Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2019 Video Game Thread Specatular Spectacular

[Eva Yojimbo]

Anyways with that all out of the way I guess The Last of Us starts tomorrow.

Yes! I don't know how much time a day you spend on gaming, but it would probably be ideal story-wise if you could do one season a day (the game is structured around the four seasons). I basically did that with my dad. Though it might be harder to do on a higher difficulty as you'll be replaying some sections over and over (and over and over). Would be cool, though, if you could post some thoughts after each section. I need to go do some quick reading to refresh myself on the major events in the timeline.

[Raxivace]

I probably won't get a whole lot of time to play tonight but we'll see what happens.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I mean, it's not imperative or anything. My first playthrough on hard definitely took more than a day to get through each section and I still thoroughly enjoyed the story... but I also think I appreciated it more the second time around as there was a better flow.

[Raxivace]

I mean I'll be going at my own pace anyways, its just that within the next few weeks there's some new stuff coming out that I want to play (The last FFXV DLC and Super Robot Wars T). I'm going to try and clear TLoU before then.

BTW I don't know if I ever shared this before but just for the hell of it I have an IMDb list going of every game I've completed (That's within their database anyways). I thought it might be fun to share. Some games are repeated on there twice because they have multiple pages for some reason but eh whatever.

[Raxivace]

The Last of Us is sure off to a...start of some kind, I guess.

[Raxivace]

Seriously this game is a little jankier than I was expecting.

[Eva Yojimbo]

TBH, I only encountered one bug the entire time I played. During my first playthrough there was a part where Ellie and Joel are riding a horse. I dismount to take care of some business, and when I met up with Ellie again her character was stretched out like some Gumby alien! Besides that, the only other janky parts I noticed where what seemed to me like an inconsistency of how some enemies would spot you in stealth mode. Speaking of which, why are you in a shootout on that first section? That's like... the easiest part in the game to stealth! That second clip reminds me of a common bug I had in Witcher 3 where killing enemies would cause their bodies to slither off. Never had that in TLOU. I'm assuming you're playing the Remastered version for PS4, right?

[Raxivace]

Speaking of which, why are you in a shootout on that first section? That's like... the easiest part in the game to stealth!

Combination of playing right before going to bed/not being quite used to the controls yet/experimenting a bit to see what is and isn't allowed by the game. Like in that first clip I was trying to see if the game would let me stealth kill that guy when he seemed to be distracted by the NPC lady you're with, though it seems not.

In general it seems like yeah, I can't Rambo through things and should have been a bit more actively stealthy.

That second clip reminds me of a common bug I had in Witcher 3 where killing enemies would cause their bodies to slither off. Never had that in TLOU. I'm assuming you're playing the Remastered version for PS4, right?

Yeah I'm playing the PS4 version. That's why I've been able to upload clips these past few days, since I've been playing around with the recording feature on it.

Man I had tons of glitches, bugs, and crashes in Witcher 3. I remember posting about some of them in the 2018 games thread...of course, a few days after I finished the game and had gotten the fricken Platinum trophy there was a god damned stability patch lol. I swear the Polish hate me, eve though I'm like a quarter Polish myself (Or that's what I've been told anyways. I'd like to do one of those ancestry tests one of these days).

[Eva Yojimbo]

Speaking of which, why are you in a shootout on that first section? That's like... the easiest part in the game to stealth!

Combination of playing right before going to bed/not being quite used to the controls yet/experimenting a bit to see what is and isn't allowed by the game. Like in that first clip I was trying to see if the game would let me stealth kill that guy when he seemed to be distracted by the NPC lady you're with, though it seems not.

In general it seems like yeah, I can't Rambo through things and should have been a bit more actively stealthy.

NPCs are most useful for sometimes getting you out of a jam than anything else. I never noticed much help as far as distractions go. Enemies will fixate on you pretty quickly.

Yeah, game will punish you for trying to Rambo anything, which kinda sucks because stealthing everything is not easy!

Man I had tons of glitches, bugs, and crashes in Witcher 3. I remember posting about some of them in the 2018 games thread...of course, a few days after I finished the game and had gotten the fricken Platinum trophy there was a god damned stability patch lol. I swear the Polish hate me, eve though I'm like a quarter Polish myself (Or that's what I've been told anyways. I'd like to do one of those ancestry tests one of these days).

I assume I played Witcher 3 after the patch and I still had tons of crashes, though not too many glitches/bugs. I just got used to manually saving a lot.

No comment on the intro?

[Raxivace]

You know it just occurred to me that Rambo himself might not actually be a great example of, uh, Ramboing through things since in that first movie he basically is using a lot of stealth and traps and so on to fight people and only has a body count of like, two dudes.

[Raxivace]

I assume I played Witcher 3 after the patch and I still had tons of crashes, though not too many glitches/bugs. I just got used to manually saving a lot.

Yeah that update came in like early April 2018 so quite a bit before you had the game.

No comment on the intro?

I thought it got a bit predictable once I realized I was controlling Joel's actual daughter. I was just waiting to see what it was that actually killed her at that point.

The 20 year timeskip surprised me more though.

[Eva Yojimbo]

You know it just occurred to me that Rambo himself might not actually be a great example of, uh, Ramboing through things since in that first movie he basically is using a lot of stealth and traps and so on to fight people and only has a body count of like, two dudes.

I've actually thought of that myself! So we need to come up with a new character-metaphor... Terminatoring? I like that just 'cause it's fun to say.

No comment on the intro?

I thought it got a bit predictable once I realized I was controlling Joel's actual daughter. I was just waiting to see what it was that actually killed her at that point.

The 20 year timeskip surprised me more though.

When I played it I knew nothing other than the basic "post-apocalyptic zombie survival/horror" premise, so I had no clue Joel's daughter was going to die and that Ellie was going to be the main female character. I just assumed they were going to get out of it and that Joel and his daughter were the main characters, so the death came as a pretty big shock to me. I still can't hardly watch that ending bit without tearing up. There's a pretty interesting story about that scene too in the making-of documentary.

[Raxivace]

Yeah the Terminator is probably a better comparison.

I probably would have been more impacted by the intro if I hadn't spent like five or six years hearing about Joel and Ellie from other people, so during the intro all that I could think about was the choices they were making to emotionally manipulate and direct your attention. Like how they had the police cars drive by the windows as you go downstairs to attract your attention without going into a cutscene, or how the TV was conspicuously on in Joel's room and so forth. Or how they have the daughter in the backseat to ground you in her perspective even further before she's killed.

I don't even mean this as inherently a negative, but the choices were all just kind of easy to see through if you have some idea of what's coming.

[Raxivace]

I don't want to be too negative, so I will add that I was pleasantly surprised that Troy Baker was allowed to use something other than his default voice like he does in Persona 4, Tales of Vesperia, Final Fantasy XIII, and BioShock Infinite.

Dude clearly has more range than he's usually is allowed to use (Metal Gear Solid V is another example where he plays Revolver Ocelot of all characters). It's not even that he's at all bad in those other games but its odd that more often than not people ask the same thing from him whether he's playing an anime teenager or a hardened American army veteran.

[Raxivace]

Man that Robert guy looked exactly like Bronn from Game of Thrones. Apparently I'm not the only one who noticed.



Come to think of it Witcher 3 had that dude that looked exactly like him too.


^Couldn't find a better picture, unfortunately.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I probably would have been more impacted by the intro if I hadn't spent like five or six years hearing about Joel and Ellie from other people, so during the intro all that I could think about was the choices they were making to emotionally manipulate and direct your attention. Like how they had the police cars drive by the windows as you go downstairs to attract your attention without going into a cutscene, or how the TV was conspicuously on in Joel's room and so forth. Or how they have the daughter in the backseat to ground you in her perspective even further before she's killed.

I don't even mean this as inherently a negative, but the choices were all just kind of easy to see through if you have some idea of what's coming.

Game's pretty great at emotionally manipulating the player throughout, really. That opening does a fantastic job at really making you feel utterly helpless and panicked, being swept up in a zombie apocalypse. It does seem simple in retrospect, but it's a lot of the little stuff that so many games typically ignore. Even that small scene with the watch... that does more to build a character and relationship than most games I play or, hell, a lot of films I've seen.

I don't want to be too negative, so I will add that I was pleasantly surprised that Troy Baker was allowed to use something other than his default voice like he does in Persona 4, Tales of Vesperia, Final Fantasy XIII, and BioShock Infinite.

Dude clearly has more range than he's usually is allowed to use (Metal Gear Solid V is another example where he plays Revolver Ocelot of all characters). It's not even that he's at all bad in those other games but its odd that more often than not people ask the same thing from him whether he's playing an anime teenager or a hardened American army veteran.

Since I haven't played any of these I can't comment, but I'm definitely interested in hearing him in other stuff.

Man that Robert guy looked exactly like Bronn from Game of Thrones. Apparently I'm not the only one who noticed.

Come to think of it Witcher 3 had that dude that looked exactly like him too.

^Couldn't find a better picture, unfortunately.

LOL, yeah, it's pretty dead on. I remember that guy in Witcher 3 too.. wasn't he at the castle in White Orchard?

[Raxivace]

Yeah he's the guy that hires you to kill the Griffin in White Orchard.

[Raxivace]

I've missed the first safe and I have to say its mighty stupid that I can't just backtrack into the mall area I just left to nab it up.

Great game design right there.

[Gendo]

I hate missables in games. Zelda usually does good to avoid it; but sometimes they mess up. For some games, we always look it up when we start to see if there are any missables to make sure we get them.

Mario RPG has a really bad one; a hidden chest that can only be gotten at one specific part of the game. Even though you can return to the area later, you can't get the chest anymore.

Twilight Princess HD has a dumb thing that's sort of like a missable. There's an optional combat dungeon with 3 levels. When you beat a level, it saves a “score" based on how much life you had left. While doing later levels, you can refill your life, and the amount you can refill is based on how well you did in the previous level.

The problem is, once you beat a level, you can't do that same level again. The third level was very difficult, but it would have been easier if I had a better score on the second level. If I had known this ahead of time, I would have tried harder on the second level and gotten a better score. It really should let you re-do earlier levels to improve our score.

[Raxivace]

At least I could redo this section of TLoU, but the missable is at the very end of it which is just irksome.

I think I remember that one in Mario RPG. Was it the chest with the giant ass koopa shell?

[Raxivace]

Also I want to add some of the "rules" of TLoU don't seem immediately intuitive.

Like when I killed my first Clicker, I happened to have a shiv and just killed them with that. When I tried to kill my second one I was down my shiv and couldn't stealth kill it like a normal enemy. I died right there and got the popup on my screen about how shivs are NECESSARY to stealth kill Clickers.

What do shivs being necessary to stealth kill this enemy actually add to the game? I could understand if it were just harder to choke them out and was simply easier to shiv them (Which, you know, would still be a challenge in this second area since the Clicker was surrounded by like four patrolling enemies) but forcing you to have one to stealth kill them just seems arbitrary to me.

EDIT: I will say though that it is kind of interesting that the Clicker's defining characteristic- their greatly enhanced hearing- seems to be Joel's primary super power as well.

[Gendo]

At least I could redo this section of TLoU, but the missable is at the very end of it which is just irksome.

I think I remember that one in Mario RPG. Was it the chest with the giant ass koopa shell?

I don't remember what was in it; I think it was a frog coin but not sure. But I do remember how to get it / how to miss it. There's a cut scene in a throne room near the beginning. After; some guys walk out the door. You can follow them and jump on one of them; and then use him as a platform to jump on top of the door frame. The chest is up there. If you come back to the same place later; you can't reach the chest. Even if you glitch your way up there; there's an invisible wall making it inaccessible.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I've missed the first safe and I have to say its mighty stupid that I can't just backtrack into the mall area I just left to nab it up.

Great game design right there.

Yeah, I also found the lack of backtracking rather annoying. I half wondered if perhaps it was necessary given the linear nature of the story or something. I just got used to saving often so if I realized I missed something I could just start from a previous point. Basically, "manually save often" is a mantra I've learned with modern gaming!

Also I want to add some of the "rules" of TLoU don't seem immediately intuitive.

Like when I killed my first Clicker, I happened to have a shiv and just killed them with that. When I tried to kill my second one I was down my shiv and couldn't stealth kill it like a normal enemy. I died right there and got the popup on my screen about how shivs are NECESSARY to stealth kill Clickers.

What do shivs being necessary to stealth kill this enemy actually add to the game? I could understand if it were just harder to choke them out and was simply easier to shiv them (Which, you know, would still be a challenge in this second area since the Clicker was surrounded by like four patrolling enemies) but forcing you to have one to stealth kill them just seems arbitrary to me.

EDIT: I will say though that it is kind of interesting that the Clicker's defining characteristic- their greatly enhanced hearing- seems to be Joel's primary super power as well.

FWIW, I wouldn't waste shivs on clickers. At the very least, always make sure to save one for those shiv doors, as they're always worth opening unless you're fully stocked on supplies. Clickers are actually rather easy to sneak past. Optimal kill strategy would be: If there happens to be a large clump of them, throw a bottle at an area, watch them scramble to that area, and then throw a molotov cocktail and watch them all burn. The bottle/brick to melee trick works too. As do arrow head-shots and enhanced melee weapons. (Spoiler-tagged in case you don't wanna know). Stalkers are another matter entirely. Most annoying enemies in the game by far.

Given that clickers are blind I'm guessing they thought it would be too easy to make choking them out an option. Perhaps what I would've done is made choking them out an option, but allow the clickers to make a noise so that if you do that, other clickers will be alerted to your presence. So basically it would only be an option if there was one clicker in that area.

LOL, Joel's enhanced hearing only works on easier difficulties, though.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Holupaminute, new Girlfriend Review. Maz will appreciate this one.

The whole Super Metroid bit was just

[Raxivace]

Been a couple of days since my last update. TLoU is starting to feel like a major slog tbh. The combat feels more and more tedious the more I play it, and as of where I'm at now in the story (I'm in some hotel) it doesn't feel like any character work or plot development is even happening.

[Raxivace]

I am FINALLY in the Fall section and continue to be disappointed in this game. I mean I figured the combat would not be very remarkable since I've played Uncharted 2 and this game is from the same developers and the combat seems to be a modified version of what that game was using but Jesus christ, what on Earth do either of you see in this story? It seems like whenever it goes for the most obvious beat possible for the genre they not only go for it but do it kind of clumsily. The story of The Brothers Who Obviously Only Existed For One of Them to Turn was just terrible. I am not opposed to clumsiness in video game writing if at least something is weird or different or interesting about what is being done but TLoU doesn't even seem to have that going for it.

This whole game is like someone turned an Alex Garland script into a video game.

EDIT: Like for example, you know what would have made the dumb as hell brothers section better? If we didn't find out the younger brother had been bitten not even five minutes before he was actually killed. Like imagine if we somehow knew he had been bitten, gasp, at the START of the entire brothers plot? There have at least been some honest to god suspense with what was going to happen.

[maz89]

Ignore Rax, Jimbo. He is always a contrarian when it comes to games I like. He ripped apart W3 in similar fashion.

[maz89]

Holupaminute, new Girlfriend Review. Maz will appreciate this one.
The whole Super Metroid bit was just

Hilarious, and spot on! Does this review make you want to check out the game, btw?

[Raxivace]

Ignore Rax, Jimbo. He is always a contrarian when it comes to games I like. He ripped apart W3 in similar fashion.

Hey this isn't true, I thought were really good parts in W3. Even BioShock Infinite I thought had some neat ideas with garbled/arguably racist execution.

I got like nothing for Last of Us though, yeah.

[Raxivace]

Also do keep in mind that even games that I like a lot I tend to be critical of.

Like BioShock 1 is probably one of my 10 or so favorite games ever and even for that I had that big rant about how I don't think the game even works thematically.

[maz89]

I think the real reason for the nitpicking is that you're an unfeeling robot. Or... maybe you just have a tendency not to like AAA titles not made in Japan. I see a trend.

[Raxivace]

I mean I think I've been pretty vocal about hating AAA western games more often than not in the past, I'm not sure why that would be a surprise.

[maz89]

Oh, right. We already knew that! That's why W3 got an eventual pass.

[Raxivace]

I feel like the game only gets a pass in that while I thought the Baron/Witches stuff was really good and that Gwent was fun, it unfortunately averages down due to significantly worse parts like the Ciri/Wild Hunt storyline itself and the like the entire B&W DLC even existing which exacerbates some of the worst flaws I was already critical of in the base game (Having too large map design/too much meaningless filler content as it is, in addition to the DLC introducing new mechanics you never actually get much chance to use).

So like when I think one significant part of the game is 9/10, but other parts are like 3/10, I'm left with a game I might give a 6/10 even though it doesn't accurately reflect how much I liked the parts I did like and how much I disliked the parts I didn't enjoy (Though I guess most everything else in the game I didn't mention here is in the 5/6/7 out of 10 range if I had to put a number on it). This is why numbered scores are bad and, unfortunately why people who use them must be burned at the stake for the sins of quantification.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Been a couple of days since my last update. TLoU is starting to feel like a major slog tbh. The combat feels more and more tedious the more I play it, and as of where I'm at now in the story (I'm in some hotel) it doesn't feel like any character work or plot development is even happening.

FWIW I had several complaints about the gameplay myself, though it was more frustrating in various ways than tedious. To me it was the fact that the game would really punish you for actually trying to do open combat, but doing things stealthily was often ridiculously difficult, and it was often easier just to restart a section if you were spotted rather than try to fight your way through it.

...Jesus christ, what on Earth do either of you see in this story? It seems like whenever it goes for the most obvious beat possible for the genre they not only go for it but do it kind of clumsily. The story of The Brothers Who Obviously Only Existed For One of Them to Turn was just terrible. I am not opposed to clumsiness in video game writing if at least something is weird or different or interesting about what is being done but TLoU doesn't even seem to have that going for it.

This whole game is like someone turned an Alex Garland script into a video game.

EDIT: Like for example, you know what would have made the dumb as hell brothers section better? If we didn't find out the younger brother had been bitten not even five minutes before he was actually killed. Like imagine if we somehow knew he had been bitten, gasp, at the START of the entire brothers plot? There have at least been some honest to god suspense with what was going to happen.

I'm not sure why the Sam/Henry section was so obvious or clumsy. I mean, other than the fact that in any survival horror game or film you pretty much have to have characters that are going to die, I didn't think it obvious this was going to happen to Henry/Sam, and certainly not the way it happened. I mean, it would've been just as easy to kill Bill (lol) and he survived. Thematically I'd argue it's also perhaps the moment of the game that most strongly drives home the rhetorical argument for not getting attached to people in this world. There was obviously much of that in the Bill storyline too, but Bill's was mostly talk, and he wasn't as relatable (even rather intentionally off-putting at first).

I'm also not sure why your EDIT would make that section better. For one, it's already been established that bites turn people within two days. IIRC, that section's story takes more time than that. For another, I'm not sure what any supposed suspense would add to it. This isn't a Hitchcock film. The quick transition from Sam and Ellie discussing their fears, to the realization that his fear is going to happen, to the sudden experiencing of it happening, to the shocking consequence afterwards was a pretty strong 1-2-3-4 combo punch, made stronger IMO by the speed at which it happens.

I assume the Alex Garland reference is about 28 Days Later. I don't remember much about that film but I don't remember it being all that emotional and I also don't think any of his films have been badly written.

EDIT: FWIW, I also think the strength of TLAO is more in its characters than its story, though. Joel and Ellie are just the most well-written, 3-dimensional characters I've ever seen in a video game. I think the story is good enough, but I also think it's more genre-typical and its best moments are more about how they impact the characters than the moments themselves. If we take the Sam/Henry section, I think the biggest significance of both characters are as reflections of Joel and Ellie's darkest traits and worst fears. The narrative is so Joel/Ellie centric that everything else seems like a blurry, ill-developed background by comparison. You kinda have to glean a lot from little gestures and the context. Like, Bill and Tess aren't all that fleshed-out either, you just kinda have to intuit who they are and their significance to Joel and the story by their general demeanor. On replays I also appreciated a whole lot of small stuff I completely missed the first time.

So like when I think one significant part of the game is 9/10, but other parts are like 3/10, I'm left with a game I might give a 6/10 even though it doesn't accurately reflect how much I liked the parts I did like and how much I disliked the parts I didn't enjoy (Though I guess most everything else in the game I didn't mention here is in the 5/6/7 out of 10 range if I had to put a number on it). This is why numbered scores are bad and, unfortunately why people who use them must be burned at the stake for the sins of quantification.

When it comes to stuff I feel is polarized in quality like this I just mention it in the review and do indeed average it out to something in between. I don't see anything wrong with that. Any numerical score would be the sum or average of all the positive and negative things we feel/think about it, and most things are indeed a mix of great, good, average, bad, and/or terrible. Obviously we didn't share the same complaints about W3, and while we share some complaints on the gameplay of TLAO we very strongly disagree on the story!

[Eva Yojimbo]

Ignore Rax, Jimbo. He is always a contrarian when it comes to games I like. He ripped apart W3 in similar fashion.

If I ignore rax I wouldn't have many other people here left to talk to! But, yes, I've noticed his contrarian nature with these acclaimed games. I guess I'm only a moderate contrarian by comparison!

Holupaminute, new Girlfriend Review. Maz will appreciate this one.
The whole Super Metroid bit was just

Hilarious, and spot on! Does this review make you want to check out the game, btw?

I actually picked it up during the last PSN sale for like $15, so it's on my list. Right now I'm going through my pop playlist one more time (about 2/3 through) and will start up AC:Odyssey after that, then probably do another FF game, then maybe something completely different, and then maybe HZD. At least that's the plan right now.

I think the real reason for the nitpicking is that you're an unfeeling robot. Or... maybe you just have a tendency not to like AAA titles not made in Japan. I see a trend.

He doesn't like Ghibli, which is all the proof anyone needs of that.

[Raxivace]

FWIW I had several complaints about the gameplay myself, though it was more frustrating in various ways than tedious. To me it was the fact that the game would really punish you for actually trying to do open combat, but doing things stealthily was often ridiculously difficult, and it was often easier just to restart a section if you were spotted rather than try to fight your way through it.

Playing on Hard, I'm at a point now that I start out stealthing and if I get spotted I just say screw it and Terminator through whoever is left and usually survive now. This works pretty well but has the side effect of making encounters in this game feel fairly samey.

Trying to go back to perfect stealth either takes too long for my patience too now (Especially if at the beginning of a section there's dialogue to sit through several times on retries), or I'm just ready to move on with the game. There also times where for the life of me I'll be unable to figure out how somebody even saw me, and other parts of the game I feel like I can dance around dudes forever. The system feels a bit inconsistent.

Also sometimes hitting that "Restart Section" button will only send me back in time a minute, but I've had instances where it sends me back 10-20 minutes which is just .

The worst though is where you're forced to fight waves of enemies and can't use stealth at all. There's not too many of these so far but they seem to stick out.

I'm not sure why the Sam/Henry section was so obvious or clumsy. I mean, other than the fact that in any survival horror game or film you pretty much have to have characters that are going to die, I didn't think it obvious this was going to happen to Henry/Sam, and certainly not the way it happened. I mean, it would've been just as easy to kill Bill (lol) and he survived. Thematically I'd argue it's also perhaps the moment of the game that most strongly drives home the rhetorical argument for not getting attached to people in this world. There was obviously much of that in the Bill storyline too, but Bill's was mostly talk, and he wasn't as relatable (even rather intentionally off-putting at first).

I mean, I don't know what else to tell you dude. Upon immediately seeing them I immediately found them to be obvious parallels to Joel/Ellie (The scene where you meet them for the first time where the younger kid points a gun at Joel is even a blatant parallel of a previous scene where Ellie first saves Joel with a pistol.) and killing one or both them off is just immediately what I thought was going to happen. Right before they die you even go through the entire faux-orphanage section that not-so-subtly brings up the idea of dying children and such (Even if the younger brother isn't as young as the kids are meant to be there (Though wanting and then having the robot toy links him to the younger kids), though naturally they have Joel run around with the brother through there in a further attempt to generate sympathy for the character).

Like with the intro, while I get the beats they were going for it just felt so artificial to me, like the characters only exist to be those parallels and to die the way they do.

As far as Bill goes, he hated Ellie and didn't seem to like Joel much more so I'd actually call him the most relatable character in the entire game so far. I'd definitely would have preferred a game based around him sneaking around and setting traps and such up.

I'm also not sure why your EDIT would make that section better. For one, it's already been established that bites turn people within two days. IIRC, that section's story takes more time than that. For another, I'm not sure what any supposed suspense would add to it. This isn't a Hitchcock film. The quick transition from Sam and Ellie discussing their fears, to the realization that his fear is going to happen, to the sudden experiencing of it happening, to the shocking consequence afterwards was a pretty strong 1-2-3-4 combo punch, made stronger IMO by the speed at which it happens.

IIRC the whole section only takes place over around two days itself. In fact now that I think about it I'm kind of confused when you're supposed to think the younger kid was bitten since the part where you use the sniper rifle was only like the afternoon before he turns.

EDIT: Now that I think about it I guess it still falls within two days.

Anyways, I thought the whole "combo punch" you mention just didn't work at all in its suddenness. I think introducing the bite earlier would have at introduced at least some ambiguity about joining them more than than the contrived stuff with the armored car or tank or whatever chasing you (Why the hell did those guys continue chasing you anyways? It got a little ridiculous that they kept coming for you as long as they did after you've killed like 50 of them).

I assume the Alex Garland reference is about 28 Days Later. I don't remember much about that film but I don't remember it being all that emotional and I also don't think any of his films have been badly written.

I bring it up because Garland's stuff tends to feel like obvious regurgitations of his influences to me. Like its there in 28 Days Later and Annihilation and I think you yourself said something similar about Ex Machina (Though that one I have not seen myself). And to me that feels similar to TLoU, where it just feels like beats I've seen from other zombie media being repeated again and not in a particularly exceptional way.

EDIT: FWIW, I also think the strength of TLAO is more in its characters than its story, though. Joel and Ellie are just the most well-written, 3-dimensional characters I've ever seen in a video game. I think the story is good enough, but I also think it's more genre-typical and its best moments are more about how they impact the characters than the moments themselves. If we take the Sam/Henry section, I think the biggest significance of both characters are as reflections of Joel and Ellie's darkest traits and worst fears. The narrative is so Joel/Ellie centric that everything else seems like a blurry, ill-developed background by comparison. You kinda have to glean a lot from little gestures and the context. Like, Bill and Tess aren't all that fleshed-out either, you just kinda have to intuit who they are and their significance to Joel and the story by their general demeanor. On replays I also appreciated a whole lot of small stuff I completely missed the first time.

Yeah this is going to have to be something we agree to disagree on because unless something drastically changes in the last parts of the game Joel and Ellie falling completely flat for me is absolutely my biggest complaint in the game, even more than the combat itself (Which I think at least occasionally works). They feel just like a thousand other disposable characters I've seen in zombie stories before. Hopefully it gets better.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh on the game overall but for something I saw tons of people calling it some medium defining work, the "Citizen Kane of video games" (Lmfao) I naturally have higher expectations. Perhaps too high.

Right or wrong, it's how I feel about the game.

When it comes to stuff I feel is polarized in quality like this I just mention it in the review and do indeed average it out to something in between. I don't see anything wrong with that. Any numerical score would be the sum or average of all the positive and negative things we feel/think about it, and most things are indeed a mix of great, good, average, bad, and/or terrible. Obviously we didn't share the same complaints about W3, and while we share some complaints on the gameplay of TLAO we very strongly disagree on the story!

It's wrong because it promotes math, and I just find that to be supremely unethical. Math and its evil stepbrother Science are responsible for the worst atrocities in human history and must be undermined at all times.

The 9/11 attacks were planned out using math. It's fucked up but true. Are you trying to cause another 0.81818181818, Eva Yojimbo? Is this the legacy you seek to continue?

[Raxivace]

But, yes, I've noticed his contrarian nature with these acclaimed games.

Oh yeah? Well your face has a contrarian nature.

[maz89]

Ignore Rax, Jimbo. He is always a contrarian when it comes to games I like. He ripped apart W3 in similar fashion.

If I ignore rax I wouldn't have many other people here left to talk to! But, yes, I've noticed his contrarian nature with these acclaimed games. I guess I'm only a moderate contrarian by comparison!

Lol, yeah! If you had come back and told me you didn't care for TLoU's characters or story, I'd have thrown a similar tantrum. Glad you didn't. As for the gameplay criticisms, I'm going to play it again (RDR2 and my obsessive nature to 100% every game has taken control of me) and get back to you.

I actually picked it up during the last PSN sale for like $15, so it's on my list. Right now I'm going through my pop playlist one more time (about 2/3 through) and will start up AC:Odyssey after that, then probably do another FF game, then maybe something completely different, and then maybe HZD. At least that's the plan right now.

Where do San Andreas and RDR1 fit in? I like the plan! I just hope you don't experience gaming fatigue by the time you get to HZD. On that note, are you experiencing that right now by any chance? You have been gaming for quite a while now!

He doesn't like Ghibli, which is all the proof anyone needs of that.

*head explodes*

[Raxivace]

What, did you forget I tend not to like Ghibli either?

I even watched Nausicaa earlier this year! I disliked it so much it even killed most of my motivation to watch films for the time being. And I had even been prepping to watch all of Miyazaki's filmography too.

Anyways I haven't touched Last of Us again in a couple of days and if I don't get back to it here soon I'll probably just drop it altogether tbh. Or at least not pick it back up for quite a while.

[maz89]

I had buried that fact somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my mind. That's why my head exploded, all of this was just too much for my feeble mind to handle.

Well, at least, we'll have your film reviews to look forward to. Personally, I'm okay with not having to read up on any further TLoU write-ups especially when they're just so, so, so wrong.

[Raxivace]

Personally, I'm okay with not having to read up on any further TLoU write-ups especially when they're just so, so, so wrong.

Well unfortunately for both of us I realized I was further along in the game than I thought, buckled up, and powered through to the end.

I think the ending bit where Joel goes "lol no" and kidnaps Ellie and lies to her about what went down is honestly the only kind of interesting beat in this entire story, though even that I feel I've seen done better and in more daring ways before in other games.

Even ignoring that though I think this game has the same issue has BioShock Infinite did (Well one of the issues it had anyways) where the only interesting potential challenge to the central relationship comes at the very very very very end of the narrative and seems kind of underutilized. That being said, there is still Last of Us II: Death Too Soon coming out, so perhaps something will be done with it there.

Sorry I didn't like the game much at all you guys.

[maz89]

If you didn't like the characters, tone or gameplay from the get go, it was unlikely the ending would have done much for you. I didn't realize other games had examined this kind of story before though; which ones are you referring to? I love art that blurs the line between good and bad so hit me.

I like Infinite for its ambition, and it may have not succeeded wholly in its attempt there, but dammit if it doesn't grab my attention with its ideas and visuals. I wonder if I'm more forgiving of flaws in art than you are and if that allows me to be less critical and connect more.

[Raxivace]

Wow, I totally forgot the Left Behind DLC existed and so I just played through that.

Actually I thought this was decent, though I wonder if it was meant to be a part of the main game originally (The flashbacks at least). Some of the riffs on the gameplay were pretty good too- I liked being able to get zombies to attack the regular humans.

[Raxivace]

If you didn't like the characters, tone or gameplay from the get go, it was unlikely the ending would have done much for you.

Well I did just say I think the ending is one of the more interesting parts of the game, I just think it should have happened earlier in the story...if it was going to only be a single standalone game anyways. Hard to say now with the sequel existing.

I didn't realize other games had examined this kind of story before though; which ones are you referring to? I love art that blurs the line between good and bad so hit me.

Nier 1 is the biggest one that comes to my mind. I think the story is pretty similarly structured to TLoU actually though I think its waaaaaaaay more cynical about these "I'm a dad making tough choices to save my daughter, damn the consequences" plots than TLoU is (I think they might even overdo it to an extent), and TLoU doesn't exactly paint Joel in the best of lights to begin with.

I like Infinite for its ambition, and it may have not succeeded wholly in its attempt there, but dammit if it doesn't grab my attention with its ideas and visuals. I wonder if I'm more forgiving of flaws in art than you are and if that allows me to be less critical and connect more.

As far as Infinite goes the art design is genuinely stellar in that game and I do appreciate the ambition even if the execution has problems. Even though I had some issues with TLoU's gameplay (I think I'll write something up more about it tomorrow because I've had some more thoughts about it and what I think worked and what didn't (Spoiler alert I really hate the part where the guy snipes at you from the house)), I'm not sure I ever actually enjoyed Infinite's combat while there are at least parts where I think TLoU's gameplay works decently well. Like I never had to do something in TLoU as dumb as fighting the ghost mom three entire god damned times. Infinite's own attempt at stealth in the Burial at Sea DLC doesn't really work either, whereas it sometimes does in TLoU.

As far as whether I'm not forgiving enough, Idk. I probably wouldn't have been so harsh on TLoU if it didn't have the huge reputation that it did, though I felt extremely similarly about Uncharted 2 as I did to TLoU when I played that (Which was back in 2011 or so FWIW) and I didn't even know yet that there were people that genuinely consider that game to be a masterpiece. And TLoU really gave me flashbacks to playing Uncharted 2 that first time (It took me about 9 months to get through it) so I doubt I would have ever felt more than neutral about TLoU even if it was only some random game I had picked up from a bargain bin on a whim.

I don't really think of myself as someone that normally has trouble connecting with game stories. Like you could probably turn most of my criticisms of TLoU onto any random JRPG's that I happen like and not have an entirely baseless case, and I still enjoy those (Though I would contend no JRPG today enjoys the kind of huge, elevated positive reception that something like TLoU does, going to back to my navel gazing about bias). I guess with a lot of these big western AAA games though I find it far easier to see the strings in them and how they're being pulled and why than I do in anything else (Perhaps part of it is inherent disconnect between realistic aesthetic and artificial nature of video games themselves, that at least exists for me), and unfortunately I just don't/can't see much else in them beyond that.

For comparison's sake, if I take a random game like Xenoblade 2, its still a kind of generic story for its genre. I think the characters are fun and I like them, but I also don't think they're particularly "deep" or whatever. That doesn't mean there still isn't things of interest in them for me though. For example there's a part where the main character Rex has to fight copies of the rest of your party in a kind of dream world, and during the fight these dream versions of your party member are consistently berating him. "Why do you have eyes for that girl and not me?" "Why do you think you're better than us?" "Are you leading us to our deaths?" etc. Stuff like that.

However the curious thing is that the source of the dream versions of the party is never actually explained. From what little information we do get, at least two mutually exclusive interpretations arise- that the source of the dream versions comes from Rex himself and represent his own doubts about himself, or that they're manifested from the rest of the party and are their genuine doubts about Rex being expressed through the battles. Both explanations then cast the story in a different light though, if they're Rex's doubts given form then the fact that one of the girls is in the dream world is jealous/heartbroken means that Rex must have known the real version of her felt that way, but previously nothing in the game painted Rex as even being truly aware of her feelings. With this in mind, was he actually in denial? Or pretending not to know because does in fact have another girl he likes more? If its the other interpretation I mentioned, then that casts the entire rest of the party in a different light, and makes me wonder if there's an entire running idea of buried resentment toward the main character that I just didn't pick up on the first time through.

It could also just be a translation issue, I don't know. Or just a genuine mistake in the writing.

It's a really weird gap in Xenoblade 2's narrative that even a year later I've never seen a convincing explanation for and I still occasionally think about. Me and Kuribo even tried to hash it out in the previous thread but couldn't really come up with anything. I haven't replayed the game yet with these ideas in mind to see how they hold up because even with skipping side content Xenoblade 2 is long as hell, so I don't know yet what else might spiral out from them, or if there's more or new evidence to consider on this very weird point.

But I think about it. Xenoblade 2 is by no means the greatest story every told or anything, but I think about it because I still don't really understand it or exactly what the game was going for here in this one weird segment, here I can't see the strings at all.

EDIT: I dunno how much any of this makes any kind of coherent sense but I'm like half asleep right now lol.

[Raxivace]

Devil May Cry 2 (2003) - I know I promised one last post on TLoU, but I've been playing Devil May Cry 2 on the side for a while now and finally beat it tonight and oof that is not a good game. Combos are way more simplistic than the first game, the lockon is terrible (It often auto-locks you onto far away enemies, and Dante's attacks will redirect him toward whoever he is locked onto. Combine this with how enemies in some rooms will spawn seemingly infinitely and it can take 30+ seconds sometimes to hit a simple switch or something right in front of Dante), the platforming is terrible and imprecise, and its kind of mindlessly easy due to guns being overpowered and poor boss design. I don't even know how you're meant to find the hidden levels on your own without a guide since there's literally nothing to indicate which random objects in main levels will teleport you to them- they're totally inconspicuous in a bad, terrible way. On top of it all, it has a classic Resident Evil-style fixed camera style that is totally at odds with fast paced comboing and dodging and such (Though this was a problem I think with DMC1 as well, though it still wasn't as bad as it is here).

I don't think the original DMC1 is anywhere near a perfect game but Jesus DMC2 is worse in literally every area.

There's a second story mode where you play as a new character named Lucia, but damn after Dante's mode I just don't have it in me to spend any more time in DMC2.

[Raxivace]

The Last of Us (2013) - Okay, so TLoU's gameplay. After thinking about it some more, the gameplay is at its best when you can make actual decisions about what you're doing. Normal gameplay sections where you can decide whether to stealth through a section OR fight everything that moves OR do a combination of both approaches are decently well fun, despite the mechanics being limited compared to TLoU's contemporaries like Resident Evil 6 (In melee systems. Also I'd say RE4 and RE5 are better here too) or stealth (Metal Gear Solid V, even if you don't use all of the various cool toys you can unlock in that game through Mother Base development).

However when you have to absolutely fight, that's where things get shakier. The part where Ellie teams up with the pedophile NPC to fight off zombies is just horrid for example, because you just don't have the verb set to make it interesting (And of course of you've lost your ability to stealth here). I had pretty limited ammo here, and being on hard I can take like two hits. The best strategy for parts of this section that I could come up with involved awkwardly kiting enemies into grabbing the pedophile so I could one-hit kill them with Ellie's knife. Emphasis on "awkward" here, in all senses of the word.

Of course the NPC would occasionally give you ammo (And it would very very infrequently drop from enemies) but it was hardly enough to make the big action setpiece particularly fun or good.

This whole bit was likely inspired by the house defense section with Carlos in Resident Evil 4. I think RE4 just has a much more solid combat system at its core- enemies react based on where you damage them! You can shoot enemies in specific ways to set up strong physical attacks! Enemies in general have more variety! There spawn points you can actually spatially grasp and strategically defend! You still get ammo drops from enemies and from Carlos, but not so much that you still don't have to think about what you're using. Leon can take a few hits before dying too, but again not too many.

RE4 is one of the cited inspirations for TLoU and came out almost a decade before it, but I don't think Naughty Dog grasped anything about what made that game good at all.

To some extent though you can defend this by saying "Well Ellie is a little girl, naturally she would be less competent than big FBI man Leon S. Kennedy", though I would say Ellie is already unrealistically competent for her age and that there really wasn't really any need to make her gameplay more limited than Joel's.

There are other parts of the game where you just can't make decisions that I think other games would let you make. Like the really dumb sniping level. My first instinct was to approach the house from the side and snipe them back. After all, the game even has give you a RIFLE by this point, and had you been upgrading it properly I think you could even have the scope attachment by this point (I did not however, not that this was going to stop me). This game is so attached to its dumb setpieces though (They want you to sneak into the house so Joel can get jumped, and protect his companions with the sniper himself) that it restricts my natural impulse in the situation. I'm not sure the gunman even has a character model here, and he's able to shoot you at these bizarre 90 degree angles. It's just a very dumb, thoughtless bit of game design IMO.

Going to some broader points, I think that the companions either needed to not be a part of the gameplay at all, or far more vulnerable a la Resident Evil 4's Ashley (Though not literally helpless like she was). So many times I would be trying to sneak around and Ellie would just stop in front of me for no reason and I would get slowed down. When Ellie or the other NPC's were sneaking around though, they were literally invisible to all enemies. It would be nice if I could at least tell them to stay in a general area or something, which I could do with Ashley.

Also the puzzles in this game are fucking garbage. Ico (The game Fumito Ueda made a few years before Shadow of the Colossus) was cited as an inspiration as The Last of Us, but in that game the puzzles are far more clever, involve working with your NPC partner (Who doesn't even speak the same language as the character you play as), and actually tie into the themes of the game. Instead the puzzles here amount to moving ladders, moving pallets in the water, moving crates to climb on. Who actually liked these parts? Did anyone actually find them fun as is? They're such a half measure that again, I think they should be either taken out or worked into something at least a little more involving. Like what if to make a makeshift bridge I had to combine multiple ladders AND garbage cans? That's hardly the greatest idea for a puzzle ever but its more involved than what we got and the game already has the tools for this.

Okay I'm done making big posts about this game for now. There's probably more stuff I can remember that bothered me but I'll stop.

[Raxivace]

Geeze I know you guys didn't agree with me on TLoU but its feeling pretty lonely here now.

[maz89]

Lol, no, it's not like that. Just been super busy with work and it does not like that that will change anytime soon. The free time I have I save for watching shows and playing games. I would have liked to have wall of text wars with you about TLoU, but alas, it is not meant to be. For the moment. I mean, you already know that TLoU is another in the expanding list of games that we have differing opinions about, a list that grows with every new game we have both played (except for Bioshock and RE7 - not surprising given that you liked both of them ), but maybe I can pick this up again after I do my replay of the game.

I'm nearly done with RDR2. Spent 150 hours on the game, but only because I hunt trophies.

[Raxivace]

I suspect even if we did get into Wall of Text Wars over TLoU it would eventually boil down to just agreeing to disagree anyways. And I certainly know the feeling of getting obsessed with Trophy hunting...

Anyways if after a long session of RDR2 you have a craving for a western film may I suggest Jean-Luc Godard's Wind from the East?