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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 22:06 
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I've now spent more time reading and watching reviews and opinion pieces than it'll take me to actually play through the game, and I'm sufficiently intrigued to tip over into giving it a go.

As such I've bought it and it's downloading now, I'll make a start on it tomorrow.

I know every single thing that happens in it from start to finish already, I'm genuinely curious to see if it's got the story-telling chops to justify what it wants to do.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 22:21 
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Hearthly wrote:
I know every single thing that happens in it from start to finish already, I'm genuinely curious to see if it's got the story-telling chops to justify what it wants to do.

You cannot judge story-telling chops when you go in already knowing everything that happens. You’ve robbed every story beat of its impact and destroyed any foreshadowing or narrative structure.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 22:39 
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I'm still optimistic though.

Glass half full and all that.

Anyway, I often enjoy films, books and videogames more on second/third/fourth visits so I'm not concerned about that aspect of things.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 22:52 
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Hearthly wrote:
I've now spent more time reading and watching reviews and opinion pieces than it'll take me to actually play through the game, and I'm sufficiently intrigued to tip over into giving it a go.

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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 23:08 
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You're a unique flower, Hearthly. I've never known anyone deliberately spoil a narrative for themselves and then spend £60 to run through it. Madness


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 23:25 
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DavPaz wrote:
You're a unique flower, Hearthly. I've never known anyone deliberately spoil a narrative for themselves and then spend £60 to run through it. Madness

Wait until he comes back to tell us he was bored because of how predictable it is.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 23:37 
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DavPaz wrote:
You're a unique flower, Hearthly. I've never known anyone deliberately spoil a narrative for themselves and then spend £60 to run through it. Madness


The way he does stuff in general would usually drive me fucking nuts even just on principle, but there's something about the way Hearthly just commits utterly to his fucking bonkers approach that somehow disarms me and I end up being incredibly amused by it. Like he's so completely bare faced in his batshittery that what can you do? Everything he does just screams 'folly' and he doesn't give a single shit.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 1:31 
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Rude Belittler

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I dunno, I have the terrible habit of looking media up on TV Tropes prior or even while consuming it (if it's a game or a episodic work, I didn't pull it up half way through Endgame). I don't think it spoils my enjoyment of the work.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:07 
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We had this debate some time ago here on BEEX and I found some study that had been done over in the States about spoilers and it concluded that spoilers often don't 'spoil' things at all.

IIRC the thrust of it was that as human beings we can be in a sort of 'discovery' mode where we don't know what's going on and are trying to work shit out, or a 'comfort' mode where we feel safe in a known and stable environment and can chill the fuck out.

So if you're experiencing something like a film or a game for the first time, you'll be in 'discovery' mode, which isn't necessarily a relaxed state to be in, because it's a sort of evolutionary response to an unknown situation. It can be exciting and scary and surprising and suchlike, which is what can make first experiences enjoyable.

However, play the same game or watch the film again, and you know everything that's going to happen, so your brain automatically goes into 'comfort' mode because there's nothing about it that's going to surprise you, and you can enjoy and appreciate it in a different sort of way.

The study found that in general, more people enjoyed stuff a second time around, despite the content having been 'spoiled'. The post with the link in it will be around somewhere, it wasn't a massive scientific study or anything, but it was something at least.

On a more general level, surely we all re-read favourite books, or rewatch favourite films, or play through well liked games again and so on. Christ, I've watched Aliens so many times I can recite the script pretty much by heart, and I make a point of rewatching First Blood every three or four years.

For me at least, knowing the entire story of TLOU2 before I start to play doesn't bother me at all, honestly, I'd rather know where it's all going upfront, especially since I'm now pre-prepared mentally for some of the more horrible things that are in there.

Each to their own of course, and I appreciate that for some folks this approach would be highly undesirable and/or ruin their enjoyment of the game to a greater or lesser extent, but it works for me.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:08 
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Bamba wrote:
DavPaz wrote:
You're a unique flower, Hearthly. I've never known anyone deliberately spoil a narrative for themselves and then spend £60 to run through it. Madness


The way he does stuff in general would usually drive me fucking nuts even just on principle, but there's something about the way Hearthly just commits utterly to his fucking bonkers approach that somehow disarms me and I end up being incredibly amused by it. Like he's so completely bare faced in his batshittery that what can you do? Everything he does just screams 'folly' and he doesn't give a single shit.


I quite like that, it would make a nice signature.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:17 
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Also, in other TLOU2 news, I left the game downloading last night, figuring it would be ready to play this morning. (The little bar was about 50% along when I turned the telly off before going to bed.)

What actually happened is at some point my PS4 Pro decided that it needed a system update to install TLOU2, so it stopped the install of TLOU2, but didn't update itself, and then helpfully turned itself off due to power settings that apparently I defined (I have never defined any power settings on it).

So this morning instead of coming to a new game ready to play, I came to a console that was turned off, a 'installation failed' notification for TLOU2 when I turned the console on, and then a demand that I update and reboot the console before it would even consider finishing the install of the new game I'd bought.

It's a long way from sticking a cartridge into a Megadrive.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:19 
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Must've really spoiled it for you


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:29 
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Re spoilers. Iirc the study said that the majority of people enjoy a film knowing the ending, rather than saying everyone prefers being spoiled all the time.

I know I prefer not being spoiled the first time I watch a film. Yes you can enjoy it on repeated viewings, but for me there is a visceral thrill from not knowing the outcome, similar to watching live sport.(it would be interesting to see if there was on overlap there)

My wife firmly falls into not caring about spoilers, and actively spoils films for herself, often watching the end, before going back to the start, especially in a tense thriller.

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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:34 
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Malc wrote:
My wife firmly falls into not caring about spoilers, and actively spoils films for herself, often watching the end, before going back to the start, especially in a tense thriller.

Bet she reads the last page of a book first too.

No offense, but why bother?


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 11:40 
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She gets really emotionally involved in the film, to the point she gets stressed when the characters are in danger, so to remove that stress she likes to find out what happens to them, if she knows they are going to die, then she can reconcile herself to that, if she knows they are going to survive then she has no worries.

To her its about enjoying the journey and not just the destination, and that knowledge helps her enjoy it more.

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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 12:27 
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Malc wrote:
She gets really emotionally involved in the film, to the point she gets stressed when the characters are in danger, so to remove that stress she likes to find out what happens to them, if she knows they are going to die, then she can reconcile herself to that, if she knows they are going to survive then she has no worries.

To her its about enjoying the journey and not just the destination, and that knowledge helps her enjoy it more.

I completely get this. I don’t read spoilers myself, but I will regularly ask people who have already seen the film/series if X character dies/gets hurt, etc and bail on it if so.

I always think of Fight Club when I think of film spoilers. I’d not have missed experiencing the ‘twist’ first time for the world, but subsequent viewings with that knowledge are no less brilliant, because you view the film completely differently.

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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 13:02 
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30 hours in and I’ve got to say, you’re certainly getting value for money here even if I’m surprised it’s still going. There must be some sort of magic going on here because there’s a megashitton of assets here. Unique textures are everywhere. Goddamn there’s been some time and extraordinary effort gone into making this look as fantastic as it does. You’d swear this was a PS5 game... probably.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 16:02 
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Lesbians, transgender, interracial!? This game is like my Pornhub search history.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 16:26 
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This is an interesting take on things.

(By a woman.)



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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 19:19 
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Finished.

Absolutely epic.

I’ll cobble some thoughts together when I’ve relaxed.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 20:23 
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The only opinion I actually give a shit about is out and it’s a behemoth 2 hours long. Ouch.



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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 22:17 
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Hearthly wrote:
The usually dependable SkillUp is not impressed, and gives very good reasoning as to why.

Note this is a SPOILER FREE review.

I absolutely loved The Last Of Us, I'm not sure this sequel is going to work for me though. I'll wait for more reviews before committing to a purchase, and see what BEEXers have to say about it too.



Having finished the game and now watched this SkillUp “review” I can categorically say that this is an hilariously awful hot-take. I wouldn’t even trust him to review chicken wings in Hooters.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 22:38 
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Or, you know, his opinion is his opinion. If he didn't enjoy it you can't say "you're wrong! you clearly did enjoy it!".


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 23:33 
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I’ll pull out his main points.

“Playing on normal difficulty enemies are spectacularly stupid” - there’s fix for that. Play on harder difficulties; that’s what they’re there for.

“Enemies blindly fixate on locations I’ve long since vacated” - not if they spot you they don’t.

“Piles of bodies do not deter them” - bodies trigger enemies to call out and go into patrol mode.

“Enemy patrol paths are stuck on tight patrol paths” - except when they aren’t.

“Weapons clunky and difficult to aim” - just nonsense. Weapons have a slight weapon sway like every game ever, and it can be modded out. Maybe he’s got Hearthy hands.

“[Hand to hand combat] you spam square to beat your enemies to a pulp” - not on harder difficulties.

“Fewer environmental puzzles” - cause we all wanted more ladders aye?

Opinions on the game were:

“I was so bored of this game, had I not been reviewing it I would not have seen it through to it’s conclusion... especially with a story as bad as this” -

“In my view there’s no commitment whatsoever to the story and characters so many people fell in love with in TLOU1”

“This is a petty revenge plot filled with shitty unlikeable people. Most of the characters could be swapped out for any other and it wouldn’t make a difference”

“I couldn’t connect with any characters. It’s like a DCU movie where everyone is grim and dark all the time and sad and angry and broken” - never visited the fish zoo or threw a ball for a dog, aye?

“In the first game you’d buy into characters who make you smile even if for a moment. There’s none of that here.” - load of nonsense. I mentioned two very early jokes earlier in the thread. There’s a bunch of flashbacks that lighten the tone. Two of the new characters are extremely likeable.

“The tone is oppressively bleak. The game just never comes up for air” - just nonsense, as above.

“The central theme is deconstruction. The game actively tries to deconstruct your memory of the characters from the first game in way that I find unnecessary” - shows a picture of Joel.

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
I think he’s referring to painting Joel as the bad guy. Personally I think it’s masterful that he’s been recontextualised as the baddie and for all the right reasons.


“Much of the game hinges on the actions Ellie makes. These were so unbelievable and so ludicrous that I was laughing out loud as they unfold” “there’s no groundwork to justify what she’s does” - having got a fucking clue he’s on about here.

“There’s a 10 hour section of the game that feels like a side quest. The purpose of this section is to give you background into the characters and the world. ... I didn’t find those characters or events remotely interesting.” - he just didn’t like the new characters. Ewan was very likeable and I’d be surprised if the majority of the public didn’t take to him. Oh and this guy called Manny. I liked him a lot. And he appears to have missed the point of this 10 hours completely. They’re not ‘just’ world padding.

“Don’t get me started on the plot holes. There are so many gigantic plot holes.“ - what the fuck is this guy on? What plot holes?

So yeah, I reckon I can disagree with his opinions.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 22:33 
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OK I've given this two full evenings of play now, so I'm a fair few hours in and as such this isn't a snap, kneejerk reaction.

It's fine. It's competent. It works reasonably well as a videogame.

The graphics are stunning, the sense of 'place' is amazing, the world building is fantastic. 30FPS doesn't bother me in slower paced games such as this, it's not a twitch shooter or high octane racer, and the motion blur covers the worst of its sins in that regard, it's mostly a non-issue for me, and I'll take it as a trade-off for the incredible visual fidelity on display.

Gameplay wise it's solid if unspectacular, as was the previous game. The infected are creepy, and taking the various types on with the available toolkit is fun. Stealth works OK, the guns are weighty and feel pretty good, the melee is brutal and crunchy, and the crafting and upgrades are, well, just sort of there and do their jobs OK.

The puzzles are kind of meh, as I was expecting them to be, although there's still a decent sense of satisfaction in solving them.

There's an awful lot of rummaging around for supplies, it goes with the genre, I'm fine with it.

I do doff my cap to Naughthy Dog for the astonishing levels of options around controls, difficulty, and accessibility, I've managed to get myself an overall control and difficulty setup that works as well I could possibly expect given how shit I am with a gamepad.

I'm also finding the characters OK in the main, I don't actively dislike anyone so far, put it that way. (And yes of course I've got past 'the thing' that happens relatively early on.)

But holy shitballs the writing is corny and unconvincing, I've got no problems with the characters and who they are, they're just not written well.

Moreover:

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
I absolutely do not buy their motivations. Assuming we're prepared to put aside the nonsensical Deux Ex Machinas the game spits out early on to get Joel killed, which in fairness I am, I get that the game needs this to happen so the story can happen, so fine...... But fuck me I don't buy that Ellie would set off with Dina, travel ONE THOUSAND MILES to Seattle (on a fucking horse), with the intention of avenging Joel's death, but not having any real idea of how she's going to do it, and that she'll probably get them both killed in the process.

And here's the thing, I ALREADY THOUGHT JOEL WAS A PRETTY BAD GUY AT THE END OF THE FIRST GAME, quite frankly anyone who plays TLOU1 and gets to the closing credits thinkng they've been playing as a hero needs their head reading. So I don't need TLOU2 to 'recontextualise' something I'd already determined for myself. I could understand why Joel did what he did at the end of Part 1, but he still did a really, really shitty thing, and killed a lot of decent people to make it happen.

I don't get why Ellie would feel the need to avenge Joel's death as she wants to do, since she already knew he was pretty sketchy. On top of this, she's young, she's in love with her new girlfriend, she lives somewhere safe, she's going to throw all that in the bin to try and seek vengeance on behalf of Joel?

And I'm down in Seattle with Ellie and Dina, and they're chatting like a happy young couple, what they've done, who they are, what's made them who they are, their hopes for the future, whilst they're both apparently committed to a virtual suicide mission for a reason I don't find remotely compelling. Plus, the fact the people they're hunting managed to travel 1000 miles to kill Joel in the first place says a lot about them and how fucking dangerous they are. Gah.

I'm not angry that they killed Joel, he wasn't a saint or a good guy, although the way in which he died is fucking dumb. 'HELLO MYSTERIOUS STRANGERS WHO ARE CLEARLY VERY CAPABLE OF SURVIVING IN THIS POST APOCALYPTIC WORLD, WHICH MEANS YOU'RE POTENTIALLY VERY DANGEROUS, THESE ARE OUR REAL NAMES, JOEL AND TOMMY, AND OUR CAMP IS JUST DOWN THE ROAD, FEEL FREE TO COME DOWN AND TAKE SOME OF OUR STUFF TO SEE YOU ON YOUR WAY'.

And this is after the game has brought Abby and Joel together with a series of nonsensical coincidences.

I guess there's chance for the game to flesh this all out more, maybe it'll all make more narrative sense as we push forward, but as it stands at the moment, I don't buy into, on the most fundamental level, that Ellie and Dina are down in Seattle on the mission they are.

I'm not phased at the prospect of playing as Abby later on, the time I've spent with her so far in the game makes her look like a sort of interesting character, in fairness.


So yes, there's enough decent videogame here to keep me invested, but the story and characters simply haven't grabbed me (or convinced me.....) like they did in Part 1.

Early guess? It's going to finish up as a 7 out of 10, give or take. My feeling is it's nowhere near as bad as the 'fans' are making out, but it's nowhere as good as the critic metascore suggests either.

I'm certainly not putting down my pad in disgust or anything, and I suspect I'll see it out to the end.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 19:35 
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Crikey this game is dumb.

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
What is it Ellie? Have you just travelled 1000 miles with Dina ON A FUCKING HORSE to unleash righteous fury on the killers of Joel, because he's really worth it, or are you in Seattle to noodle around on the fucking guitar and make small talk with your girlfriend?

THE CONTEXT OF THIS GAME MAKES NO SENSE.

It made sense in TLOU1 because Ellie was a young teenager trying to find some joy in a blasted world, and Joel was a broken man learning that it was possible to care, and love, and ultimately trust again. So I got that they did 'trivial stuff' together because it made sense for the characters in that narrative.

Here it makes no sense whatsoever, it is in fact, suicidally stupid.

They have INTENTIONALLY TRAVELLED to a known hostile location, deliberately seeking out brutal killers, Ellie explicitly references, on their way into the city, not to read too much into how quiet it is because their own lookouts back home are essentially undetectable. i.e. Just because it looks quiet, doesn't mean we're not in imminent mortal danger.

OH I KNOW, LET'S FUCK AROUND IN A MUSIC SHOP FOR A BIT TO PLAY THE GUITAR AND BANG ON SOME FUCKING DRUMS. I'M SURE HOSTILE HUMANS OR INFECTED NEARBY WON'T BE INTERESTED.

STUPID STUPID STUPID.

I don't buy anything that's happening, it's as dumb as rocks.

Ellie and Dina are clearly a young couple in love, with so much to learn about each other, so much to cherish, so much to enjoy, so much future to look forward to, THIS IS NOT A SITUATION THEY WOULD HAVE PUT THEMSELVES INTO TO AVENGE JOEL.

Ellie could have, would have, played the fucking guitar for Dina back at home, that's where they both belong.

STUPID.


The stuff that a lot of folks are getting bent out of shape about with this game are not the same as mine.

I shall continue.

And moan, probably.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 19:54 
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By crikey this dialogue is heavy weather.

I think Druckmann has gone full 'George Lucas in the prequels', there was no one at Naughty Dog who could say 'no' to him.

I wonder if any dialogue will mention Midi-chlorians.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 22:29 
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In fairness there's a lot of good stuff about this game.

The gameplay loop itself in terms of moving forward, combat, exploration, scavenging, crafting, story beats, puzzles etc are all fine. (The TIMING of the story beats are fine, it's just that the story itself is codswallop.)

A lot of the mechanics have been improved and tightened up, in fairly subtle fashions, but enough to make themselves felt. I also really, really appreciate what they've done in terms of incredible configuration options when it comes to difficulty, controls, and accessibility. The HIGH CONTRAST mode is a godsend when it comes to rummaging around for stuff in largish areas, for example. And using the control and difficulty granularity I've managed to get a game that still feels moderately challenging to me using a gamepad (which I'm totally shit at), but doesn't just fucking annoy me in the process.

Moreover, if it weren't for the overall narrative context of why the characters I'm controlling are where they are, I'd be OK with that too in terms of how they behave and interact and do what they do, but TBH the further I get into it the more nonsensical it becomes, given what we know about them and why they're there.

There's clearly enough human endeavour gone into this game to mean it's impossible to call it a flop or a 3/10 or some shit like that, it's simply a better videogame than that.

But at the other end of the spectrum the PERFECT SCORE and declarations of MASTERPIECE are equally nonsensical, based on what I've seen so far.

I'll play this one out, it's a good enough videogame to deserve seeing to the end credits, and if I'm massively wrong about it at a few hours in and it turns the narrative cohesion around in incredible style, I'll cheerfully call myself out on it.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 9:40 
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I have been playing more of this, a couple of hours per evening is about right.

The game itself is fine, the story is hot garbage, and works a lot better if you approach it in a state of bemusement as to how stupid it is, rather than try to find some emotional investment with what's going on. The Ellie and Joel flashbacks are nice, although the overall pacing is all over the place.

There were clearly enough competent people working on the game so that Druckmann couldn't fuck it up too much.

The game world itself is often astonishingly good, and some of the locations are so beautifully crafted you can't help but sit back and admire the craftsmanship on display.

It definitely needs some nips and tucks though, I really don't understand why 'game length' is seen as a positive feature taken in isolation. Editing is a thing in films, it should be a thing in games too.

But yeah, if you decide to give this a go you'll find enough to keep you entertained I reckon.

For my money the reviewers who are bringing this in at around 7/10 are calling it right, I think Angry Joe is a bit mean at 6/10, and SkillUp was overly negative too IMO, although it's possible my viewpoint could shift between where I am now and the end of the game.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 10:07 
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Maybe the reviewers played through the entire game before making their mind up.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 10:16 
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Posting in this thread as the playthrough is progressing is exactly the same thing that Satsuma did, I'm a decent chunk of the way through the game now so getting a feeling for a score doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, and I explicitly state it's potentially subject to change as the playthrough is still in progress. (Remember though, I know everything that happens between where I am and the end of the game, so I have that knowledge in mind already.)

As much as anything it's to give fellow BEEX-ers a viewpoint they may or may not wish to consider when it comes to dropping the cash and giving it a go for themselves.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 10:19 
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Unpossible!

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So you decided you hated it ahead of time, spent £60 and now you don't hate it? This is fine, normal reviewing.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 11:00 
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DavPaz wrote:
So you decided you hated it ahead of time, spent £60 and now you don't hate it? This is fine, normal reviewing.


I don't come close to saying that I 'hated it', at all, at any point in this thread.

The most negative comment I make is:

Quote:
I've already decided this one isn't for me, it's one for the 'take a pass' pile. I have no time for games that want to bludgeon me over the head with their (fucking obvious to anyone who isn't a psychopath to start with) 'message', and compromise themselves as stories and games in the process.


I then read and watched a load more reviews and that tipped me back into being sufficiently intrigued to give it a go for myself, especially since there are so many reviews at complete polar opposite positions. (I'd say the truth is very much somewhere in the middle.)

Since starting my playthrough I've read through an extended interview with Neil Druckmann, and what they were aiming for in terms of plot, characters and story is indeed as wanky as I feared it would be - https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020 ... -druckmann

HOLY SHIT NEIL I'D NEVER CONSIDERED THINKING ABOUT A STORY FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE BEFORE. EVER. WOW. REVOLUTIONARY STORY TELLING. AMAZEBALLS.

However, as it turns out they have improved the 'videogame' aspects of things quite a bit, in many subtle ways, and the stunning work in terms of configuration options when it comes to difficulty, controls and accessibility have genuinely made me feel comfortable in controlling a third person game with a pad in a way no other game has ever managed. I've explicitly referenced that in my comments a couple of times already, it really is a very big deal for me.

Anyway, I always have the Bamba defence to fall back on.

The way he does stuff in general would usually drive me fucking nuts even just on principle, but there's something about the way Hearthly just commits utterly to his fucking bonkers approach that somehow disarms me and I end up being incredibly amused by it. Like he's so completely bare faced in his batshittery that what can you do? Everything he does just screams 'folly' and he doesn't give a single shit.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 11:09 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
That AngryJoe review is the apex of the toxic privileged white male gamer. He walked out of a stream during an opening moment and refused to play a flashback like a petulant child because waah waah this isn’t the game I wanted waaaaaah. Fucking shameful.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 11:14 
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UltraMod

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Satsuma wrote:
That AngryJoe review is the apex of the toxic privileged white male gamer. He walked out of a stream during an opening moment and refused to play a flashback like a petulant child because waah waah this isn’t the game I wanted waaaaaah. Fucking shameful.

Look how woke this guy is

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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 11:18 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
Also:-

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
• Joel took Ellie 2000 miles in TLOU so Ellie can at the very least travel half that for Joel, who gives a shit.
• Prior to the Joel event, Ellie and Dinah kiss for the first time the night before it happens and I think Dinah splits up with Jesse only 2 weeks prior. So Ellie & Dinah are hardly “madly deeply in love with each other” when they go off to search for Abbey.
• And how exactly do you plan for a revenge? You go and look for the person and do some recon. It’s hardly a suicide mission since they don’t know if they’ll even find Abbey in Seattle.

The story and writing is hardly bad, nonsense, guff blah blah. It’s decent and performed excellently by the VAs. It’s not Discopath in terms of quality but most things aren’t.

Etc etc etc


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 11:18 
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Bad Girl

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Posts: 14353
Mr Chonks wrote:
Satsuma wrote:
That AngryJoe review is the apex of the toxic privileged white male gamer. He walked out of a stream during an opening moment and refused to play a flashback like a petulant child because waah waah this isn’t the game I wanted waaaaaah. Fucking shameful.

Look how woke this guy is


You’ve taught me well, Obi Wank.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 14:30 
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Hello Hello Hello

Joined: 11th May, 2008
Posts: 13381
Oh yes and HEARTHLY'S TOP TIP for anyone deciding to play this.

Save your game manually on a regular basis, particularly when it looks like shit's about to kick off.

The checkpointing in this game is very efficient, arguably too efficient. Early on there were a couple of occasions where I felt I'd fucked a fight up and wanted to try again, especially if I'd burned through more resources than I wanted to. 'No problem, I'll let myself die, and it will go back to the checkpoint.'

What can happen there is that your erstwhile useless AI companion who couldn't hit a fucking barn door at five paces, will magically become a stunning killing machine, finish off the encounter on your behalf, and the split second this happens the game overwrites its checkpoint and you're left stood there with a sliver of health, and far fewer bullets/molotovs/whatever than you're comfortable with, and no way to return to a save.

So I got myself into the habit of saving my game manually with a degree of regularity, it's not a true 'point in time' save but basically creates a copy of whatever the checkpoint save would be at that point. (So it might knock you back a minute or two if you reload it.)

Excellently, and I do like this, if you bring up the pause menu you see the options:

RESTART CHECKPOINT (less than 1 minute ago)
RESTART ENCOUNTER (4 minutes ago)

(Where the time values are of course variable.)

This gives you a super easy way to check how long it is since the game last checkpointed and how much you'll go back if you choose to restart the checkpoint or the encounter. By comparing the timestamp on the manual save to the checkpoint save, you can see if reloading the manual save will take you back further than the checkpoint save.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 15:31 
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Unpossible!

Joined: 27th Jun, 2008
Posts: 38439
So the AI is bad and good at the same time and the very efficient save mechanism doesn't work. Got it.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 11:12 
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Ready for action

Joined: 9th Mar, 2009
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No spoilers because I’ve not played yet but I follow the critical role cast on Twitter, which includes Ashley Johnson (Ellie) and Laura Bailey (Abby). I’ve really enjoyed seeing some behind the scenes stuff from TLOU2 and it’s obvious they all had a blast making it. Then today, Laura Bailey posted this.

https://twitter.com/laurabaileyvo/statu ... 92992?s=21

I don’t why I’m still surprised by how toxic the gaming community can be but this is awful. One tweet specifically references her toddler son.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 11:28 
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Unpossible!

Joined: 27th Jun, 2008
Posts: 38439
Bless her for censoring the spoilers!


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 12:06 
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Rude Belittler

Joined: 30th Mar, 2008
Posts: 5016
Holy shit. I hope she forwards those tweets to the authorities.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 13:05 
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Hello Hello Hello

Joined: 11th May, 2008
Posts: 13381
In today's TLOU2 news.

GAME CONTINUES TO BE SOLID, I AM ENJOYING IT.

STORY HAS NOW BECOME THE WALKING DEAD.

(Last night's session was a good three hours or so, although I did get stuck for a while on a puzzle I was determined to solve without resorting to Googling.)

I shall explain.

This is all documented in the TWD thread, but basically I reached a point with that programme where the sheer stupidity and inconsistency of the characters and the nonsense they got up to utterly shattered the suspension of disbelief for me, to the extent that I was openly mocking it before giving up completely. (I still remember them drinking puddles and eating squashed frogs before stumbling upon Alexandria, and then five minutes later Rick was telling The Alexandrians how shit they all were and trying to take over. And I'm like 'THREE DAYS AGO YOU WERE DRINKING FUCKING PUDDLES AND STARVING TO DEATH, THESE PEOPLE HAVE A FULLY FUNCTIONAL COMMUNITY WITH SOLAR POWER AND WELL STOCKED STORES STUFFED WITH CHOCOLATE'.)

TLOU2 is now so stupid that I'm genuinely laughing at it, there was a sequence last night that was really good from a gameplay perspective and I thoroughly enjoyed playing through it, but I was also saying to the telly 'You would all be dead already, you are as thick as pigshit and everything about your presence in this location speaks to completely unbelievable character contrivances driving a flawed narrative that makes no sense'.

Also it's wildly inconsistent from one section to the next. It's no secret that Naughty Dog crunched their abused workforce like utter bastards during this game's tortured development cycle, and also that they haemorrhaged a lot of talented people in the process, and fuck me it shows, and sometimes you can really, really see the cracks.

So yeah game is fine, but park your brain at the gates when it comes to the characters and their motivations, and the dumpster fire that the story ends up being as a result.

At some point during last night's session I honestly thought to myself, 'Christ, this is The Walking Dead after it went to shit'.

THE LAST OF US 2 - COME FOR THE GAME, HAVE A LAUGH AT THE STORY.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sat Jul 04, 2020 13:11 
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Joined: 11th May, 2008
Posts: 13381
Oh yes and you know a much, MUCH better game than TLOU2?

Death Stranding.

I'll do a full comparison between the two when I've finished TLOU2.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 0:24 
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Finished. That was a fucking masterclass in storytelling.

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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:12 
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Grim... wrote:
Finished. That was a fucking masterclass in storytelling.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 17:08 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
Hearthly wrote:
Oh yes and you know a much, MUCH better game than TLOU2?

Death Stranding.


Oh yes and you know a much, MUCH better story than Death Stranding?

etc


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 17:36 
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I think the games have similarities though, sure they're not the same genre but there's a lot about them that feels like they're coming from the same sort of place. A post-apocalyptic world that has shattered civilisation as we know it, the humans that have survived struggling to rebuild, divided into hostile factions, a sinister 'other worldly' foe to contend with, and our protagonist(s) having to navigate the world and its various occupants as best they can whilst pursuing their goals.

Except Death Stranding shot for the stars with a tale of bringing everyone together in a shared and connected world, whereby the act of killing carries huge negative consequences, and where kindness and compassion are the order of the day, whereas TLOU2 got down in the gutter with a grimy paint-by-numbers revenge tale that hits you over the head with the astonishing revelation that revenge is bad and only by breaking the cycle of revenge can we move on as people.

They had similar development cycles too, so as Kojima was crafting his wondrous and spellbinding creation that truly redefined what a videogame could be, and how it could make us feel, Druckmann presided over a studio that abused and traumatised its staff to bring us a game that is incredibly good at depicting vicious acts of terrible violence, and yet has absolutely fucking nothing to actually say. But even worse than that, it thinks it does.


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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 18:53 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
TLOU2 has a simple but effective plot with decent dialogue, exemplary voice acting and mo cap.

Deaths Stranding has a terrible convoluted plot by a guy who has no filter and no one to say no to him or edit down his rubbish, has amateurish ambitions to be a director and can’t write dialogue to save his life.

There’s nothing in TLOU2 as shockingly awful and cringeworthy as “Like Mario and Princess Beach” and that run along the beach.

Gameplay wise, one is a linear stealth horror shooter and the other an open world deliverathon. I like both games a lot but they’re entirely different.

If it came down to laughing out loud at one over the other Death Stranding would win that shit no fucking contest whatsoever. I mean, come on... Jesus Christ.



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 Post subject: Re: The Last of Us 2
PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 0:19 
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WTF

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