I do not like The Last Of Us 2. I didn’t like the first one either (it kinda fell apart for me in the final act) and everything I’d heard about its sequel made it sound like a carnival of violence I’d feel ok about abstaining from. And yet, despite the foul taste left from others’ reviews, Naughty Dog’s childish response, and my own experience chugging through what is indeed a carnival of violence, I”¦ still don’t like this game. Sorry.
I hate the main characters. I hate the story. I hate the combat and its visceral “so lifelike you can hear enemies choking on their own blood” sense of realism. I hate the zombies ” they trigger the hell outta my trypophobia. And the Wolves. And the Seraphites ” “everybody in this game is morally grey… except those religious zealots, fuck those guys amirite?” It’s easier to ask me what I didn’t hate, which is, ironically, literally everything else. This game is good, it’s a masterpiece, if not for every single element that makes it the game it is.
But that doesn’t mean The Last Of Us 2 is a total loss. With just a few (radical) changes, I imagine we could salvage it into something that doesn’t wring out the last drops of happiness my dried-out sponge of a soul can hold nowadays.
Were it in in my power, I’d take a little digital melon baller and scoop everything out. Scoop out all the guts and leave me with the bones ” a world depopulated of characters and story beats and filled with quiet and beautiful empty spaces crafted with so much loving detail they evoke the same feeling of nostalgia the characters feel whenever they discover something from the old world. Abby and her quarters, Ellie with her cards. Give me nothing but the towering shelves of the hardware store and the pet shop complete with moss and rust-covered grooming tables. Let me creep along the floor of a crumbling bubble tea shop thinking, with fond pre-quarantine nostalgia: “God, remember boba?”
Beyond picking over bones of the world itself, I enjoyed the game the most when riding my horse through the wilderness. Instead of a misery simulator, The Last of Us 2 should be a post-apocalyptic Pony Express meets Oregon Trail adventure game. You and your trusty steed navigate ruined infrastructure while dodging the occasional fungus zombie, combat being optional in this fantasy of mine, all to deliver some small innocuous package from one bombed-out part of the country to the other. No life-or-death stakes, no moral quandaries about right and wrong and vengeance the characters never seem to grow beyond. Just you, your horse, and the open road.
My vehement dislike of The Last Of Us 2 doesn’t preclude me from appreciating its artistry or its writing, particularly with some of the characters. Jesse, Manny, Nora, Dina, Lev, and Yara ” in my fantasy game, they can come too. My little exodus leading these beautiful people to a place where everything is fine and nothing hurts. I want to save them from being caught up in a blood feud between two women who’ve never heard a Black auntie tell them “peace be still.” And likely never will because in this game everybody who is named, Black, and has a speaking role is guaranteed to die. But hey, progress right?
The Last of Us 2 is like laudanum ” best enjoyed in small doses. But as crunch-less conditions.
I know people won’t want to play my version of TLOU2, and I don’t fault those who enjoyed the real one. It’s a beautiful game for many of the reasons I’ve already discussed. But playing it makes me feel the same way I did slogging through BioShock Infinite, “This is your king?” Nobody wins, everyone hurts, and the main characters ” the driving force behind everything you see ” are so incapable of thinking, for just one second, outside their own selves.
There’s already enough callousness and cruelty in my own waking world, I see no merit in reproducing that in a digital one. That’s not to say every game I play needs to be sunshine and rainbows, but at some point, if realism is the goal, wouldn’t either Abby or Ellie stop, look at the pile of friends’ bodies, and say “enough”?
I know I’ve had enough. Too much even, which is why I’ll be shopping around my alternate idea for studios to pick up. Get at me Devolver Digital. But if Naughty Dog wants to improve its game, I’m open to consulting. Hell, with photo modes all the rage and the wealth of accessibility options and difficulty settings that greatly reduce combat encounters, a mode where all you do is ride through the game doesn’t seem too far-fetched. Hollow out the game to its basic components, and it becomes playable”¦ enjoyable to me. Make The Last of Us 2 a lavishly rendered, post-apocalyptic horse-riding adventure and then you might have yourself a GOTY.
Comments
8 responses to “I Loved The Last Of Us 2 Except For All The Parts I Deeply Hated”
Good. You’re meant to hate everything about this world. Sounds like it did it’s job 🙂
I never could understand why it seems that, aside from the obvious red shirts and princesses in need of rescue, nearly every single other uninfected person you meet in zombie games is either a cannibal, a serial killer or a sadist. It’s almost as if arsehole genes are the protective quality that makes one immune from the zombie virus.
This is easily the strangest/most bizarre take I have read on the game yet. Definitely not a compliment, this reads more like a random LiveJournal thought, oh Kotaku…
It’s pretty straightforward. I mean, and this is boiling it down as simply as possible, but our world is deeply fucked up right now.
It’s hard for many to draw enjoyment and entertainment out of a game that enjoys throwing you into a similarly fucked up world, never relenting, and twisting the knife just to further remind you that there is no hope. Maybe it’d be different in a pre or post-coronavirus world, but that’s not where we’re at.
The game looks like they changed writers in the middle. The last of us did not need a sequel. They only ruined a story.
I can’t comment on this game, and I never played the first, either. But a lovingly crafted, post-apocalyptic open-world, (non-violent) fetch quest/delivery sim without an overwrought story sounds like something I would love to play.
If you didn’t enjoy the first game then I suspect that you’re probably not the target audience for the second one.
I would play your version of the game, it sounds very satisfying.