The Last Of Us

[Julius]

38 minutes ago, bob said:

I've always wondered about trying this game, but I've been put off by the zombies and horror aspect of it.

How scary, creepy would you say it is? Is it easy to ignore that and just enjoy the story?

I wouldn't say it's so much a case of it being scary (well, apart from one particular moment in a hotel basement; screw that hotel basement), but it's very tense and suspenseful throughout. Even going through this second time I would say I was still on edge a bit. Occasionally having to shake your controller as your torch feigns a sudden death certainly contributes to that. 

What I would say though is that on Normal I was tripping over myself with supplies and the game itself isn't particularly hard, so a lot of the tension comes from the atmosphere and its inhabitants (or lack thereof) a lot of the time, so in that sense I suppose it is creepy. 

I think if you wanted to turn the difficulty down, turn the brightness up a bit, took it slowly and picked up every last supply you could get your hands on to always be chocked up on ammo/melee weapons, the tension would certainly ease up a bit with the knowledge that you're more than ready for whatever comes, especially if you made sure to keep on top of item crafting and keeping weapons fully loaded. I always end up clutching a shotgun and toeing through areas with it drawn when I'm not sure what to expect, but am expecting something, though that didn't really happen this time around as I knew the general lay of the land already.

Another thing I'd mention is that, as I think half of the problem for some is not knowing exactly what's up ahead, you can circumvent this a bit by relying on Listening Mode (R1) to see where enemies are that are making noise in most instances. You can also normally tell something is coming up by supplies suddenly becoming more plentiful. I was also a big fan of clearing out every area before moving on my first time around, but found this second time going through that there are a load of opportunities to just dash through an area. 

It's just a really good story too, and because it's so gripping I think it can be a good motivator to see the game through. Would love to hear your thoughts if you do get around to trying it out 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, bob said:

I've always wondered about trying this game, but I've been put off by the zombies and horror aspect of it.

How scary, creepy would you say it is? Is it easy to ignore that and just enjoy the story?

I'm not keen on horror and gore stuff either, especially with how realistic graphics are these days. I don't think this is really that scary but rather more intense. Some of the death animations can be really gruesome but you can turn these off, which is something I done when playing the game. 

Honestly, I can't recommend this game enough. The story, characters and world that ND built with this game are some of the best that gaming has to offer. If you do go ahead and play it, please let us know how you get on with it. I would love to hear the opinions of someone who is playing it for the first time in 2022.

[bob]

Good to hear there are some other wusses out there.

I might put this game on my list then. Maybe get it for Christmas. Hopefully the PS4 version will get very cheap now there's a new version!

[Julius]

So, the last week or so I've been playing through the Firefly Journey on Factions, and it's been addictively fun -- really surprised at how active it still is, and I think the new Factions that Naughty Dog is working on might be one of the games I'm now most excited about. 

Interrogation is where it's at for me, at least as someone playing solo, and while I wouldn't say I'm great at it (played mostly with people at Lv. 500 and up so far, though there's been a scattershot of lower levelled players like myself), again, it's just been fun. Sometimes we get a sweep, other times they do, but it's most fun when it's really tight, and I've really enjoyed how much crafting plays into it and trying to figure out a half decent loadout. 

Anyways, I've just had the most frustrating thing happen - the really frustrating thing; the I'm actually going to tear my hair out frustrating thing. I was aware going in that occasionally there were missions with a 100% risk to your clan, and so I was careful about what I picked in other weeks as my missions to save some of the easier ones for the 100% risk missions. Went off without a hitch, for example some of the missions will be mark X number of players, revive X number of players, get X downs with X weapon, etc., and this is spread across 3 matches. 

Going into the end of Week 11, the mission I chose for the 100% risk encounter which could wipe out my clan was to get 9 kills with my Burst Rifle across 3 matches. Piece of cake! Last time I did a lower tier and needed to get 6 kills I ended up with 14 or 15, so this should go pretty smoothly. The first two matches were rough, only managed to get 8 of the 9 needed kills, but hey, one last match to go. 

Well, for some relevant background info here to set up the final phase of the story: I've been whitening my teeth over the last 2 weeks, because I had an accident when I was a kid which left me with about ¼ of one of my front adult teeth, and it's had a resin crown since I left high school (...which has lasted more permanently than the 15 temporary resin crowns which all ended up coming out in various way over a 10 year period, but that's a story for another time). Anyways, because resin is the cheapest material used (over here at least), it's stained horribly close to the gum and looks out of place compared to the rest of my teeth, so the plan was to whiten my teeth, then colour match a new crown to my whitened teeth. Awesome. Two weeks of whitening my teeth at night has left my teeth feeling incredibly sensitive, and today I woke up in a lot of pain due to the sensitivity (I think my current crown isn't as airtight as it's meant to be which could mean the gel is coming into direct contact with my damaged tooth). 

So anyways, back to Factions: after my last match left me at 8 of the 9 needed kills, my tooth is hurting that much that I decide to go pop some ibuprofen, and so I grab some and then wait a little while for my tap water to get to the point where it's luke warm before taking it, because tooth sensitivity and all that. Probably takes me a minute - at most - and I come back to see that I've been kicked from Factions due to inactivity. No big deal, right? I'll just load up another game and finish this 100% risk mission to head into Week 12 (the final week of the online journey, you need to play 84 matches and at this point I've played 78), that should be fine, right? 

Haha. Nope.

Tried to start a new game and was met with this: 

The game I got kicked from counted, leaving the 100% risk encounter mission incomplete, meaning everyone died 

So, now I have debilitating tooth pain and I've lost a week of progress in a game...how's everyone else's Sundays going? 

Edited July 3, 2022 by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

That's so harsh.  

I only played enough of Factions to unlock the trophies but I enjoyed my time with it. It felt very unique compared to other multiplayer games and most games I played I was met with a decent amount of teamwork. 

I doubt i'll pick up the new Factions when it does finally get released. Given today's multiplayer climate it will probably be filled with battle passes and constant updates. However, I'm still eager to see how it plays and will happily look on from a distance.

[Julius]

23 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

That's so harsh.  

I guess at least it's in line with the tone of the world of The Last of Us, but yeah, it definitely is! I've looked it up and seen one or two others mention that the time to get kicked might have been shortened in updates over the last few years? 

I guess this means quitting matches after joining progresses things by a day, though, so that knowledge could come in handy...

27 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I only played enough of Factions to unlock the trophies but I enjoyed my time with it. It felt very unique compared to other multiplayer games and most games I played I was met with a decent amount of teamwork. 

Yeah, definitely. I'm not using a headset and am playing with complete strangers, so my experience has ranged from "if we were any more out of sync people would think we were a boy band that split and are being forced to play together" to "I feel really sorry for the opposition, because they're getting wrecked", but it's got such unique modes that every match manages to feel fresh and exciting. 

Would probably be an even better experience playing with people you know, though. Unfortunately, my friends have commitment issues when it comes to multiplayer games; I'll never forgive them for how unceremoniously Monster Hunter World dropped out of our rotation for months after one first 10+ hour session where we all loved it, and then when we were rusty going back to it, the blame was placed on the game

53 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I doubt i'll pick up the new Factions when it does finally get released. Given today's multiplayer climate it will probably be filled with battle passes and constant updates. However, I'm still eager to see how it plays and will happily look on from a distance.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. I'm really excited about it now because Factions has such a strong core which could go so many places, and I'm curious about the potential focus on a multiplayer Naughty Dog story, but it's delay lining up with PlayStation spouting off about the scores of multiplayer games they'll have out over the next few years is definitely a cause for concern. I have no doubt Naughty Dog have ideas for where they want to take it, and I can see it's scale spinning out of control based on that alone, but I feel like things being tacked on by higher-ups is a likely part of it too. 

I'm also concerned about how it's going to be priced. It could be free-to-play, which would be fine with cosmetic microtransactions only...but I can't see a title from Naughty Dog being F2P. On the opposite end, it could be full price, but after seeing how they wrecked Gran Turismo 7 with its microtransaction economy and how it destroyed the balance of the game, I don't know if going full price really gets us anywhere. A nice middle ground could be a £30 - £40 title, but, well, we know what PlayStation can try to pull with £70 titles. It's such an odd position to be in considering they haven't really got a stream of multiplayer games going yet, but I guess that just shows how much of a shock Gran Turismo 7 was to most with its microtransactions  not to mention that the story could easily just be a seasonal thing a la Fortnite

[Julius]

Decided to go with the Hunter Journey in Factions after the little mishap I had with my first Firefly Journey, which I ended up completing on Monday night.

After that, I got around to going back through the Firefly Journey, which I finished off this evening. 

Man, Factions is such good fun! Just the mechanics - crafting, listening mode, etc. - coming over from the main game and using a lot of areas from the main game (maybe tweaked or made wider with some returning assets) seems so simple, I know it's something which was much more common at the time (hamfisted multiplayer modes in single player games), but it went so far for me, I had an absolute blast. A lot of moments of chaos, glee, courage, and me in fits of laughter when things happen like myself and an opponent just fist fighting in the middle of a shootout. Can't believe I nearly missed out on it through thinking it had been closed down, and again, I was pleasantly surprised by just how active it still is today. 

Very much hoping the next Factions can recapture even half of the fun with such lean mechanics that this game managed. 

Anyways, I still found that I couldn't put The Last of Us down...so I booted up Left Behind again. I played through it a few weeks ago, but this time I wanted to focus less on revisiting the story and more focusing on the gameplay and setting myself a challenge: completing it on Survivor difficulty. It's rare that I play things outside of Normal/the default difficulty for a game, but I've found it happening increasingly over the last few years, so thought I'd give it a shot – it's not like I can find it in me to put the game down anyways! 

And, well, isn't it crazy what a change of difficulty can do for a game? Left Behind is a very lean bit of DLC which doesn't have too much available in the way of supplies compared to the base game, even at Normal difficulty, and Survivor just kind of hides it all away from you. It takes away Listening Mode, too, and the AI is much more robust and reactive (for example: enemies I didn't even notice could react to my flashlight being on before I very much noticed this time!), which means a lot more sneaking around is required. Well, that and keeping a trusty brick to hand...you know, just in case! And, as Ellie puts it: I AM BRICKMASTER 

Anyways, long story short: managed to beat it. That final section...took some trial and error, that's for sure! It's a drawn out fight with two phases, and considering just how much opposition you come up against in both, having so little ammunition to hand really meant I had to make every shot count, and so repeating the same section over and over again really forced me to key into a side of gaming I haven't really toyed with since I got addicted to speedrunning in Astro's Playroom, which is really getting to grips with a level, it's layout, any AI, and just playing around with the order you tackle things in, and which direction you tackle them from.

This was the end result (kindly ignore me not finishing on a headshot ): 

Honestly, I loved The Last of Us before - it's story is fantastic and it's gameplay is very accessible and fun - but playing through Left Behind on Survivor showed me a whole level of depth to the game that I didn't even realise was there. As soon as I completed the first encounter, the reason for there being an absurd abundance of bricks and bottles lying around: it was for these higher difficulties. I'm sure there are some other changes in terms of supplies beyond there being less at higher difficulties (maybe different supply configurations?), but at least on a surface level, that seems like a really smart way to not have to completely rework every encounter for every difficulty when it comes to the level's environmental design, available supplies, etc. 

And, well, I still find that I don't want to put the game down (RIP my backlog). I'm kind of toying with the idea of playing through the main story again on Survivor - hell, maybe even Grounded - off the back of my experience with Left Behind, I really enjoyed that last section that much. Definitely one or two encounters I won't be looking forward to...but I doubt that'll be enough to put me off 

[Julius]

On 7/9/2022 at 3:28 AM, Julius said:

I'm kind of toying with the idea of playing through the main story again on Survivor - hell, maybe even Grounded - off the back of my experience with Left Behind, I really enjoyed that last section that much.

I started a Grounded playthrough on Saturday, with the caveat that, as somewhere along the way this became a Platinum run, I used a little workaround to just jump straight into Grounded+ (well, more like Grounded+++ at this stage); while Grounded isn't necessary for the Platinum, having two Grounded trophies (a Grounded and Grounded+ playthrough) be the only outstanding trophies in the way of getting 100% would have bugged me, and I think I've only got the energy for one last playthrough of Remastered with Part I just a month and a half away. Over the last few weeks I've put nearly 100 hours into the game, having played through the story twice (Normal+ and Easy++ for collectibles - we'll get into that another time, but good lord was that a bit of a pain and boy was I freaking out for a moment when I thought I'd missed a pendant before realising that NG+ means that the progress kind of carries over!), Left Behind twice (Easy - collectibles - and Survivor), and Factions essentially three times, so yeah, just this one last playthrough for me of Remastered I think; I'll be saving a pure Grounded run for Part I if I'm not fully TLOU'd out at that point 

What I will say though, is that it's tough as balls, which I've loved but definitely been left frustrated by once or twice, and I actually think being fully upgraded after playing Left Behind on Survivor has left me needing to readjust (the lack of sway using a bow, for example, is throwing me way off my headshot game). I'll dive into some specifics of my Grounded+ adventure in the spoiler tag - I've just finished up in the suburbs - but generally this run is both shining a light on brilliant things the dumbed down AI in lower difficulties simply make you take for granted about the game, I've noticed some awesome details which I didn't in earlier playthroughs; I actually made it up to Bill's Town without firing a single non-mandatory bullet, which felt great. But good lord, is the ally AI dumb as rocks. I mean, seriously: kick rocks Henry. 

Spoiler

Man, where to even begin! 

Let's start with the bricks and bottles to stun and then clobber enemies with a weapon, carrying over with my time in Left Behind on Survivor: it's fun as hell, even if it leaves you running around like a headless chicken at times, and creates an awesome risk-reward dynamic of knowing when to rely on the technique. 

The parts that I were dreading going into this run were the hotel basement, the sewers, and Silver Lake, and yesterday I got through the first two, and honestly? They weren't nearly as bad as I thought that they would be, both only taking two attempts to get through (it really helps that I've played through the game a few times recently to know the layouts of these levels, but actually Factions maps in particular have really helped to learn some areas back to front too outside of these). 

So, the way I normally take on the hotel basement now is to go upstairs, hunt the four stalkers down, blast their heads off, grab the key card, try the door (so I don't need to watch that animation when I return), go downstairs and turn the generator on, then leg it back upstairs. It's tried and true, and a method I used playing Normal+ and Easy++ a few weeks ago, but Grounded was an entirely different experience where I ended up sneaking around, luring the stalkers into the key card room, lobbing bottles/bricks at them (there are a bunch strewn about this area), then hitting them with a pipe before trying the door, going downstairs and turning on the generator. 

This was all going smoothly on my first attempt, although I did use a shotgun shell or two as I only had the brick I walked in with and the bottle on the desk that I could find to take out some stalkers. I grabbed the keycard, tried the door, went downstairs and turned on the generator, then absolutely pegged it to the keycard door. Problem was, there was one thing I didn't expect to come across...

Appropriate Music #1 and Appropriate Music #2. 

So...yeah, I had no idea a Bloater was just going to be there waiting for me as I turned the corner, and so this clip is followed by me immediately pausing and laughing my ass off after the second or two of intense panic wore off. The thing is, it makes perfect sense that it starts off at the end of this infected hallway (and likely jumps down to the right to get to the ground floor), but because I'd never come across it upstairs before, I had previously just assumed (very, very wrongly!) that it spawned a couple of rooms away downstairs, and so that sprinting - my tried and true method! - was safe, because this had never happened before. 

The sewer section I was most concerned about was the part when you get trapped with Sam in the corridor of stalkers, thankfully just aiming with a brick to walk around here slowly and being smart about waiting behind pillars, hiding behind stacks of stuff, etc., worked great, especially considering this place normally turns into an absolute bloodbath for me. First time I got spotted, but second time wasn't too bad! And the way I made it out of the final sewers section first time was a calculated fluke. 

Anyways, I want to mention here what have been the toughest sections for me so far, and that's the wider open spaces with plenty of enemies around (making me dread the thought of Silver Lake even more), namely the buses outside of the school in Bill's Town (took me a long time to come up with my route here), the Financial District courtyard shootout (first few attempts I tried to get by on stealth alone, but each attempt took 10+ minutes only for me to fail, so I ended up pegging it and smartly killing off enemies in groups with nail bombs and Molotov's), and the area with the spotlight at the end of Pittsburgh (learned some cool things I had no idea about, like taking out the spotlight and the option to walk up to and turn off the generator, but this basically became me doing that and sprinting back into the building I came from to pick people off one at a time, which was a slow and painful process, made worse by Henry doing absolutely nothing but praising me, then setting up camp a few times in corner hiding spots which I needed, getting me killed). 

Anyways, talking of details I didn't pick up on before, something I didn't really pay attention to before but thought about this time was Sam throwing the toy on the floor and Ellie later giving it to him, I hadn't really considered if Naughty Dog did some work to animate Ellie picking up the toy. And, well, sure enough...

Wow. Definitely made me appreciate the game just that little bit more. 

Anyways, finally, let's talk about the sniper section in the suburbs...what a freaking pain. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as the other open areas with plenty of enemies (because it actually has a goal you can go straight to without needing to kill people off), and pretty much immediately settled on having to sprint through, which made failed runs only a couple of minutes long, so not too frustrating. The nightmare part for me was getting to the side of the van about halfway through and then needing to sprint behind the house to the far right, the sniper's first shot always missed but that second is some next level RNG tripe. Also had no idea until this playthrough that there was room to sneak around in under the decking on the far right house!

Anyways, this was what my successful run ended up looking like:

First time I got to the house I accidentally ran close to the front windows on the second floor and had someone shoot me through them, which gave me an annoyed chuckle 

Overall, despite a few frustrations, I'm really enjoying this run through of the game. Supplies are severely limited (I had 15 bullets in my starting pistol at one point...and have hovered between 0 and 2 for about 3 or 4 hours now), I'm finding a lot more gears and pills than I am bullets, but all praise the brick I guess, it's proving very useful. 

This game is absolutely worth playing at any difficulty for the story alone, but if you've already played through on Normal or Easy, I'd really recommend giving a higher difficulty a try if you ever replay Remastered or cough up some coin for Part I. Grounded is a little extreme, but it showcases the game's stealth mechanics far better and works better for me in terms of the world's narrative, where supplies aren't abundant - the AI and having to depend on sneaking through areas honestly feels like it was closer to the original vision of the game, and having played the game a few times these last few weeks, it feels like dumbing down the enemy AI a bit and adding Listening Mode as an ability was something which came about later in the development process. It reminds me a lot of Metal Gear Solid in a weird way, and actually feels like good training for it. 

Which is all to say: I'm having a blast 

Edited July 11, 2022 by Julius

[Julius]

And that's a wrap on my Grounded+ run, meaning: Platinum and 100% acquired 

I've got nearly an additional 100 hours logged in the game now compared with my playtime before, and I've had an absolute blast these past three and a half weeks just glued to this game. The story and gameplay of the main story is phenomenal in more ways than I care to count and have already mentioned, Left Behind is a stellar piece of DLC, and Factions is so fundamentally distinct when compared to most other online multiplayer shooters these days, and is a hell of a lot of fun in its own right. I never quite got the appeal of replaying games (I tend to complete one and move onto the next), especially when I hear about people replaying survival horror games like they do with the Resident Evil games, but now I think I can see the appeal, especially when playing on higher difficulties to show off some level of mastery of the game's mechanics and it's levels. 

To cap off my Grounded+ adventure, Sunday night I blasted through The Dam and University (well, ran, for the most part!), and last night I finished my favourite level around 23:00, which...took a while. I was pretty tired and figured the last couple of levels would take a fair few attempts, but today it took me an hour, with the penultimate main level taking me one attempt, and the final (kind of) main level taking just two. 

Spoiler

Well, unexpectedly, The Dam wasn't too bad, just a whole lot of running from one room to the next. 

The University, on the other hand, surprised me a bit. The basement with the clickers and bloater I knew was coming, but yikes, screw that all to hell on Grounded, just inching through with a bow and arrow drawn, needing headshots to take out the clickers. It wasn't too hard, just nerve wracking, though the bloater was easy work (a little scorching from my flamethrower after a surely refreshing Molotov treated it well). 

The end of the university when trying to escape took a few attempts, though, with me getting to the last room before the stairwell only to find myself surrounded with guys poking their heads in from all angles. This level was basically just seeing how nicely the AI played along, then lobbing bricks and bottles at people's faces to not waste ammo. 

Silver Lake is my favourite level in the game, and I'll take this opportunity to lay out another reason why it's so great, which is something which happens a few times throughout the game but is easy to miss: it's the number of times you're walked through, shown, or teased about what's coming in a level, before then having to take it on yourself. In this level it's seeing the suburban area when you ride through on Callous as Ellie, before taking control of Joel and making it through on foot, but for example this also happens at the dam in Jackson when Tommy walks you through the area and you get a bunch of exposition and a few cutscenes before you turn back and then need to get back out of there. It's great, because it familiarises you with the level layout somewhat before handing the gun over to you and saying "go on then, get out of here." Similarly but kind of the inverse of this is running through the suburbs while evading the sniper only to then take on the role of sniper to defend Ellie, Henry and Sam in one of the more rewarding moments in the game. And, as for hinting at what's to come, there's of course the assault vehicle in Pittsburgh. 

But anyways, Silver Lake is a rough start as Ellie after meeting with David, you practically need to hit everything in sight at first glance or, well, die, during the horde attack. I found myself using the arrows I had to hand on runners and using the hunting rifle pretty much exclusively on clickers, and it certainly took a few attempts to find my rhythm and learn the patterns of when and where the Infected would come from. For the first phase it's figuring out where in the room to be at what time, in the second phase it's just evading clickers in a sneaking section (albeit needing a few headshots), and then the third and final phase is hunkering down on the middle of the bridge and just going for it. Things got incredibly tight at the end when the bloater fell through the roof and the last runner joined it, because I only had one arrow left and no time to really run around and pick up ammo after throwing a nail bomb and Molotov its way, so used the last arrow on the runner as it got up close and personal before needing to dodge around a virtually dead bloater trying to find scraps of ammo, which I thankfully did find in the end. There's definitely an element of RNG to ammo drops, which added to the rush, but your mileage with David really will vary in this section, because the guy ranged from absolutely useless and throwing Infected in my direction (?!) to knocking them out quickly and with his barehands. 

The rest of Silver Lake was much easier, just sneaking around and sprinting a whole bunch. The final section with David I have locked down from my previous runs, which really is just me using the immediate corner of the lodge you start off in, running in circles to attract him with the sound of broken plates and then knifing him from behind, no sweat. 

Bus Depot was just me slowly trudging through the area with bloaters, clickers and runners, and the Hospital was just me sticking to the right and ducking and weaving through with bursts of sprinting (actually, staying to the right was the answer to a lot of the questions asked by sections like this throughout the game, now I think about it). I died during my first attempt running through, but the second went great, I don't think I fired a single shot, sneaking and sprinting past everyone before getting to the final door and then lobbing every distraction I had available (Molotov, smoke bomb, my trusty brick) down the opposite end of the hallway and then whipping out the flamethrower for the two chumps who turned up at the door. 

And, well, you know how the rest goes if you're reading this! 

Lastly, love the contrast multiple times you get in the story and with the music between his and Ellie's relationship and how it contrasts with his and Sarah's. The game starts with Joel trying to hide the craziness of what's going on from Sarah by telling her to look away – and I don't think she would've lasted five seconds in this world because of this. Similarly, Sarah represents the loss of innocence in the world at the start of the outbreak, and when Ellie loses her innocence after David attempts to rape her and she hacks his face to a pulp, you get at it's core the same track playing (All Gone) – but in Ellie's case the guitar strings are wild, whining and meandering all over the place, out of tune, like it's more a corruption of her innocence and recoiling from what she's had to do. And, of course, it's the same track which plays when Joel carries Ellie out of the hospital having trusted "the official powers that be" with his child (and then his kind of adopted child who is a surrogate for his dead child) and being shown once again that he shouldn't have faith in them. The world took Sarah from Joel, and Joel is taking Ellie - and the hope that she brings of a cure - from the world. 

Oh, and lastly, the literal cliffhanger. It's hilarious they did this two years before The Force Awakens 

Had a great time revisiting this game, and it's further cemented itself as one of my favourites, especially with the Grounded+ run of the main story and Survivor run of Left Behind. Playing through it I did have Part II on my mind a fair bit, and I think I'll have to replay it after Part I (which I now can't wait for, if only to get treated to a half decent Platinum screenshot! I mean what even is the state of PS4 Platinums on PS5, they're gross!?), because I now want to contrast that game to The Godfather Part II considering the important parallels at times that this game has with The Godfather. Off the top of my head, there's definitely a lot similar in terms of theme and tone between the two (though not quite as bloody in The Godfather Part II's case), but playing through this again actually got me noticing where some of my issues with Part II come in, as there are a lot of sections in that game which clearly parallel sections in this game, but which I think this game does miles better. For example...

Spoiler

...the beginning of the game in snowy Jackson, getting different perspectives before reaching a climax is pretty much exactly Silver Lake – but worse. I mean you can extrapolate that out to the whole game considering the two perspectives you get, but I think that's more an influence from The Godfather Part II. 

The seal is the giraffes – but worse. 

The Rat King is the hotel basement taken to a very absurd and weird degree – maybe not worse, but I don't think it's quite as impactful, it's more something I'd expect to see in a Resident Evil game than The Last of Us, and from what I remember of playing through that section, it certainly didn't feel like TLOU. 

And so on. Hell, there are multiple sections of I'm remembering right throughout Part II which are more Uncharted-like? Maybe it's unfair to compare them so directly like this given I haven't played Part II in a couple of years, but I couldn't help but connect the dots playing through TLOU again. Really do appreciate some of the hints and foreshadowing you get in the dialogue which ends up in Part II, though, I have to say (Ellie wanting to be an astronaut, Joel talking about how one way or another your past always catches up to you when Ellie hands him the photo of Sarah in the Bus Depot, and then a level later the game ends with him killing Marlene because he knows if he doesn't she'll just give chase – which is exactly what Abby ends up doing!). 

That got long, but I could talk about this game until I'm blue in the face, so I'm just going to force myself to stop there.

Now to wait another six weeks or so to play it's remake 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

[Dcubed]

 

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