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The Last of Us Part II - Review Thread
- Thread starter vestan
- Start date
The first one was compared to Citizen Kane. ;)
And Jeff is great.
I'll make sure to use the following phrases:
- Now that the honeymoon period is over
- Overrated
- Movie game
Very true. Most games obviously want you to identify with the protagonist. And some games go a step further and may call out the player for their actions in games but the idea of putting the player and the player-character in constant conflict is... well, I can't pretend it doesn't seem extremely interesting but also unbelievably difficult to pull off effectively.
Also same to you! I love discussing game themes and especially how mechanics can help build those themes. I really hope there's a lot to talk about in the post-release thread. Even if not everything lands.
Doesn't matter how much it's repeated: The Last of Us is not a story about zombies. I think being reductionist is understandable for a simple fan (or rather, the total opposite), but a professional journalist should stay above that level of public discourse. If someone thought the other tweets were hyperbolic, then answering with simplified points is not the best course of action either.
going the "manufactured outrage" route makes this an ironic tweet, all things considered
nvm^
Yes? I loved the original's gameplay but would have been disappointed if they didn't expand on it
and Why do we need to even talk in hypotheticals? Gameplay HAS been expanded upon. We knew this from the very first gameplay we saw of the game. Reviews echo this too
He's not responding to ANY of those ppl. Just engaging the two he knows. You cannot talk down a mob on Twitter and their crazy hot takes.
Saw the edit..let's kill this noise lol
So, I've been keeping darkish on the game for a while, but has any reviewer noted any sequences analogous to the repetitive ladder or pallet puzzles from the first game?
Idk where this game will settle, but to think it's at a 96 with 84 reviews it's insane. With the odds stacked against the studio to top what a lot of ppl consider one of the best games ever, I found it highly unlikely that it would be as good or even surpass it. From the reviews it sounds like the game isn't without flaws, but it sounds like one of the critical and defining games of the generation. Some have even gone as far as to say it's story surpasses the original. Just recently while watching someone's play through of the first game, I thought to myself "it's going to be impossible for them to beat the presentation of this story" lol. I may have been wrong.
Ive decided to play the game on easy or normal first so that I can just enjoy the story, then my second playthrough will be on hard or whatever its called lol All the reviews have only increased my hype, cant wait to get my hands on this!
Yep, same here. Normal it is. Though i might fiddle with all those different difficulty settings.
thank you.
going with this as well, like I did so with the first title
Schreier flippantly dismissing TLOU II as "the new zombie videogame" was frankly rude and disrespectful, particularly from someone that's so knowledgeable and tied into the industry, someone who fully understands the sacrifices and blood and sweat that it takes to make a game like this.
It's like calling The Shawshank Redemption "the new prison escape movie" or The Godfather "the new shooting movie" or 2001: A Space Odyssey "the new sci-fi adventure movie". It's disingenuous and he knows it.
Anywayy... I'm just happy the game is getting all this love and also happy Sony didn't allow for spoilers to be posted about the game itself.
By the time I buy this I'll still be completely spoiler-free.
Reviewers reveal way too much about games stories and unnecessary spoilers are all over the place.
By the time I buy this I'll still be completely spoiler-free.
Reviewers reveal way too much about games stories and unnecessary spoilers are all over the place.
I think I'm gonna do hard mode first. Seems like a good middle ground given the lack of scarcity of materials mentioned in reviews
You can give a review of the effectiveness of the story without going into major plot points. I think a separate place for discussion, like a spoilercast where you can deep dive into everything is preferred. Especially when a game has just came out and people most likely want to experience much of it for themselves.
There are a lot of customization settings in the game so you can tailor the game to your liking.
Like at some point playing TLOU2 you are going to stab a dog to death and a trophy notification is going to pop up. A game which simulates violence as a core, repeated mechanic can muse a bit on the impact of violence, but ultimately it does ring a little hollow. Making analogies to other media that deal with violence and suffering is tricky because a movie like Schindler's List is inherently anti-violence. All of the action it depicts is sorrowful and pathetic and sad.
Francois Truffaut said, "There's no such thing as an anti-war movie." What he meant is that a war movie can narratively be anti-war, but if it depicts violence and conflict in exciting ways the audience is going to be enamored with that violence. That's the same trap TLOU2 falls into. It can tell a story about how violence consumes these characters and ruins their lives, but the player is having a blast beating dogs to death and setting elaborate pipe bomb traps that kill enemy characters with names.
How can a work of art criticize violence while making it so fun?
Francois Truffaut said, "There's no such thing as an anti-war movie." What he meant is that a war movie can narratively be anti-war, but if it depicts violence and conflict in exciting ways the audience is going to be enamored with that violence. That's the same trap TLOU2 falls into. It can tell a story about how violence consumes these characters and ruins their lives, but the player is having a blast beating dogs to death and setting elaborate pipe bomb traps that kill enemy characters with names.
How can a work of art criticize violence while making it so fun?
They haven't done much to improve on the environment puzzles in the game from what I've heard, but they have much reduced their volume apparently.
This is how I play games that narrative-driven. And it has worked for me so far
I think Hard is a good bet for a first play through. And yes, there are no difficulty related trophies, and you can not only change difficulty on the fly, but also change individual difficulty settings to customise the difficulty to your ideal.
Have u played it? A lot of reviewers have openly said its not fun killing enemies, a lot of it is designed to be off putting and uncomfortable, I'm kinda confused by your claim here.
Iono all bets are off when society has collapsed and mushroom fungus dudes are looking to eat people lol
Most zombie media isn't about the actual zombies lol it's the entire point of the genre... Doesn't make comparing it to a movie about the Holocaust less dumb. Or calling other games "john wick".
It's a dumb tweet all around.
Yeah. We can't say for sure, but I trust them over there. Especially Rob. Dude doesn't ever seem to give a single fuck if no one likes something he's into, or he dislikes something everyone else is gushing over. Your homework assignment is to play it and tell me if you agree or disagree with him overall I await your answer and thank you very much.
I think that this is a great post, fellow Fieri fan
I think part of the reason that the only game that has had that message resonate a bit with me thus far was Spec Ops because the game was pretty shit and unfun to begin with. It is hard to take that message seriously in other games, like in Assassin's Creed Odyssey's DLC quest where you find a tree covered with the corpses of men you killed and they wag their finger at what a naughty little misthios you've been after killing literally thousands of enemies as the primary way you engage with the game world
It can definitely ring hollow
Hell yeah thats whats up! ✊🏻 I was thinking of making the enemy difficulty a little bit higher but keeping the resources the same, Im sure there will be tense moments nonetheless but I just want to be lost in the story and atmosphere for my first playthrough cus I know i'll enjoy it more that way.
Watching 1917 it was pretty harrowing even though the action was exciting and engaging. I definitely didn't watch that movie thinking "war is awesome! Sign me up!"
Uhhh you may want to follow Jeff a bit. I highly suggest DLC as it is one of the best gaming podcasts out there.
The Paste Magazine review is a good read: https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/the-last-of-us-part-ii/the-last-of-us-part-2-review/
5/5
www.t3.com
The Last of Us Part 2 review – does the long-awaited sequel measure up to the hype?
Naughty Dog takes us back to the apocalypse for a heartfelt and disturbing look at our own humanity
www.t3.com
I wonder if this is also part of the reason they spun off the multiplayer. It's almost hypocritical to make a a work of art to criticize violence, but then have a mode that celebrates and revels in it.
Okay I get it. My bad for misinterpreting. I thought Cannata was comparing two movies in the way they formally approach violence, not the themes theirselves they deal with. Yet his reply is pretty lame in my opinion.
Only because those films have their legacies established over time. It wouldn't be disingenuous to call The Godfather "the new crime movie" or "new gangster movie" when it came out
Including a gay relationship in their game (something ND already showed with Ellie like 7 years ago) is not the same as that inclusion being used positively. It's not to say it's not a good thing but... what is Rob expected to say? "Ellie is gay. And that is still nice." The bar for major media products like this cannot be that low. They've discussed a lot of games that feature queer-identities (not nearly enough, but still), that alone does not warrant a parade just because Last of Us is a big game.
And this is assuming what he can say in his review even represents that the game doesn't fall into negative pitfalls along the way. Maybe that love interest doesn't get fridged along the way, or maybe she doesn't end up as some kind of twist villain. Maybe the romance is allowed to be just that. But that discourse will come when more is allowed to actually be discussed when people start playing it.
I think we're saying mostly the same, so I don't know what's the point of discussion here. Yes, many apocalyptic stories use that context as a backdrop for social commentary. If you've had the chance to read previous pages in this thread, you'll see people saying exactly the opposite, or simplifying its intentions as another "zombie game" (in fact, Schreier did pretty much that, though we cannot discuss about this, so let's move on). That's why I've written that sentence, not to reaffirm any "special" status about The Last of Us (though I believe its execution is certainly better than most) but to remind them that there's barely such thing as a story focused on zombies, to begin with.
The tweets cannot be discussed anymore. I'll only say that anybody can have its own opinion about it.
The fundamental issue I think with trying to connect player to player-character in a negative way is that people simply don't have negative intentions when they decide to play through a game. People might want to see the story unfold, they might be hunting a Platinum, or they might simply want to get their money's worth out of the game they've just spend $60 on. Even in cases where the evil shit is optional you're not doing it because you're evil, you're doing it because you want to "see the evil ending," or "role play as an evil dude," or "want to experience the dynamic cat-and-mouse chase that happens when you commit mass-murder in GTA."
I think the best games can really achieve is making some things out to be 'bad ideas' mechanically and hoping that the player sees them as bad morally. Stealth games have done this a whole bunch and games like Pathalogic take it to a rather extreme extent, but even then I doubt many people feel 'judged' for, say, going on a full-murder run in Dishonored.
Personally I think that stories which aim to challenge the player's preconceptions instead of trying to judge the player themselves will always work so much better. Take Spec Ops: The Line for instance, that game was so much more impactful when it was directly critiquing American imperialism through its gameplay instead of trying to make some grand statement about shooters.
He purposefully contextualized it that way vs Schindler's List to make a point though. He purposefully tried to diminish the potential impact of the game by describing it that way. It was rude.
Last post on the subject, sorry.
It would be bananas if this game has racks of perfect scores but the core gameplay mechanic isn't fun.
If we cannot discuss it then we won't.
But I think I misunderstood your post then.
