have colour-associated ratings, Red people rated this 4/5, Blue people rated it 2/5.

This really connects with my current major bug-bear which is the bollocks of movie.TV age ratings. Someone somewhere arbitrarily decides what someone of a particular age-group should be able to deal with. Hence you'll have a mix of violence, sex, substance abuse, etc and no way of knowing what's in a film based on the age rating. I'm shocked at the content Disney+ considers appropriate for a 6 year old!! I'd rather have ratings for different aspects of a film than a single value that can't be at all representative, and that's the case with scores.

In the days of old, games were given scores for graphics, sound, gameplay, etc, and the final was something of an aggregate allowing a game with a weak element to still score healthily overall, and I don't remember arguments over the relevance of review scores back then. Maybe I just remember badly?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

He points out the fact that the game is constantly trying to make the player feel bad for having done stuff that... the game forced the player to do in the past.

I never felt this. Let alone "constantly". Returning to a point I made many days back having only just started the game, myself and my fiancé, are just not feeling the outrage of video game violence that some people are. Is the game really making people feel bad for killing digital humans? If any of the posters here feel his way, I would really appreciate knowing how the game is manifesting this? Did I blink and miss a cutscene? Why is The Last of Us 2 different from other videogames in this regard? Is there something tangible anybody can point too? Please?

This aside I agree with many of the things Jim Sterling said, I said it myself. It would have been a better game for being a few hours shorter, some bits are outright superfluous. His comments on the weapon mods are spot on, the first couple of times you mod a weapon it's interesting to watch but deeper into the game when you've not upgraded for a while and have a pile of parts and want to do a bunch of upgrades, it can take literally take 5 minutes. But likening to Red Dead Redemption where the entire game forces you to move at a snail's pace is unfair. In RDR2 it takes a few seconds to pickup any one item, in TLoU2 it's no different than the original game and as I discovered, there is an auto-pickup option to spare your Triangle button! #savegreentriangle

The Last of Us 2 is far from a perfect game but I'm spotting a distinct theme amongst some reviewers who have decided that Naughty Dog wants to you feel this way or that way and it doesn't work for them. I'm either missing these emotion cues entirely of people are projecting here. This was a strong theme even prior to launch and back in this post I said: "I hope the creative team responsible for the story and scene-to-scene writing will reveal what it was they intended the player to feel. Then we'll know if they missed their mark, or hit it."

I've been killing onscreen avatars since Beserk on the Atari 2600, maybe I'm utterly desensitised to it by now.

 

[messyman]

Jim Sterling's review:

He points out the fact that the game is constantly trying to make the player feel bad for having done stuff that... the game forced the player to do in the past.
I already felt tricked when Specs Ops: The Line made a similar move, but that game did it once.



This is a dishonest attempt at dismissing the explanation I gave for my opinion on professional reviews.
If you want to argue those points then do so, but please spare us of this "you sound like a bad guy" rhetoric.

Nah, it's pretty clear you think big websites have ulterior motive to give big games good scores. That's what your explanation boils down to.

 

[Strange]

I never felt this. Let alone "constantly". Returning to a point I made many days back having only just started the game, myself and my fiancé, are just not feeling the outrage of video game violence that some people are. Is the game really making people feel bad for killing digital humans? If any of the posters here feel his way, I would really appreciate knowing how the game is manifesting this? Did I blink and miss a cutscene? Why is The Last of Us 2 different from other videogames in this regard? Is there something tangible anybody can point too? Please?

This aside I agree with many of the things Jim Sterling said, I said it myself. It would have been a better game for being a few hours shorter, some bits are outright superfluous. His comments on the weapon mods are spot on, the first couple of times you mod a weapon it's interesting to watch but deeper into the game when you've not upgraded for a while and have a pile of parts and want to do a bunch of upgrades, it can take literally take 5 minutes. But likening to Red Dead Redemption where the entire game forces you to move at a snail's pace is unfair. In RDR2 it takes a few seconds to pickup any one item, in TLoU2 it's no different than the original game and as I discovered, there is an auto-pickup option to spare your Triangle button! #savegreentriangle

The Last of Us 2 is far from a perfect game but I'm spotting a distinct theme amongst some reviewers who have decided that Naughty Dog wants to you feel this way or that way and it doesn't work for them. I'm either missing these emotion cues entirely of people are projecting here. This was a strong theme even prior to launch and back in this post I said: "I hope the creative team responsible for the story and scene-to-scene writing will reveal what it was they intended the player to feel. Then we'll know if they missed their mark, or hit it."

I've been killing onscreen avatars since Beserk on the Atari 2600, maybe I'm utterly desensitised to it by now.

Spoiler

I also never really felt this. The only moments that I felt the game took a shot a making me feel bad are the several characters that we have to kill through the plot.
But hey, they're cut scenes and are integral to the plot line, I mean I felt bad when I played Modern warfare and shot civilians up, but wasn't framed in a way that encourages you to do it.
As long as the game isn't glorifying morally devoid acts (even if it's forcing me to do it) I'm fine with it.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I'm struggling to find generally positive reviews of the game in Youtube reviewers.
Here's a positive one:

And others:

His major issues are 1) that the game was not what he expected

Why is it so bad that he liked the second game less because something that was present in the first game is now lacking? Same goes for @milk BTW.

To me, The Last of Us had a significant sentimental value by showing the story of a man who adopted a girl that resembled his long lost child, and how far (for better or worse) he went to save this child from death.
Like e.g. God of War, there is an added value into the evolution of a caring relationship between two people within the context of a very cruel world. Despite the supernatural / apocalyptic setting, the relationship makes the story human and relatable.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with people being disappointed that a game called The Last of Us 2 kills off an integral component of the first game that felt important to many.
It's completely within the dev's right to subvert expectations and remove this from the sequel, but this also means people must be within their own right to not like this direction and voice their opinion.

I.e. no one must be forced to like the games in the same way as you do.

But this review includes so much inconsistency, literally like two people had written it. Here are some of his takes for your bingo card: "I play games for fun" - "I enjoyed the combat." - "the game is not fun" - "there are not enough unique characters" - "there are too many characters" - "this world is depressing" - "I would like to see more games set in this world" - "it's darkness, darkness, darkness with no light" - "there are moments of levity" - "levity is missing" "I loved the combat, I loved the diversity of weapons, I loved all of the gore and viscera that comes from these different types of kills" - "I wasted 25 hours".

If I genuinely felt all these conflicting things as once I think I'd have a brain aneurism.

You didn't show any message that is exclusive to another.
He enjoys fun games but didn't find this one to be fun, despite having good combat mechanics. There are too many characters which doesn't leave enough screen time to make said characters develop any form of uniqueness. He would like to see more games based around this world, but in this game everything seems too depressing all the time to him. There are some moments of levity but not nearly enough to provide relief. The gameplay elements like combat, weapon diversity and gore are excellent, but in the end the story and/or storytelling are lackluster so in the end he feels he wasted 25 hours of his life.
Most of these points are repeated among these reviews I posted up there.

In your post you seem a bit upset that he didn't like the game like you did. You can enjoy the game but he must be free to not like it, and that's okay.

Nah, it's pretty clear you think big websites have ulterior motive to give big games good scores. That's what your explanation boils down to.

It's pretty clear you think you can get away with using cheap methods to undermine opinions contrary to yours. That's what your last couple of posts boil down to.

 

[milk]

I never felt this. Let alone "constantly". Returning to a point I made many days back having only just started the game, myself and my fiancé, are just not feeling the outrage of video game violence that some people are. Is the game really making people feel bad for killing digital humans? If any of the posters here feel his way, I would really appreciate knowing how the game is manifesting this? Did I blink and miss a cutscene? Why is The Last of Us 2 different from other videogames in this regard? Is there something tangible anybody can point too? Please?

I wouldn't say the game made me feel bad, or that it trying to make me feel bad exactly. But it sure had lots of moments that feel exactly like the game is looking back at me with a witty smart-ass face saying "ooohh, bet you didn't see that coming huh" while I'm rolling my eyes so far up I can see what is behind me "yeah game, a absolutely did not see that coming, I never realized that the enemy also has their own point of view, and that from their perspective I'm the actual villain, nor did I suspect you were gonna pull that cheap-ass narrative device on me from miles away, nor have I ever seen any other game, film or movie that brought this point before. No, TLoU2 is making me think so much, so deep, yeah sure, whatever"

more specifically

Spoiler

When you see some of the folk that ellie killed from Abby's perspective and, guess what, they are actual human beings with feelings and interests and goals who are friendly and contribute to their comunity.
Eyeroll...

When you see them being nice to dogs.
Eyeroooooll....

When you help save a zebra to make you see them as similar to Joe and Ellie and the giraffes..
Oh so smooth and subtle, Neil... Eyerooooooolll...

When then abbie herself discovers the scars also have feelings.
Eyereroll.

When she realizes how nasty and overly violent WLF can be.
God damn it Neil, we had gotten it the first time, hell, we knew it already before the first time, how many more times are you gonna reinterate the same point? Is the whole narrative in this 30h game gonna consist almost exclusevely of THAT theme?

And it does not end here. there are dozen other such obvious and hammy moments like this that think themselves way more clever and subtle than they really are, but I'm already tired from simply listing them.

It's a one-note story (the note being a pretty clichè one at that) stretched out through the length of a symphony. That gets tiresome.

People say they didn't have fun because that is the lasting impression the game leaves. It is fun in the beginning. But by the end, it has became a chore. You just wanna see the end for the sale of claiming to have seen it, but when you get there its still just yet another re-statement of the same fucking point again. The same note playing over and over again. I mean, ellie could have lost three more fingers and be ok if playing the same note over-and-over again is good enough for a song.

 

[Arwin]

Maybe the problem is that there are many well made tv shows that have excellent writing and production values so you can also easily avoid the themes you are not interested in.

With games in that regard it is still fairly slim pickings in that department ... like how I always wished that better, proven writers would have a stab at creating a game with Quantic Dream’s engine.

 

[Strange]

Maybe the problem is that there are many well made tv shows that have excellent writing and production values so you can also easily avoid the themes you are not interested in.

With games in that regard it is still fairly slim pickings in that department ... like how I always wished that better, proven writers would have a stab at creating a game with Quantic Dream’s engine.

Problem with games is that for a 5 hour script you would need something like 10~30 hours of writing due to the branching.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Why is it so bad that he liked the second game less because something that was present in the first game is now lacking? Same goes for @milk BTW.

This game actually has more in than the original, the negativity in the reviews are 1 ) from somebody who is literally upset that the game didn't meet what their imagination conjured, and 2) somebody who is attributing motive on the part of the creators based on nothing. Literally nothing.

To me, The Last of Us had a significant sentimental value by showing the story of a man who adopted a girl that resembled his long lost child, and how far (for better or worse) he went to save this child from death.

Me too, I love The Last of Us and it's a game I have enjoyed replaying around once a year. I love the game, the story and the characters. This is not that game, nor that story. If you want to replay that game, just go and re-play that game. They've tried to do something different with this game. I'd argue that thematically and in terms of main story beats, it's still too similar with the original game so it's ironic that you've decided that you won't like it before you've played it.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with people being disappointed that a game called The Last of Us 2 kills off an integral component of the first game that felt important to many. It's completely within the dev's right to subvert expectations and remove this from the sequel, but this also means people must be within their own right to not like this direction and voice their opinion.

Me either, which is why I wonder even if you read my comments because I've said, repeatedly, that I can understand why people may not like the story or the structure. As to the developers "right to subvert this YouTuber's expectations", seriously WTF? This is the work of a creative team who care more about these characters than some random internet people. If you wish to contend this I suggest you watch the Greg Miller / Neil Druckmann / Ashley Johnson / Troy Baker spoiler cast around 13 to 20 minutes in where one of the biggest plot points is discussed.

I.e. no one must be forced to like the games in the same way as you do.

Please link to any post suggesting everybody should like this game. Please. If you genuinely believe that is what people are saying, I don't know what to say to you.

You didn't show any message that is exclusive to another. He enjoys fun games but didn't find this one to be fun, despite having good combat mechanics. There are too many characters which doesn't leave enough screen time to make said characters develop any form of uniqueness.

As somebody who hasn't played the game and formed their own opinion, you sure are putting a lot of faith in someone else's opinion. He actually says that he liked the gameplay, which is 25+ hours long. Like the original game, a lot of people die and many are not unique because if the game took time to make everybody unique, the game would be longer than the Witcher 3. Many people who die are grunts.

In your post you seem a bit upset that he didn't like the game like you did. You can enjoy the game but he must be free to not like it, and that's okay.

I'm not upset at all As I've said in many posts I can see why a lot of people may not like this game. Please stop trying to create some weird narrative abut me calling out bullshit criticism. There is so much legitimate criticism that can be aimed at the game the gameplay and the story of The Last of Us 2, that bullshit "this didn't meet my imagination" is just shite. If somebody said this to me, I'd seriously be wondering if that person didn't some kind of real professional help. It's just that insane to me. Blaming a creative team of an entertainment product for not living up to their imagination.

Maybe the problem is that there are many well made tv shows that have excellent writing and production values so you can also easily avoid the themes you are not interested in. With games in that regard it is still fairly slim pickings in that department ... like how I always wished that better, proven writers would have a stab at creating a game with Quantic Dream’s engine.

I liked your post because it's ambitious but I think it's beyond achievable even for a Sony AAA studio, The Last of Us Part II, with one single narrative, and hundreds of hours of actor mo-cap took seven years. Tossing in branching stories, Naughty Dog would output less games that Polyphony Digital!

 

[milk]

Maybe the problem is that there are many well made tv shows that have excellent writing and production values so you can also easily avoid the themes you are not interested in.

With games in that regard it is still fairly slim pickings in that department ... like how I always wished that better, proven writers would have a stab at creating a game with Quantic Dream’s engine.

That is not new though. There aren't many games that can stand toe to toe narratively with the best of other mediums. But that is ok if they don't try to be something they can't. I'm ok with a simple, unpretentious story that just does it's own thing with care and craftsmanship. That's Monkey Island for example. That is Uncharted 2. That was TLoU1.

The first game was gritty and somewhat grounded, but still a bit fantastical. It had mushroom zombies afterall. But it told it's simple story ass tightly and precisely as possible. Each moment would naturally flow into the next. Each chapter illustrated their own internal narrative and themes. Each section advanced the larger plot as well as the characters. We get to knowore of each one of them, as well as they develop their own personality, get to know each other and bond infront of us, together with us. Within that simple template, the game went pretty deep into these people's souls.
TLoU2 had a complex and messy plot. The way its told is even messier, and the characters did not have a third of the depth and soul that they did in part 1. They barely feel human most of the time.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And for everybody who subscribes to some reviewer's assertions that The Last of Us 2 is judging their actions, in the above (and below) linked spoilercast, Neil Druckmann says:

"I love that people struggle with this and that there is no right answer here. I've seen some criticism that the game is, oh like oh I kill the dog in one second and pet the dog in another and the game is like, wagging it's finger at me.. The game is not making any judgements. The game is just presenting 'here are some acts' and 'here is another view on those acts'. You make whatever it is you will, the game is not making any judgement on your actions."

There is no feedback on whether any player-initiated action was good, nor bad. Whatever people are feeling the same is making them feel. It's all coming from inside.