The Last of Us

[youmeyou]

I don't give a shit about collectibles, but I also don't think its terribly immersion breaking to have random salvage that your character picks through that serve the stated purpose of the game: you're a scavenger (as is every surviving human) and you must make your way across the country. The stuff you pick up (generally) helps the odds that you'll survive your journey. Shivs are worth more than their weight in gold so I get giddy when I find a pair of scissors. I'm thinking "this'll be great - now I can take out enough zombies to clear a path comfortably rather than rely purely on distraction and stealth hoping that I don't aggro a runner on my way" Rather than "i don't know why i'm eating all these hotdogs cookies and cigarettes but games?!" 

 

So it's not like Bioshock Infinite, where you weren't a scavenger, you were a kidnapper rushing to escape the scene of the crime. It didn't make sense in that case to stop constantly and search trashcans. This is also why I think this style of horder gameplay serves games like Fallout because once again it's a game where you play a scavenger, all other motives aside.

[horsebaggins]

The story of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylpfuRhA5I0

saw this last night.

Without the mirror, I would never have become a human being.

Only fools call it a narcissist complex.

No mirror, no art, no echo, no music.

-Erwin Blumenfeld

The first thing you see in this game after being given direct control was a Silent Hill 2 mirror.

 

"The level progression is linear, and the pacing feels really predictable"
"figure out where the game wants you to go, and then go in every direction but that direction"
"Are you supposed to just trust the game creators not to stick hidden collectables in story heavy events?"

As youmeyou said scavenging closes the gap for me of linearity versus exploration by being embedded into the nature world. I can hardly think of a item that is out of place and wouldn't go about collecting so much as voyeuring. The pendants are a bit wacky, but I excuse the placement like I accept shoes will inevitably find their way strung up on telephone wires (shoe gnomes I suspect, fairies freak Ellie out).

 

 

My companions running around in plain sight being ignored by enemies is the obvious, player-friendly solution

I accept this concession to playability. But early on I disabled hearing mode on hard. This slows down the resources and pace and you're only moving to cover in small increments and for the most part your partners will stay close and often hide from enemy gaze. It's when you aggressively maneuver yourself that the Benny Hill music starts playing.

 

Turning hearing mode off is is akin to playing the Witcher in Polish or Dishonored in French. If you feel comfortable taking something away it can add.

 

 

Also, that bit about emptying clip after clip, notice that there was no bullet counter? You were doing a turret sequence.

This sequence actually took into account bullet count, but didn't show the HUD, probably because it would be visually distracting considering the inverted perspective. Was there anything that you could say that was wrong with this sequence other than familiarity? Considering this entire game was an escort mission. These probably became pejoratives because of overuse. But what happens when a borrower becomes a thief?

 

 

transcendent experience

That's a bit much to expect from anything other that a burning bush.

[quantum_leopold]

That's a bit much to expect from anything other that a burning bush.

 

That was my point--I was explaining why it was a minor complaint rather than a big one.  Although it bothered me a little, the effect of the scavenging is not something that prevents this from being a great Video game (although I'm starting to get to a point where the combat might not be such a minor complaint).

[horsebaggins]

If you weren't expecting transcendence then the use of the word threw me off. No malice intended. What kind of experience were you expecting? I had no expectations other than hoping that it wasn't overly cloying. Then pleasantly surprised at a complete lack of cloy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the Silent Hill 2 of The Last of Us's Let the Right One In.

no cynicism!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Silent Hill 2 are single imperceptible moments in a relationship splayed out into a series of events and onto the world.

The Last of Us and Let the Right One In are adolescent genre stories told with undue yet appreciated sensitivity.

[dmarlett]

Just played the first 45 minutes (had to stop for din dins)

Dat intro!

I can't help but scavenge ever nock and crany, hopefully it won't effect my immersion to much. Like bioshock infinte when I'm supposed to be chasing after Elizabeth but instead looking behind every create along the way, I feel silly, but I just can't help myself! Are you supposed to just trust the game creators not to stick hidden collectables in story heavy events?

I did wonder whether this game would have collectables or not, and low and behold it does. As long as they're interesting artefacts from the world and not 50 dog togs

 

Yeah, I'm not sure why Joel would pick up so many dog tags but a lot of the other collectibles make sense to me.  I love the scavenging in post apocalyptic games.  Fallout was murder on my OCD.  At least in The Last of Us they didn't have pointless collectibles like "tin can" and "abraxo cleaner."  Everything has a purpose (except the dog tags).

[toblix]

Bahhh this game

[Thrik]

Bahhh this game

 

You bloody grump!!!!!

[melmer]

i was dying a lot last night, bloody tickers in the museum

 

its a combination of me wanting to explore everywhere and me not really being that careful around the tickers because i witnessed some shitty AI early on, so i'm not 'respecting' the zombies as much as i might have

 

am i supposed to stay completely still?

 

Also another one of my pet peeves 'unmarked points of no return', to be fair Joel did say something like "i think we can fit through here" which is a pretty big sign, but i missed out on exploring an entire subway station probably missing some precious collectables. grrr. and the game autosaves so frequently that you can't even jump back before the point of the point of no return

 

Games like this should have 2 auto saves which alternate

[melmer]

Also, is there anyway of not killing dudes after you've grabbed them.

 

When i grab a guy i get a choice of 'strangle to death' or 'shiv to death'. I butted a guy on the head with my gun handle early in the game and i can't remember how i did it? i thought it might have been R1.... but that just shot a bullet clear through the guys head. hmm, maybe i was out of ammo?

[Lu]

It's one of the execution animations if you melee a guy you grabbed with a pistol equipped in hand. Once you grab hold o' them, unless they break free, they gon' die.

[youmeyou]

It's weird, I was expecting to try and play this game as non-violently as I could (cleared Deus Ex and Dishonored with no kills - ok no non stairway induced kills). But owing to the fact that melee auto-kills, and encounters are so tense and difficult it just felt right to be as brutal as I needed to be. It was them or me, it's the explicit and mechanically implicit narrative. By a certain point I stopped caring about it. I recognized I was being a kind of shitty dude but lo and behold: Joel was acting like kind of a shitty dude in the cutscenes! A shitty dude who will do anything to keep Ellie alive.

 

This game does owe a tremendous amount to The Road and the father in that story would never have tried to reason or nonviolently dispatch the bandits he encountered. It made sense while still being shocking to brutally render human beings inert.

[melmer]

Anyone else spend 5 minutes playing with the god rays

https://vine.co/v/huMBKwI1TTO

[quantum_leopold]

If you weren't expecting transcendence then the use of the word threw me off. No malice intended. What kind of experience were you expecting?

 

No worries.  My statement that the scavenging made the game less than transcendent was only intended to diminish the strength of my complaint.  Seeing plenty of 10/10 reviews and a lot of chatter out there about this being not-your-typical-Video game left me open to the possibility of something really unexpected and new, so when the scavenging aspect lead me to play the game in very much the same way I've played many other recent games, it was a minor letdown.  Not super annoying, and it makes sense in the context and is partially a result of the way I choose to play, but it nonetheless reinforces that I am definitely playing a Video game.  Which is cool!  I like playing Video games!  Going to give this some more time tonight...

[I Saw Dasein]

One cool thing about the crafting is that it takes place in game -- you don't pause to craft or anything. For me, that is a way better and more interesting decision than having the crafting take place in a menu a la Far Cry 3. Watching your dude pull bullets out of his arm in real time, only to pause and craft a million syringes and bags and holsters in the midst of combat was the dumbest thing. 

[youmeyou]

Yeah reminds me of the frantic real-time inventory scrambling in Stalker. Too bad they didn't have the act of opening your bag/inventory make noise that the enemy would respond to like in Stalker. Makes for great stories like the one Chris told many podcasts ago wherein he was stuck in a basement with a sleeping beast, afraid to bring up his shotgun lest he wake it.

[Salacious Snake]

am i supposed to stay completely still?

You can do the slow crouch walk right in front of a clicker with impunity. (By slow I mean just nudge the stick a little, don't go full crouching speed.)

Also another one of my pet peeves 'unmarked points of no return', to be fair Joel did say something like "i think we can fit through here" which is a pretty big sign, but i missed out on exploring an entire subway station probably missing some precious collectables. grrr. and the game autosaves so frequently that you can't even jump back before the point of the point of no return

That annoys me, too. I find that I'm always consciously wondering where the next trigger point may be. It's a shitty thing, because that's not what I should be concentrating on.

Whenever I go to open a door or something and a cutscene begins, it feels like I stepped on a land mine.

[horsebaggins]

yes! hugging kills, killing is caring. You're a killer that killed.
It's absurd to forcefully hug 100 men then expect to have the world love and respect you. We put assholes in jail for that dumb shit.

Yet I do it anyways, because dead men tell no dialogue trees. Kill them with kindness.

BTW I haven't played Deus EX Revolution, but this is amazing. This guy turns it into an artistic game of AI pathing tetris.

Crate Blocking Ghost + Double Takedown playlist

I adore this kind of absurdity

 

[twmac]

"This sequence actually took into account bullet count, but didn't show the HUD, probably because it would be visually distracting considering the inverted perspective. Was there anything that you could say that was wrong with this sequence other than familiarity? Considering this entire game was an escort mission. These probably became pejoratives because of overuse. But what happens when a borrower becomes a thief?"

 

No it doesn't, I fired way more bullets than I had in my pistol; I know this because I just treated it like a turret sequence after I failed it twice and just fired all the bullets, all the time. When I finally completed the sequence I had the same number of bullets I had started with. So basically telling me it does is nonsense.

 

Calling this game an escort mission would be like Bioshock Infinite, or the sections where in Half Life 2 with Alyx, being conisdered an escort mission. They aren't.

 

What was wrong with that sequence was that it was a turret sequence that completely breaks the ethos of the rest of the gameplay, if my reasoning for not liking it wasn't clear enough.

 

I am grumpy because I just woke up but I found the second half of that paragraph patronising as well as a little confused. What are you even trying to say with that last sentence? I reads like an A-Level student using a metaphor they heard in class rather than just saying what they mean.

[melmer]

This game looks so good, it like playing next gen, TODAY!

But seriously, these are by far the nicest cinematics I've seen in a game. The walking dead needs to step up

[dmarlett]

I was in the middle of Deus Ex when I picked up this game.  It'll be nice to return to not murdering anyone (who isn't clearly a boss).

[melmer]

I'm at 92% complete (according to my save file) I'm starting to seriously dreaded how this game might end

[horsebaggins]

When I finally completed the sequence I had the same number of bullets I had started with. So basically telling me it does is nonsense.

twmac, Yes there's infinite ammo by way of Bioshock Infinite style partner tossing, which is present and consistent with the rest of the game. I went in with 18 bullets and came out with less. For me the circle was unbroken.

Would you consider that it was your actions in the game which broke the ethos of the rest of the gameplay? I don't consider that a bad or good thing. And certainly not to say "You're playing it wrong". Considering I played this sequence as you described also. It's testing the game's boundaries. Patronization was not my intention. You answered the question as to what you thought was wrong with the sequence. The magic was lost, you didn't write that in your first post.

Calling this game an escort mission... They aren't.

Partners are situationally invisible but not invincible.

when asked the question:

how he made his way across the country, Joel responds.

"It was her..."
"She fought like hell to get here..."

this provided the inertia.

So mechanically and fictionally I consider it an escort mission. Those lines clarify who is being escorted. I'd be interested to hear why you disagree.

I reads like an A-Level student using a metaphor they heard in class

I turned off listening mode in class, I swear!

Turret sequences aren't usually used to convey reliance and vulnerability, they're usually used as violent catharsis. What The Last of Us stole is theirs as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't without pain however say they owned.

dmarlett, I was in the middle of Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 Urban Chaos which has interesting parallels in the incidental banter. The "I hate to look at that kind of thing" (crow pecked corpses of my own destruction) mirroring the "Jesus Joel!".

but jokingly, I wouldn't consider leaving mountains of men unconscious to choke on their own tongues exactly a humane revolution.
 

[dmarlett]

dmarlett, I was in the middle of Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 Urban Chaos which has interesting parallels in the incidental banter. The "I hate to look at that kind of thing" (crow pecked corpses of my own destruction) mirroring the "Jesus Joel!".

but jokingly, I wouldn't consider leaving mountains of men unconscious to choke on their own tongues exactly a humane revolution.

 

 

Deus Ex does have the most disturbing nonlethal takedowns.  Still, it is my hope that crippling and maiming hundreds of men will lead to them to a more introspective and peaceable life.  It's hard to join a rabble when you are wheelchair bound and consuming nothing but liquids.  If your brain was crippled by a tranquilizer dart to the head, have I not saved you from the stresses of day to day concerns?

[twmac]

You see, that is the thing, I don't know how you expended bullets. That sequence was a classic turret sequence to me once it seemed to have become apparent that it was just a turret sequence. I unloaded bullet after bullet into the oncomers without a care in the world. I still don't believe that the bullets do expire - I was utterly wanton in my use of it  and still had all my ammo intact - and if I play the game again I will keep an eye on that.

 

In my original post, I was using short-hand; in this forum referring to it as a turret sequence is immediately a pejorative. I apologise as I see now that this is only your seventh post and you might not know that.

 

I would also disagree about turret sequences, not all of them are cathartic (like in Gears of War 2 or Spartan: Total Warrior). In fact a lot of them are used as a way to convey spectacular fight sequences while rooting the player to the spot so that they cannot miss any of it (Terminator Salvation, Gears of War 3), or are actually a 3-D version of space invaders (Dead Space, Bayonetta, Resident Evil 5) that are stressful to get through and full of possible death. This is what The Last of Us was like for me so no different really.

 

As for the escort mission, just because Ellie is not indestructible (she didn't die at any point in my  playthrough, so I didn't realise until I went back and checked the game and its stats that suggest it can happen) doesn't mean that it becomes an escort mission. Unless it is part of a new class of escort missions similar to the one in Metro 2033 where the person/thing you are escorting is actually way more equipped to resist the elements than you.

 

I guess the game could be considered an escort mission but it has none of the standard expectations of one. That is a good thing, I suppose, but if that became the standard (like the way some of them felt in Dead Rising 2) then I am not so keen on that. A well done escort mission - I'll admit there are few - can play very well and become a fundamental piece of tension. The Last of Us has none of that so I think that is why I never considered that part of the game's philosophy, in the same way that I didn't feel that about Bioshock Infinite or Half Life 2. 

 

Now that I am in the nitty gritty of it all I might as well go into why I don't think that The Last of Us is a very good game, merely an alright one that has a fantastic (in most places) story.

 

The survivor aspect of it has been over played, the ammunition and gadgets are very rarely in short supply and as long as you take out some of your opponents with melee then you will never run short, if anything you will have an abundance of items by the end of the game. I was actually crafting items just to use up resources so I could carry more.

 

The skill system is pretty pointless and unbalanced. This is most specifically a problem with the shiv upgrades that cost a lot and by the time you unlock them you will have so uch equipment that they are pretty much redundant.

 

Dying is infrequent and even when it happens it is kind of redundant. You can pretty much coast through most encounters if you are smart enough and abusing the health packs never feels like a big deal as there will always be more just around the corner. That said sometimes dying when you haven't done exactly what you wanted to is more beneficial in the short term, there is no real penalty to dying as the check points are abundant. Any sense of desperation that the narrative builds up is not congruent with the game play.

 

Coasting combat is easy because the much vaunted AI isn't all that great. Their routes are predictable and their routines in combat are really boring.

 

Speaking of boring Naughty Dog are starting to repeat themselves. The Uncharted series had this jarring thing where everything would go quiet and then you knew that you were fine to explore and then you would walk into an area and the game would announce its combat, then it would have its 'dynamic' set pieces where you would push a button to be thrilled. I couldn't stand it in Uncharted and I appreciate it even less in The Last of Us

 

Time and time again The Last of Us does this, every section is clearly signposted either through level design or by one or more the characters actually telling you what to expect, the latter I wouldn't mind so much but it happens every time. Apart from one great moment early in the game there is not a moment where the game lets you just exist and experience the game, someone has to be talking to let you know you can relax at this point or the less than subtle music kicks in to let you know that you are in a tense situation. To top it all off, there are just sections where you push forward and things happen around you dulling the sense of threat even more.

 

At some point I might talk about the ending, but I think that might be an article for Arcadian Rhythms, but maybe not right now. In short: I think was good but the game didn't earn it.

[Cigol]

What difficulty did you play on? At first I started on hard difficulty and found supplies to be quite low, to the extent I usually only had 1 or 2 rounds in my pistol if I was lucky. As the game progressed I got so frustrated by some areas that I switched to normal and supplies were as plentiful as you describe, and the game was markedly easier. I personally enjoyed this more since it gave me the freedom to play it how I wanted without the frustration of getting repeatedly killed by clickers/hunters - but it definitely impacts the whole 'surival' motif.

 

As for the first turret sequence, it's a concession to the fact you're not able to move and ellie is preoccupied. She can die in the sequence if you don't help. I don't think my ammunition went down either, for what it's worth.