The Last of Us

[Erkki]

I'm probably half-way through the game or a bit more. It's really enjoyable most of the time, except when hordes of zombies come running at you. I'm no good at aiming with the PS3 controller, and the clickers are so annoying... start loading a shotgun and no way to fire if you are realoading and have 3/4 bullets in, next second your neck is between the teeth of a clicker. I had to try a sequence 10 times before I got it. Now I upgraded my shotgun as much as I could, maybe next time will go easier. At other times when you have a stealthy option, it can get confusing how the stealth works. Are some of the runners perhaps half-clickers? Seems they can hear almost as well.

[Tanukitsune]

I think there are four stages, the runners are the first, I don't know why the ones in between are called but they are halfway through the transformation and can still see, clickers and I'm not sure if you've met the fourth stage of the infected.

 

If you're that far and not connecting it just must not be your thing.  I was hooked well before that, and found winter to be the best bit.  On difficulty: it feels like it should be played harder to heighten the sense of survival, I got it in little bits on normal, but felt it was a bit easy mostly, where shit hitting the fan were the most fun parts.  As weird as it sounds, I think easy isn't the way to go,  The most satisfaction I got was barely making it out of conflicts.  In fact I was pretty surprised that you aren't a bullet sponge, at least not to the extent of most games.

 

I used the bow most of the time and rarely ran out of arrows.

 

Of course it feels AAA, it's a AAA game. However I think it's more than that designation.  There's heart to it in a way most big games don't have.

 

Since I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to fight through a room with 50 bandits with heavy armor and heavy weaponry, if anything I'd rather it be "easier" or at least less enemies. The only time it was fun was when I when through a basement filled with clickers and a bloater with no runners to ruin the experience. 

 

Come to think of it, one of the reason the combat bothers me is that it tries to be a survival horror the same way Dead Space is, by limiting the ammo you can carry in a ridiculous way. How can you even carry only seven bullets of one gun? 

 

By the way, when I say a game feels AAA it's not a compliment, I usually mean that the game has been artificially lengthened to ridiculous lengths, because AAA gamers demand longer games. The AAA games are filled with busy work just to make the game longer or sometimes, like in The Last of Us, each time you reach your goal they trick you and you realize you have to "start over" again.

 

The thins is, I don't mind most of the things that much, but AAA do it SOOOO much, that it does start to bother me. Image a Batman game where all you had to do was stop the Joker's scheme with some antidote and every villain in Gotham stole it from each other just to... oh wait, that actually happened. :| 

[Tanukitsune]

Update: 

Thank God Ellie seems to be more or less rescuing herself, but I'm still fed up of killing thugs, if I wanted to kills thugs in post apocalyptic world... Well, that's basically every other game now.

[Erkki]

Finished. I hope there won't be a sequel, but I'll play it if there will be.

 

Did anyone actually fight and kill the 4th type (the most powerful) of infected? Except that one time you have to, I managed to get around them.

[Brannigan]

Yea I pissed one off by accident once.  I too mostly avoided them.  I agree also that there shouldn't be a sequel, or in the very least have it so the new game does not involve any character from the first.

[Tanukitsune]

Yeah, I avoided them too, I'm so glad there were avoidable, because it sucks to fight them... XP

[dartmonkey]

I'm five or six hours in (after a download of more than twelve hours until I could start playing - only about 70% of the total!) I'm getting inevitable whiffs of The Walking Dead and Half-Life. I sighed near the beginning when I walked into a yard strewn nonsensically with conveniently waist high crates. I've just finished Arkham City and the thrill of the superhero stealth takedown is dampened here, probably appropriately for a forty-something non-superhero, but it was still a comedown. It's been a slow few hours. It looks beautiful, if a little glitchy. Characters snap here and there, and moving the camera too quickly gives Joel a pixellated halo - unless that's the twist and it's all in the matrix. Having said that, it's a generational leap in BeardTech. As I progress I can't help thinking about the scores of assets and textures I'm merrily trotting by, never to be seen again.

I only see Ellen Page in Ellie. What was the deal with that in the end? Hmm, time to wiki...

[dartmonkey]

http://www.youtube.com/embed/BF0EaH73ee4

 

Video comparing E3 demo AI to final AI.

[Bjorn]

So I finally finished this last night, just got done skimming through a lot of this thread.  I find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticisms of the game, though I ultimately still quite enjoyed it and think well of it. 

 

There was one thing though that was so distressingly pointless that it nearly ruined the end of the game for me.

 

Fuck you Naughty Dog for making me kill the doctor. Don't pretend like I have some other option by letting me stand around trying things. It just blew my immersion, and thereby screwed up my appreciation of the final scenes because of how ridiculous it was. I threw a brick at the doctor's chest, and it shattered like he was Superman. I shot him in the pinkie toe with an arrow, and he crumpled bonelessly to the ground like some sort of pinkie-toe Achilles. They were so married to the idea of forcing the player to kill him that they wouldn't consider allowing any other gameplay possibility.

Not like there were any other narrative choices to be made in the game, but that one was just so ridiculously jarring. It would have felt more appropriate to me to have killing the doctor be in a cutscene, and force the player to pull the trigger on Marlena. Why make the player do one and not the other?

[Erkki]

Yeah, too bad about that AI. Was still a good game though.

[Frenetic Pony]

So I finally finished this last night, just got done skimming through a lot of this thread.  I find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticisms of the game, though I ultimately still quite enjoyed it and think well of it. 

 

There was one thing though that was so distressingly pointless that it nearly ruined the end of the game for me.

 

Fuck you Naughty Dog for making me kill the doctor. Don't pretend like I have some other option by letting me stand around trying things. It just blew my immersion, and thereby screwed up my appreciation of the final scenes because of how ridiculous it was. I threw a brick at the doctor's chest, and it shattered like he was Superman. I shot him in the pinkie toe with an arrow, and he crumpled bonelessly to the ground like some sort of pinkie-toe Achilles. They were so married to the idea of forcing the player to kill him that they wouldn't consider allowing any other gameplay possibility.

Not like there were any other narrative choices to be made in the game, but that one was just so ridiculously jarring. It would have felt more appropriate to me to have killing the doctor be in a cutscene, and force the player to pull the trigger on Marlena. Why make the player do one and not the other?

 

This was my entire problem with the ending, I didn't even want to do it at all, and it felt weird to be forced too to get to the end. I suppose that's an interesting thing to do with games. In movies you can have a fucked up protagonist, but in games you can force the player to be the fucked up protagonist. I'm imagining something like "The Voices" an upcoming indie film where Ryan Reynolds views the world as a bright and cheery happy go lucky place, where his talking cat tells him to kill people because he's insane.

 

And yeah, it was a good game. But the AI is boringly dumb (in what game is it not? Half Life 1 maybe?). One section that requires you to take on a bunch of guys in one area saw me hiding in the same room, strangle or shoot a guy, all the AI would come running to see what the noise was, "Ok split up gang!", and they would with only one AI dude coming into the room to look, who would then be strangled/shot/whatever to repeat the process. The visuals range between pretty damned good and pretty damned blocky, and the story ranges from excellently executed to far too derivative to uncomfortable. Still, at times it works really well. I got into a great desperate zombie fight, where I had to continuously run and switch weapons and etc. before they finally stopped. At another time I screwed up a stealth takedown and got into a fight that looked like a fantastically choreographed action movie scene. Sometimes the story even hits hard and perfectly, like when you chase Ellie down to the ranch.

[Bjorn]

My favorite AI moment was

when you are playing as Ellie

around the camping lodge thing, I ended up with a stack of like 6 bodies all in the same place from stealth kills, right on the other side of a chest high stone wall, because more guys kept coming over to investigate.  By the 5th and 6th bodies, you would think that a guy would wonder if maybe he should not go right on up and check it out. 

[baekgom84]

So I'm a few hours into this game (around the hotel area). I only really own a PC but I wanted to play this badly enough that I borrowed a PS3 from a friend of my brother-in-law and had my sister mail the game to me (she's in Australia and I'm in Korea). The level of detail is incredible and the voice acting and dialogue are probably the best I've ever heard... but I just cannot get into the gameplay at all. In fact, I think I hate it. This is coming from someone who really enjoyed the Uncharted games (well, the first two at least) and even enjoys the occasional stealth games. I just feel like the controls are really sluggish and unintuitive. I think the melee combat mechanics are clunky, and the stealth mechanics can be really frustrating considering they have a checkpoint save system which is very frustrating when you have spent the last five minutes silently taking down a room, only to be one-shotted by a damn clicker. I also don't like the sprawling level design; it seems like half of my game time is spent either roaming around looking for gear, or trying to work out where the exit is.

 

I actually feel really depressed by all of this. Maybe I hyped myself up too much or something. Am I the only one who feels this way? In any case, I have to return the PS3 by this weekend-ish, so I doubt I'll be able to finish in time. I might just end up watching gameplay videos online to get the rest of the story, although the lack of agency might frustrate me in parts. I don't think I've ever felt this conflicted about a game before.

[Dewar]

So I'm a few hours into this game (around the hotel area). I only really own a PC but I wanted to play this badly enough that I borrowed a PS3 from a friend of my brother-in-law and had my sister mail the game to me (she's in Australia and I'm in Korea). The level of detail is incredible and the voice acting and dialogue are probably the best I've ever heard... but I just cannot get into the gameplay at all. In fact, I think I hate it. This is coming from someone who really enjoyed the Uncharted games (well, the first two at least) and even enjoys the occasional stealth games. I just feel like the controls are really sluggish and unintuitive. I think the melee combat mechanics are clunky, and the stealth mechanics can be really frustrating considering they have a checkpoint save system which is very frustrating when you have spent the last five minutes silently taking down a room, only to be one-shotted by a damn clicker. I also don't like the sprawling level design; it seems like half of my game time is spent either roaming around looking for gear, or trying to work out where the exit is.

 

I actually feel really depressed by all of this. Maybe I hyped myself up too much or something. Am I the only one who feels this way? In any case, I have to return the PS3 by this weekend-ish, so I doubt I'll be able to finish in time. I might just end up watching gameplay videos online to get the rest of the story, although the lack of agency might frustrate me in parts. I don't think I've ever felt this conflicted about a game before.

 

That's more or less how I felt after two hours as well. I've heard it gets much better as the game goes on, but I haven't really felt like going back as of yet.

[bkbroiler]

The beginning of the game is very straight forward and railroady. After that it opens up considerably. If what you're not enjoying about the game is that you're spending too much time roaming the environments and looking for gear, you will probably not like playing the game. Personally, I loved that aspect of it (felt very much like what you would need to do to survive in the apocalypse), and the random conversations that occur with Ellie, but if you're not liking it that part is only going to get "worse" for you.

 

The combat isn't going to change much either, apart from giving you more options weapons-wise the further you get into it. Again, personally I really liked it.

 

It's funny you really liked Uncharted but don't like The Last Of Us. I hate Uncharted, the way it plays, the difficulty, everything. I played Uncharted 3 on easy just so I could enjoy the breezy nature of it more, and still died a lot. I ended up beating The Last Of Us on Survivor, and love everything about the way it plays. The fun thing about the stealth (to me), is that you can stealth as long as possible, and then if your cover is blown you can shoot your way out, or run and hide, or whatever.

 

I think the story is absolutely worth watching, but if you're really not digging it the game is only going to change so much. How far into it are you guys?

[baekgom84]

The beginning of the game is very straight forward and railroady. After that it opens up considerably. If what you're not enjoying about the game is that you're spending too much time roaming the environments and looking for gear, you will probably not like playing the game. Personally, I loved that aspect of it (felt very much like what you would need to do to survive in the apocalypse), and the random conversations that occur with Ellie, but if you're not liking it that part is only going to get "worse" for you.

 

The combat isn't going to change much either, apart from giving you more options weapons-wise the further you get into it. Again, personally I really liked it.

 

It's funny you really liked Uncharted but don't like The Last Of Us. I hate Uncharted, the way it plays, the difficulty, everything. I played Uncharted 3 on easy just so I could enjoy the breezy nature of it more, and still died a lot. I ended up beating The Last Of Us on Survivor, and love everything about the way it plays. The fun thing about the stealth (to me), is that you can stealth as long as possible, and then if your cover is blown you can shoot your way out, or run and hide, or whatever.

 

I think the story is absolutely worth watching, but if you're really not digging it the game is only going to change so much. How far into it are you guys?

 

I can't say I really hate the roaming aspect, I just find it a little frustrating at times in a game where I'm mostly just trying to make progress and hit the next story beat. It's really the combat that gets me. I mean, I like that they've gone for a brutal and desperate approach - really compliments the whole theme of the game, which is cool - but I thought the melee combat mechanics were garbage; possibly even worse than they were in Uncharted 3 (and that's saying something!) It's mind-bendingly frustrating when you get swarmed by runners, and then a clicker moves in and chews your neck off. Maybe I'm just not playing it correctly? A lot of these issues would be more or less irrelevant to me if you could just save wherever you wanted. What I wouldn't give for this game to be on PC, with quicksaves and mouse/keyboard controls... (not to mention the graphics!)

 

Anyway, like I said before, I'm currently in the hotel, I think maybe 1/3 or so through the game? I'll probably only have access to this Playstation for the remainder of this weekend, and I'm debating whether or not to put in a shift and try to finish the game in a marathon session over 2-3 days. I really want to give this game another chance, but at the same time I feel like forcing myself to push through the game as quickly as possible will end up making me hate it, even though I think it's really incredible in a lot of ways.

[bkbroiler]

Okay, I think you're officially in the part of the game where the majority of people say the game "starts getting good" - just so you have that as a baseline. If you're not liking this part maybe the game isn't for you.

 

I know what you're saying about just wanting to push through to the next story beat, but to me the best part about The Last Of Us was that it didn't something only video games can do - put you in the world for 20-30 hours with the two characters and let you form your own attachment to them through the dialog, exploration downtime, small conversations, etc.

 

Again, I really like the melee combat. It's not overly complicated, but you definitely need to know your limitations. When taking out infected it's definitely a good idea to stealth kill as many as possible, because fighting more than one at a time with melee will get you killed. Having a shotgun/close range heavy weapon will let you one shot anything running close to you. On normal I thought the infected were actually pretty simple to kill because of the abundance of ammo and their general tactic of running straight at you.

[baekgom84]

This is something I just started thinking about, but you know what else I hate? And this isn't just exclusive to The Last of Us, plenty of other games do it as well (Tomb Raider comes to mind). It's the absurdly gruesome death scenes that play whenever you fail. It's like the game is rubbing it in my face every time I screw up. "Good job, loser! Now Joel is DEAD!" I mean, I feel bad enough for failing, did you really have to show me a scene of a bloater tearing off his face? I was similarly disturbed in Tomb Raider whenever I mistimed a QTE and was witness to a very detailed scene which involved Lara being violently impaled on a sharp metal object..

 

I actually think I try as hard as possible to avoid dying almost exclusively because of this reason. It didn't bother me as much in Uncharted or Tomb Raider, because in Uncharted the death scenes were nowhere near as explicit, and in Tomb Raider I just... didn't really feel very attached to Lara. But I like Joel, and I don't like feeling responsible for getting him savagely murdered. It doesn't help that TLOU is a game that is deliberately unforgiving.

 

I'm now starting to wonder if anyone else has this issue.

[Bjorn]

Those death scenes get old me in "serious" games, particularly if I end up struggling through a section and have to see it several times in a few minutes.  But I love cheesy and ridiculous death scenes, which are almost like a reward for trying something stupid and dying.  Best example would probably be Dragon's Lair.  It makes dying a fun little reward in and of itself.

[Larsen B]

Although I wasn't completely bowled over by the game and the DLC just reinforced my opinion, the difference in quality and enjoyment between the first third and the middle third really is quite something.

 

The way the game explains itself at the beginning is actually pretty poor considering how much better the encounters become and I definitely was of the opinion that people were mad to give it perfect scores within the first 5 hours. Although I still don't agree with them, it's much easier to understand why they'd be inclined to do so having finished it.

[baekgom84]

Although I wasn't completely bowled over by the game and the DLC just reinforced my opinion, the difference in quality and enjoyment between the first third and the middle third really is quite something.

 

The way the game explains itself at the beginning is actually pretty poor considering how much better the encounters become and I definitely was of the opinion that people were mad to give it perfect scores within the first 5 hours. Although I still don't agree with them, it's much easier to understand why they'd be inclined to do so having finished it.

 

Can you elaborate a little bit (without spoilers, if possible) on how exactly the encounters improve? I'm still debating whether or not to marathon this thing over the weekend before I have to give my borrowed PS3 back. If I feel like the gameplay is going to improve a lot from this point onwards, I'll be much more inclined to give it a shot.

[Brannigan]

RE: death scenes

 

I think it fits a lot more in Last of Us because of the brutality of the world, but I totally get people being tired of it/having issue with it.  In Tomb Raider it felt gratuitous despite trying to be harsh as well.  It mostly felt like violence porn in that game.  Always thought it was odd that dying to gunfire was by FAR the least graphic death in that game.  Some of those death scenes felt borderline fetishized.  

 

On finishing the game:  I think you should give it a shot, it was one of the my favorite games last year.  I too do not own a ps3.  I had played a little at my sister's place, got interested and then ended up marathoning the rest in like 5-6 hours one day when she wasn't even home. It does have a slow build for sure, but it really does kick it up after the hotel.

[Larsen B]

Can you elaborate a little bit (without spoilers, if possible) on how exactly the encounters improve? I'm still debating whether or not to marathon this thing over the weekend before I have to give my borrowed PS3 back. If I feel like the gameplay is going to improve a lot from this point onwards, I'll be much more inclined to give it a shot.

 

It's more changing your way of thinking and approach to combat. The first few combat bowls (eg. the docks) are not very good areas to fight in and the tutorials/introductions you're given aren't very enjoyable ways to play really - throw bottle here, kill dude when he investigates.

 

When I started using the environment items (bricks/bottles) and the inventory stuff (smoke bombs/molotovs/nail bombs) as part of a stealth game, it became far more involving. It can be as basic as making the enemies in an area investigate a brick and then throwing a molotov cocktail or using bricks and bottles to hit enemies directly (look for the targeting circle to appear on-screen) and then melee them for a one hit kill. Some of the best events were when my carefully planned stealth assaults degenerated into desperate survival tactics.

 

It's a tad overselling it to say the gameplay improves a lot and it's still what stops me thinking The Last of Us is a masterpiece but, certainly once I'd adjusted, I actually enjoyed the encounters for the most part.

[Bjorn]

A fascinating piece about the experience of a conflict photographer playing The Last of Us while trying to photograph it as she he would an actual conflict.

 

None of the game’s characters show distress, and that to me was bizarre – it’s a post apocalyptic scenario, with a few remaining humans fighting for the survival of their race! To be successful, a player must be the perpetrator of extreme, and highly graphic, violence. I’m interested in a more emotionally engaged type of photography, where the human reaction to a scene is what brings a story to life. That was tough inside this game. Occasionally the characters show anger, though generally they’re nonchalant about the situation they’ve found themselves in. In the end, their emotions mimicked that of the zombies they were killing.

[Dewar]

It's wierd to read the last couple of posts in the thread from Febuary and see the exact same things mentioned there that have bothered me recently when trying to play it. It's nice to know I'm not completely crazy.

 

That's an interesting article Bjorn, though I wish it had been a bit longer and more detailed. I was starting to feel where he was coming from and then it just ended *shrug*