PixlBit

Here's my problem with reading reviews of games I haven't played: you illustrate your problems very loud and clear, yet I still don't know if I'd consider these problems bothersome or not, whereas with a movie or book, I can at least get some idea without seeing or reading it, based on descriptions. Games just have to be experienced, though. So do the other media, if you want to have an informed opinion honestly, but games are so much more interactive that it's hard to relate how much or little I could relate to words said of them.

 The Last of Us is a GREAT experience let down by a lot of immersion breaking silliness. It breaks it's own rules and takes you out of the experience. Otherwise, the story is great and I enjoyed it overall. 7/10.

Bioshock Infinite seemed to have pacing issues as well.  It must be those high plot ambitions.

Bioshock Infinite also had massive gameplay issues and a fucking terrible boss fight that almost made me quit the game.

I never really felt there were any pacing issues. Like that bit when Ellie tells Joel she can't lose him, that was a way for the game to have Joel avoid admitting he was wrong while still realizing he needs Ellie, which was why he could still lie to Ellie at the end. Joel doesn't admit when he does something wrong, and those guys showing up enabled that to continue.

As for the two bloater thing, you do realize you can just sneak past them, right? In fact, it's pretty damn clear that's what the game expects you to do. I never thought it had any fat to trim either, it would be like telling Resident Evil 4 to do that. Just because it's long doesn't mean there's fat, it's just if the gameplay doesn't click with you, of course you're going to want it to be over sooner.

I was fine with most of the gameplay. The problem is I felt it hurt the overall plot. I feel it's a problem with games that focus heavily on narrative. Some sections feel far too drawn out. It works for some bits, like the two brothers, as you get to know them. Still, with the tunnel, I feel the game could have cut that bit entirely and I wouldn't have cared. In fact, the only part of it I liked was the bus and water bit.

  What you said about Ellie and Joel may have been true, but I still feel it was exectued poorly. I mean it was a bit of a jump, and I didn't even have time for the feelings to set in. Also, this happens so often it's not funny. Sometimes the gunfights don't even make sense. Why am I fighting bad guys while on horseback on the way to find Ellie. Why didn't they get her? It reeks of forced gameplay and elongation. I complain if a movie feels too long, so I'm going to argue if a narratively focused game feels too long.

1. Didn't feel anything with Ellie telling Joel- Well I did. Hell, I was contemplating so much when I was fighting them that it threw me off my game. Because that's how it is in The Laat of Us: Survival doesn't mean you get a chance to mule over these things. The Walking Dead comics do the same thing, it's just a part of zombie fiction.

2. Why didn't didn't get her?- Ellie clearly had a head start so who's to say they were organized or even there when they passed? And the game even shows her fleeing on horseback from even more guys later.

3. Too long- Funny thing is if you take that approach, you lose some of the best parts of the game. Winter for example. That wasn't really necessary to the overall plot, but it was an amazing piece of gameplay. The tunnel sequence after I felt was necessary. They established pretty much every city's overrun with savages or clickers, I wouldn't have bought it if they just got to the hospital. Even from a gameplay standpoint it felt necessary as you hadn't seen clickers for hours so it was a final encounter with them.

There's no set limit on how long a game could be just like there's no limit on how long a movie can be. I don't see anyone saying Wolf of Wall Street is too long even though it's 3 hours because it keeps itself engaging all the time. Same with Resident Evil 4 in terms of games. In fact the first thing I thought after beating TLOU was how no action game has been so long yet so engaging the whole way since RE4. I'm not alone here either. And I know you've said before you didn't like the controls which is fine but it also means the game will naturally exhaust itself a lot quicker for you.

if this is your beef, fine. I'm just saying these aren't really flaws, the game just isn't for absolutely everyone. It has it's audience and caters to them even if it means alienating a large number of people kind of like a far less extreme version of Dark Souls.

The game is absolutely for me. I called it a spiritual successor to RE4 and I don't say that lightly. I love this game, and that's where the criticisms stem from. The control issue I think was from me not playing a console game in a while and having to adjust to characters taking half a millenium to turn around, but once I got used to it I loved it.

 I know you'd lose some of the best parts, and I'm not saying that it's too long from a purely gameplay point, because apart from a few puzzle sections, most of the gameplay is good. I'm saying from a narrative perspective. I beat it in 3 days, and by the end of it I felt that the story meandered too much, and that it would have been more impactful if it were more concise. It's a personal tale, it doesn't need to be this long, especially when there is very little in the way of plot, and most of it is actual character development. I wish Ellie and Joel talked more in the game too, as there were certain areas where I wished she'd just say something.

 I quite enjoyed this game, but it's far from perfect. FAR. There are moments when the game breaks it's own rules that completely bring you out of the experience, like Bill running into clickers, or Ellie standing in front bandits. It's Naughty Dog, they have infinite fucking cash, so you'd think they'd iron some of these problems out. Also, there's one bit where every single clicker knew where I was and chased me like they could see me, despite the fact that I didn't make any fucking noise.

Yeah, if this game doesn't have  flaws, than no games have  flaws, they're just "not for everyone." But that's not how critique works. 

And trust me Blaine,people did complain about The Wolf of Wall Street's length. Every other review I read mentioned it. Too many scenes that provided no deeper insight than similar scenes before them. This is not good writing craft.  Repetitive scenes of debauchery, in which we learn nothing new about the characters we didn't know before. No new insights, no plot progression, no fleshing out of a theme. 

I loved WOWS (favorite of 2013, though I technically saw it this Jan), but it did feel really long, and there were several criticisms of its length. I do disagree that the writing craft is as awful as you say it is, or that we learn nothing new of the characters scene to scene, but after arguing with so many people about the fact I dislike Man of Steel, I'm gonna leave you alone and let you hate it. Doesn't ruin my experience, and I could see how someone could legitimately be really turned off by it, and only view it as a surface level debauchery fest, even if I believe there's more to it. 

Nowhere did I say the writing was awful or that I hated the film (which is the exact opposite of truth). Pointing out some elements of a script as not good craft (according to academic theory) is not synonymous with saying the writing is "awful" in general. It's careless to project that upon me, and it's also careless to assume I don't see below the surface, which I do because I am not careless. It's not a very deep or complex film. I don't need 5 scenes of drug use/sex/partying to convey information about characters and themes that I already knew by the second one.

I would have thought you weren't a fan of the writing/movie based on your description, but if that's not the case, then my bad. I understand the difference between constructive criticism and hating something, but I'm not really analyzing comments from an academic perspective when I read them, so a series of exclusively negative comments about something will paint a certain picture in my head of what the person providing those comments thinks about it during the brief time I read a comment. Again, my bad. I tend to be pretty relaxed when commenting on here, so I guess that's where the carelessness comes from. 

I still think it's a bit deeper than you're giving it credit for, but I honestly don't feel like arguing right now. Have a good day. 

I haven't played this yet, but my cousin got it with his PS3 bundle, so I might borrow it some time. After playing Uncharted 3 though... ugh. I just don't know.

 Uncharted 3 is awful. This feels more like a spiritual successor to RE4 but with a better plot. I'd give it a try.

I was skeptical too after Uncharted 3, but TLOU gave me hope in Naughty Dog again.

I haven't played this game either. I think the game came out when there were just too many Zombie games out and I didn't want this from Naughty Dog. I just rejected it and was like no. No more zombies. At least you didn't pay full price though. Or did you? 

 Funny story, I was actually trying to buy Demon's Souls. I went to JB HIFI and they told me to check EB. They said they had a copy at the other store, which is an hour drive. I thought fuck it, I really want Demon's Souls so I drove to get it. They didn't have a copy. The dude messed up. Because of this, the guy gave me a 15 dollar discount on any game I wanted, so I got TLoU for 25 bucks.

 Anyway, the game is good. I like that Zombies actually feel threatening, and some of them kill you in one hit unless you have a shiv.

I remember Demons Souls had a limited print run first time around and it was hard to find. I bought it new and it sat on a shelf wrapped while I was playing Final Fantasy 13 or something. When the game first came out no one really new what it was. Well that isn't really true. It was compared to another hard PS One game and a few people were anticipating it. Anyway, eventually Sony put out more copies due to the demand and extended online servers. I think after Dark Souls, players have gone back to play Demons to see what it's all about. I read a rumor that Sony is make Demons Souls 2 for PS4, but it's just a rumor. And actually I love the zombie genre, but at the time, I wasn't feeling it. I'm sure Naughty Dog made a good game. 

Yeah. I played Demon's Souls before Dark Souls came out but I never finished it. Then I lost it in the housefire. I'm borrowing a friends PS3 at the moment, and I just want to finish it!

Your final line (the boss fight) was one of the most amazing things I've ever personally experienced in gaming. It wasn't so much the boss fight though, but more or less the way it effected me as a gamer.

Normally I take time to explore and check out my surroundings (hunt for supplies, collectibles, etc), but whenever that scene dropped and switched you to Joel, I instantly made a B-line straight for the objective without second guessing myself. It's weird how much that game made me care about Ellie, and honestly, I don't think I've ever personally experienced anything like that within a game before. Just my two cents though

The most apt comparison I can make is that this game is a more polished version of Manhunt, which is an underrated urban stealth game.  It has a similar brawny art style and hard hitting violence. So yeah, a more refined Manhunt, which is a good thing mechanics wise. Too bad about the played out disaster theme, pointless planks and ladders interactivity, and too-easy human enemies. The plot I couldn't give two shits about; it's stuff I've seen done more concisely in 28 Days Later and The Road, but with more false Hollywood-style emotionality.  The game industry needs to either learn cinematic nuance and subtlety, or develop a narrative language of its own (it has before, but modern developers seem to ignore anything that predates Xbox360).

But the game industry wants to be taken as seriously as Hollywood - which will never happen, the results of "mainstream" gaming can be seen in the poisonous sea of cheap mobile cash-grab games - and when gaming does try to develop its own narrative, people bitch about how poor the plot is. I personally think most of the best story-driven games are fine in the context of the games themselves. They'd make shitty movies, to be sure, but they work just fine as games. Same way most movies make for shitty games. But then, if I wanted that kind of experience, I'd just watch a movie.

I would say the story driven games I consider to be the best written or best told are less obvious about their influences. You could draw comparisons between the Silent Hill series and Jacob's Ladder, but it's really it's own beast, and imo at its best has excelled the horror genre in films for the past decade and a half. Planescape: Torment has tons of literary and genre influences, but it is also it's own thing. And if people don't understand why Super Metroid is a brillianty told video game narrative, without having a conventionally told plot, then they know nothing about the subject.

 I agree gaming works best when it tells it uses it's own narrative tricks. I look to Dark Souls as one example, where the plot is only made available to you if you look for it, by talking to NPC's, reading item descriptions, and paying attention to the world. That couldn't be done in another medium, and it enriches the experience.

 Another great modern example is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, as it uses it's mechanics to emotionally effect the player and incorporates it into the story. Games need to stop aping other mediums and become their own thing.

I highly enjoyed the game, but I tend to agree that they could have cut some of the length down and I would have been fine with it.  I felt similar to you about the tunnel near the end of the game.  I was kind of annoyed when I realized that I had to go through it before actually making it to the hospital.

But I can't really fault companies for putting padding in a game.  I've read too many reviews and message board comments about games being too short and from people that stated they weren't willing to pay for a game if it is not at least a certain length.

...Which is stupid. Realistically, if we want games to be considered art, we should let the material dictate the length. 

Thanks for this blog, man.  I saw this game at #1 on some many top 10 lists, it's too good to be true.  I'm sure it's a good game, but damn.... 

 Yeah dude. It's a GREAT game. Not the best I've played by a long shot and nowhere near the second coming of jesus, but well worth a play.