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 On 02/10/2014 at 09:20 PM by Nick DiMola See More From This User » |
Yesterday I finally wrapped up The Last of Us. I've been chronicling my experience in the forums. So those of you who have been following along via those posts surely know that it wasn't my favorite game. It's nothing awful or anything, it just didn't strike me as anything particularly special.
I guess the problems really started at the beginning - it started way too slow. And by beginning, I mean the first 6 to 8 hours of the game. Narrative was light, character interaction was coming along slowly, and the actual gameplay just wasn't gripping me. I still can't figure out what the game wanted to be. Action? Stealth? Survival Horror? Maybe it's meant to be all of those things, but you know what they say... jack of all trades, master of none.
I'm a big stealth gameplay guy. I've always loved stealth games and The Last of Us committed one of the greatest sins against that style, which is (frequently) giving you no option but to kill your enemies. Most of the time you do need to get into an encounter, it's tedious and my main drive for stealthing often was avoiding any of the annoying fights and the horrid gun play.
Outside of the disappointing and grinding gameplay, the narrative just didn't strike me as anything special. It was occasionally fantastic, but often mundane and the pacing was quite uneven. Ellie is a great character and easily the best part of the game. Her dialog was excellent and they really did bring her to life. I loved that part of the game. Otherwise, the narrative was fairly straightforward and exactly what I expected. Joel, very obviously became a father for Ellie and acted accordingly. That's not surprising and I'm not sure if it's a tale that even really needed to be told.
I wish they would've spent more time giving us interactions with the two of them and existing in nature, but more often than not, Naughty Dog forced you into another tedious combat section or a moment of downtime that was highly focused on looting as much as possible.
All I'll say is that I'm surprised there wasn't more criticism of it. There are some very obvious flaws that most reviews seemed to glaze over and I guess the narrative hit them so hard that they were able to overlook them. Still, I'd expect at least a few dissenters and I didn't see anything of the sort, outside of Tom Chick, who I agree with in a lot of ways on this one.
Long story short, this is almost a disappointment on the level of Bioshock Infinite for me, but I did enjoy this quite a bit more than that. If I were scoring it, I predict it would've gotten a 3/5.
Anyway, thread for today: Live Chat?
Interesting to hear you aren't completely agog over this one. I'm waiting for it to hit the super sale shelf and play my other games in the backlog in the meantime.
Speaking of which, you should play FF XIII-2 like I am. Since you liked XIII, I think you'll like it.
I definitely need to start that one up. I'm always so gun-shy on starting up RPGs because they take so long to complete and they're so hard to put down and pick back up again if I stop midway.
Like right now, for instance, I've got Donkey Kong Country coming next Friday, South Park shortly thereafter, and then Dark Souls II like 1 week after that. It's so hard to squeeze an epic like FF XIII-2 in between the stuff I've already got ahead of me. Might have to push that one to the summer months to get through the inevitable lull.
Well, that's a good line up of excuses. To make XIII-2's case when you have a bit more time, I think it's "only" 20-25 hours and it has chapters. Each chapter has a "The Story So Far [tee hee hee!]" recap you can watch too, which might help if you do have to stop in the middle. I'm not attacking it as fast as I'd like. I'm hoping to get deeper into it this week.
The more I read about The Last of Us from non-reviewers, the less of a desire I have to actually play it. I want to experience the story at some point, but that desire is slowly waning.
I don't want to turn anyone off from playing it. I think everyone should give it a shot if they're interested, and best I can tell, I'm in the very small minority with my opinions on it. I definitely don't think it's proof that games are art or that it's the Citizen Kane of gaming, so take that for what it's worth.
The Citizen Kane of gaming? So what you're saying is this game is not a movie that I think was right to lose out to the more emotionally impactful How Green Was My Valley, despite my respect for it as a hugely important cinematic classic that nonetheless bored me to tears regarding a subject who's personal affairs I care little about, but find fascinating to read about when it comes to his (William Randolph Hearst, in large part the basis for Charles Foster Kane) professional exploits?
Duly noted.
Yeah, I had a similair feeling about this game when I first saw commercial ads for it. I figured it would be like Uncharted, but with waaay more combat, and I knew I wouldn't be into it that much.
Plus, I'm not happy with Naughty Dog going the M-rated route. I'm still wearing my rose colored glasses from the Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter series. Ironically though, I'd be a fool to think that they were progressively going in the direction with each new game series they'd develope.
I wish that they would make another more platformer oriented game. I miss those from them.
It dawns on me now what I wanted from this game after seeing the first released footage was excellent melee fighting. I don't know if it delivers that, but I may play it to find out.
Thank you! I knew this game wasn't all that! Glad I didn;'t bother with it. Suck it "The Last of Us."!
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