The Last of Us Part II

This was a beautiful game. 10/10

The level of storytelling combined with immersive third person gameplay, I cannot remember playing recently on PC. Sony PS4 Pro this generation has given me Bloodborne, God of War, The Last of Us Remastered, The The Last of Us 2 which I loved.

I still need to play: Uncharted 4, Persona 5, SOTC, Spiderman.
 
ivrytwr3 said:
My first play through was around 37hrs.

Also, i found it got a bit repetitive around the middle point, lots of moving through areas and lots of rooms to search without much happening. But, this soon picked up and the story continued - so stick with it!!

One thing i found annoying was when we went to Abbys base, there was quite a bit of area, but you were forced to walk ie no option to run. I understand ND wanted to show off the stadium etc, but for subsequent playthroughs, this could get annoying :)
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Naughty Dog's lack of freedom in movement is a big issue with this franchise and the reason why I struggle to classify it as soley a game. It is a piece of cinematic storytelling with video game elements. Its mechanics are not built into every scene and game. They disable run, jump, crouch as and when neccessary to continue to tell the story in real time. Although this is a decent choice for their games, I do struggle to respect is as a video game as much as something like BOTW, which gives you full control all the time.


It would be nice if they could somehow work on this a bit although I'm not entirely sure of an easy workaround. I think the inability in TLOU2 to jump onto something unless you're meant to jump onto it, makes exploration feel very outdated and very restricted.

I believe game like BOTW and Tomb Raider offers more freedom in platforming. This is an area which somehow Naughty Dog always gets praise for despite its jumping and platforming being rubbish.

Gold standard for Mario games for platforming IMO and naughty dog are very far away.

I agree with your point on the walking. Its just annoying not to be able to do what you want.
 
aoaaron said:
Naughty Dog's lack of freedom in movement is a big issue with this franchise and the reason why I struggle to classify it as soley a game. It is a piece of cinematic storytelling with video game elements.
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There's 30+ hours of gameplay there, I think you do it a huge disservice to suggests there are just "video game elements" during that entire time.

aoaaron said:
Its mechanics are not built into every scene and game. They disable run, jump, crouch as and when neccessary to continue to tell the story in real time. Although this is a decent choice for their games, I do struggle to respect is as a video game as much as something like BOTW, which gives you full control all the time.

It would be nice if they could somehow work on this a bit although I'm not entirely sure of an easy workaround. I think the inability in TLOU2 to jump onto something unless you're meant to jump onto it, makes exploration feel very outdated and very restricted.
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Ultimately that sort of thing is a decision made for narrative and gameplay reasons. If the player character wouldn't be running around jumping on anything and everything whilst engaged in a serious conversation with other characters, is it important that the player still be able to? Quite often they're telling the story whilst keeping the players in some element of control so there will need to be compromises which mean restricting player movement, speed or other actions for a short time so that some attention is actually paid to what's happening on-screen.

aoaaron said:
I believe game like BOTW and Tomb Raider offers more freedom in platforming. This is an area which somehow Naughty Dog always gets praise for despite its jumping and platforming being rubbish.

Gold standard for Mario games for platforming IMO and naughty dog are very far away.
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Never played Zelda though I agree Tomb Raider gives the player far more freedom in terms of exploration within the world, but then TR game isn't trying to do the same thing as TLoU. I enjoyed all three recent Tomb Raider games for the level design, exploration and gameplay aspects but the storylines and character development were sub-par at best, whereas this is clearly something ND have excelled at in both Uncharted and TLoU.

As for ND getting praise for its "platforming", I'm not sure that's actually true given their games in the past tend to be criticised for being linear and not providing anything more than one path to follow. Uncharted 4 and TLoU 2 improved on that by providing larger open areas and the ability to completely bypass certain things if so inclined.
 
TheVoice said:
There's 30+ hours of gameplay there, I think you do it a huge disservice to suggests there are just "video game elements" during that entire time.



Ultimately that sort of thing is a decision made for narrative and gameplay reasons. If the player character wouldn't be running around jumping on anything and everything whilst engaged in a serious conversation with other characters, is it important that the player still be able to? Quite often they're telling the story whilst keeping the players in some element of control so there will need to be compromises which mean restricting player movement, speed or other actions for a short time so that some attention is actually paid to what's happening on-screen.



Never played Zelda though I agree Tomb Raider gives the player far more freedom in terms of exploration within the world, but then TR game isn't trying to do the same thing as TLoU. I enjoyed all three recent Tomb Raider games for the level design, exploration and gameplay aspects but the storylines and character development were sub-par at best, whereas this is clearly something ND have excelled at in both Uncharted and TLoU.

As for ND getting praise for its "platforming", I'm not sure that's actually true given their games in the past tend to be criticised for being linear and not providing anything more than one path to follow. Uncharted 4 and TLoU 2 improved on that by providing larger open areas and the ability to completely bypass certain things if so inclined.
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Don't get me wrong, I think its a 10/10 and in my top 10 games of all time. If I had to critique the game though, those are the few slightly immersion breaking flaws I found.

I find the Tomb Raider games are very underrated critically, due to the subpar character development and storylines. Square Enix hopefully push the franchise forwards from a narrative perspective during the next few titles.

Zelda's freedom is beautiful but I'm not imagining a game like TLOU can afford that type of freedom. I just wanted basic freedom even.. if there is a box, my character will attempt to jump over it. Or if there is a mountain, they will attempt to jump.. but the jump button is pretty much locked in many circumstances to only activate in a specific position on a specific box or mountain or rock.
 
Zelda is a good juxtaposition, because it gives you complete freedom to explore and do as you wish....at the expense of *any* storyline or character development. There's literally zero.

It's very hard to align story telling with the freedom of an open world. AC Odyssey probably comes closest to pulling it off, but even that is mostly through gating the main story beats.

TLOU2 is always trying to set up cinematic moments, the way the levels are designed and how that forces the camera to be positioned are all about setting up those hollywood moments.
 
aoaaron said:
This was a beautiful game. 10/10

The level of storytelling combined with immersive third person gameplay, I cannot remember playing recently on PC. Sony PS4 Pro this generation has given me Bloodborne, God of War, The Last of Us Remastered, The The Last of Us 2 which I loved.

I still need to play: Uncharted 4, Persona 5, SOTC, Spiderman.
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playing through UC4 again at the moment. I just love it. Such a great game from start to finish. A lot of people said it has pacing issues.. but I don’t think it does tbh.

Also considering picking up p5r. I completed the ultimate edition early this year, but it was so good I’m thinking of picking up royal too
 
Plainsong said:
Abby basement boss fight would be interesting on Grounded!
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Can't even count how many times I retried this part, had to switch off and go back to it the next day out of frustration, almost lost the controller through the window many times, but I did it, never again :p
 
JBeck said:
Can't even count how many times I retried this part, had to switch off and go back to it the next day out of frustration, almost lost the controller through the window many times, but I did it, never again :p
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I played through it the second time and I only died once because I lost my bearings and got stuck. You just have to give the big guy everything you've got, then ignore the little guy and just keep on at big guy. He goes down pretty easily and then you're at the next checkpoint. Of course it's not easy when you're running away crapping yourself for every second that he's coming at you. I hated it first time because I wasn't sure what I had to do and like you I walked away and went back the next day. Second time was much more fun and a pretty easy fight. On grounded though? Nope.
 
Plainsong said:
I played through it the second time and I only died once because I lost my bearings and got stuck. You just have to give the big guy everything you've got, then ignore the little guy and just keep on at big guy. He goes down pretty easily and then you're at the next checkpoint. Of course it's not easy when you're running away crapping yourself for every second that he's coming at you. I hated it first time because I wasn't sure what I had to do and like you I walked away and went back the next day. Second time was much more fun and a pretty easy fight. On grounded though? Nope.
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Was that the
Ratking boss
?
 
Plainsong said:
Yeah. That's the one.
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I heard someone talking about that and it got me curious to look it up to see what I'm going to get into. It never spoiled it for me as I'm nowhere near that. Haven't touched the game in quite sometime now. Can't say I'm looking forward to that part. As some scenes I found mentally exhausting. :D

I saw one part of the beast separate which I thought was so disgusting. It literally tore itself away that it reminded me of that 90s film, In the Mouth of Madness.

 
Replaying this on Grounded+ on my Samsung ks8000 after only having a cheap non hdr tv for the first play through and I’m enjoying so much more 2nd time around. The story seems so much better 2nd time around as you can see all of the little details in the facial
Expressions that I was oblivious to first play through e.g. when Abby meets Joel and her crew realise it’s him etc. HDR is stunning too as is the combat (much better once you’ve already got the upgrades). 10/10 atm.
 
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