In Case You Forgot, The Last Of Us Is A Damn Good Game

33 responses to “In Case You Forgot, The Last Of Us Is A Damn Good Game”

1. 

   thaum

   August 28, 2013 at 2:38 pm

   Damn it, I need to finish this game. Ugh.

   Reply
   1. 

      pablopepper

      August 28, 2013 at 3:06 pm

      Me too, got stuck and haven’t had the time to come back to it. Sometimes being gainfully employed, having too many hobbies and a family really sucks.

      Reply
      1. 

         rowan

         August 28, 2013 at 3:15 pm

         Your priorities are just WAY out of whack man!

         Reply
   2. 

      tony0707

      August 28, 2013 at 11:23 pm

      Spoiler, I bought after all the hype although i normally just play gt5 and cod & its a bit overrated and actually predictable. so dont worry ya self

      Reply
2. 

   kineas

   August 28, 2013 at 2:39 pm

   The natural conversations and the emotion that came through them. I had several chills just from them throughout this game. Specifically one of them is the argument between Joel and Tess.

   Reply
3. 

   whitepointer

   August 28, 2013 at 2:44 pm

   I only just finished this a few nights ago.

   While it was a good game and I enjoyed it for the most part, some areas of the game seemed to really drag out for me, largely due to the fact that the game was deliberately paced to be slow in many areas. Sure, you could try to be a hoon and run head first into a firefight but that usually didn’t get you very far, not to mention the fact ammo was scarce so you were forced to take things slowly without firearms quite often. Also you needed to make sure you spent time searching for supplies before moving onto the next area.

   The slow pacing got to me a little by the time I was nearing the climax, and I had definitely had enough of it by the time the credits rolled.

   So yes, good game, but I just can’t shake the feeling that the pacing was a little off.

   Reply
   1. 

      braaains

      August 28, 2013 at 2:53 pm

      I thought the early part of it (i.e. the bit in Boston immediately after the opening credits) was a bit too slow and dragged on a bit. But after getting out of Boston everything from then on was absolutely stellar. Easily my GOTY and there’s nothing on the release schedule between now and the end of the year that looks likely to even come close to it.

      Reply
      1. 

         blackdahlianz

         August 28, 2013 at 7:54 pm

         I thought the same, then I remembered GTA5

         Reply
         1. 

            braaains

            August 28, 2013 at 10:44 pm

            I hadn’t forgotten GTA5 ;P

            Reply
      2. 

         whitepointer

         August 28, 2013 at 9:13 pm

         I thought the opening in Boston was pretty good actually. Set the rest of the game up quite well.

         It was the middle part of the game in Pittsburgh in particular that really stood out to me as being a little too slow and a bit tedious.

         Reply
   2. 

      zquest

      August 28, 2013 at 2:54 pm

      Hmm I can see where you’re coming from but I guess it depends on what you were expecting. I’ve heard some people criticise the pace because they’re big Uncharted fans and expected a similar combat system from Naughty Dog.
      Maybe I’m just a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff but I loved having to scavenge and spend an insane amount of time flanking the enemy with my bow because I didn’t have enough ammo to take the most direct route. I think the pacing also added to the impact of the violence and didn’t glorify things at all which was a very nice change from so many games out there.
      I love it. Brilliant game.

      Reply
      1. 

         whitepointer

         August 28, 2013 at 9:12 pm

         I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be Uncharted (although some elements of it were clearly taken from Uncharted), I was just making a comment that the pacing seemed a little off, and a bit too slow in some parts.

         Reply
         1. 

            nexi

            August 28, 2013 at 9:59 pm

            I agree there were a handful of sections during the game that had odd pacing relative to the setting (sniper, the horse chase to the ranch and the hospital come to mind) but as a whole package, I felt that I knew what my goal was at any given time, none of the sections dragged too long (on the second playthrough when I was less terrible at the game) and the game had an ending that ended the game and didn’t try to allude to a sequel or failed to tie up loose ends etc that left a sour taste in the mouth.

            Reply
   3. 

      roh

      August 28, 2013 at 3:12 pm

      I never had a problem with ammo, ever. So that was never an issue for me, which really hampered the ‘survival’ aspect. I always had plenty of supplies to make med kits/shivs/molotovs too. I played the whole thing through on normal, ie: the way that i would think the developers would WANT it to be played. If you want you game to be hard, make it hard (see: dark souls).

      Reply
      1. 

         rowan

         August 28, 2013 at 3:20 pm

         Or, if you want your game to be hard, play it on the hard setting?

         I played the first time on hard and had barely any supplies for the entire game. Made me really appreciate my new game + play through where I could have a few sessions of blasting at foes.

         Reply
         1. 

            roh

            August 28, 2013 at 3:35 pm

            But i don’t necessarily want a game to be ‘hard’ or ‘easy’, i just want to play the game the developers intended it to be.

            Having ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ options available are there for other reasons, ie: someone who is not very good at games to get into it without dying a million times or for people who play games specifically for more of a challenge.

            If you want people to be challenged right out of the gate why not make the ‘hard’ setting the ‘normal’ setting and have an ‘extra hard’ setting above it?

            Reply
            1. 

               rowan

               August 28, 2013 at 4:16 pm

               This game’s in my all time top 10. Brilliant game and I loved every minute of it.

      2. 

         braaains

         August 28, 2013 at 3:34 pm

         I played on normal the first time, then on survivor on my second play through. Try it on survivor, it’s a very different game and there’s very little ammo. In fact I don’t think I ever actually bothered upgrading the ammo capacity of any of my guns, as I don’t recall ever actually having a full clip anyway 😛 You also lose the “listen” ability that lets you pinpoint enemy locations through walls etc. Really raises the tension a few notches.

         Reply
         1. 

            roh

            August 28, 2013 at 3:41 pm

            See that makes more sense to me.

            The game was obviously borrowing A LOT from ‘The Road’, but seemed to miss the entire point of what made ‘The Road’ so harrowing: the constant struggle and bleakness. Only having 2 bullets for your one and only gun, having to scrounge for food and clean water and generally just try and survive through the night. None of this was apparent in TLOU, plenty of guns and ammo everywhere, supplies around every corner, no threat of starvation or dehydration and waves and waves of generic bad guys to mow down.

            To me it just felt like uncharted, except with the big set pieces taken out, and the boring ‘kill a room full of guys then look for supplies’ formula repeated ad nauseum.

            Reply
            1. 

               braaains

               August 28, 2013 at 3:44 pm

               Try it on Survivor and see what you think.

               The other big difference is those locked rooms that cost you a shiv to open. On normal I opened every single one of them, because there was always enough stuff inside to craft at least 1 shiv to replace the one you lost opening the door, and everything else in there was just pure profit. On survivor I stopped opening them after a while because they usually just gave you some weapon upgrade parts and not much (if anything) else, and the scarcity of resources meant the shiv was usually more valuable to me than whatever was behind the door.

            2. 

               roh

               August 28, 2013 at 3:47 pm

               Maybe I will, just gotta get it back off my mate who i lent it to…

               I opened all those doors as well, and still had plenty of shivs to stab in clickers faces, so it was never an issue.

            3. 

               slyph

               August 28, 2013 at 8:29 pm

               I agree. Survivor mode is the superior experience, however given my near anal retentive desire to down foes using choke outs, melee weapons and molotovs I ended up saving a fair bit of ammo for dire circumstances and only using shivs on rooms.

               The rooms do occasionally have some decent stuff, but rarely… Hell, there’s rarely anything in the entire freaking game on survivor mode. That, and the bleakness gets to you a lot more too. I had to put it down in the late chapter after you resume control of Joel this palythrough, purely to take a break and play something lighthearted (Ni No Kuni… another GOTY contender).

               Yeah… amazing game(s) 🙂 Life’s good!

4. 

   roh

   August 28, 2013 at 3:10 pm

   I really don’t get the love for this game, i played it and finished it and just wasn’t that impressed. Not a bad game, but definitely not brilliant.

   Reply
   1. 

      mattroe

      August 28, 2013 at 5:18 pm

      I found the story and atmosphere very compelling, which is what I suspect a lot of the praise is over. It was a very cool “experience”, but focusing purely on the gameplay, yeah, I wasn’t that impressed, it played like a very clunky version of pretty much any third person shooter out there. I didn’t get around to finishing it and I think it’s telling that I had a better time just watching it on YouTube than actually playing it.

      Reply
      1. 

         roh

         September 2, 2013 at 9:11 am

         I can kind of understand that it’s being praised for being a bit different, but when you compare it to the source material (post apocalyptic movies, especially ‘the road’) it doesn’t really stack up to other games that exude a lot of atmosphere.

         I finished it kind of out of principle, the ending was pretty meh and predictable, also didn’t seem to have any effect on either character or the world at all.

         Reply
   2. 

      drewmosabi

      August 28, 2013 at 5:45 pm

      Don’t try to get it, just appreciate the fact that others love it and move on with your life 🙂

      Reply
5. 

   puck

   August 28, 2013 at 4:46 pm

   I can’t see how any game short of GTA V can knock this off my personal GOTY. Such an amazing experience. The story was brilliant, but more importantly it was held together by really compelling gameplay. It was everything I loved about a Naughty Dog game with none of the things I didn’t (the constant shooting and climbing got a bit much in the Uncharted games for me).

   With such a large backlog I can’t usually allow myself to play through a game more than once, but I think I’ll make an exception for TLoU. I really want to have a crack at survivor mode.

   There’s was only two real weaknesses that stood out to me in this game: (SPOILERS! I hope those spoiler tags work again!): The first encounter with the big infected in the gym that you can’t avoid, and the fact that there are no real battles fighting infected and humans at the same time and playing them off against each other, that would have been very cool.

   edit: Nope, those spoiler tags still don’t work… hmmm, not sure if those spoilers are worth censoring, they don’t really reveal any story… ?

   Reply
6. 

   chobi77

   August 28, 2013 at 5:18 pm

   I just finished it last night (loved it), the thing i loved the most was Joel’s character progression, quite amazing stuff.

   10/10 would shiv.

   Reply
7. 

   mamado

   August 28, 2013 at 6:24 pm

   funny how i see this article when i just finished it last night. beside some funny AI issues this game is a masterpiece…… and soooo sad.

   Reply
8. 

   nexi

   August 28, 2013 at 10:12 pm

   If you take the gameplay out and scrutinize it then yeh, it is less than stellar but we don’t judge things like that (well we do, but we shouldn’t).
   The game is an experience through and through, a great story with endearing characters each with their own strengths and flaws voiced over by people with real emotional investment in the part that they are playing. The musical score is moving and hits all the right notes to give a scene extra weight. The world oozes character and realism in a way that no set piece action explosion shooter could capture and by the end of the game, if you didn’t laugh or cry (re: shed manly tears) at at least 1 point during the game then you are an emotionless lump.

   It had minor, non game-breaking issues and some occasionally stupid AI and yes, the gameplay portion of the equation had been done before but when you weigh that against everything else the game nailed, it is but a small qualm.

   Reply
   1. 

      roh

      September 2, 2013 at 9:16 am

      Gameplay is part of the experience, if you ignore that fact then your viewpoint becomes biased somewhat. Especially since this is a game and not a movie. There are plenty of games/movies that have created realistic worlds, the difference being is how this factors into the game vis a vis how gameplay is unique because of that world, otherwise you get a bunch of bland shooters with different backgrounds.

      Reply
9. 

   tony0707

   August 28, 2013 at 11:24 pm

   am i the only one whos computer wont remember the log in details for these sites?

   Reply
10. 

    Swarbie

    August 29, 2013 at 1:53 am

    Just got this this morning, probably eight or nine hours in playing on hard. I’m really enjoying it so far. I’m consistently low on ammo but rarely stuck without a single bullet to my name, and I have a bunch of some of the crafting items (rags, sugar, bindings) but almost no blades or alcohol so I can actually make something useful out of them.

    I like the encounters with humans the most so far; I made it through most of them without dying more than once and my general lack of ammo meant I was picking up throwables and melee weapons on the fly, dashing in and out of stealth and generally just enjoying being a dick to the AI characters, who’ve done a pretty good job of sweeping zones in an organised fashion and flushing me out of hiding.

    The infected are pretty fun too but more in a tense “oh shite oh shite oh shite” way. Except stalkers. Thos things are the devil incarnate.

    Reply