The Last of Us - it's the time of the season

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/the-last-of-us

"The Last of Us is a masterpiece, PlayStation 3's best exclusive and an absolute must-play."

zombies? do i have to?

it does sound pretty fucking cool tho

really wish i could play this :(

zombies? do i have to?

feeling this but will get it anyway. i'll wait for used copy at least

i have tried to get excited by this but yeah zombies post-apocalypse gritty survival blarrrgh

ha, but i thought you liked the Metro games?

i also keep confusing this with like 7 other games, like that ellen page one and whatever "remember me" is

the 2010s also seem to be the era of the "strong protagonist helps waify young dark haired girl with a smart haircut achieve her goals"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbNmmK9Bhzw

i liked metro 2033 because its the king of interesting background mostly - any game that makes me want to hang out and listen to as many npc conversations as possible is an all time achievement tbh.

the 2010s also seem to be the era of the "strong protagonist helps waify young dark haired girl with a smart haircut achieve her goals"
― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, June 6, 2013 12:24 PM

haha true. at least here she doesn't have a huge head n eyes like a thrift store keane painting (bioschlock)

i am kind of resigned to the fact that despite my better judgment i will go for a walk one lunchtime and suddenly find myself somehow holding a copy of this game with 60 bucks missing from my wallet

someone should make a game where you play as the waify girl trying to escape from the dude who keeps trying to help you + killing people.

^ dlc

main character looks like drake w/ a beard

http://i.imgur.com/PN3c5JS.jpg

lol.

"GAMING'S CITIZEN KANE MOMENT"

oh good lord shut the fuck up

the gaming yankee foxtrot hotel has arrived

ok haha so despite not actually starring ellen page, the character from this looks uh exactly like ellen page?!

wait, they got 10/10 from God as a Geek????????? *runs to store*

and her characters name? you guessed it: frank stallone ellie

OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE says "this PS exclusive is a MUST-BUY"

http://images.crispygamer.com/public/column-2288/kanethegame.jpg

never forget

actually, is there a gritty adventure narrative rhythm game out there? I would totally play that

just play bit trip runner on a half broken black and white tv, that should get you there

until i see video demonstrating otherwise i assume this game is just zombie uncharted with some handwringing over the murdering

gameplay looks the same, the molotov cocktail throw in the video above is exactly like uncharted grenades. i think main difference is that its more rpg, open world, carrying items, etc. i could be wrong tho

the laboured choking and the head-smashing are quite different from the tone of uncharted

actually this isn't rpg at all so nm

ok i am getting this tomorrow and if it is anything less than gaming's citizen kane moment i am going to have been misled by advertising yet again

this isnt the citizen kane of gaming... citizen kane is the The Last Of Us of cinema

http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/tellmemore.png

that jpg has many ilx appropriate applications

my hopes for this game are right around the level of gaming's lethal weapon moment, or at my most giddily optmstic, gaming's ghostbusters moment, although the original ghostbusters game had a fair claim to that distinction.

it was pretty cool but man the loading times

gaming's citizen kane with andy warhol's loading times

day 1 server issues :B

https://twitter.com/Naughty_Dog/status/345591249148985344

http://thecitizenkaneofvideogames.tumblr.com/

i am not sure this is gaming's citizen kane moment, but it is very good

it doesn't start off promisingly - for the first few sections of the game it doesn't hold your hand so much as take the controller, sit you down with a hot drink, and say 'listen, let me do this bit ok?'. but it gets beyond that, although it never quite stops giving you helpful nudges. it feels initially like it is aiming for Uncharted: Heavy Rain of Zombies but once it gets going it surpasses that low bar without effort. the basic gameplay is very simple and i did wonder if i really wanted to throw however many hours at doing the same thing over and over, but the game manages to keep contriving situations that refuse to let you just fall back on what worked last time, and that is probably the most impressive achievement. it's never scary but it is frequently intense. however it is as linear as all get out, no more illusion of choice of direction than i dunno operation wolf, so if you have a philosophical problem with that look elsewhere i guess.

supplies are scarce enough that you actually have to think about what your doing, which is essential for a game like this to work and if i'd have had to pick a place they'd have gone wrong that probably would've been it. it does look great, and the recognizable bits of boston at the start are very cool. the story and the characters and the voice acting etc are all at least reasonably intelligent but as usual the assumption is that gamers are impervious to subtlety, so none of it is what it could or should be to deserve the critical jizz.

so yeah, it is very good. it's paced so you can't put the controller down because you always feel like you're in the middle of something, but there is also a genuine feeling of not wanting to stop, of wanting to know what's next, and that's as much of a recommendation as anything imo.

how much space does it need to install on ps3? (ive only got the 12gb hd)

it's 26gb so it will want 52 gb (!) to download and install.

i mean from disc version - i've written off ever downloading anything on this flimsy thing

operation wolf!! i have not thought about that game in literally years

Anyone else getting a Children of Men vibe from this?

getting a citizen kane vibe
for christmas
lil orson welles head that takes three AA batteries

hey remember how you were like man i love uncharted's shitty gameplay but all these engaging characters and this breezy story are really dragging me down? have i got the game for u

like right at the beginning of the game this little girl dies and it's like who cares but the protagonist is fuckin freaking out and it's just like that heavy rain glitch video where dude is like SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN

lmao

This is good so far!

i'm kinda tempted? I don't like uncharted at all though.

I played Uncharted 2 for about 30 minutes and decided it wasn't for me. This, on the other hand, I started playing a couple nights ago and so far it totally rules, it's exactly Half-Life but it's too pretty and fun to not enjoy it.

Just on a technical level, I am super impressed with how fluid it moves from "you're playing" to "watch this!". And (barring the insanely long install time) the loading times are fluid and wonderful. Zero inventory management. Skyrim was the only other Big PS3 game I felt compelled to complete but this one kills it. Critic hyperbole otm, imo

lol @ "completing" skyrim

I said "compelled to complete", not that I completed it

I did complete a lot of it :( despite agonizing load times :(

me too, i even shamefully bought dlc :|

i watched part of a last of us playthrough and the boston ruins made me think of hl2. i guess the clickers wouldn't be out of place in ravenholm. i'm good with the uncharted style controls as long as the targeting isn't crappy

i am not gonna say anything about the ending except to say that it is kinda worth saying something about and not necessarily in a negative way

Loved the game but was so worried about the frequency of pastiche that was abundant during it's 14hr journey that I was afraid the ending would head the same direction. The turn it takes is fantastic, not so much a plot-twist as something you should have expected to have seen coming... and are, actually, given constant evidence of throughout the course of the game, not just gameplay tidbits in between purely relevant 20 second cut-scene segments. I really loved it, the game and how it eventually chose to close itself.

No spoilers, but vague details abundant

What I especially love is fact that that the game does not take your actions as a summation of the entire fate of the universe.... it starts as a character study and ends as such. The side characters you meet throughout the course of the game I initially thought were a bit irrelevant and undeveloped until I realized there is this large thematic string between all of these people and the ways they cope with loss. Everyone has their own dramatic reaction, and every reaction befits their own definition of self-preservation... whether identity, quality of life, or actualized existence.

Still, I am a bit askew as to what benefit having Ellie modeled after Ellen Page did for the series. Did they really find that we couldn't emote w/ a videogame character unless we had an already established connective node with them already? Were they afraid of creating a side character that was too generic to care for?

I haven't completed it yet!

Finding the fungus flowers in dark places never ceased to creep me out, like, the fuck out

ah I was wondering why she looked so familiar the whole time. Was it actually Ellen Page? Tommy and Henry look really familiar, too.

There's no official evidence to posit Ellen Page as Ellie's inspiration but it's all I could think about a year ago, seeing the videos teased for this at e3. Ellen Page actually addressed the likeliness with disapproval just recently: http://kotaku.com/famous-actor-sounds-upset-about-the-last-of-us-ellie-551365129

Tommy & Henry hit me immediately as Walt and Michael, from Lost.

Running with this theme, the developers behind Bioshock: Infinite cited the fact that they changed Elizabeth's initial look to resemble that of Disney's Belle (Beauty & The Beast) to make her expressions more emotionally charged and "real" in circumstance of her face... everything being super-expressed and all. I'm taking this cue and thinking that Naughty Dog did something somewhat akin in trying to give us a character with a face we wouldn't forget, especially considering the basis of the game's plot depends on an emotional connection with this character....

...which is a weird move, I think, as there's a fair amount of evidence from too many other videogames that we can become attached to a character without their possessing a physical allusion to something we already know, and likely like. Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 looks like nobody else, and is most definitely one of few videogame characters I can recall from memory as being particularly memorable.

started this last night, beginning was cool, i liked the flash-forward 20 years, and then all of the sudden i was spending an hour walking through houses and helping a lady climb on things

that could be an ok evening

Seeing ads and reviews for this make me want to brave my PS3-induced motion sickness and give it a shot.

Is it worth potentially barfing to play?

gravol

Still, I am a bit askew as to what benefit having Ellie modeled after Ellen Page did for the series. Did they really find that we couldn't emote w/ a videogame character unless we had an already established connective node with them already? Were they afraid of creating a side character that was too generic to care for?

― kelpolaris, Wednesday, June 26, 2013 6:36 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

nerdbait

i'll protect you ellen... *pushes glasses against bridge of nose*

^Totally.

It's so embarrassing/hilarious to see fanboys get defensive about this game's obvious pandering. "She doesn't look at all like Ellen Page! Stop criticizing this MASTERPIECE!"

Gamers are the worst people.

That said, having just finished the game, I liked it a lot!

Who's Ellen Paige?

Juno

juno who she is, don't play dumb

This game is so great.

Help a n00b:

If I love this game and the Tomb Raider reboot (and to a slightly lesser extent Far Cry 3), what else would you recommend?

The Walking Dead, Uncharted 2, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3, Resident Evil 4, Heavy Rain, Dead Space 2, Alan Wake if you can find it for like $2

I actually liked Assassin's Creed 3 too, like a lot.

this game is pretty great huh?

children of men vibe otm, at least for the first couple of hours: a freaky event that has rendered the survival of humanity tenuous; a government clampdown; a resistance group smuggling a girl out from the controlled zone of martial law; an ambiguous relationship between the protagonist and that group

zombies? do i have to?

lol this was EXACTLY my reaction as well. thank god they figure very very little in the first couple of three hours.

still waiting for it to hit that 25 buck used sweet spot

i downloaded the fucker straight off the net. so psyched this era is finally upon us. the only time i really play games anymore is when i'm sick and fuck if i'm going outside on a wet november day in my state.

Finally got some more time to play this. It is really fun AS A GAME. If that makes sense. Some sections surprisingly difficult, and the game has a pretty good sense of when to dump you back at the beginning of a section and thereby let you play through seamlessly, fuelling your own sense of badassness, or when, on the other hand, to give you a break and let you keep the gains you'd got.

It basically succeeds in all the places that Uncharted failed: it has a core mechanic - sneaking, melee and a bit of shooting - that miraculously doesn't ever get repetitive; it doesn't rely on shooting galleries as set pieces or to slow things down artificially; you constantly feel just barely on the verge of being competent enough, and equipped enough, to deal with what's coming next

(not like it's Demon's Souls or anything, but for this casual gamer it's pitched pretty right; that said, I'd probably try it on the more difficult setting if I had more time in my life)

ok, sold. £20 on amazon.co.uk now, but that's used, says the download codes have been used - am i missing anything major by not having those?

or should i wait for this weird black friday thing? is it likely to be cheaper new on friday or does it not work like that? </british>

probably a safe bet to say that come january/february most ps3/360 games are gonna start getting deep discounts so maybe wait a few months and clean up?

is that the usual drill when new consoles come out? might well do that, thanks. though i was kinda wanting a game to while away the hours over xmas, might just go for beyond 2 souls (also £20 used) and hang on til feb for LoU

this is gonna be an odd console generation in terms of last gen pricing because of the introduction of digital download as the primary and preferred method of purchase. in the past, it's always been about moving inventory off shop shelves to make room for the new display of next gen titles and that motivates a lot of brick-and-mortar discounts. not so much now. even so, lack of backwards compatibility is likely gonna bend to ongoing fight for precious hd input in your tv; i think anyone who bought a nextgen system is gonna mothball the old tech which means retailers online and irl are gonna have leftover holiday stock and less consumer interest... hence the us $200 ps3 w/250gig + arkham + last of us as an attempt to sell the razor cheap to keep blades moving.

new answers

jesus, back up to £27 now. anyone on here bored of it and want to sell on for £20? (or loan out for a cpl of months for a tenner?)

and what are the download codes for? should i try to get those?

I don't know what those are.

We just teamed up with the young kid and his dad. I have a sinking feeling that more clickers are in our immediate future.

Comment upthread about the sound of the gunshots is super OTM, each one is extremely loud, hollow-sounding and definite. No "pew pew pew" here.

I also love how there is NO JUMPING in this game! This ain't no Mario Brothers, this is life or death. Usually death. Every now and again I think possibly I could jump across a gap and immediately I think "eh, better not try that", which is exactly the right reaction for a 50-year-old human being to have.

By the way the animations for the clickers - and especially the bloaters - finally reaching you and macking down on a neck vein are fucking terrifying; I live in fear that one of my children will open the door to the living room right at that moment.

And need I mention how refreshing it is to play an action adventure game that refrains from overloading its cut scenes with pointless details and backstory? And that I see no sign on the horizon of any cult members who wield a terrible power? All story boils down to tersely worded refusals by your character to offer any encouragement to anybody else whatsoever, and exhortations to get a move on. Which is usually how I feel about playing these games in the first place. Let's go. We gotta get to point B, I really do not care about your feelings right now.

That said, there are tantalizing pieces of paper lying around that when read turn out to be scribbled diary entries from some long-dead soldier, stuff like "Perimeter overrun. Can hold out another 3 hours max. Supplies low." WHO GIVES A GOOD GODDAMN ABOUT THIS STUFF??

Actually a few of the notes from Ish are pretty funny. And the note in the nursery in the tunnels was affecting. But it's just weird! Who writes diary entries for themselves on scraps of paper and scatters them about??

i think tomb raider suffered a bit from that too didn't it, you'd find diary scraps that were read aloud in the characters voice or something.

"Those inquisitive tourists sure got what was coming to them. Especially the one with the beard. The Great Khala must be appeased! Over and out."

Can't wait to get a fucking holster.

i think tomb raider suffered a bit from that too didn't it, you'd find diary scraps that were read aloud in the characters voice or something.

― am0n, Tuesday, December 3, 2013 1:10 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bioshock is the classic here

Love how the scissors on the end of your pipe/stick/bat snag into the baddies' skulls, so disturbing

i really didn't want this to end :(

It's not that it's reinvented video games, or invented much of anything overt -- it's "simply" that it takes the things video games are about right now, takes the things that video games seem to have to do, and solves the problems of previous attempts. It takes some basic and very reasonable requests about games of their sort and answers them.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195423/

I would love to read something by someone that talks about how brilliant the combat is.

I've seen complaints about the lack of bona-fide puzzles but by my lights the combat IS the puzzle. It reminds me a lot of classic Tenchu in that you get to size up a situation and think quite hard about how you're going to make it all happen. Virtually all shoot-n-cover adventure games do this to an extent but it's really done to perfection here. You have a limited number of items, each with its own capabilities and you want to set up the chain reaction just so. Actually I could have done without a few of the guns, and the bow and arrow was fairly superfluous, and I possibly leaned a little too heavily on the smoke grenades but these are incredibly minor quibbles. In Tomb Raider I approached a new shooting gallery setup with a sigh, knowing I'd be doing that for the next 20 minutes or so and not enjoying it very much. Here, a new phalanx of clickers and runners would appear and there was this delicious glee, like OK, what am I going to be asked to solve this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8XN7eoZr0Y

i think i agree with this:
http://www.nohighscores.com/2013/06/18/why-the-last-of-us-sucks/

Did you play it?

I mean, that article is largely OTM - though I take exception to its dismissal of the combat, which I thoroughly enjoyed (then again I am the most casual of gamer) - but its complaints are addressed in the gamasutra article I linked a few posts back (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195423)

Will the world be saved? Can you kill a lot of zombies on the way? Will you have an emotional response to the partner AI like you're obviously supposed to? Find out in this third-person action game with guns, stealth and melee elements!

In other words, it is on its face a video game, made to present specifications. Yet it’s the grace and restraint with which The Last of Us approaches such limitations that sets it well apart from any other game where you play a sullen man trundling along with a gun.

It's not that it's reinvented video games, or invented much of anything overt -- it's "simply" that it takes the things video games are about right now, takes the things that video games seem to have to do, and solves the problems of previous attempts. It takes some basic and very reasonable requests about games of their sort and answers them.

i played up until bill is taking you to get car parts and then realized the combat is just some annoying thing i have to get out of the way to progress the story. and then i spoiled the plot by reading the wiki >:C

I've been tempted to play it again on difficult just because I like the atmosphere so much, and to try and "nail" the combat sections better than I did the first time

There is definitely some gameplay/plot fatigue that sets in, esp. after such a promising start. It definitely could have been shorter and cleaned up a little. That said, I would never say this game sucks, that is complete trolling.

yeah i don't think it sucks by any means, just not feeling the hype

its funny how naughty dog can put so much budget towards graphics/story/voice etc and still leave in terrible a.i. like walking up to a partner character causes them to jump away skittishly. or slowly moving in a crouch position by an enemy undetected while your partner is frantically running around and bumping into the enemy causing no reaction. uncharted series had the same problems

Yeah. That actually tripped me up at the beginning of the game; I observed my buddy being able to just walk right up to clickers and even bump into them with no reaction so I was all "hey, ho" and then... well you know what happens then

yeah, so this where i post how much I was into this. very much! completely worth getting a PS3 just for this.

i still have to go back and play Uncharted 2 and 3, but I jumped from the original Uncharted to this, you can imagine what an incredible leap in quality/design/production/story/acting and so on it all was

something i was really into was the tonality matching the gameplay (which really bothered me in Uncharted, you can't simply mix Indiana Jones hijinks with faces exploding in close-up every 30 seconds), the brutality and despair of this world was very well drawn, terror-filled and emotionally engaging

the plot is really the meat on the stick for this, so I don't even want to touch plot details in this thread; the ending was very satisfying to me. kelpolaris particularly otm about it being a character study in the end. there's a surprising level of mature reflection in the script and direction concerning Joel's character in the last sections of the game, and it's done quite well and subtly. that really was a notable step forward for video games, imho

i really want to play this again, and i NEVER feel that way about games

A friend got this and we played for an hour or two. Sort of fun but also sort of dreary and very linear. How long until this game stops being walk forward/watch cutscene?

per howlongtobeat.com:

Main Story
15 Hours

quite accurate, I went just over 15hrs on my save. it could have even been shorter and tighter, too

$22 on GameFly with tax/free shipping; that's the magic number for me.
http://www.gamefly.com/Buy-The-Last-of-Us/5004174/#axzz2yys3DM8i

Re-mastered version coming out on PS4.

Aside from loving the obvious stuff, for some reason it's one of the only 'choose how you fite' type games where i actually really enjoy being stealthy.

er... did not even realise there is now single-player DLC for this?? i have been wasting my life

yeah, i'm tempted to grab it soon

It's good. Adds some lovely depth to Ellie's character and has some fun combat, although I found the very last section a bit of a pain in the arse. Basically, if you liked the main game you'll enjoy the DLC too.

Did you do it on hard, or normal? (or "survivor"??)

Just regular-issue normal, I think.

i splurged, got the DLC and played through it tonight. no regrets, great stuff. easy recommend to anyone who beats it and wants more, it fits in well - happy with the framing device and timeline they went with too.
you weren't kidding about that difficulty spike in the last section, whew

not to get too corny here, but i love that we're in a time where this super high-budget project can come out with this extra story, which is for the most part an affecting, low-key coming of age teen drama

yeah... this game is best-in-generation, no doubt

Good interview on the making of the DLC:
http://www.wired.com/2014/02/last-of-us-dlc-interview-long/
I'll have to pick up that prequel comic, didn't realize it was so tied in.

not to get too corny here, but i love that we're in a time where this super high-budget project can come out with this extra story, which is for the most part an affecting, low-key coming of age teen drama

i just don't know if this is really a state of affairs to celebrate!!

the spectrum of voices and tones is so generally narrow in video games, it's a tragic waste of the medium; not seeing a downside here, especially with such a high-quality product in this instance

i wish there were less superhero movies but i wouldn't be cheering if one of them had an episode of the gilmore girls as a post-credits scene

i mean, actually i'd love that, and i don't really care about the number of superhero movies, so that statement is basically nonsensical. but i think the point still stands

lest you worry, there's still plenty of psycho stealth murder-'em-up action. i'm telling you though, the dichotomy works very well in Left Behind

this game really revolutionized transporting wooden pallets in water for NPCs that are scared of doggypaddling

i look forward to the game which presents that sort of scenario as a puzzle to which the solution is to shoot your partner and/or yourself in the head

i love this game but loooooool

xp that's why I keep meaning to get around to playing Persona 3

i started that the other day, i was kinda disappointed by how much less self-assured the opening seemed than pers 4

I've been playing this with no problem for a month and then the last couple of times I tried to play it got stuck on the "LOADING" percentage where it will go up to like 91%, then stay there a long time, then jump back down to 0% and stay at less than 1%. Then if I try to quit the game and turn off the PS3 it won't let me completely turn it off. Anyone seen this or have any idea what to do about it?

man finished this and never once used a smoke bomb v disappointing

the combat was fun i agree with tracer about the feeling of giddiness when it was abt to happen

also lol the random notes lying around everywhere for no decent reason, best part is the end where marlene leaves multiple tape recorders lying around like who carries around multiple tape recorders for different entries in a single audio diary and then leaves them around?

the story and """"emotions"""" are geeked over by gamers bc gamers are trained by the terrible storytelling of the gaming industry to respond dramatically to even the most slightly not-shitty story and characterizations. the very ending w/joel was alright as a turn but i don't get projecting what happened over the rest of the game like it was earned, or like the majority of the story wasn't just there to reach that point. it's hard to do, making a 15-20 hr story seem tight when you have to intersperse it with hours and hours of largely silly and unbelievable combat situations, but i'm still not gonna go easy on it u kno. like i can see where the story beats are in each season (and "winter" was really fantastic) but it's still so shoddy front to back.

when i was maybe 10 or 11 i remember bearing witness to a conversation my brother and his friends were having -- they were all 3 yrs older and big big big JRPG nerds, and one of them mentioned crying when aeris died, and i immediately responded like "what? you cried? at that??" and he was like "oh you little one, one day you will be cool and in tune with your emotions like me" like he was so proud and almost bragging about having an emotional response to a game and even then i could tell it was sort of forced. i loved ff7! but come on. for like the next 3 times i watched my brother play through ff7 (he played a loooooooot) i think i tried to cry at that moment. i think of that every time a game comes around that makes nerds get all loudly emotional when it offers less emotional pull than a paul ws anderson video game movie

same feeling as when i told my friend i was playing HL2 and he was like "oh man aren't you just like totally in love with alyx vance" and i just sort of stared

well, talking of hl2 (and this) (and bioshock infinite):

bc gamers are trained by the terrible storytelling of the gaming industry to respond dramatically to even the most slightly not-shitty story and characterizations cute girls in peril from which only you can rescue them

(nb i have not played this so i'm not saying there is not More going on but this certainly seems to be a key, uh, storytelling strategy, in the industry these days.)

can't remember if alyx ever got herself into much peril but iirc her conversation was always trembling just at the brink of fellatio

but then to be fair so was the conversation of literally every npc in the game. gordon freeman!!!

she was meaningless pixels, a total non-person who was barely even in the game

she was the state-of-the-art scripted NPC FPS companion of the day. remember that up until that point we had... Daikatana and the hapless Black Mesa staff

was kinda affected by the single endlessly replicated security guard model hl1 had, who joined you to enthusiastically fight by your side every time you encountered him and invariably died ninety seconds later. an eerie purgatorial thing. of course in hl2 he/they was/were retconned into the metaphysically uninteresting "barney".

even deus ex sucked at this, and yet i rescued the suicidally aggressive "miguel" from his prison cell every single fucking time, even though the game gave you no incentive whatsoever to do so besides feeling bad for this nonexistent idiot for no reason

lol had a long rant with Joel the other day about stories and acting being "good for a game" and how that is code for "too shitty for even the worst straight to DVD movie to get away with"

also lol the random notes lying around everywhere for no decent reason, best part is the end where marlene leaves multiple tape recorders lying around like who carries around multiple tape recorders for different entries in a single audio diary and then leaves them around?

this is bioshock's fault, which means it's system shock 2's fault, which kinda makes me sad to admit

in bioshock infinite iirc they were entire phonographs? fuck games.

cute girls in peril from which only you can rescue them

(nb i have not played this so i'm not saying there is not More going on but this certainly seems to be a key, uh, storytelling strategy, in the industry these days.)

no idea why i said "these days" btw sry my brain was in another castle

lol that games are still doing that. it was cool in system shock tho , that you wd be wandering around hiding from mutants and shit while listening to them, novel for the 90s

I remember feeling vaguely moved at a cut scene in ffix where the black mages are all falling from the airship and a music box is playing or something. perhaps a v self aware moment. whereas aeris dying is just like rpg iconography 101

moment I found moving in ffvii as an adolescent: cloud and toga hanging out by the whatsit crater, everything emotionally unresolved, unsure if their friends will join them to go to their probable deaths, a 30-40 looping wind sound effect in the background and no other soundtrack. I think that was it tho

*tifa

for like the next 3 times i watched my brother play through ff7 (he played a loooooooot) i think i tried to cry at that moment

this is an incredible memory.

it's hard to do, making a 15-20 hr story seem tight when you have to intersperse it with hours and hours of largely silly and unbelievable combat situations

For certain games like this, the visual lushness of the world grants so much to the experience and the story, if not explicit. I vividly remember one point where you're escaping Philadelphia after meeting that father-son duo, and you have to escape through a toy store. Now if you're just gunning it, it takes less than ten seconds to run through there. But I stopped and looked around and how much detail was in this set that you could just glance at and never notice, how much effort and craft it took to make this store, it amazed me, all the shelves, objects, signs, overgrown foliage, broken glass, individual toys and colors and everything; the distress to show the age and burden of what the store had been in this universe. They probably put almost as much effort into this one-time use setting as they did those endless apartment buildings where you had to choke out a few dozen psychos.

this novel was full of what hemingway called ... true sentences

I finally played the DLC and FUCK ME THIS IS THE BEST DLC EVER. Chock a block with surprising moments, both of fear and delight. There is an incredible scene where, well I'm not going to spoil it because it's too good but it's just the most touching love letter to the power of video games, the power of friendship and the power of imagination all explicitly rolled into one.

Also you get to play as Ellie, and you get to kick ass.

Which is so totally satisfying and awesome that I forgot for awhile that in the main game you play 95% of it as tough-nuts beardo dude.

*thumbs up*

Anyone played through the main game again? Seriously tempted, especially as I did it on "normal" the first time.

I enjoyed it so much on PS3 I ended up getting the remastered version for the PS4. It's the only time I've ever double-dipped for a game, and one of the very rare occasions I've wanted to do a second run after finishing the first time. I'm only a couple of hours in but really looking forward to going through the whole thing again - I've already noticed some stuff I missed on the first playthrough.

I played through on PS3--there's a big advantage as you get to keep your weapons and level-ups, so it turns into more of a straight-up action game. You don't get to keep your unlocks from the previous gen in the PS4 version, which bummed me out.

I also played a bit of the multiplayer for the first time. I generally despise playing with strangers but it's way more fun than I expected - it does a really good job of keeping the tension of the main game.

xpost @ tracer, seriously, play on hard for sure. I did my first playthrough on hard and it's way more fun and survival-horror-ish imo. You have to really sneak around and strategize every encounter, at least until you get the flamethrower late in the game.

^oh, good to know. this came with my borrowed PS3, planning on playing it whenever i finish Demon's Souls.

If you like demon's souls you should definitely play on hard. Or the harder-than-hard one, where you don't get to use your sonar thing, which was way too hard for me but if much more of a YOU DIED type of gameplay experience (with lots of checkpoints and pretty fast respawns)

The restarts are seriously amazing in this game. Like 3-4 seconds max.

OK, I think I'm in for hard.

I don't even remember the flamethrower??!? Maybe i never got it ;_;

i'd worry playing through snowville on hard, that part was torture for me

like the story in retrospect more than after i just finished playing but it's one of those things where it gets compressed into smth much smaller in my memory and idk

I like the story as long as I'm thinking about it separately from the gameplay. If you consider what you as the player do to be part of the story, then it's a story in which Joel is a mega-ubermensch who brutally kills his way through hundreds of dudes, rather than negotiating, compromising, and using his wits. That's obviously a standard a lot of games fail, but I feel like it becomes more of a tension as narratives aspire to certain kinds of seriousness.

joel has some massive, violent psychopathic tendencies - that jibes with the story, he's killed hundreds of dudes (at least) before you start playing as the old man

Played through this over the last few days. It's incredibly well made but I can't say I had that much fun playing it, spent more time wowing at the scenery and idle animations etc than all the shoot bang and lame puzzles (though appreciated Ellie giving it the "again?" when asked to stand on a pallet for the nth time.) They do a v good job of funnelling you down a route while making it feel that you are choosing to go that way. Fav bit was start of winter with the deer, is there such a thing as an arrow-based fps, like a Neolithic survival game?

xp yeah of all games where violent behaviour seems to contrast with the character, psycho behaviour is pretty consistent with joel's character. Don't want to spoiler this thread as apparently some people are still playing but there's some shit coming.

I started this again and just got Ellie. Killed Robert (I forgot how disturbing that was; it wasn't necessary to shoot him in the face but we did anyway).

Saw a "Wanted" poster for Riley :(

Is Marlene Riley's mom, by the way? Ellie says "Marlene knew my mom, she's taken care of me." Just a thought... If so, the moment when Ellie and Marlene say goodbye to each other is even more affecting; it's the last connection Ellie had with Riley.

I actually really enjoy the combat. There's something both relaxing and engaging about it, it strikes just the right balance between puzzle-ness and YEAAAARGHness.

I'm not finding hard TOO hard yet, though the supplies are quite few and far between.

By the way, if you played through on normal, you don't get to keep any of your shit if you play through on hard afterwards ;_;

Oh nm:

Riley was born at some point in either 2016 or 2017. When she was younger, her father was infected with CBI and killed her mother, tearing her to shreds. Riley was forced to kill him in order to save her own life.[5]

anybody ever read the comic?
http://thelastofus.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_of_Us:_American_Dreams

it's sitting on my pile of TPBs yet to read, i should read it

is the Left Behind side thing worth playing? how long is it?

a) this thread including me universally says yes
b) 5 or so hours? maybe less

I'd say 3.5 or 4 but absolutely worth playing

ok that seems manageable, will give it a go. thanks!

Just met up with Bill (Hicks?)

it's the guy who played dan dority from deadwood. looks like him too:

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120718152858/thelastofus/images/5/52/Wearl.jpg

"Ellie."

"What?"

"Tell 'em Ellie is the name of the little girl who BROKE YOUR FUCKING FINGER!"

Played it again on hard. I was surprised by how easy some sections were. Fights that were permanently burned into my brain, locales that I knew were coming up and which put a knot in my stomach, wound up being not too big of a deal. Obviously it helped that I vaguely remembered my successful strategies from the first time through. But I suspect that fewer supplies actually made it easier, in a way, because I had to play smarter. Several sections that I'd blasted through, with immense difficulty, the first time around, I just stealthed past, no biggie, see ya suckers. And knifing the cannibal in the steakhouse was a piece of cake, almost disappointingly so.

The only place I really got stuck for awhile was before the cannibal turns on you, in that fucking concrete room with the clickers and runners coming through the windows and the bloater who comes down through the ceiling. I was quite unlucky in that I had only one tick of health left when that scene started so any hit was fatal. Kept me on my toes.

I found myself wanting the melee combat to be just a little smoother and better, but in general the combat is just so satisfying to me for some reason in this game. (I haven't played enough other games to really know why, I don't think.)

remastered version looks fucking good. enjoying this more 2nd time around

I always soup up my melee weapon just because connecting with some fool's skull and yanking a nail through it feels so fucking good

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i watched the new planet of the apes movie the other night and was struck by how much it reminded me of the last of us:

http://static2.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1836331.1403200492!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/dawn-planet-apes.jpg
http://geeknation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/media_dawn_planet_apes_20140619.jpg

i..... totally don't remember that scene from last of us?? i remember the monkeys in the lab, and the giraffes

neither of those shots are from the game, they're both from the movie. it was the production design of the movie which reminded me of tlou rather than the presence of the apes

movies, games - who can tell the difference these days!

the promise of night trap finally fulfilled

good call, definitely reminds me of the Pittsburgh chapter

That 2nd shot is the Stockton Tunnel:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/2548285.jpg

i started this over the weekend, on hard. i like it! so far bullets are so scarce that it's not even worth starting a firefight, stealthily strangling everybody one at a time (ie Batman-style) seems like the way to go.

it reminds me of I Am Alive, except with a giant budget.

Fans of this game will probably want to see The Girl With All The Gifts

It's essentially the same plot with a v good twist to the setup.

Looks interesting for sure

Sold out already, but loved this poster commissioned for "Outbreak Day" (their attempt to keep pushing this franchise?)
https://mondotees.com/blogs/news/celebrating-the-last-of-us-for-outbreak-day-2016

playing this on grounded difficulty is so stressful, i've made it pretty far tho. the hanging upside down in the trap and shooting part took like 30 tries

so many empty drawers

not sure this game needed a sequel at all but the trailer for part 2 is certainly atmospheric:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqU58Q72acA

Ellie will be the lead playable character in The Last of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog has revealed in a panel session at this year's PlayStation Experience.

Neil Druckmann took to the stage with Troy Baker - who plays the returning Joel, the main playable character in the first game - and Ashley Johnson, who plays Ellie.

Details were understandably thin for a game that's not due out for a while - and the trailer was intended for next year's E3 but Naughty Dog elected to show it at this year's PlayStation Experience - but Druckmann did give a broad view of what to expect.

The story is set five years after the first game, with Ellie now 19 years old. "If the first game, the theme was the love between these two characters... This story's the counter of that," said Druckmann. "It's about hate."

The Last of Us' original end drew lots of praise, leading many fans to believe the story of Joel and Ellie did not need a sequel - something Druckmann addressed.

"So much thought went into this - I know there's trepidation about going back to these characters. We feel that as well. No-one loves these characters more than we do, and we wouldn't do it if we didn't have the right idea. I had ideas with different characters and it didn't feel right. The Last of Us is about these two characters. All I ask is that fans of the first one put some faith in us - we're going to do right by you."

Calling it now that Joel is a ghost and Ellie is avenging his killers

spoiler alert ffs

i still haven't played this game but am so looking forward too. i may have to buy a PS4. can you play Demon's Souls on it?

damn it zappi, i hate that you're probably right

i'm still 100% behind the hype ofc

didn't need a sequel. will still play it. pls do not fuck this up naughty gods. get hype

I just started playing this and:

it's never scary but it is frequently intense.

I will tell you that I let out an entirely undignified yelp once when I was ambushed by a runner.

I wish I could play it for the first time again

leee are you talking about the sequel?

sequel isnt out yet

I'm playing the original! (I've taken a long break from console gaming.)

And without checking any advice, I started my game on Normal difficulty and am currently at the sewers (so about halfway through the game?), don't quite feel like starting over. ESPECIALLY don't want to retry the hotel bit with the bloater, which was all I could do not to completely freak out (even though I ended up just sprinting to the exit) (I'm so bad at this game!).

Just finished this. Really reminds me of Citizen Kane.

lol

was this the game responsible for the current generation of Dad Games

what are the current Dad Games?

so many empty drawers

lol.

OK so the Winter section was a bear, I'm amazed that I was able to make any progress during the whiteout sequences because I was scared out of my wits and was just running to avoid gunfire without any clue about where to go -- one of the times I was thankful for how linear the game is. But after that the difficulty started to melt away, in part because some of the stages became, with all my dying, a de facto training ground for me, which made the last two stages a lot more tractable (and dare I say easy?).

Except the hospital stuff was still hard! But it also forced me to use smoke bombs in a somewhat strategic manner.

I never got to actually use the flamethrower!

xp witcher 3, god of war, theres several other big ones from the past few years but im blanking on em at the moment.

but yes, this was totally the game responsible (+ Telltale's Walking Dead S1 which was around the same time iirc)

One thing that annoys me though about the game is the compulsive scavenging mindset it forces on you, because of which I missed the giraffe petting part.

Oh and BTW, Tommy is IMO definitely modeled after a lesser Baldwin brother (Stephen?).

always seemed more like sawyer from lost to me

For Part II, it'd be great if Ellie knows how to swim, it'd be even better if she only knows how to dog paddle.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-last-of-us-and-the-post-apocalypse-by-darran-anderson

Great longform article on post-apocalysm by the Invisible Cities author.

i played the first 3 hours or so of the remastered ps4 version and just wasn't into it at all. but does it get better after that? i'm assuming that i continue helping the girl get to wherever i was supposed to be taking her, but then something happens and i end up having to be her guardian more or less full time, and i don't want that and neither does she, but then we go through some shit together and we slowly bond while learning that in this terrible land of zombies and death and terror, the capability to love and be loved is ultimately the thing worth living for? meanwhile solving little puzzles, moving ladders around, and judiciously saving ammo and going through lots of cutscenes where the little girl is moody and hates me but is slowly starting to respect me? and at one point i get really injured (or maybe just straight up die) and end up playing as her for a significant portion of the game? i'm just making all this up and would like to be very wrong and surprised. so many people adore this game, so it makes me think that there must be something more to it.

That was a really assholey way to ask that question, sorry. I guess it’s better phrased as something like “is this more of a really well polished action-adventure game, or is there something really innovative about it that I haven’t seen yet?” That sounds assholey too. Maybe I’m just an assholey. It didn’t help that I played through the first hours of the game with someone who was adamant that it was the greatest game of all time, so I was naturally kind of inclined to pick it apart (internally) as I went, which is kind of an assholey tendency, I know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTSGp4UdEvQ
in my mind your two posts were spoken aloud in this voice
but tbf and answer your question, no, there isn't really a great innovation you're looking for. it's just really exceptionally well done

good article brocc

xp
your plot guesses are pretty much otm haha
as you suspect it's a well polished action adventure game
I remember someone (on here?) calling these sort of games "content tourism", being led thru a linear path of set pieces while giving you the illusion of agency

xpost Weird, that Family Guy clip briefly was replaced by a Last of Us 2 trailer for me, then reverted back to Family Guy after I reloaded the page. .

hahaha, uuugh, i'm sorry. i would prefer that my posts be read in the voice of the crystal river boy on the right from 3:35 on in this video, but i brought that on myself.

i'm sure we've already discussed stories + videogames before, but i can't find it at the moment. in the spirit of being the ilx i want to see, i'll start a thread on it

As someone who feels that story is not inherently but in actuality an afterthought (at best) in most videogames, I was surprised to find myself getting a lil emotional during the opening portion of this game.

(I never got too far beyond that, though.)

They've made a point of emphasizing that story is an important context for the apparent ultra violence of the sequel. Likewise, as discussed elsewhere, there is apparently more emotional payoff to Uncharted 4 if you've played the previous games. Most games and esp. game series have mere scenarios or setups for action, or boast pretty elliptical/confusing/optional narratives. But as graphics get better and better and more and more "realistic," and games intersect and overlap with the qualities of feature films - and as feature films become more and more like video games - I assume there will be a gradual but still ever greater emphasis on story.

Has there been a high profile (or low profile) collaboration with a game developer and A+ author or screenwriter yet?

Pretty sure whoever did this has won at least a Pulitzer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhG9D9UO7c

i'd say there was plenty of context for the ultra-violence in the first game (at least, beyond the first Uncharted, for instance). the second one looks even more violent, but that world has already been established as pretty sickening so i wasn't that taken aback. Plus The Walking Dead has been on for like eight seasons now and has really normalized this kind of thing, for better or worse

if anyone cares to join me on the story tangent:

storytelling, plots, and narratives + videogames

http://www.thelastofus.playstation.com/outbreakday#sf198111575

Damn this sounds like a Plastikman track (spoiler-free!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn50VaRva0s

Not TLOU2 news, but still:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ae2ug8/the_last_of_us_in_a_nutshell/

this is probably a good thread to say that i didn't realize until last week that life is strange 2 came out!

LIS has such a cool vibe i just recently played it

I bought LIS last month! Haven't had the chance to play it yet, but nice to hear it get the ILG stamp of approval.

there are some cringy parts and it's not for everyone but i overall loved it .

I don't know this game (LIStrange). Is it worth $5 for the "Complete Series?"

yes!

Oh, wait, it's for PS3, don't think I can play it on PS4?

I bought it for PS4! It's pricier than the PS3 version of course: $6.

I got that a while ago, and I need to backlog the other series and the sequel before I can even start the first one right

there's only one episode of S2 out now iirc or maybe I've misunderstood

Nhex, I may be misinterpreting your post but from what I've gathered, LIFE IS STRANGE can/should be played before LIFE IS STRANGE: BEFORE THE STORM which is a prequel.

i should go back to it. i played the first ep (maybe 2) and it was charming but not super compelling to me - maybe it picks up?

xp ...right... also that prequel before LIS2

Hold up, is Life is Strange kind of a choose your own adventure game? Or are there control mechanics? If it's the former seems better suited for something like the Switch. Even then, I got Thimbleweed Park for the Switch way back and haven't really played it because I didn't find the gameplay (as such) compelling. The reviews of Life is Strange are super strong, but without seeking spoiler-y gameplay vids it looks like maybe it's a bunch of cut scenes connected by asking you to pick from a pair of choices?

yes it is a story game where you make choices and walk around - not for everyone but i loved it and feel like it shares a vibe with last of us

Which I haven't played yet, but that (this) one has character mechanics, right? You control the character, fight, hide, explore, right? It just has a strong narrative on top of it, correct?

Last of Us is an action/stealth game

Life Is Strange is a supernatural story game

life is strange is like a telltale game (tho not actually a telltale game)

File under: BUT WHY??

https://kotaku.com/the-last-of-us-is-getting-an-hbo-tv-show-1842124338

seemed inevitable, consdidering how many movies/tv shows were blatantly inspired it since the game game out

hell of a time for this game to come out

yeah, think i’ll be skipping this one for the foreseeable future tbh

is it a tv show or DLC where they convert all the content to COVID-19 carriers?

June 19th!

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2020/04/27/release-date-updates-for-the-last-of-us-part-ii-ghost-of-tsushima/

Oh and apparently there's a massive story spoiler that got leaked over the weekend on Youtube, so beware.

It's gonna be an annoying two months trying to avoid those spoilers.

first review i've seen.

https://kotaku.com/the-last-of-us-part-ii-the-kotaku-review-1844006193

let me just excerpt a few phrases that jumped out at me on first skim...

Everything in The Last of Us 2 takes work. Every weapon reload, killing blow, and crafted item takes time and button presses. At times the game is painfully slow; even in the most action-packed sections you put in effort to move things forward. You’re paid for this work in a grim story and explicit violence. It can be exciting and beautiful, but mostly I just felt like shit.

...This gives the game a sense of effort and scale that make traversing a few city blocks feel like a huge adventure, but it’s also exhausting.

...As suggested by interviews with its creators and its own marketing, The Last of Us 2 is meant to feel very, very bad.

...My playthrough of The Last of Us 2 felt terrible to experience. Over the course of my 27 hours with the game, it grew to the point of feeling nearly unbearable. This wasn’t because it asked me hard questions about my own capacity for harm or revenge, or pulled some Spec Ops: The Line-style moralizing about video game violence. Despite Druckmann’s promised “philosophical questions,” I never felt like the game asked me anything. Instead, it told me “brutality,” repeatedly and louder, until by the end I couldn’t hear what it was trying to say at all. Characters make hideous, irredeemable choices, over and over. Everybody suffers, physically and emotionally, in graphic detail. This is all intended to prove a point, but the only point I got from the game was simply to be required to stare at violence, and play through violence, and then do that again, and more, and again, and more.

BACK OF THE BOX QUOTE
“What if every terrible thing you can think of, but more of it?”

TYPE OF GAME
Misery simulator

honestly i'm sure kotaku is struggling and knows that they'll get more traffic if they run a negative review, because every other outlet is going to give it a 9.0 best new music or above

wow what a difference a misreading makes. at first glance i thought that said "everything in the last of us 2 works" and then i reread and it means practically the opposite.

i was v momentarily excited lol

I'm hard-pressed to recall a bad review that left me more intrigued about the work being 'panned'.

Sounds like Green Room: The Game (i.e. not fun but also 'fun' isn't the point)

polygon's review is more negative than kotaku's i think!

i'm in the middle of the first one now (never got that far), but my least favorite part of the game are the "puzzles", and i really dislike watching the animations to climb up a ladder or help someone else up over a ledge several dozen times per hour. it feels like half of the game involves finding the ledge and tapping a button to help someone climb over it.

the relentless cynicism/negativity/depression of the series doesn't bother me so much, but hearing that the gameplay remains much the same is enough to convince me not to bother

I'm hard-pressed to recall a bad review that left me more intrigued about the work being 'panned'.

Lou Reed & Metallica - Lulu Poll

I guess tbf I never got very far into the first game for pretty much the reasons you give.

who didn't find green room fun??

Not really a fan of the Naughty Dog style but I did play and (mostly) like the 1st one way back on PS3.

That said I have absolutely no interest in playing another one. Especially right now.

It's the feel bad game of the summer!

thing is, death stranding was also supposedly a "feel bad" game, but it's actually really fun (imo)

xposts Green Room was bracing af but fun is not the descriptor I'd use. Like riding a rollercoaster where survival is maybe a 50/50 proposition at best.

i would never play it but i appreciate the concept of a miserablist hyper-violent video game that is philosophically anti-violence. you love killing enemies in video games? well here, experience the full range of sights and sounds involved in murdering this cute dog. you like that?

So many horror games veer explicit torture porn, there's something to be said for the experience being bad vs fun or "escapist, " though don't know if it makes for a better game.

thing is, death stranding was also supposedly a "feel bad" game, but it's actually really fun (imo)

would never play it but i appreciate the concept of a miserablist hyper-violent video game that is philosophically anti-violence. you love killing enemies in video games? well here, experience the full range of sights and sounds involved in murdering this cute dog. you like that?

― na (NA), Friday, June 12, 2020 11:56 AM

haha, yeah, that reminds me of (something someone said here?) the idea of a game where you spend the first 5 minutes killing something and then spend the rest of the game in a panic about what happened, trying to cover it up, and/or coming to terms with it and trying to forgive yourself

that was some kind of adult swim web game, i forget the name

i liked the first one if this got raves across the board maybe i'd bite but it feels like it'll be $30 soon and the reviews seem inconsistent and don't make me excited to play. "misery simulator" sounds like fun but i think i just want a sequel to afterlife

I haven't played the first one yet, so I figure by the time I do this one will be, like, $20.

skimming the reviews, making me reconsider. i love the first one, so i was going to get this for release day...

mainstream reviews are almost universally positive, but the sites I generally trust have much more mixed reactions (Polygon, Ars, Eurogamer)

Didn’t eurogamer give it an essential?

Overall positive yes

Are the problems reviewers have with the gameplay, or are objections related to thematic aspects of the story and presentation? The last high profile games I can think of that got some very mixed reviews were Rage 2 and Days Gone, and I guess Death Stranding, but fans really seem to have grown to like those second two, if not the first.

when the gameplay consists of brutally murdering people i don't think you can disentangle that from the thematic aspects in this case!

I guess, but plenty of games consist of brutally murdering people. Like, I remember hearing good things about Far Cry 3, so I watched a couple of videos and it seemed massively unpleasant, like, referring to women as bitches before stabbing them in the neck sort of stuff.

the kids can’t go to bed quick enough to suit me

idly mulling whether to start on “hard” once i get down to brass tacks later on

Yeah I thought about it but went with normal.

FWIW a few minutes and I murdered a bunch of kids, in a snowball fight.

A few minutes IN.

reading the reviews it sounds like this game spawned from the violence-in-videogames-what's-it-all-mean discourse that popped up every once in a while for a decade but the world has moved past that by now. maybe the world's also moved past naughty dog style cinematic experience games. in any case it takes a really long time to make a game

I caved and bought it. See you guys in a week or two.

that’s going to be the cleanest fucking fretboard in zombieland

lol Leee

in the walking bits i keep unconsciously trying to keep 6 feet away from everyone

i'm waiting to hear y'all's reports back b4 i buy this new but yr excitement is infectious

The first one is sitting in a drawer. Have to Finish death stranding first

i love everything about this so far.

Same. Not a whole lot different from the first game so far, except the narrative has been slacker, and the combat encounters seem more dynamic.

Oh and the trick of sitting on your upgrade vitamins until you're low on health to save on a health kit doesn't work quite as well because the health upgrade is the third level on a skill tree now.

Yeah i think i was expecting it to be a really different game somehow given various things i’ve read so i’m very pleasantly surprised that i still get to creep around and shiv monsters and snap fools’ necks. There’s a nice emphasis on scrambling and exploring. it feels more open somehow. and good god the first time you realise that your only move is to run? fuuuuuuuck

been watching some playthroughs. this looks incredible

Is expecting to binge the game this weekend, and after putting in about 8 cumulative hours yesterday, my hand started to hurt. 😟

I'm not sure why I like TLOU so much when I hated playing the Uncharted games.

cause it’s got heart? but also gameplay-wise it’s more MGS than uncharted imo

Hah, that sounds reasonable on both counts!

It’s also got heavy horror energy. Christ almighty. I’d sooner let my kids watch Alien than play this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tero0sRNi8U

I watched a full stream of Part 2. I don’t really want to pick at the flaws right now. This game takes big risks, and I think I need to sit on it for a while. I can appreciate what the Kotaku and Polygon reviewers are saying, but “misery simulator” is also (deliberately) glib. There’s a lot more going on than that. Themes that could seem trite on paper turn out to be far more absorbing when given time and a world in which to develop. A lot probably depends on how far you can buy into the depiction of violence, as well as the verisimilitude of the crazy lengths these characters are willing to go to. But it must have essentially worked on me since I was just really sad at the end.

wait.... isn’t it like 25 hours or something??

Yeah, I was stuck inside this weekend.

Oh I see what you meant. I meant a full playthrough, over a few separate streams.

Is there a stream you preferred? I don't think I could invest in the time to play it but I could have it on in the background while doing other things.

just a little light evisceration over dinner

Yeah the thing that strikes me as myopic (though I've been studiously avoiding reading reviews as a stringent anti-spoiler policy, so I may be missing some of the current context) is that the critics are forgetting about the first game. The gameplay loop is fairly basic, and resources are deliberately scarce. In other words, the not-fun qualities aren't new to Part 2, on top of which is overlaid a story that, on paper, is trite. But you get into the game, the polish and care and overall execution given to the conventions are notable.

I didn’t realise til yesterday that you can tweak a million individual difficulty settings using the “accessibility” menu. I’m considering slightly reducing the amount of resources I get but keeping everything else the same. Still haven’t come across my first roll of tape yet though!

Same here re: tape and blades!

The narrative slackness I mentioned earlier is, I think, caused by the semi-open worldness of some stages, with optional areas for you to clear, which don't really advance the main story and only offer some modest character building.

I’m super fine with it. Love taking down WLFs.

Hoo boy the stage before the movie theater is INTENSE.

man whenever you have to descend into some flooded basement it’s like “oh fuck”

but yeah I really enjoyed that whole pre-theatre set of sequences - partic the TV tower

i am completely in love with Dina, obv

The hotel basement in Part 1 is actually too much for me! It's one of the sections that I always dread going through because I can barely hold it together when I play it (suburb sniping is the other one that I dislike, but more because of how stressed it makes me).

The subway portion in Part 2 OTOH is intense but still fun.

agreed. it’s high drama. something great about moments when the high tension of sneaking turns into a firefight. you try to delay that transition as long as possible. not as fun when it’s just pure fight-dodge-figh.

not as fun when it’s just pure fight-dodge-figh.

AKA Uncharted!

I sat down to play this last night.. went through the whole theatre sequence, which was lovely, and then... I put it down. It's a little too much. I just didn't have the desire to get back into the ultra-panic. I'm sure that will change. But I need a break.

Yesterday I googled "the last of us scary moments" to see if anybody had video documentation of that portion of the first game where (I think it's in the school?) you finally come across a mushroom in full maturity, a seated corpse with full extended fungal bloom, I remember wanting to throw up. (It made a similar scene in "Annihilation" feel tepid in comparison)

i am REALLY not a fan of these dogs

this is a great piece, probably the most insightful review i've read:

https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2020/6/12/21288535/the-last-of-us-part-2-review-ps4-naughty-dog-ellie-joel-violence

I think the problem is really that it's a game and not an HBO show. That would make it easier to calibrate the level of violence the characters inflict against their stories/journeys to be more proportionate, understandable and selective. Naughty Dog wants to tell a story the way those famously gritty and violent comparable hit shows do. However, for it to be a game with content, they need to jam a considerable amount of encounters and situations for you to fight your way through. Enemy types are developed for the sake of variety of mechanics and increased strategy. When those varieties need to make sense in the context, one obvious idea for instance is including dogs, because obviously the military style enemy set would utilize them. And each enemy set comes with their unique play-style challenges, so this is a perfect idea for this category. On the mechanics side, the dogs create a challenge where the player needs to worry about being more easily tracked and found. OK, but all enemies need to be defeat-able. Therefore, merciless dog killing in a game that makes a great effort to look believable. That's a recipe for sadness. And the amount of human murdering- well, the need for there to be game content in between plot points means you kill hundreds of believable human beings with very peripheral personal involvement with the main characters. And rather than go "unsympathetic henchman" which is typical with the overly militaristic enemy trope, they've set a precedent within their games to humanize all the extras or minor roles, and they're doing that because popular gritty Golden Age of Television shows influenced them to tell the story that way. So the collision of story and gameplay content makes for a very disturbing combo imo.

And the amount of human murdering- well, the need for there to be game content in between plot points means you kill hundreds of believable human beings with very peripheral personal involvement with the main characters. And rather than go "unsympathetic henchman" which is typical with the overly militaristic enemy trope, they've set a precedent within their games to humanize all the extras or minor roles, and they're doing that because popular gritty Golden Age of Television shows influenced them to tell the story that way. So the collision of story and gameplay content makes for a very disturbing combo imo.

yeah, for sure. i don't experience it as "disturbing" so much, although i could definitely see how others would. it bothers me more that the relationship between the story and the player is non-sensical.

when a game asks the player to sympathize and care about the fate of games characters like they're real people, there are only a couple routes that make sense:

- the avatar can be a good person that doesn't kill people (unless necessary), and you're roleplaying a good person, or at least not an evil one.
- the avatar can be evil and kill people on purpose, and you're roleplaying an evil person.

games like this ask you to be a good person that kills dozens of people and carries on with their life. it's not revolting or wrong or anything, it's just weird

the more realistic the characters get, aesthetically and with writing/performance, the less the game makes sense

I'll save the Polygon review till after I beat the game.

they've set a precedent within their games to humanize all the extras or minor roles

Minor roles who get to interact with the protagonists in cut scenes, yes, but cannon fodder enemies, no.

- the avatar can be a good person that doesn't kill people (unless necessary), and you're roleplaying a good person, or at least not an evil one.

I don't think the either game argues that the protagonists of TLOU are necessarily good people! The series does, however, make us sympathize with killers.

But this game does seem to want to reverse our perspective on the cannon fodder enemies - the WLFs, at least. We see a lot about how they live, individual enemies call each other by name, they chatter about relationships and stuff while you're sneaking around, they cry out when their buddies are killed. It's a disturbing tension built into the fabric of the game, and I don't see an easy resolution. That's what I was trying to get at with "buying into" the depiction of violence; it's hard to take the violence completely seriously when it's also so constant and brutal, and it's also hard to understand killing hundreds of people in order to bring to a head the specific moral crisis involved in seeking revenge on one specific person. But I had largely the exact same anxiety about the first game too, and I doubt that the creators are unaware of all this.

The hotel that pops up in the flashback after the scope tutorial with Tommy seems heavily modeled after The Overlook from the Shining... was it also in the first one?

i just did this bit last night. the comparison didn't occur to me! now i wish i could go back and check it out.

Re: the polygon article, I actually mainly just really liked their breakdown of the gameplay. I agree with them that the sneaking and the planning is where the game shines and it's annoying when you get railroaded into a straight up fight.

After one too many times finding resources and seeing 'full' next to them I've finally dialled up resource difficulty in the settings. It feels a lot more balanced now. It's genuinely thrilling to find a blade, etc

And I really don't think this game wags its finger at you for being a bad person. At least that hasn't happened in my game yet. They make the feeling of sinking a tricked-out baseball bat into some fool's skull FAR too satisfying for me to ever believe that they don't want you to, in some way, feel good about it.

Oh absolutely, I had a wolf beg for their life and I was blithely and sanguinely, "LOL nah."

@Tracer, I googled and around 5min mark you'll see this hotel from Pittsburgh in the original game which I may have been remembering wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MTWUlDDQzw

I've played "Fade Into You" and "Just Like Heaven" on the guitar minigame,
if I could remember any other chord progressions I'd have given those a shot too.

slight spoiler..

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so i finally got to that scene with nora. when ellie comes back she says she got the info, but... how? nora refused! leading to the “moment of moral indecision” we see (which isn’t really, because anything else would be MORE cruel, given the slow gruesome transformation that awaits)

My interpretation below.
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Even though the scene cuts to black, I assumed she kept hitting Nora afterwards, who eventually broke, which explains why Ellie is so shaken when she's goes back to the theater. Up to this point, she's killed as a matter of survival, but never in such a cruel and calculated way where she's had to inflict pain and suffering. (The closest experience she's had was with David, and that was another horrible trauma that left its mark on her.) It's a heartbreaking scene for me, that she had to transform into Joel, and her realizing the cost on her when she was alone with Dina.

Right okay. Feel like those three blows would have finished Nora off toot sweet but you must be right.

Something this game is really good at is that the combat never feels like a shooting gallery. The enemies aren't amazingly bright but they're mobile and relatively unpredictable. The first game settled into a bit of a pattern of cover, wait for them to stick their heads out, pop them, move on - which we've all seen in a million games like RDR, Uncharted etc - but the gunplay here pretty much always feels panicky and cumbersome and not guaranteed. Enemies will just go ahead and walk around things and get behind your cover, or close in from multiple angles.

Oh boy I think I’ve reached the misery simulator part of the game.

Finished it.
I loved it, ultimately. It's not flawless - a thing this big with this level of sprawl, sort of, can't be by definition - but it worked for me. Calling it a misery simulator far too glib, like jmm said. The game is beautfiul and epic, and traumatic and miserable, but filled with moments of joy and humanity as well.
Does anyone else want a spoiler thread?

I haven't been playing it, just watching a full play-through on youtube in parts. It's amazing how thorough the set design is... They did a great job keeping models and layouts from looking recycled. There's some reused furniture models here and there but on the most part every apartment, house or unique space feels totally believable. It's so immersive and fun to try to imagine all the environments pre-apocalypse in a constant game of before/after. I love the way it snakes the player through it all as well; almost nothing is a one way in one way out. All sorts of zig zagging through a tunnel made up of random rooms or arbitrary sections of buildings and alleys/yards etc. all effectively contributes to the feeling that the city and yesterday's society is 100% ancient history. Every object or area is repurposed by the survivors as resourcefully as possible. Anyway they put a lot of meticulous care into designing the game universe. Thumbs up.

This is probably a really dim question, but some of the shops & locations in Seattle were also in the first game, right? I mean apart from the hospital. Like, there's a music shop with an upstairs where I feel certain I wrecked a few clickers one time in the first game.

Does anyone else want a spoiler thread?

We could use this thread, though we'd probably want to add a spoiler warning in the title:
No more pallet puzzles: THE LAST OF US PART II

Anyway, it's heartening to hear that Part 2 isn't just unremitting bleakness, though I'm in a section that's pretty light on levity -- the first game is unflinchingly grim too but has loads of beautiful and hilarious moments.

LOL, I was the last post in that thread and forgot it existed

I think the misery simulator is replaying the sex scene over and over as a Ludovico technique.

damn, Abby is JACKED.

Wait, are you talking about the gratuitous sex scene?

It's official: I've seen the start screen of this, which means I'll probably start "The Last of Us" this week. (I assume the title is a reference to the handful who have not played it yet.)

I played most of the first one but I found it so long that I eventually just looked up the ending on YouTube lol

I’ll also be starting it as soon as I can dispatch of the last twenty chapters of death stranding

Game on! It's interesting coming to this after "God of War," which refines a lot of the same gameplay (so far). But it's good. Funny that people want to make it into a movie, since it essentially is a movie. Again, so far. There's a lot more going on in this, plot and setting wise, than "God of War," I'll say that much, awesome as "God of War" is.

Also, I know that this is remastered, but it's still an old game. Interesting to see how the same uncanny valley issues comes into play compared to newer games. That is, there are fleeting moments of photorealism that are almost instantly undercut milliseconds later. It's kind of fascinating. I'm curious what the sequel looks like, though I won't get to it until it goes on deep sale. So, like, January maybe.

Still enjoying this, though as of yet intense though it may be I don't really feel much of a threat from it, which is fine, because I like the characters and don't need to feel totally stressed all the time. It's kind of like playing a Choose Your Own Adventure story.

Except you don’t choose your own adventure here!

And you will definitely encounter some high stress stages.

The game becomes exponentially more terrifying if you increase the difficulty.

Oh, I'm sure. I'm just not good enough at aiming and controls to get the most out of that. For example, I have "Doom" on Switch, and gyro aiming helped me immensely (even though I never finished it). Still, I repurchased it on PS4 for pennies, because the slowdowns o the Switch were getting to me, and the regular aiming was trouble enough that I had to start on a different difficulty level.

As I understand it part of the appeal of this particular game is the way the gameplay and strategy changes on different difficulty levels. Right now I'm on "normal," which is fine. As far as "Choose Your Own," I just meant that you can approach certain rooms and encounters different ways with different attempts for different results. At least so far. It's a testament to the design and writing that I like the "adventure" it has chosen for me so far. I'm way slower than most at these games, too, so I'm getting the most out of each challenge.

OK, hit a slightly more challenging part. This game is really about being patient, isn't it? And using your environment?

yes, and being an ice-cold murderer who rips fools’ skulls open. that too

I'm just starting this too. I like that health packs and molotovs are crafted from the same resources. Interesting idea.

The bad graphics makes the horror elements easier for me to take. I couldn't do Resident Evil 2, for example.

Dunkey called this the first "third-person strangling / ladder moving" game

Also running and brick throwing.

I just met Bill.

damn when you get cornered in that house at night and it’s just you versus the menagerie of infected and those two kids haven’t opened the door for you yet fuuuuuck. anybody beating that the first time deserves a diamond trophy or some shit.

What "bad graphics"? Honestly!

It looks pretty good to me.

I've not played any stealth games before, this is really making me shift gears after something as aggro as "God of War." At times it kind reminds me of "Alien: Isolation." Admittedly I moved on from that pretty early, not because it was bad but sort of because it was too good. Lots of stealth, no real cheats, that alien is going to eat you. And yet it lacked much of a compelling story, Alien film mythology aside. This game, though, advancing the story seems like more of a reward for doing some heavy lifting.

re: "bad graphics" ehh you know what i mean. You can make stuff look a lot grosser in 2020 than in 2013.

Oh, I agree with that, actually. Compared to the stuff in, say, the most recent Resident Evil, this might as well be Saturday morning cartoons.

I haven't gone back to play the original since 2013 but it was pretty gnarly at the time

One thing kind of mildly annoying about this game - and it's by no means unique to this game, since it's endemic to survival games - is resource management. There is no way to know if you need to horde certain items because they are rare, or if you're supposed to use them as you find or craft them, which can be a little frustrating. For example, using up your bullets might spawn an ammunition pickup in the near future, or maybe not, which could leave you with no bullets when you need them, which could in turn mean having to start that stage over again. So far on "normal" mode at least I seem to be finding plenty of resources, but maybe I'd be finding even more, say, crafting material if I used up more of my bombs, bandages and whatnot.

I just got through the graveyard, which was fun.

On Normal i wouldn't worry too much about the resources

btw, when i said gnarly i meant it was beautiful (horrific). realizing that statement could've meant the opposite of what i meant

I'm fairly confident that the resources in TLOU are fixed and depend only on the difficulty level. That is, a resource will show up at a certain place whether or not you're running low on it in your inventory.

So I don't need to horde, per se, but I should still use stuff only when I absolutely must?

Hoard arrows, shotgun shells, hunting pistol ammo (and also health kit components) and worry less about the rest. Later on you'll be able to craft ammo which helps quite a bit.

Albert seems to be talking about Part 2.

For Part 1, a rule of thumb is to not craft anything until you know you need it, though you generally can't go wrong with health kits. (I don't use molotovs in most cases, mostly because I save them for harder enemy types.)

Over the course of playing, if your inventory happens to be maxed out when you find more of that item, go ahead and craft something out of it so you can pick that item up. The inventory maximums are there to reinforce a sense of privation (like, really? I can't carry more than a dozen bullets?), so you will almost never be swimming in resources.

heh, I find it hilarious that this world is practically 50% crumbling bricks, but bricks (or attack sticks) you can use aren't always readily available.

wait is this thread not for Last of Us 2 spoilers (as indicated in the other thread...?)

I (and a couple of others) am playing the original game for the first time, partly to to get to the second game but also to get it over with so that people discussing the second game don't spilt the first. So ... no spoilers on the thread, please!

The other thread with Part 2 in the title is the one that has Part 2 spoilers.

I see that now, I don't know how I confused the two in retrospect?

Creeping right along with this game. Things (not at all unique to TLOU) I find hilarious: when you're crouching, afraid of getting spotted and killed, and Ellie is just whistling or standing around doing kid shit. Or how you might sneak up to a big garage door, and then the cut scene is loud as fuck as you lift and yell "the coast is clear!!!!" That kind of stuff. But I do appreciate that it has these built in breathers, unlike, as I might have noted, something like "Alien: Isolation," which is relentlessly stressful as fuck, even at its slowest. Anyway, good game so far, I like the characters. In a lot of ways "God of War" which I just finished before this, refines a lot of the best aspects and features of this one, but it's also a totally different sort of world, which makes the stakes feel a lot lower.

I just hit "FALL," which I imagine is halfway or so? I really like how the difficulty level of this game is calibrated, at least set at "normal." If I take too long in a place, the L3 prompt appears, offering a hint (even if I am usually just taking too long exploring or something). If I keep dying at a certain stage, eventually it will remind me that I can ramp down the difficulty at any time (which is always a nice option, even if I've never taken advantage of it). And if there's a stage with several levels of danger and I die at a certain point, it doesn't kick you all the way back to the beginning, or even back more than a few seconds, which helps a lot.

Hilariously, I just realized that if I am in a new area, crouching and paranoid and using my super hearing, but Ellie is strolling along, then I am probably safe for the time being.

The new game is much better with companions not “breaking the rules” of what you can do, what you’ve noticed, whether enemies are alarmed if they see them, etc.. Though a few times I have noticed enemies stumbling right on top of my companion but not killing them nor raising the alarm - it is rare though. In the first one, runners or clickers could walk right past them and nothing

Btw, a couple of more observations. One, this game is so well written that it can take a pretty familiar apocalyptic scenario and make it much more engaging/intense/affecting than the majority of movies doing the same sort of thing. Two, very predictably and realistically, the people are worse and in may ways more dangerous than the monsters. Three, how come in these apocalyptic worlds, everyone is always hoofing it, or hot-wiring cars, or riding motorcycles and riding horses, but no one ever takes bicycles, which seem like they'd be really practical?

I think I'm creeping toward the end of this. But I'll probably wait until tomorrow because I've enjoyed it (in an appropriately intense way) so much. Confession: one reason I'm steaming through is because I want to watch that 3.5 hour Tim Rogers video on TLOU.

All done. What a great game, made best by incredible voice acting and solid writing. The gameplay almost comes second. It was interesting playing this right after God of War. God of War of course owes so much to this, and the gameplay is even more seamless and complex. And yet, when God of War's main storyline ended it took me totally by surprise, which I think betrayed it superficiality.

I should probably play God of War! Feel like I need to get through GOW 2 and 3 first... just like the Souls games, so many to catch up on.

I didn't play any of the other ones. As I understand it it's a ... soft reboot? Hard reboot? That is, different enough that it doesn't matter, but with enough callbacks to past games to make fans happy.

Oh, I should clarify that God of War's ending took me by surprise because I was not expecting the game to end when it did. Not that the end itself was surprising or anything, just happened and I thought, oh, is that the end?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/e2-80-98the-last-of-us-e2-80-99-hbo-series-casts-pedro-pascal-as-joel-e2-80-98game-of-thrones-e2-80-99-breakout-bella-ramsey-as-ellie/ar-BB1dA89Y

I just saw that they are allegedly *remaking* the first one for PS5, which seems like a waste of time to me. I just played "Last of Us" for the first time ever on PS4, where it had *already* been remastered from PS3, and everything about it was great and *nothing* about it was something I wanted improved. And if people *do* crave improvements, there's the sequel, which I haven't played but which looks really incredible. So why go back to the first one *again* and remake it *again* when all the things that make it great are the very things that won't and can't be changed?

just stinks of laziness, corporate risk-aversion. only been about eight years!

I guess i should finish the second one at some point.

it’s terrible that they will make this incredible game available for the system that the majority of playstation owners will have for the next 4-6 years.. ?

There's already backwards compatibility with the remastered PS4 version on the PS5 though, which is why this comes off so greedy and lazy.

otm, plus the fact that just recently they have massively restructured their japan studio and are killing their online stores, the sort of moves a struggling company would pull, not the biggest brand name in home consoles with 3 out of 4 100M+ sold systems in past generations

i mean, technically playstation is as good as dead in japan but everywhere else they're clearly doing fine so why scrape the bottom of this particular barrel?

Also weird because there is a Last of Us TV show coming out, which is already, if you think about it, basically the game getting remade with the best graphics possible. I guess there are concerns the remake might change the story, too, which could be valid (because I am sure the show will feature some changes) but (don't spoil it for me) I assume the sequel already bakes in a lot of the story from the first game.

last of us 3 should just be a new Pikmin game. The last pikmin - unless you can do something about it!

The production for the PS4 remaster was reportedly very difficult and painful, but I imagine a lot of the reason was because of the differing architectures, which might not apply going from 4 to 5.

That said, waste of time or no I'd probably play the new version. But them, I'm like a decade late to the game (literally and figuratively).

remake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_cPTeiGMxA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRKIWQUucj0

I think that Last of Us is a masterpiece. I loved every second, and can't wait to play the sequel. But the idea of a remake of a remaster of an older title ... I mean, I get it, they want to tie it to the show. But $70 for a game millions have bought and played before, many at least twice? For better graphics but the same story, etc? The game should really be no more than, I dunno, $50, or $20 for those that already own the game.

I suspect it'll be $25 by Black Friday (nearly four months from release). If not, it'll eventuall get down to a price point where I'll buy it a third time

Hmm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Ebc_OFeug

It does make me kind of want to replay this remake before playing Part II (for the first time). For sure at the least I will add it to my "snag when it's $20 or less" PS5 list.

Also this:

https://kotaku.com/the-last-of-us-hbo-max-tv-series-show-trailer-first-1849439621

I'm going to skip the show and wait for them to remake it in 5 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBRRDpQ0yc0

In five years they are just going to remake the show, with better graphics.

In five weeks you'll make that joke again.

it's good casting at least

I'm going to make the same joke at least once per cycle.

i just want somebody to make a limited series of Super Mega Baseball 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3DTWBVJBpo

i'd like to know if this is a snarky Dunkey or a serious Dunkey before i watch

serious

ok, solid

Show is supposed to be great. If I'm going to get caught up in that world again, I think I'm officially starting "Last of Us Part 2" for the first time. Wish me luck! Hope I fare better than John Carpenter.

I'd be surprised if season 1 covers more than Part 1! But I'm also not going to tell someone not to play Part 2.

I just meant that I will be in the LoU mindset, though I did hear that S1 might at least nod to elements of Part 2, or set stuff up. Not that I would notice if I didn't play it first.

So, the show has only THREE episodes left, and I'm going to guess it'll break down like this:

7: Left Behind DLC -- alternating the mall stuff and the flashbacks with Riley, and ending with Ellie sewing up Joel.
8: David
9: SLC/Giraffes

I guess with so few left, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room for weird detours.

Exactly what I figured. And imo it's not enough. All those detours haven't given Joel and Ellie much time together, especially since two of the three likely episodes left mostly focus on them apart. The show is going from Joel literally on the cusp of leaving her to the way it all ends, which seems pretty ... rushed.

Depends if Ep9 is going to have the whole Giraffe backstory detour like Ep3.

captured in Africa,
Sent to the Zoo,
outbreak,
post outbreak shenanigans/bartering with monkeys etc,
meet Joel & Ellie.

Isn't that the plot of "Madagascar"

Maybe they'll reveal that the outbreak started with the giraffes, and all the Last of Us 2 haters will explode with renewed rage.

Although I don't think that the pacing has been compressed for the rest of the season, I do think that Joel going from "you're better off with Tommy" to "Giddy-up, kiddo" felt abrupt without the intervening montage of the three of them traveling back to Jackson that let us see him reconsider.

I get that that whole detour was to show that Joel is starting to feel older and less secure about himself but yeah, it didn't really work quite right for me. Also being an absolute dick to his beloved brother when he said he was married and expecting

I *definitely* think this season should have been episode longer, knowing what's left for it to show. But I suppose one advantage of the show over the game is that Bella and Pedro are actors, not animated, which can let them do some pretty heavy lifting with just a wince or a smile in the way the game (however exemplary the animation) can't quite compare.

While I am impressed at how well they have compressed the game, this episode felt particularly rushed.

Quick perusal of YT shows compilations of all the game's cutscenes take about 3-5 hours (HLTB lists 15 hours to beat the main story) -- so while the runtime doesn't suggest that dramatic content is being cut, maybe the transition from gameplay to just viewing is where things feel wonky for you?

But of course there's more to the game's story than the cut scenes. For example, the stuff with Bill, hanging upside is gameplay, but that whole scene is still part of the narrative. I was skimming a cutscene compilation the other day, and there's a lot of not strictly cut scene that's not included, like the shooting of Marlene. I guess that's not a cutscene, but it's pretty important! Also, of course, just the general gameplay itself develops (the) character(s).

But, like, I find it shocking that the Bill and Frank episode (which is not important, however good) gets over 80 minutes, but this most recent one (which is also ultimately maybe not important, but is dramatically impactful to the connection between Ellie and Joel) gets less an hour. And the next episode is reportedly the shortest one of the season!

And here I was thinking that my Steam Deck was going to replace PS consoles: https://kotaku.com/last-of-us-pc-port-glitch-iron-galaxy-building-shaders-1850278718

3D glitch nightmare fuel... surprised there hasn't yet been a AA game that does these things intentionally. Or maybe there is?

Is this for real? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ftc8vMnakAA6U43?format=jpg&name=large

A new patch for the PS5 version of The Last of Us Part I is now available, including new @HBO t-shirt cosmetics for Ellie, as well as improvements and fixes to combat, accessibility, audio, and more.

Read the full patch notes here: https://t.co/YGzDjEWHM6 pic.twitter.com/CLRTN5wsKu

— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) April 11, 2023

So I guess just cosmetic novelties. Pretty tacky, regardless.

as well as improvements and fixes to combat, accessibility, audio, and more.

Yeah, that's the rest of it.

Pretty good summary of the formal shortcomings of the HBO show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Hs8_DzU3M

TLOU stuff starts at 13:05.

interesting, it's a real testament to this story and its evolution that people are still discovering, discussing and debating it.

gonna hard disagree Josh. the story is pulp trash that we’ve seen a million times. it’s about zombies for christ sake. what made it different was the execution. the acting in particular is tremendous. the co-op mechanic, also not new, actually worked instead of being annoying. the gameplay loops were very satisfying and the difficulty was pitched just right. etc

pulp trash? hmm.

I do see what you mean, but the characters are what ultimately sets it apart, imo, and the characters are the sum of writing and performance, which ultimately adds up to story. The gameplay and all those other important details, I think that's what helps it achieve more than just good story, for sure. But, like, its big inspiration was The Road, which is also pretty familiar stuff, but far from pulp trash, because of it execution. Again, imo.

I don't think Tracer was slamming the game, just noting that the plot itself is rote.

I think the specific callout from the video I linked I wanted to mention was the gulf between the playable action vs. set-piece adaptation. The Capitol Building clicker section is still way scarier in the game than it'll ever be for me just watching it on the show because I can actually fail that section, but something that's easier to overlook is the supply economy, inventory management, etc., i.e. basic gameplay elements that are uncinematic but go a long way to establishing the game's mood.

Yeah, I think I got that, but the video basically enforced that the same story has now been told essentially four different times, each using more or less the exact same framework with their own set of pros and cons. I agree that losing the gameplay is the biggest con, the question becomes how much does it fundamentally change that framework. I agree that it changes it a lot, and I agree with the video, in that the show lost something that the game uniquely provided, despite being overwhelmingly similar otherwise.

mourning the emotional wallop of crafting after hbo had finished sucking all the usable material out of the powerful cutscenes about fatherhood is exactly what millennial gamers had coming to them the moment they signed that infernal pact with roger ebert imo, a learning experience

Drag Me To TV

https://kotaku.com/last-of-us-clicker-bread-sculpture-joel-ellie-1850908509