Wheee! WoT War Time!
Raxivace wrote:Eva Yojimbo wrote: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 never liked terminatoring for two reasons: one is that I always felt like it was partially a failure for not figuring out the best stealth strategy, and two was that I just generally hated wasting/being low on supplies. Basically, I would stealth as much as I felt was possible and then if I could get down to a few enemies then I'd be willing to go terminator.
I do agree about the wonky, inconsistent mechanics of being spotted. I complained about that myself.
Weird that you had these "Restart Section" issues, as for me it always just took me back to the beginning of the gameplay on whatever section I was in. I think perhaps once it took me back further, but that was just a minor annoyance. Again, I got used to manually saving a lot anyway.
Raxivace wrote: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 guess the point I was driving at was that in games like these, just like with horror movies, it's always "predictable" that some characters are going to die. The only issue is which ones and how. I don't know how you could make a case that it was more obvious they were going to kill Sam/Henry than Bill, and I'd still say THE WAY it happened was rather shocking. Are suicides in games very common? Kids turning into zombies?
Stuff like the faux-orphanage was more, to me, about world-building than any intentional foreshadowing about dying kids. I also don't think having Joel with Sam was an attempt to generate sympathy. At least, I don't think that's how building sympathy for characters in games works. Stuff like the scene with Ellie and Sam just before he turns builds sympathy, not having Sam run around with Joel while fighting Stalkers.
I don't necessarily disagree that the beats feel artificial or the that the characters were just designed to be parallels; I think where we disagree is just in the fact that I felt it was done extremely well. One of the things I told maz when I finished the game was that I thought it was masterful at being emotionally manipulative, and even when I noticed what it was doing/going for I still constantly felt that it was doing it really well. Part of that is because the writing and acting was so good, and part because the world felt extremely real and well-realized.
Raxivace wrote: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).
Sam got bit (or perhaps scratched; I don't think the game is clear whether it requires actual "bites" to turn) during the sniper section where he gets tackled by an Infected. At least, if that wasn't it, I can't imagine when else it was supposed to be. Seems to me like the whole section took more than two days, but I could be wrong.
I assume the armored car/tank kept chasing you because not many people come through there and they're pretty desperate for supplies.
Raxivace wrote: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.
The problem I had with Ex Machina was more in its direction than writing. I actually thought the writing was pretty original, but the direction went for this whole chilly, eerie, Kubrickean approach that didn't really work. I've also seen Never Let Me Go, which I also thought was well-written, but it felt very "literary" in a way certain adaptations of novels do, but again the problem wasn't really with it regurgitating influences. Dredd also did a pretty bang-on job at nailing the weird tone of the comics.
There's certainly beats in TLOU that are taken from other zombie media, which I assume is partly inevitable as there's only so much you can do within that genre; but I'd still say it feels like a uniquely emotional, humanistic take on it. It doesn't have the social commentary of Romero, or the camp of Resident Evil or so many lower-budget horror films. I simply can't name any zombie media that has two more compelling characters or a more compelling relationship.
Raxivace wrote: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.
I just can't imagine what's "falling flat" to you about Joel and Ellie, or what other "disposable characters" you're comparing them to...
I think it might be a medium-defining work in terms of its dramatic execution (mostly writing/acting) and the emotional involvement that elicits from gamers (and even non-gamers: see Girlfriend's Review of it)... but it's no Citizen Kane of video games. If anything maybe it's the On the Waterfront of video games. For it to be the Citizen Kane it would've had to be a compendium of all the great gameplay ideas combined with some original plot/narrative structure, and it isn't that.
Raxivace wrote: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?
Of course my evil masterplan is to rule the post-apocalyptic Earth with my grasp of Bayesian probabilities. Didn't you know this?
Raxivace wrote: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..
LOL, You remind me of when Xard freaked out after watching Last Year at Marienbad and it killed his motivation for watching "serious art-films." I never got this attitude, personally. My media moods are never dictated by encountering bad (even terrible) works.
Raxivace wrote:maz89 wrote: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.
Even more so than the kidnapping/lying, I thought the game forcing you to
kill the doctor just to get Ellie was the most interesting beat. Has there ever been a game that forced you to kill a good, innocent person when you're supposed to be playing a sympathetic protagonist? That moment when you're standing there in front of the doctor holding the scalpel and you have to make a decision, the only one possible, seems the only moment in the game that I feel touches on the meta-themes of a game like MGS2. It's as if it's saying that our instincts ultimately control our decisions far more than any rationality ever could (of course this works as a parallel to game designers controlling our actions/choices as well). A lot of people actually complained about not being able to have a choice there, but I think the game is all the more powerful for it.
To me, the challenge to the relationship was just the world and characters itself. You have Joel who's scared to death about getting close to anyone and "replacing" his daughter (notice how often he touches his watch in the game; it's a psychological tick); and you have Ellie who's scared to death about being left alone because everyone keeps leaving her. It's very much the ultimate case of NGE's Hedgehog's dilemma.
Anyway, it's OK you didn't like it, but some of your reasons are puzzling to me. At the very least I don't know how you don't appreciate the writing/acting. I did share some of your gameplay complaints, and I also discussed with maz how I felt the game's main strength was being "emotionally manipulative" and that it doesn't contain a lot of intentional thematic substance beyond that (and by that I mean anything that's not just a natural part of the story and character relationships). It's why the game will ultimately rank behind stuff like MGS and Deus Ex for me, but I still can't think of any other game I felt so emotionally invested in and ultimately moved by. That scene when Joel confronts Ellie after running away from his brother's compound was just so good, as was the end of Winter when Joel finally calls her "baby girl."
Raxivace wrote: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.
Left Behind really only worked for me as a story because there just wasn't much gameplay there. I did like the new gameplay touches you mentioned, but they were pretty brief. Only section with anything extended was the end. Was I alone in finding that section a real bitch on hard? Still, I loved the flashback structure and how they kept connecting the two sections together.
Plus, there's this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZKPSUwgfZk&t=25m57s" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Which I may have liked more than anything in the actual DLC.
Raxivace wrote: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.
Yeah, we surprisingly completely disagree on this. My problem with the stealth/terminator option sections was that it wasn't always clear if you had a choice, and I just felt that stealthing was so difficult, counter-intuitive, and shaky as to when/how you'd be spotted that I just didn't enjoy it that much. However, I felt like when you were forced into combat the game made it tough-but-fair in terms of having just enough supplies to get through it if you played well and carefully. EG, I loved the Ellie/pedo "defend the cabin" bit because if you figured out when to use arrows, when to use the rifle, and when to use your knife you would have enough ammo to make it through. Similar when that section moves to the big room, you just had to memorize which directions enemies were coming from and plan accordingly with nailbombs, molotovs, and whatever ammo you had. So I actually liked the "resource management/memorization" strategy of these sections. It felt like old-school gaming in a sense, and done quite well. I like the fact that you don't/never actually feel like a "terminator" playing Ellie, because you very much shouldn't. Though I still find it weird that a brick/bottle-to-knife combo works better than a handgun. On the other hand, I just frequently felt lost in the "choose to stealth or terminator" sections. I mean, I'm sure there's some way to stealth through the bookstore and spotlight sections, but damn if I ever figured it out.
Raxivace wrote: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.
Hmmm, I figured out within the first try that you couldn't shoot the sniper, so once I realized the point was to find a path to the house I actually really enjoyed this section. The combination of sneaking around houses to kill the guys coming to get you while avoiding sniper fire from windows or being out in the open was pretty cool, I thought.
Raxivace wrote: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.
We can agree for the most part here, though I can imagine the game becoming too easy if they were much more helpful or you had more control over them. It does feel weird that in the section where Ellie gets the rifle that, one, she doesn't do much (I think she shot one guy when I played) and, two, when she DOES shoot someone that nobody, you know, goes after her.
Raxivace wrote: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.
Oh, this is a hard agree. The "puzzles" in TLAO are garbage time-wasters. No idea who thought this was a good idea. I mean, I can understand stuff like maybe moving a dumpster to reach a window as part of being "in that world," but when they go for more elaborate stuff like diving under water to loosen wooden rafts it was just ridiculously stupid. Game would've been better without that stuff at all. Really made me miss the inventive puzzles in a game like Fear Effect (never played Ico).
Raxivace wrote: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.
I started DMC2 back in the day but didn't get very far. I think I played it too soon after DMC1 and was just burnt out on it. I don't remember thinking it was bad at the time, but you've certainly lessened my expectations now. :/