The Last of Us

[I Saw Dasein]

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.

I don't really agree with any of this. I am playing on hard and have basically no ammo at any time. I just started the part with the "Hunters", and my inventory contains: 3 shotgun shells, 3 arrows, a medkit, and a board. This makes fights feel very tactical and I really have to think about firing even a single bullet. I die a few times in every fight before making it through. I'm not great at Video games, but I'm not terrible either. I honestly do feel like I am scrounging for every. single. bullet. just to survive.

I agree with you regarding dying though: I wish there was some consequence to it. Maybe losing crafting materials or something?

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.

I think this is an interesting point. Most other kinds of media do something similar--for example, in movies and books you will often have a period of calm after a highly emotionally charged scene. Movies that remain tense all the way through can be quite unpleasant and exhausting. And of course, in movies the music will often kick in just as an exciting fight scene begins. That doesn't bother me in most movies at all. So I think what is going on is that Naughty Dog is taking certain pacing tricks from movies and books and applying them to games. Whether or not that works for you is a matter of taste. For me, I don't think I would want to play a game that was all tension all of the time. Even stuff like "Stalker" or "Left for Dead" has safe zones and moments of clearly sign-posted calm.

[toblix]

THIS GAME IS SO LOOOOOONNGGGG

[melmer]

Finished. Weighing in at just over 17 hours. The single best thing about this game is the restraint they used in the design.

Looking through the unlockable concept art you get a real sense of how much they must of eased off on the enemy design. They've got lame stereotypical mad max style post apocalyptic freaks and lots of people carrying assault rifles. Thank god. I think the game has made real progress in the AAA space.

Also really restrained with achievements, all the usual 'get 30 kills' shit is in there if you want it, but it never in your face. And for the first time in a very long time my play style hadn't been influenced by them. Must use the grande launcher more to get that chevo (looking at you infinite)

The story beats are all the cliched zombie story scenarios, but so well told. Video games are finally growing out of their infancy. This is truly a video game for adults.

Beautiful

[melmer]

THIS GAME IS SO LOOOOOONNGGGG

My gf actually had a go at me earlier as she hasn't seen me all week.

[horsebaggins]

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.

That was an unnecessary apology. Accepted¿

Golly, if I'd used the dreaded and concise term: ludonarrative dissonance, I'd likely been burnt at the stake. Luckily I saw that coming like the poor souls in Far Cry 2 see a car careening in their direction, perpetually, for eternity, like Groundhog Day with mosquitoes.

artist unknown

http://www.shapeshift3r.com

Mike Edwards

http://www.ericspitler.com

Eric Spitler

But seriously, these are by far the nicest cinematics I've seen in a game.

Even though cinematics are deeply unfashionable currently, it's amazing how much of this story is conveyed through facial micro expressions. Not to mention realtime body language.

 

 

[melmer]

Will this game herald the death of the narrative driven fps?

If I'm not looking over Gordon's shoulder in half life 3, Valve might as well not bother

Even though cinematics are deeply unfashionable currently, it's amazing how much of this story is conveyed through facial micro expressions. Not to mention realtime body language.

 

That's really interesting, as now that I think of it the last game I played 'Remember me' was full of cutscenes and I absolutely hated it, I kept wishing they would at least try to tell a little bit of the story whilst I was controlling the character.

A lot of the major plot points in the last of us are explored through cutscenes, but I didn't mind it at all, I think there was a good mix. Two of the most poignant moments for me came straight one after another whilst in game. I don't even want to spoiler tag it as I wouldn't want to ruin that for anyone.

[horsebaggins]

Clint Hocking might know.

[horsebaggins]

But I'd personally find more clever game design to be honestly distracting in The Last of Us. It would add to the cloy quotient.

Even for me Half Life 2 was skirting the edges of being overbearingly clever. Portal's fiction alleviated that for me. But even the most knee-slappingly clever of environmental puzzles, once solved, entail the same mental load as: put plank here, walk the plank. You're getting wet either way, cleverness is delaying the inevitable, torturous even.

In this instance the spell would be broken in the time before the solving.
 

[Cigol]

Even though cinematics are deeply unfashionable currently, it's amazing how much of this story is conveyed through facial micro expressions. Not to mention realtime body language.

 

There's quite a few exchanges between Ellie and Joel I noticed that occur entirely in game which, if you take the time to position the camera and watch unfold, are fully animated and very convincing. They'd be easy to miss if for example you're swinging the camera around searching for supplies or pile driving through the game but I thought they added a lot of personality and because you're not forced to take any notice its a bit more personal.

[toblix]

This game has now gone on for what feels like three game lengths, and I see no end.

Oh what's this? Another clumsy non-stealth sequence with tons of men running at me? Unless something magical happens that changes my mind, it feels like they should've cut so much of this game. At first I thought the high number of zombie/human arenas were there to pad out an otherwise short story, but at this point there has been so much actual interesting story stuff, there is need for padding!

 

Ellie has just been

taken prisoner by cannibals.

How far in am I, like a third?

[melmer]

11/16th's of the way through I'd say

I think the length and pacing was perfect. I though it would be shorter, and at certain times I was wishing it wouldn't end

[youmeyou]

Yeah I didn't mind the pacing. But I also found the enemy encounters tense and interesting. If you don't like the gameplay I'm sure it's gonna feel long as hell.

 

I think the stealth is brilliant. It's so very easy to fuck up but it doesn't feel like you need to restart when you do. Even Dishonored, with its emphasis on moral binaries, kind of enforced a dichotomy in playstyle that made me restart many botched encounters (despite them having designed the game to allow you to fight your way out ). In Last of Us the environment and tone supports freaking the hell out and murdering everyone the minute you get caught. I dunno, it didn't feel dissonant at all to play it in this way. And it didn't feel like padding or a slog for that matter.

[twmac]

Cigol & I Saw Dasein - I was playing on Normal, from what you are telling me I should have played it on Hard. I used to play all games on Hard until I realised that shitty developers don't know how to make Hard games well and started playing everything on Normal. This was a mistake for The Last of Us, I see.

 

I Saw Dasein - I hate films lazily trying to manipulate me through music. A good film generally will wait until action, emotion or mood has taken hold of a scene before they allow music to kick in and some of my favourite films barely have any music in them.

 

For an interesting comparison, if you have any interest in horror films, go back and watch Halloween and Halloween II. I prefer the second film for its restraint in using the music. Instead of having a Jaws style build up there is no music until Michael strikes. This means that every scene you see could be when he attacks and amps up the tension.

 

The Last of Us irritates because it tells me exactly when it is safe rather than letting me ascertain that for myself. I don't think comparisons with Left 4 Dead work (I haven't played STALKER so I cannot comment on that), that game gives you safe houses that are only safe, mechnically, once you have closed the door not because the developers decided they weren't going to spawn any enemies. That was what was kind of interesting on the first play through of L4D, every area felt like a potential hot spot so you were on your toes in anticipation, you couldn't wait to get to a safe house (similar to the save points in Silent Hill 2) even though there was the dread that you were going to have to go back out there. The Last of Us doesn't have that at all, it is partitioned very neatly and clearly a bit like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - Here is your shooty bit, here is your exporation bit etc.

 

I am being way harsher on it than I really want to, I did enjoy the game quite a bit.

[I Saw Dasein]

I Saw Dasein - I hate films lazily trying to manipulate me through music. A good film generally will wait until action, emotion or mood has taken hold of a scene before they allow music to kick in and some of my favourite films barely have any music in them.

For an interesting comparison, if you have any interest in horror films, go back and watch Halloween and Halloween II. I prefer the second film for its restraint in using the music. Instead of having a Jaws style build up there is no music until Michael strikes. This means that every scene you see could be when he attacks and amps up the tension.

I don't think that's really true at all. If you think back to the history of film (and theatre, for that matter), music is often used to set the scene, establish mood, and punctuate action. Music and film/theatre have been intertwined since at least the ancient Greeks. It's hard for me to accept that all of those movies and plays and operas are not good because they use music as a way of cuing the audience. I don't think that movies MUST use music in that way, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with using music in that way.

I do agree with you that using music to tell the audience that they can relax for a minute can diminish tension--but that's exactly what the music is intended to do. I do like the Halloween movies (Halloween I and 2 also have excellent scores), but they are unrelentingly tense, and while that's one possible goal for a game, not every game needs to be that tense. The "safe" parts of the Last of Us gave me a chance to breath, to listen to the characters banter, and to appreciate the scenery. I honestly don't know how much I would have enjoyed the game if I'd spent the whole time creeping around worried that I was about to be jumped. I like that the game has quiet and calm moments.

[melmer]

I did find it peculiar that they created these huge environments to explore without any danger, instead of ten empty houses in a row, why not stick a zombie in one of the bedrooms.

 

But introducing an element of danger in to the safe/exploring areas would make the player constantly on edge, constantly using listening mode when exploring houses, walking through every doorway with their gun raised....  i think that would get pretty tiring

[horsebaggins]

The Last of Us irritates because it tells me exactly when it is safe rather than letting me ascertain that for myself.

 

twmac, i'd have to cordially say that isn't always the case.

A specific example from very early on. The first infected encounter with spores, while with Tess in the city. Most players will be safe after they sneak past the mushroom kingdom, and after they drop down and out of the dilapidated 2-floor building, Tess remarks about the fresh air.

In a subsequent playthrough I ran while on the 2nd floor, the not-nzumbe saw me through the hole in the floor and I dropped down outside the building. The athlete's foot people actually sprinted after me into what was previously to be a safe area. Some toadstool punching later, Tess then savored the fresh air.

An area clearly marked as safe for the majority of players can, even in the tutorialized portions of the game, become fuzzily unsafe if the geometry supports it. Similar to how youmeyou just described the stealth and combat loops as being fungible.

But if you want the shroom flock to relentlessly follow you from coast to coast like a DayZ Phish concert. That, I'd kindly have to say is literally asking for the Benny Hill line dance. At some point for practical purposes, specifically the flow of electrons through a medium, things need to be gated, elegantly in my opinion in The Last of Us. Opposed to DayZ's charm, which is unwavering impracticality on a bicycle. Much like Phish fans.

Bill Murray cosplaying QWOP

 

[dmarlett]

One of my favorite non-cutscene moments that jolt you back into the story

 

When you prepare to give Ellie a boost and she isn't there.

[Lu]

Yea, that was great.

That whole section made me feel a bit melancholy. When Ellie ran ahead, I felt a sense of being left behind. I was thinking that at that point Ellie could probably survive without Joel, but I don't think Joel can without Ellie.

[twmac]

I don't think that's really true at all. If you think back to the history of film (and theatre, for that matter), music is often used to set the scene, establish mood, and punctuate action. Music and film/theatre have been intertwined since at least the ancient Greeks. It's hard for me to accept that all of those movies and plays and operas are not good because they use music as a way of cuing the audience. I don't think that movies MUST use music in that way, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with using music in that way.

I do agree with you that using music to tell the audience that they can relax for a minute can diminish tension--but that's exactly what the music is intended to do. I do like the Halloween movies (Halloween I and 2 also have excellent scores), but they are unrelentingly tense, and while that's one possible goal for a game, not every game needs to be that tense. The "safe" parts of the Last of Us gave me a chance to breath, to listen to the characters banter, and to appreciate the scenery. I honestly don't know how much I would have enjoyed the game if I'd spent the whole time creeping around worried that I was about to be jumped. I like that the game has quiet and calm moments.

 

Yeah, that was phrased poorly. I find the musical and audio cues in The Last of Us to be lazy - in the way that a lot of films are lazy in their use of music. I was trying to say that a good film generally doesn't rely on that. Not that all good films don't. Although, does it surprise you that I find Opera and Musicals dull? As soon as the music starts I switch off. The quiet of films like Elephant and Buffalo 66 I find far more effective.

 

Although I appreciated the banter in The Last of Us, it is those moments that jar me out and make me think of all those horror movies where the writer and director have decided that exposition is needed no matter how improbable.

 

There are ways to create quiet and calm moments and I think that there are points in the game that do it believably and effectively. It is just there are too many points when it doesn't.

[melmer]

[Berzee]

[a video]

 

MATT LEES, I didn't know he played games that were not made of boards!

[toblix]

Just finished this game, and II'll just put down my little review before I go through this thread and read all these spoilers.

 

MY REVIEW OF «THE LAST OF US»

By toblix

This is a really technically, artistically and game-developmentally impressive game that shows how far things have come, both in terms of video games in general, but also as a mind-blowing thing that exists on the PS3. It also shows how the current state of video game technology makes doing big-scale story-telling a weird impossible task, and impose some ridiculous restrictions and constraints. Instead of trying to write a thing I'll just make a dumb list like this:

• Amazing graphics, music, animation, and a crazy good last PS3 game from Naughty Dog. So much attention to detail throughout, like hand placement, incidental animation/dialogue and just ridiculously good-looking stuff all over the place.
• I've never experienced a bigger disconnect between when I'm playing the game and watching the cut-scenes. The cut-scenes are so good and well-produced and so emotional, and have characters that I relate to and empathize with, and the game itself is a very well made action video game that feels like it's not much different from other games.
• When I walk around the game and see Ellie sitting down on some furniture or picking at a thing or leaning over a thing or she comments on a poster, I'm super-excited about this ostensibly non-important, secondary thing, but why? Because I know that I'm now not just interacting with the systems, but watching a sequence that took lots of planning, motion-capturing, recording and rigging. This is weird, and a result of things that would be trivial in a movie being super-non-trivial in a game.
• This kind of AAA video game feels to me like it's struggling to go in the wrong direction. Look at how much time and effort has been spent on getting more detailed environments, and better graphics and more life-like animation. A lot of it just finding ways of easily letting hundreds of people crank out assets for your game. Yet we're still at the point where even the most highly praised games are basically 95% interaction with some variant of a classic system (traversal and combat) and 5% trying to be like a movie.
• Everyone gave this game perfect scores, which makes me feel like I'm not "getting it" or trying too hard to be critical.
• My impression is that the standard is such that a lot of people are "too happy" with what is basically the equivalent of a Hollywood action movie. The story is supposed to be about this man and this girl, and the role of the father figure and loss and hope or whatever, and still you get a flamethrower.
• Developing the sneaking/combat/fighting/weapon/AI system is so expensive, it's automatically given a huge role in the game, regardless – it seems to me – of whether that system "fits" with the story. You kill hundreds of people by shooting them in the face and blowing them up, which nobody can do without turning or already being insane, and the "story parts" just ignore this. There's a story and a game running in parallel, and they only touch ever so gently at a few points along the way. This is unfortunate, but all games with serious stories still do it, and the reasons for that are ridiculous, and it seems like the AAA industry is using all their might to get rid of or cover up this divide between the two game components, but it's like trying to bring down the Great Wall of China with an eraser.
• If you cover all the game parts, it's a serious, brutal story. If you cover the story parts, it's a farcical, over-the-top action romp with mindless killing and exploding buses.

God damn it. I spent an hour and that's the best I could come up with.

[I Saw Dasein]

Is there anything other than body count that made you think that the action was over-the-top or intended to be a romp? From my perspective, the action wasn't really over-the-top at all. The violence is extreme but muted (there's not buckets of blood or eeyes popping out or anything, as in Fallout 3). The characters you play are relatively vulnerable and fallible, in the sense that they have difficulty aiming and die easily if you're overwhelmed, and there's no regenerating health. Resources are very limited (especially on hard), and so ammunition counts. You do kill an absolute ton of guys, but in my view that alone doesn't make the game feel farcical or over-the-top, and you do a similar amount of killing in other games that take successfully treat violence more seriously (e.g. Stalker, Far Cry 2).

I also didn't really feel a strong disconnect between the cut scenes and the game play. Joel is kind of emotionally stunted and sociopathic in the cut scenes, which is reflected in the game play. He really does seem like a character who would happily kill dozens of people to get his way. I guess I really felt that the story and the game play made sense in this game. Joel is a brutal person who would (and has) done anything to survive, and that comes through in the game. The story in general terms is about Joel and Ellie fighting their way through a savage world, and that's exactly what the player does in the game.

e: Maybe this mostly reflects on me and my own approach to Video games. I don't really care about stories in games, as long as they don't distract from the gameplay. In the Last of Us, I thought the story was consistent with the gameplay and I thought the characters were well written and interesting. It could be that the story could have explored deeper themes if it hadn't been so combat focused; but I really don't have an interest in a game that explores narrative themes at the expense of gameplay. I feel that Naughty Dog started with a gameplay concept (an admittedly familiar third-person shooter), polished the shit out of the gameplay, and then developed a story that was more-or-less consistent with that gameplay. It could be that the narrative would have been stronger had the gameplay been different; but I think it would have been a worse game, because ultimately I am there to play a game and not to be told a story.

[toblix]

Is there anything other than body count that made you think that the action was over-the-top or intended to be a romp? From my perspective, the action wasn't really over-the-top at all. The violence is extreme but muted (there's not buckets of blood or eeyes popping out or anything, as in Fallout 3). The characters you play are relatively vulnerable and fallible, in the sense that they have difficulty aiming and die easily if you're overwhelmed, and there's no regenerating health. Resources are very limited (especially on hard), and so ammunition counts. You do kill an absolute ton of guys, but in my view that alone doesn't make the game feel farcical or over-the-top, and you do a similar amount of killing in other games that take successfully treat violence more seriously (e.g. Stalker, Far Cry 2).

In video game terms it wasn't extreme at all, but that is one of the weird things that's starting to become ridiculously, annoyingly apparent to me. In some ways (all the cut-scenes) the game is going right for the serious movie thing, and still, just like in every video game ever, the player is tasked with just fucking murdering hundreds of people. If you compare it to any other medium, it would be the story of a crazed killer, but in video games it's the normal thing people do. Obviously this is not some great revelation, and others have said the same thing better both in this thread and everywhere else – I just found the disjointedness of it all to be extremely jarring, probably because of my expectations and how I felt about the cut-scenes. The Uncharted game have all the same problems, as the Idle Thumbs people have hilariously pointed out too, but when the story is an action adventure to start with, the violent doesn't stand out nearly as much.

 

 

I also didn't really feel a strong disconnect between the cut scenes and the game play. Joel is kind of emotionally stunted and sociopathic in the cut scenes, which is reflected in the game play. He really does seem like a character who would happily kill dozens of people to get his way. I guess I really felt that the story and the game play made sense in this game. Joel is a brutal person who would (and has) done anything to survive, and that comes through in the game. The story in general terms is about Joel and Ellie fighting their way through a savage world, and that's exactly what the player does in the game.

 

This is of course a matter of interpretation. I got the sense that the story of these people was not really meant to include the combat sequences, and that they detracted from what the story was trying to tell.

[Vonlenska]

• My impression is that the standard is such that a lot of people are "too happy" with what is basically the equivalent of a Hollywood action movie. The story is supposed to be about this man and this girl, and the role of the father figure and loss and hope or whatever, and still you get a flamethrower.
• Developing the sneaking/combat/fighting/weapon/AI system is so expensive, it's automatically given a huge role in the game, regardless – it seems to me – of whether that system "fits" with the story. You kill hundreds of people by shooting them in the face and blowing them up, which nobody can do without turning or already being insane, and the "story parts" just ignore this. There's a story and a game running in parallel, and they only touch ever so gently at a few points along the way. This is unfortunate, but all games with serious stories still do it, and the reasons for that are ridiculous, and it seems like the AAA industry is using all their might to get rid of or cover up this divide between the two game components, but it's like trying to bring down the Great Wall of China with an eraser.
• If you cover all the game parts, it's a serious, brutal story. If you cover the story parts, it's a farcical, over-the-top action romp with mindless killing and exploding buses.

 

Thank God.

 

I registered just to say that I am so happy to see someone else had these sorts of reactions to the game. There is a lot to love in this game, but goddamn if it isn't hard to take Joel's character and arc seriously when he is murdering entire platoons in between story beats.

 

Edit: Specifically, the Ending...

ENDING SPOILERS

...this ending that countless reviewers and press seem to fawn over for whatever nuance or change it reveals in Joel and his relationship to Ellie is entirely undercut by the fact that it was preceded by taking down droves of armed men at no physical or emotional cost to Joel. Whatever was interesting about Joel's decision to choose Ellie over the promise of a cure just seemed downright sabotaged by the hallways of faceless soldiers they throw at you that Joel dispatches without a moment's doubt that he'd succeed.

 

When the final cutscenes were playing out, I just couldn't stop thinking of Joel as a "plot-armored video game protagonist that murders all the mans" instead of the (vague) character I had previously bought into for most of the game.

 

I just wish it wasn't a given that he would succeed when they throw these numbers at him, that he would come out unscathed. I want the people he had to kill and the physical danger it put him in to have actually been of some consequence, or just don't do it at all.