General Video Games Discussion

The Last Of Us Part II - 9/10

The Last Of Us is one of my favorite games of all-time coming from my favorite developer of all-time. I was in the camp of believing that TLOU had a perfect ending in that it answered all of the relevant questions, but left just enough to ponder when the credits rolled. Did Joel make the right decision by saving an innocent girl and denying salvation to a humanity that no longer deserved it? Or was he a monster that selfishly denied the world it’s final hope so he could feel better? And did Ellie believe his lies or could she see right through him? It was not a game that demanded or needed a sequel, that TLOU2 justifies its own existence with an even more personal and raw story is a credit to Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross, and the entire incredible team at Naughty Dog. The story (I won’t go into any spoilers) is shocking almost from the moment it starts, to the inciting incident that sets Ellie off on her mission of revenge. I refused to view any of the leaks as I didn’t want to be ruined by out of context spoilers and suffice to say the story left me surprised and uncomfortable for a large portion, which I think is the point. From looking at the leaks after finishing the game, they really did provide a false narrative as to what the game is. As in TLOU1, the game features several LGBT+ characters, all of which are treated with respect and not as tokens. It is not “SJW” propaganda as some trolls might claim, but rather a reflection of the real world. People come from all walks of life and we very much see that in TLOU2. Additionally, we get to see more of the post-pandemic world. Seattle is gorgeously brought to life. As always with Naughty Dog, the game is a graphical powerhouse. Water physics are some of the best ever. The facial animations are so detailed you can see every freckle and the creases of every scar. Upgrading weapons now include animations of Ellie actually working on the weapon.

All that said, the gameplay is where TLOU2 comes up a bit short. The movement and combat is almost unchanged from the first game. Listen mode is the same, though there are times when it isn’t helpful. There is a jump mechanic that is only used for traversal and Ellie can now go prone, which does help in firefights. Gunplay is as finicky as always in a Naughty Dog game. Granted, it’s meant to be in the context of the story, but it certainly seemed at times that the collision detection was slightly off as I swear I had lined up a headshot only for the enemy to stagger and walk it off. It was certainly annoying an immersion breaking. There is another issue I have with the combat, but I won’t mention it at this time as it would involve revealing a major spoiler.

Overall, TLOU2 is a poignant and gut wrenching look at a world that has devolved into violence and struggle. Characters are more cynical and world weary than ever and the journeys they go on are uncomfortable and raw. I don’t think game is perfect (what even is?) and while I don’t think it quite lives up to the original, The Last of Us Part II is an engaging adventure that shouldn’t be missed by anyone who appreciates great story telling, video games, and art.

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I recently finished The Last of Us Part II as well. Having also in the last couple of weeks plowed through the entire Uncharted Series, it can be said that controls are not something that Naughty Dog particularly excels at. I will say, though, that I found the controls in TLOU2 to be much better than that found in any of the Uncharted games, so maybe they’re making improvements. I never found myself wanting to break my controller with TLOU2 in the way that I often did with all of the Uncharted games. People like to say that the new Tomb Raider games are a knock-off of the Uncharted games, but it’s clear that the team behind those games refined the concept with a much better set of controls. I was also struck by how similar The Last of Us and the Uncharted games play.

As for the story of TLOU2, I thought it was very good, but could have been made dramatically better had it been structured differently.

SPOILER

I had absolutely no problem playing as Abby and, in fact, thought her three days were better than Ellie’s, but having to play through Ellie’s three days and then have the story come to that big dramatic moment in the theater, only to be thrust right back to the first day in Seattle, killed the momentum of the story. I get why it had to be done that way, seeing as how you’re meant to think that Abby is off doing something nefarious while Ellie is hunting her down, so structuring it in another way may have taken that idea away from the game, but it still absolutely kills the momentum of the story. I also wish the section in Santa Barbara had been a bit longer. After spending so much time in the rain of Seattle, it was nice to get a change of scenery, but that goes by rather quickly. That could have also allowed more development of the Rattlers, as I could see them potentially being used in further installments.

Overall, the game is in no way the disaster that everyone online is saying that it is. The story is brilliant, even if it suffers from some structural problems, and the ending is completely “misunderstood” by those that want nothing more than to find things to whine about with the game to fit their preconceived ideas about it being bad because it doesn’t follow the story that they wanted to see told.

Overall, I’d give it an 8.5 or 9 out of 10.

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I agree with pretty much everything you have said. The controls are pretty bad, though, yes they do work better than in Uncharted (Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy are actually pretty good though for controls). Modern games, themselves, are difficult to get right with controls. There is just so much that can be done with so few buttons, it’s difficult to get right. Red Dead Redemption II, for all that it does right, has an absolutely atrocious control scheme. One that is born out of the fact that you can do TOO MANY things. Too often in RDR2, I found myself trying to talk to a character, but instead accidentally holding them up and shooting them. I will say, that I love the absolutely perfect way Naughty Dog made use of the PS4’s touch pad to play Ellie’s guitar. That’s a stroke of genius.

Spoiler

I also preferred Abby’s part of the story to Ellie’s. I didn’t know how much I’d enjoy learning about other people in the TLOU’s world, until playing through Abby’s side of the story. I thought Naughty Dog did a great job of tying Joel’s actions at the end of the first game to the larger world. Transitioning Abby from hated villain, to tragic hero, was masterfully handled. It underlines the main theme of the game that revenge can turn even the most noble and innocent person into an evil monster and really nails home the idea of digging 2 graves. Abby was an innocent teenage until her father was murdered by Joel to save Ellie. It made her hell bent on revenge and when she finally got it, she lost a part of herself while beating Joel to death. All the while, planting the seeds of her own destruction by leaving Ellie and Tommy alive to hunt her and her friends down. We see Ellie, more or less, have the opposite arc of Joel in the first game and it breaks her and leaves her with nothing. She loses friends, her family, her home, part of her humanity, and even her ability to play guitar in her mission to kill Abby. It’s a tragic arc for both characters. I agree that reaching the moment in the theater and rewinding 3 days, hurts the pacing, but it makes the story something else entirely to learn about these characters who were the villains of the first half of the game. We find out that, nobody is truly a villain (or everyone is). They are all trying to survive in a world that no longer wants them. One issue I did have with the switching of characters though, is that in the minute to minute gameplay, there was no real difference between Ellie and Abby. Yes they have some different weapons and can learn some different skills, but otherwise they literally handle the same. I would have liked some more variety. For example, Ellie’s immunity to the cordyceps making her stronger against infected enemies or Abby’s more militaristic training allowing for more precise aiming and combat mechanics. I think that is a missed opportunity to really freshen up the gameplay.

However, my favorite bits of The Last of Us Part II were the littlest story bits that humanize all of the characters. Ellie’s cover of Take On Me, Joel describing Jurassic Park to Ellie, Abby playing fetch with the dog that Ellie coldly kills when it attacks her, the freeing of the trapped Zebra.

In the end, it all adds up to a mostly superb package with some minor faults. The online discourse surrounding this game is incredibly ugly and very misguided, coming mostly from a very vocal minority (probably the same minority that cried foul about The Last Jedi and bullied Kelly Marie Tran). The game has its faults, sure, every game does. But the faults don’t lie in the character arcs, or the diversity in the characters. The game is an excellent follow-up to the original. I look forward to the inevitable The Last of Us Part III.

Finished Resident Evil 4 a while ago and, once you get used to the controls, it’s a good experience. One of the stronger RE games, to be sure. Decided to pick back up with playing through the series after a Naughty Dog detour with Uncharted and The Last of Us: Part II, and began playing Resident Evil Revelations. It’s hard to criticize it as it is a port of a port of a handheld game, but it’s definitely the weakest of the franchise thus far.

It does seem, so far, rather unfortunate that the franchise continually shortchanges the Jill Valentine character, who is far and away the best protagonist the series has to offer. After a starring role in the original she gets essentially two spinoffs, with RE3 having been designed as a spinoff of RE2 only to get bumped to mainline status due to exclusivity agreements with Sony, and then the handheld spinoff that is Revelations. She deserves better, especially as we get so much of the blank-slate that is Chris Redfield.

The remake of 3 (and 2 to a point) does try to remedy that, so I’d be keen to see more of remake Jill - the woman whose hade enough of this s***

I absolutely want to see more of remake Jill. She was a major improvement over what was already the best playable character in the series. If anything, she should get her own series. Shame that we won’t see her again for a while, as she doesn’t appear to factor into Village and then we have RE4 remake coming up after that.

Village does have a new version of Chris, so Jill might appear, but, yeah, remake 3’s ending BEGS for more of Jill.

I’d like to see them do a straight-up sequel to RE3 remake. There’s such a gap it seems between RE3 and RE4 that there is surely some story there to be told that would be worthy of a mainline game, or at the very least a high profile spinoff like Code: Veronica.

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Revelations was actually a nice return to form during the action-heavy times of RE5 and RE6. Jill does have a large role in RE5, but not as a playable character. But other than that, yes she does get shortchanged way too often. Chris and Leon both take center stage more often and both are very bland protagonists. RE2 remake Leon is much better, but Claire and Jill are much better protagonists and they feature far less frequently. After Code Veronica, Claire is completely dropped from the series until Revelations 2, excluding the Degeneration movie. Capcom really has done a great disservice to its female characters (and by extension players). Ada doesn’t even get her own main story campaign until RE6 and she is easily one of the series’s best characters right up there with Jill and Claire.

It’s not bad, it just doesn’t hold up as well today as it probably did in its original form. In all honesty, if I were playing it on the 3DS, I’d probably think its fantastic. Thankfully they tweaked the controls to be something closer to a modern approach to third person action. The aiming is a bit problematic, though, as its not tight enough to make you feel confident in where you’re firing.

My hope for the future of these games would be, post-Village that we see a return of Jill and Claire to the forefront. It’s certainly long overdue.

That probably makes sense. I played in on 3ds and never played it on home consoles. The only game I’ve ever played that jumped to home consoles from a handheld, was Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. I never beat it on PSP because the controls were so awful owing to the fact that it only had one analog stick. Playing it on PS3 was so much easier. Could be a similar issue with Revelations as the 3ds only has one analog stick. I could see the visuals being wonky as the original game was 4:3 aspect ratio and non-HD. Stretching that to fit modern screens could look weird. I remember in Metal Gear Solid 3 how upgrading the frame rate on PS3 made some of the animations have a soap opera effect to them.

The game looks OK and they make good use of the dual joysticks on the PS4. It feels much closer to a modern third person action game than RE4 did, as it allows you to move the camera further than the short distance to the left and right of the character that RE4 limited you to.

I’m not entirely sure that RE4 needs a remake, but a remake could benefit Revelations. The ship setting is one that, if given the full RE-Engine treatment, could be one of the best settings in the franchise.

I still firmly believe Code Veronica needs one desperately. RE4 is still modern enough to not need one and it still looks pretty good. Honestly, it looks better than 007 Blood Stone on PS3 released a full 5 years later.

There’s no question about that. Code: Veronica desperately needs a remake, perhaps moreso than any game in the franchise. I would also have to admit that I’d be very interested in seeing an RE2/3-style remake for the original game

I wouldn’t mind that either. The RE1 remake is still my favorite game in the series, but it really needs a modern control scheme and a remake could do well to tighten up the narrative a bit as the canon story for RE1 is a mix of Chris’s and Jill’s scenarios. RE0 also needs a modern coat of paint, but I really couldn’t care less if that game ever comes back. It’s easily the weakest mainline series game after RE6. After the great train sequence, the rest of the game is painfully dull.

Getting Ghost of Tsushima today - looking forward to it. Should tide me over until my main course, Cyberpunk 2077, gets released later in the year.

I’m also gonna pick up Ghost of Tsushima. Been lookin forward to it for a long time. Sucker Punch is one of my favorite studios. Still play Sly Cooper and inFamous now and then.

Days Gone (2019)

Pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this one. Sony Bend were finally freed to work on their own game and delivered with strong, if unpolished open world zombie…er “freaker” game. While it starts painfully slow (the game doesn’t pick up until about the 10 hour mark), once it gets going, it is quite a lot of fun. Upgrading the motorcycle is great and riding around the world feels very fluid and natural. The gameplay is more or less budget TLOU, right down to a near 1:1 crafting system. Graphically, the game looks excellent and runs fairly well even on the base model PS4. However, there is somewhat frequent screen tearing and texture pop-in (a problem that plagued Uncharted 1 on PS3). On the more impressive side, however, is how the game performs when battling the hordes. I didn’t experience any slow down even in the big 500 freaker horde fight. The fights and fast paced, intense, and quite a lot of fun. Even better, there are numerous clever ways of clearing hordes like finding their hideouts and planting explosives in them when they are deserted (usually at night) and then detonating them with the hordes return (during the day). The game does suffer a bit with its monotous, repetitive side quests (a very common issue with open world games) and Deacon’s story isn’t all that compelling. But overall, Days Gone is a fun, if unpolished game. Looking forward to what Sony Bend can do with a sequel. 8/10

Glad to hear something positive about Days Gone. It’s another one that I might check out during all of this downtime.

Finished up RE: Revelations. Really good story, although I think that they could have expanded on it a bit more and put a little more meat on its bones. Definitely a game that would benefit greatly from a remake. RE5 will be up next, although I’ve got to find time to get RE0 in at some point as well.

Playing through Final Fantasy VII Remake now and honestly having a lot of fun. Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time and the remake is a great update. Will post a full review upon completion.