The Last Of Us Part II

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

People are worried about this game and Ihave to say I couldn't be less worried.

I just finished the uncharted series again and you guys have forgotten this is Naughty Dog we are dealing with here.

Naughty Dog is responsible for Crash, Jax, and Daxter, the Uncharted series, the original Last of us, Naughty Dog is responsible for some of the greatest games ever made, they don't make bad games.

I can't See this game being bad, the standard of quality has been to high for to long all they do is produce classic after classic

 

[Fantomas]

I am psyched and will be unreachable to the outside world for about a month.

 

[JaegerDice]

I have the $100 version per-ordered (cause I'm a steelbook addict, lol).

If the reviews are mixed, I can always return it and buy it down the line if it's on sale.

 

[The Burdened]

can't wait to watch this game

 

[JaegerDice]

People are worried about this game and Ihave to say I couldn't be less worried.

I just finished the uncharted series again and you guys have forgotten this is Naughty Dog we are dealing with here.

Naughty Dog is responsible for Crash, Jax, and Daxter, the Uncharted series, the original Last of us, Naughty Dog is responsible for some of the greatest games ever made, they don't make bad games.

I can't See this game being bad, the standard of quality has been to high for to long all they do is produce classic after classic

The interesting thing is while Naughty Dogs engineers, artists and storytellers have been improving year over year, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay design in their games is all over the place and probably on a slight downward decline. The Uncharted games play more and more like fixed roller coasters and less like player-led adventures with each passing game, and the shooting and platforming in them has never been good. Last of Us was better in that they basically asked players to shoot as little as possible and just sneak around and watch stealth kill animations whenever possible, but taken out of the context of the setting, story and technical expertise, the LoU gameplay was actually pretty... meh.

Jak and Daxter 3 still stands as their best PLAYING game to date.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

I think the original Jak and Daxter was their best game.

Once they brought guns into the mix I became much less enthralled in the world.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Wow, forgot this game was coming out soon. I'll definitely be getting it but probably won't have much time to play till late July.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

I have the $100 version per-ordered (cause I'm a steelbook addict, lol).

If the reviews are mixed, I can always return it and buy it down the line if it's on sale.

I have 2 copies of the Ellie Edition coming .

 

[Carlzner]

People are worried about this game and Ihave to say I couldn't be less worried.

I'm not worried at all. It only took a little bit of digging to find out the real reason behind the "controversy"

 

[Ryuji Yamazaki]

can't wait to watch this game

lol.

hopefully the gameplay is better than Pt. 1. I kept asking my buddy who swears by TLOU, “is this it?”

 

[JaegerDice]

I think the original Jak and Daxter was their best game.

Once they brought guns into the mix I became much less enthralled in the world.

I disliked the tone and gameplay changes in Jak 2, but I felt Jak 3 tightened the shooting up superbly and really re-balanced the gameplay as far as shooting vs platforming.

But I really enjoy all 3 games. I recently replayed the remaster and was immediately sucked back in.

 

[JoVel]

lol.

hopefully the gameplay is better than Pt. 1. I kept asking my buddy who swears by TLOU, “is this it?”

Not everyone can have a good taste.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

People are worried about this game and Ihave to say I couldn't be less worried.

I just finished the uncharted series again and you guys have forgotten this is Naughty Dog we are dealing with here.

Naughty Dog is responsible for Crash, Jax, and Daxter, the Uncharted series, the original Last of us, Naughty Dog is responsible for some of the greatest games ever made, they don't make bad games.

I can't See this game being bad, the standard of quality has been to high for to long all they do is produce classic after classic

Naughty Dog makes extremely polished games. Their actual gameplay/game design has been cookie-cutter for 15 years.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

96 on Metacritic, I'll be playing this at midnight when it releases.

 

[Ryuji Yamazaki]

Not everyone can have a good taste.

I know, I don’t blame Naughty Dog. They did their best.

 

[Papa Francouz]

I know, I don’t blame Naughty Dog. They did their best.

You're right, though, the gameplay is the weakest part of TLoU. The story and characters are decent, but I got tired of the light stealth/light shooter/light crafting gameplay pretty early on. If the world hadn't been fun to explore, I probably would've given up on the game a few hours in.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

The greatness is 1 week away

 

[robertmac43]

I'm going to replay the original this weekend. Have not played it in for ever!

 

[S E P H]

You're right, though, the gameplay is the weakest part of TLoU. The story and characters are decent, but I got tired of the light stealth/light shooter/light crafting gameplay pretty early on. If the world hadn't been fun to explore, I probably would've given up on the game a few hours in.

I've criticised The Last of Us in the past and even though there are some good elements in it, one of the worst aspects of the game is the enemies. Having to make enemies pretty much absorb bullets shows how lackluster the gameplay is. This aspect also tries to slow the game down in regards to beating it, Halo 5 did the same thing with the Warden Eternal and it shows how bad the creative design was. Not even the story is that super interesting since Naughty Dog came up with a Zombie Apocalypse on the tail end of that fade where it had already been saturated as possible. I didn't care for it enough to make me want to play this instalment because the gameplay was quite mediocre in the first one; go from point A to point B in stealth manner, waste time getting past enemies/shoot absurdly heavily forced bullet sponge enemies, solve puzzle, rinse and repeat.

 

[Papa Francouz]

I've criticised The Last of Us in the past and even though there are some good elements in it, one of the worst aspects of the game is the enemies. Having to make enemies pretty much absorb bullets shows how lackluster the gameplay is. This aspect also tries to slow the game down in regards to beating it, Halo 5 did the same thing with the Warden Eternal and it shows how bad the creative design was. Not even the story is that super interesting since Naughty Dog came up with a Zombie Apocalypse on the tail end of that fade where it had already been saturated as possible. I didn't care for it enough to make me want to play this instalment because the gameplay was quite mediocre in the first one; go from point A to point B in stealth manner, waste time getting past enemies/shoot absurdly heavily forced bullet sponge enemies, solve puzzle, rinse and repeat.

That's an issue a lot of games have these days that I take issue with - if devs can't think of an interesting way to make an enemy difficult or intimidating, they just give it more health. Happens a lot in shooters, as you alluded to, as well as MMOs. I think TLoU also suffers from a lack of depth in its gameplay, whether it be the crafting, the stealth, the combat, or the puzzles, it's all so shallow and doesn't do anything to push game design forward. And seeing as that's the gameplay loop for the entire game, it got old for me pretty fast.

As far as I know, though, people don't play the TLoU series for the gameplay. From what I've read and gathered, people play it for the characters and the story, and those two things are subjective when it comes to their enjoyment. I can't fault a person for liking TLoU because from where I'm standing, it's a personal experience for everyone involved. I teared up at the prologue during the first TLoU, and even though the story went on a steady decline from there on out for me, a lot of people were engrossed by the turns throughout the rest of the narrative.

In all, I'll probably pass on TLoU 2 for the time being. I just built a new gaming PC and have a ton of games on my Steam backlog that I can now play, so that'll keep me busy. Plus a buddy of mine got me back into R6:Siege, there's not a lot of time for me to enjoy single-player games anyway. I do look forward to what everyone here has to say about the game after it comes out, though. I suspect a large majority of people will love it because it looks like a large majority of games journalists love it. I just want to see what Naughty Dog has done to build the world out some more, as that was the strongest part of the first game, in my opinion. I don't really care for the story or the characters, but Goddamn did they craft a world in the first TLoU that was interesting to explore.

 

[S E P H]

That's an issue a lot of games have these days that I take issue with - if devs can't think of an interesting way to make an enemy difficult or intimidating, they just give it more health. Happens a lot in shooters, as you alluded to, as well as MMOs. I think TLoU also suffers from a lack of depth in its gameplay, whether it be the crafting, the stealth, the combat, or the puzzles, it's all so shallow and doesn't do anything to push game design forward. And seeing as that's the gameplay loop for the entire game, it got old for me pretty fast.

As far as I know, though, people don't play the TLoU series for the gameplay. From what I've read and gathered, people play it for the characters and the story, and those two things are subjective when it comes to their enjoyment. I can't fault a person for liking TLoU because from where I'm standing, it's a personal experience for everyone involved. I teared up at the prologue during the first TLoU, and even though the story went on a steady decline from there on out for me, a lot of people were engrossed by the turns throughout the rest of the narrative.

In all, I'll probably pass on TLoU 2 for the time being. I just built a new gaming PC and have a ton of games on my Steam backlog that I can now play, so that'll keep me busy. Plus a buddy of mine got me back into R6:Siege, there's not a lot of time for me to enjoy single-player games anyway. I do look forward to what everyone here has to say about the game after it comes out, though. I suspect a large majority of people will love it because it looks like a large majority of games journalists love it. I just want to see what Naughty Dog has done to build the world out some more, as that was the strongest part of the first game, in my opinion. I don't really care for the story or the characters, but Goddamn did they craft a world in the first TLoU that was interesting to explore.

Agreed with pretty much everything you said, as a game it has to be one of the most overrated games I've ever ran into from a fanbase (but it sounds like Naughty Dog normally have their games overrated, so perhaps I should've expected it). I forgot if it's going to be a show or movie, but I think TLoU could be one of the rare times where I actually think the movie/series has much more potential than the game did. As you said, the game is quite shallow and then you have to play about 11 to 14 hours of repetitive shallowness that I really lost my appeal to try this second one. I think the game steals a shitton of elements from the Uncharted series as well and I don't mean that in a good way. Why play this, when I can play a superior game in Uncharted which is a better story anyway?

Yeah the first quarter of the game is truly amazing in terms of a story-telling element, but that suspense really goes down hill when the survival aspects are lost during the time-skip. Truly, the only survival components that take place in this game is the severe lack of resources, but I also thought there were good moments like the mission in Boston and the shootout in the neighbourhood. I also think it was quite logical to bring up the fact that colder environments are worse off for zombies, thus Wyoming is the best place to head to. These moments are few and far between though. And that's what makes Zombie entertainment aspects so bad, the best ones are when the zombie plague hits and you're trying to figure out what happens and who survives (IE Telltale with The Walking Dead). Not like 4 years later when a good portion of the population is dead and the rest have already risen to form camps, cities, or bands. It devolves something central like zombies into tribalism warfare.

 

[Papa Francouz]

Agreed with pretty much everything you said, as a game it has to be one of the most overrated games I've ever ran into from a fanbase (but it sounds like Naughty Dog normally have their games overrated, so perhaps I should've expected it). I forgot if it's going to be a show or movie, but I think TLoU could be one of the rare times where I actually think the movie/series has much more potential than the game did. As you said, the game is quite shallow and then you have to play about 11 to 14 hours of repetitive shallowness that I really lost my appeal to try this second one. I think the game steals a shitton of elements from the Uncharted series as well and I don't mean that in a good way. Why play this, when I can play a superior game in Uncharted which is a better story anyway?

Yeah the first quarter of the game is truly amazing in terms of a story-telling element, but that suspense really goes down hill when the survival aspects are lost during the time-skip. Truly, the only survival components that take place in this game is the severe lack of resources, but I also thought there were good moments like the mission in Boston and the shootout in the neighbourhood. I also think it was quite logical to bring up the fact that colder environments are worse off for zombies, thus Wyoming is the best place to head to. These moments are few and far between though. And that's what makes Zombie entertainment aspects so bad, the best ones are when the zombie plague hits and you're trying to figure out what happens and who survives (IE Telltale with The Walking Dead). Not like 4 years later when a good portion of the population is dead and the rest have already risen to form camps, cities, or bands. It devolves something central like zombies into tribalism warfare.

I'm pretty sure it's going to be a show. It'd be tough to condense TLoU into a movie due to the characters needing to be established, the length of the story in the game, as well as the different places that the characters visit. I agree that the show could be better than the game; in fact, I think if they get the right people involved in the production of the show, it could become the definitive version of the TLoU universe. I think Uncharted is better than the TLoU franchise, as well, but I think there's a lot more nuance to it than we're giving credit for in our discussion here. Different strokes for different folks, and all that.

To be fair, I think some of the tribalism in a post-apocalypse world is interesting. I think it's been handled better in other media, but the way some factions treated and manipulated the central duo in the first game (especially during winter) was done well, but those moments were, as you said, few and far between.

Maybe TLoU just isn't a game series for us, my friend.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

2 days until the greatness is released

 

[Fantomas]

As far as I know, though, people don't play the TLoU series for the gameplay. From what I've read and gathered, people play it for the characters and the story, and those two things are subjective when it comes to their enjoyment.

This isn't true. I like the first game largely because of the scavenging, and the challenge of figuring out how much stuff I need to use in which sequence and still have enough left for later.

And other aspects of the gameplay are pretty decent for an old game. Even the game's glitchiness is a blast once you figure out how to exploit it to your advantage.

If people only liked TLOU for the story, why would anyone ever replay it? And yet people have been playing it for 7 years.

It seems to me that the biggest critics of the game are those who never properly absorbed it and dismissed it after the first playthrough. That's their (your) problem.

 

[Shareefruck]

Yeah, I personally found the first Last of Us to be a pretty underwhelming and overrated game propped up by production values, realism, polish, and basic crowd-pleasing elements. Like most people say, the game-play is nothing too interesting, but even beyond that, the characters and storytelling techniques used really don't get much deeper or more interesting than what's found in generic, formulaic, and not particularly good TV dramas like The Walking Dead. Joel is also another exact duplicate of the standard bearded-steely-tough-guy-who-comes-to-terms-with-his-feelings Western protagonist that seems to show up in every game. To its credit, I think it has a passable concept/theme for an interesting ending, and I don't think the game does anything outright poorly, but that's not enough to make the entire game good or well told, in my view.

I view it as just a competently made, not particularly inspired game with strong cinematic presentation (that aesthetically has aged very well), solid performances, and not much else.

That said, I'd expect the sequel to be just as much of a well-received crowd-pleaser.