Going to upset someone badly here... maybe more than one
The Last Of Us - 6.5/10
Overhyped if you asked me (you didn't, I know).
Plot was fairly standard zombie affair. Heavily inspired by every zombie film and game out there, because zombies are zombies, and they aren't really known for their expansive repertoire; they just like brains. Raw. The plot, such as it was, had all the usual tropes included for good measure. Dad loses daughter, meets girl of similar age, is initially cold/distant, but they soon bond over their shared love of running away from zombies. Two hours later, Dad would kill the whole world to protect her. And *all* the other tropes
Gameplay was more than a little repetitive. I didn't help myself by trying to be stealthy, and the stealth gameplay is the most tedious and frustrating. Eventually when you **** up the stealth the AI spawns in extra enemies and you just get down to shooting each other anyhow.
Some things made no sense at all...
You can make a proximity mine in the field from scrap metal and fertiliser (yes it's a proximity mine - I have no idea what the trigger/sensor is either).
You can't make arrows. Unlike a simple proximity mine, arrows are too complex to make from scrap metal and wood, presumably.
An arrow is a one-shot kill from any range against unarmoured targets. It doesn't matter what body part you hit. Leg, head, arse... all fatal.
A carefully aimed bullet to the chest, however, typically takes about 3 hits to kill. Logic.
Arrows are the rarest ammunition in the game. All types of bullets and other munitions are far more common. And this is 20+ years after the collapse of society and all industry.
Frustrations include...
Swing and a miss! You can often find yourself swinging at an enemy and not connecting, because he's in a door frame. Or you're in door frame. Door frames are safe spaces and melee combat is not allowed! Works both ways tho, I had one guy trying to hit me for about 30 seconds and just endlessly missing. Eventually his mate shot me as I was too busy laughing.
Sneak attack similarly works when it wants to. Other times it just doesn't. Because.
Arrows. You can sometimes re-use them. Sometimes not. Sometimes the game just says F-you and de-spawns them, like after a cut-scene/scripted battle. Good luck being the archer character that seemed like it would be lot of fun. You can maybe fire that bow 20 times in the whole game? The rest of the time it's a paperweight, because nobody in this universe can make arrows. If only it could fire proximity mines...
The button mashing bits. So many of them. I hate button mashing QTEs and these are everywhere. Mash square to open a door, mash square to not die instantly, mash square to dance the
electric bugaloo.
The AI director nearly always spawns enemies right in the middle of the map, very close to you, sometimes in flanking positions (which is cheap). Amusingly, I have a save where if you walk backwards (the game apparently always expects you to walk forwards) you can actually see the enemies popping into existence right in front of you.
If you **** up and choose "restart encounter", at least a couple times the game bugged out and placed me at the start of the
next encounter, assuming I'd beaten the one I had cocked up. You also can't restart an encounter that you beat with 1% health. The game has already autosaved.
The stealthy playstyle is super tedious. And the game doesn't reward you for being stealthy either. The run and gun playstyle is easier, more fun, and makes the game a *lot* shorter (despite giving you more enemies to kill). Also there are a few sections where you
can't stealth, so putting all your character points in stealth skills would be a kick in the nuts when you get to those points.
The most effective way to play is simply to melee smash everything around you, occasionally unloading a quick shotgun blast. But the running melee attack is an instant kill on every common enemy in the game, including the armoured ones. So why spend 20x as long sneaking around... Also the running smash takes at most a couple seconds, whereas the animation for the stealth choke attack is about 10 seconds long, can't be cancelled, and leaves you vulnerable the whole time.
