The Last of Us

[yourbeliefs]

I'm about a quarter of the way through and here's my thoughts..

I have to say that yes, from a presentation and cinematic standpoint the game is virtually flawless. Great acting, realistic body movement, and realistic dialog (although after a while I just want to whack Ellen in the face for using the F-word about as frequently as some people use commas) definitely pull me into the story.

And then the combat happens and all my energy drains like when your morning alarm wakes you up from a great dream and you need to get ready for work. First off, I GET that the combat in the game is "supposed" to be bad and was designed that way. Anyone who thinks that this game is just "Uncharted meets The Walking Dead" is going to be in for a major disappointment. I understand that the game discourages one on one/gunplay combat and that it's better to just stealth your way around, but there are still some instances where this is impossible and guys (living or dead) will come right at you. I'm not sure which I find to be more annoying. First off apparently there's no more good people in this world and you're surrounded by a**holes who want to kill you just because, and it's very easy to get overrun by them. Maybe this gets easier when/if Ellen is finally given a gun but for the moment it's very frustrating and you'll be hitting the Restart Encounter option more often than the fire button. The zombies aren't much better, again often swarming you, and the Clickers are most annoying because they pull that BS "1 Hit Kill" method. I'm sorry, but you should be allowed to escape from these guys if equipped properly. I find it hard to believe that Joel never thinks to take out a shiv and stab one of these things in the head when they're grabbing him, not to mention they can take multiple hits. I don't think they had to go and intentionally make the combat "not fun" in order to drive the point home that you should try to avoid it. The scarcity of resources and ammo are enough. I could go on about things I don't like, such as the rather unintuitive weapon switching mechanism that requires you to press a button, press a direction, hold another button, then select the weapon you want. I realize that there's only so many buttons available on the controller but really, a "hot swap" button would have come in handy. Or maybe I'm just too used to PC gaming as of late.

Having said that, I don't think the game is BAD and my issues with combat aren't enough to make me turn away the game, which is truly a testament to how good everything else, because as my experience with RE6 proved, there's only so much bad gameplay I can stand. I do expect to make some more progress as I am looking to dedicate at least an hour a day to playing, which is hard as a family man.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I saw a article today where Ellen Page was commenting on how much a character looked like Her, and from the cap it did...

News Story Link..

Actual quotes from the Reddit AMA that the article references.

 

[king3pj]

I'm about a quarter of the way through and here's my thoughts..

I have to say that yes, from a presentation and cinematic standpoint the game is virtually flawless. Great acting, realistic body movement, and realistic dialog (although after a while I just want to whack Ellen in the face for using the F-word about as frequently as some people use commas) definitely pull me into the story.

I'll start here. Yes Ellie drops more F bombs than Joel or anyone else in this game. This wouldn't seem weird if it was coming from Marcus Fenix in a Gears game. It is a little unnatural coming from a 12 year old girl though and I think that's the point. With all the horrific things she sees and does in this world she isn't a normal 12 year old girl anymore. Once you've killed zombies and people what's a four letter word?

And then the combat happens and all my energy drains like when your morning alarm wakes you up from a great dream and you need to get ready for work. First off, I GET that the combat in the game is "supposed" to be bad and was designed that way. Anyone who thinks that this game is just "Uncharted meets The Walking Dead" is going to be in for a major disappointment.

I hear you on this one. Every time I had to pass through a room full of clickers or a group of people rushed the house I was in my heart sank. I didn't think the combat was bad though, just a little different than what I'm used to. Once I got good at the mechanics of the game I actually had fun clearing out a room of bandits without being spotted.

Like you said though, the game was designed this way. You are supposed to be a normal man and a 12 year old girl trying to get through a horrific and almost impossible situation. You're not supposed to be a trained soldier or even a quasi-hero like Nathan Drake. They are trying to make us feel the bleak nature of the world and the tension that Joel and Ellie are feeling. This game isn't always fun. That's for sure. It is rewarding when you get through these tough sections and move the story forward though.

I understand that the game discourages one on one/gunplay combat and that it's better to just stealth your way around, but there are still some instances where this is impossible and guys (living or dead) will come right at you. I'm not sure which I find to be more annoying. First off apparently there's no more good people in this world and you're surrounded by a**holes who want to kill you just because, and it's very easy to get overrun by them. Maybe this gets easier when/if Ellen is finally given a gun but for the moment it's very frustrating and you'll be hitting the Restart Encounter option more often than the fire button.

A couple things here. The stealth gets much easier once you find a bow. It is a 1 hit kill unless they are wearing armor and it's silent unless you miss. If you find a way to hit one human without being seen the others will often find their body on their patrol. They will stop to look at the body and it's another easy silent kill from your bow. You can shoot at people standing right next to each other if they aren't looking at each other.

If you do get spotted run. I know it feels unnatural to leave cover when someone is shooting at you but your best bet is to run the other way and find cover again. If you can take out the guy who saw you with a quick shotgun blast before you run that's even better. Once they see you the entire patrol will work to flank that area and attack that spot from all directions. If you are still in the spot when they get there you are screwed but if you can move back a little ways you will often see them turn their back to you to look in the spot you just left. This gives you another easy bow or gun kill. In this way I found the combat to be somewhat realistic for what a 2 vs. 6 gunfight would feel like.

I agree with you on the part where everyone you see wants to kill you, no questions asked. You do meet a few friendly people but it is a very rare occasion. I found it a little strange that in a world taken over by zombies everyone who sees a single man and a little girl decides that they need to start shooting immediately. I get that these people have problems with bandits but this was one of the few parts of the game that didn't feel very real to me.

The zombies aren't much better, again often swarming you, and the Clickers are most annoying because they pull that BS "1 Hit Kill" method. I'm sorry, but you should be allowed to escape from these guys if equipped properly. I find it hard to believe that Joel never thinks to take out a shiv and stab one of these things in the head when they're grabbing him, not to mention they can take multiple hits.

Once you find enough pills you can do exactly that. Hit select and then move one menu over to the right out of crafting and into supplements. One of the areas you can improve is called shiv master. If you have an available shiv in your inventory and a clicker grabs you, you will get the chance to shiv them before they kill you. I agree that the clickers are unfair. Their AI is wonky. Sometimes I can slowly walk past one about a foot away from them. Other times they will be walking by so I am completely still. Out of nowhere they will scream and run right at me even though I didn't move an inch.

I don't think they had to go and intentionally make the combat "not fun" in order to drive the point home that you should try to avoid it. The scarcity of resources and ammo are enough. I could go on about things I don't like, such as the rather unintuitive weapon switching mechanism that requires you to press a button, press a direction, hold another button, then select the weapon you want. I realize that there's only so many buttons available on the controller but really, a "hot swap" button would have come in handy. Or maybe I'm just too used to PC gaming as of late.

Having said that, I don't think the game is BAD and my issues with combat aren't enough to make me turn away the game, which is truly a testament to how good everything else, because as my experience with RE6 proved, there's only so much bad gameplay I can stand. I do expect to make some more progress as I am looking to dedicate at least an hour a day to playing, which is hard as a family man.

Stick with it. The combat gets easier as you find better weapons and learn to craft additional items. You can also beef up your health, focused hearing, and other things through supplements. The difficulty does ramp up but you become better equipped to deal with it for the most part. One hour a day is going to be tough for such a long grueling campaign. If you can get through it I'm almost positive you will be glad you did. On the other hand, if it feels more like work than fun what's the point?

 

[Scherrman]

I really want to play this but I don't think I'd have the time to finish it. I just downloaded the demo for the newest Resident Evil game. Anyone here know if it's any good?

 

[yourbeliefs]

Like you said though, the game was designed this way. You are supposed to be a normal man and a 12 year old girl trying to get through a horrific and almost impossible situation. You're not supposed to be a trained soldier or even a quasi-hero like Nathan Drake. They are trying to make us feel the bleak nature of the world and the tension that Joel and Ellie are feeling. This game isn't always fun. That's for sure. It is rewarding when you get through these tough sections and move the story forward though.

I don't FULLY agree with that. Joel has been living in the Zombie dystopia for 20 years, and clearly Ellie has been hardened by her upbringing as well. I actually WOULD expect Joel to be closer in skill to say, Nathan Drake than I would Harry Mason, James Sunderland or Heather Mason, all of whom have NO sort of survival skills and clearly don't know how to use their weapons properly. Still, as you said it probably will get easier once I invest in some more upgrades.

One hour a day is going to be tough for such a long grueling campaign. If you can get through it I'm almost positive you will be glad you did. On the other hand, if it feels more like work than fun what's the point?

Actually I said AT LEAST an hour a day. My plan is to get up early and work out while I play as well as when I get home from work. I have a stationary bike in my PS3 room. It's a decent workout, although when things get hectic in the game I need to slow down because I need to focus more on the actual game..

 

[Scherrman]

Playing and exercising, talk about multi-tasking.

 

[king3pj]

My old college roommate has lost about 60 pounds in the last year. He went from no real exercise to buying a treadmill. He made a rule that he could only play his video games while he was walking on the treadmill. He also changed his diet which probably had a lot to do with it but he always credits his weight loss to his video game exercise program.

 

[king3pj]

I don't FULLY agree with that. Joel has been living in the Zombie dystopia for 20 years, and clearly Ellie has been hardened by her upbringing as well. I actually WOULD expect Joel to be closer in skill to say, Nathan Drake than I would Harry Mason, James Sunderland or Heather Mason, all of whom have NO sort of survival skills and clearly don't know how to use their weapons properly. Still, as you said it probably will get easier once I invest in some more upgrades.

To be fair, I wouldn't say Joel is some bumbling idiot out there either. Yes you get spotted sometimes even though you don't feel like you did anything wrong. However, when you do clear out a room of 6 bandits without any of them even knowing you're there you feel like a total badass. What I meant by my statement about him not being a trained soldier is this.

You are supposed to be a somewhat average man in this world. Yes you have lived through some crazy stuff and picked up some survival skills along the way. However, you're not Master Chief or Marcus Fenix who can just run into a room guns blazing and clear it out. 6 (sometimes more sometimes less) bandits vs 1 somewhat normal man and a 12 year old girl should be tough. It wouldn't feel as real as the rest of the game does if you didn't have to resort to alternative means to win these fights. I never felt like my aim was nerfed or that Joel was incompetent. It just felt like the odds were always against me simply because there are more of them and they work together realistically to kill me.

Once you find more powerful guns and additional items to craft you can win a flat out cover based fire fight. I did this a few times instead of stealth later in the game because I didn't want to move forward into an open area where I could be surrounded. If you do choose to fight that way you just need to pick the place to take your stand. Preferably at the end of a hallway where you have cover but can't be flanked. Then you can just pop off some head shots when they look out of cover and hit anyone who charges too close with a shotgun blast. By the way, any gun in the game is capable of taking out a bad guy with one head shot. Some of the more powerful guns just let you take them out with shots to the chest too.

 

[yourbeliefs]

A few other notes about the game..

The game seems to (for better or worse) either suffer from "Load Game Amnesia" or it just uses pre-set save points that fills in with your stats. Here's 2 examples: There was this one bit where I was going through a hotel and of course I HAD to take out a few bastards and guys were aware of my location. I got to the top floor and saw that the enemies were alerted of my presence (even though they weren't on the same floor where I alerted people but whatever.) I then accidentally ran into a hallway where I startled and then was ambushed by some jerks. I decided that was a good point to stop my current game session. When I loaded the game up the next day, I started on the top floor again but no one seemed to care. No one was on alert and everyone was spread out. Another example was later in the same building where I had to start up a generator. The way the game works is that for stuff like this it makes you start it up about 3 times, and of course in this scene every time I tried I had a zombie run up to me to give me a wet kiss. Anyways I started it up and then got ambushed and died. When the game reloaded though, I only had to start it up once perplexingly. As I said, this isn't really a complaint, because depending on the situation this can help or hurt.

WHY CAN'T I MOVE BODIES? Anyone familiar with the Metal Gear Solid games knows about moving away bodies so that they aren't found by patrols and help protect your location. It's quite frustrating to take a guy out and then need to be on high alert in case someone else wanders in and finds their dead partner. Seeing as there's 2 people and NUMEROUS hiding places/rooms, this seems like a rather glaring oversight.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Apparently Ellen Page isn't the only one accusing Naughty Dog of ripping them off..

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...st&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all

 

[king3pj]

I just took this 5 minutes ago.



As for the map guy. Yes, it looks like they used his map without permission. He has since taken the angry posts down and said Naughty Dog has reached out to him and they are taking care of the situation.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/naught...sts-boston-rail-map-in-the-last-of-us-6410721

"I've just spoken with Naughty Dog over the phone in a very constructive conversation. Can't say more at the moment, but it seems as if matters will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction shortly," Booth wrote on his website.

"I can say that they do acknowledge their error in using my map and were very apologetic for it. I likewise apologized for my initial vitriolic post. A lot of mutual respect for each other’s creative work," he added.

ND has made a couple mistakes here but at least they are trying to make it right.

 

[king3pj]

A few other notes about the game..

The game seems to (for better or worse) either suffer from "Load Game Amnesia" or it just uses pre-set save points that fills in with your stats. Here's 2 examples: There was this one bit where I was going through a hotel and of course I HAD to take out a few bastards and guys were aware of my location. I got to the top floor and saw that the enemies were alerted of my presence (even though they weren't on the same floor where I alerted people but whatever.) I then accidentally ran into a hallway where I startled and then was ambushed by some jerks. I decided that was a good point to stop my current game session. When I loaded the game up the next day, I started on the top floor again but no one seemed to care. No one was on alert and everyone was spread out. Another example was later in the same building where I had to start up a generator. The way the game works is that for stuff like this it makes you start it up about 3 times, and of course in this scene every time I tried I had a zombie run up to me to give me a wet kiss. Anyways I started it up and then got ambushed and died. When the game reloaded though, I only had to start it up once perplexingly. As I said, this isn't really a complaint, because depending on the situation this can help or hurt.

WHY CAN'T I MOVE BODIES? Anyone familiar with the Metal Gear Solid games knows about moving away bodies so that they aren't found by patrols and help protect your location. It's quite frustrating to take a guy out and then need to be on high alert in case someone else wanders in and finds their dead partner. Seeing as there's 2 people and NUMEROUS hiding places/rooms, this seems like a rather glaring oversight.

They most definitely use preset save checkpoints. Every time you pause it will tell you how many minutes it's been since your last save. Lots of games are like this. If you die you start over from the last checkpoint like it never happened. Any enemies you killed before you died will be back and you get another chance. It would be pretty unfair if you made a mistake and alerted them and died and the game kept putting you back in with the enemy already alerted to your presence. You would get stuck in an unfair loop where you just die over and over again. This is a pretty common thing in almost every game that uses auto save checkpoints unless I'm not understanding what you mean.

I agree on the part about moving bodies. I tried to do it at the beginning of the game and was surprised to find out I couldn't. One thing you can do if you are out of sight when you grab them is to drag them behind a wall before you strangle them. Strangely you can try to hide them but only before you kill them.

 

[yourbeliefs]

They most definitely use preset save checkpoints. Every time you pause it will tell you how many minutes it's been since your last save. Lots of games are like this. If you die you start over from the last checkpoint like it never happened. Any enemies you killed before you died will be back and you get another chance. It would be pretty unfair if you made a mistake and alerted them and died and the game kept putting you back in with the enemy already alerted to your presence. You would get stuck in an unfair loop where you just die over and over again. This is a pretty common thing in almost every game that uses auto save checkpoints unless I'm not understanding what you mean.

I agree on the part about moving bodies. I tried to do it at the beginning of the game and was surprised to find out I couldn't. One thing you can do if you are out of sight when you grab them is to drag them behind a wall before you strangle them. Strangely you can try to hide them but only before you kill them.

Well most games I've played will save right before a conflict area. Seeing that little saving icon is often an indication that some sh*t is going down. As I said, it's not really a complaint, but an observation I had about the whole thing. Also I know about how you can drag them before you choke them but you can only drag them so far. And it's not like the MGS games where you could move, choke, move, choke, move, choke etc until they die. And also moving around then coincides with the other issue I have, where you get "locked" into that choking animation. Of course you do your best to not try and choke someone around other patrols, but with the wonky AI stuff that can get messed up at times.

 

[yourbeliefs]

This made me laugh..

 

[king3pj]

Nice. How's the progress coming?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[yourbeliefs]

Slowly but surely. Just entered "The Fall." Have to say I rather expected the twist right beforehand and I felt the guy responsible for it was a selfish jerk and the fallout from it was really selfish as well. I was hoping to finish the game by Wednesday but I don't see that happening.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Still trudging through.. my plan to dedicate an hour a day fell through unfortunately, and I definitely missed my Wednesday deadline by a wide margin. According to my save file I'm 70% through, and while not to spoil, let's just say I just got to the "Our Princess is in another castle" part of the game. I do have to say, to make one more comment on the combat, that I think this is the first game I've ever played where I viewed combat as a reason to stop my play session. Like last night I was in the middle of about a 2 hour session. It was getting late but I felt like going on, and I was in the middle of about a half hour exploring/story continuation part, but then when some a$$hole tried to snipe me from across the way, I said, "You know what? This is a good time to call it a night!" I've had this same scenario at least 3 other times while playing. My experience has been that you go through the combat and then save at a "down" point of the game.

On a related topic, someone made a montage of all the times in the game Ellie swears. Obviously NSFW and there are some potential spoilers

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well, after about 18 hours, I finally got through TLOU. I feel like I'm not of this world. I almost feel like Elaine from Seinfeld must have felt in that infamous "The English Patient" episode. Apparently everyone around me has played a game that is is the gaming equivalent of Joe Montana. Meanwhile, I appear to have played a game that is the equivalent of Jim McMahon to go a little Sports on you.

I won't rehash my combat complaints here because you can see them in earlier comments, but know that they stay pretty consistent throughout. The only good thing I can say is that over time the combat sucks less, but that's because by then you've upgraded your character and weapons to be better equipped while the enemies stay basically the same except for some newer weapons and sometimes body armor which still crumbles under a shotgun blast. I suppose maybe part of my complaints come from the fact that I'm not a big "Stealth gamer" guy. The only real games that employ stealth extensively that I've really enjoyed were the Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid, and Batman Arkham games, which aren't completely fair comparisons as they are more action oriented than this game.

I have 2 main complaint themes about this game. The majority has to do with the plot and various parts of it, which I'm not going to get into here. I may make a separate thread if people want me do so (or choose to do so on their own) but I don't want this to turn into a spoiler filled thread when a decent number of people here still haven't played the game. The other part is that a common question I found myself asking in this game is "Why?" Why can't I use my hands to tap various objects to lure enemies like in Metal Gear Solid as opposed to being forced to throw bottles and bricks? Why can't I break away from the goddamn Clickers unless I've upgraded my "Get out of Clicker" ability which frankly has some unreasonable requirements for a first runthrough? Why don't Ellie and Joel try to REASON with some people as opposed to just shooting them to solve all their problems and vice versa? Why for this particular scene am I not allowed to use a gun when it was in my inventory beforehand and nowhere did it show me losing it?

Still, overall this is far from a bad game. I wouldn't have spent nearly 20 hours of my life on a game I flat out didn't like, but for about the last quarter of the game I wasn't playing out of pure enjoyment as much as I was "Well, if I quit now then that last 14 or so hours I threw into this will be all for nothing." Graphics and presentation and all that are top notch, probably the best the PS3 has ever seen, and while in other instances I would be able to excuse things like sub par gameplay in return for a great plot and vice versa, when BOTH of these things aren't done well (IMO) then I'm not likely to put this game in such high regard as say, Bioshock Infinite. While others have declared this a GOTY candidate, at this point for me it'll probably receive an honorable mention, or perhaps not even be on the list if a bunch of other good games come out. I give this game a B.

 

[Scherrman]

Well, after about 18 hours, I finally got through TLOU. I feel like I'm not of this world. I almost feel like Elaine from Seinfeld must have felt in that infamous "The English Patient" episode. Apparently everyone around me has played a game that is is the gaming equivalent of Joe Montana. Meanwhile, I appear to have played a game that is the equivalent of Jim McMahon to go a little Sports on you.

I won't rehash my combat complaints here because you can see them in earlier comments, but know that they stay pretty consistent throughout. The only good thing I can say is that over time the combat sucks less, but that's because by then you've upgraded your character and weapons to be better equipped while the enemies stay basically the same except for some newer weapons and sometimes body armor which still crumbles under a shotgun blast. I suppose maybe part of my complaints come from the fact that I'm not a big "Stealth gamer" guy. The only real games that employ stealth extensively that I've really enjoyed were the Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid, and Batman Arkham games, which aren't completely fair comparisons as they are more action oriented than this game.

I have 2 main complaint themes about this game. The majority has to do with the plot and various parts of it, which I'm not going to get into here. I may make a separate thread if people want me do so (or choose to do so on their own) but I don't want this to turn into a spoiler filled thread when a decent number of people here still haven't played the game. The other part is that a common question I found myself asking in this game is "Why?" Why can't I use my hands to tap various objects to lure enemies like in Metal Gear Solid as opposed to being forced to throw bottles and bricks? Why can't I break away from the goddamn Clickers unless I've upgraded my "Get out of Clicker" ability which frankly has some unreasonable requirements for a first runthrough? Why don't Ellie and Joel try to REASON with some people as opposed to just shooting them to solve all their problems and vice versa? Why for this particular scene am I not allowed to use a gun when it was in my inventory beforehand and nowhere did it show me losing it?

Still, overall this is far from a bad game. I wouldn't have spent nearly 20 hours of my life on a game I flat out didn't like, but for about the last quarter of the game I wasn't playing out of pure enjoyment as much as I was "Well, if I quit now then that last 14 or so hours I threw into this will be all for nothing." Graphics and presentation and all that are top notch, probably the best the PS3 has ever seen, and while in other instances I would be able to excuse things like sub par gameplay in return for a great plot and vice versa, when BOTH of these things aren't done well (IMO) then I'm not likely to put this game in such high regard as say, Bioshock Infinite. While others have declared this a GOTY candidate, at this point for me it'll probably receive an honorable mention, or perhaps not even be on the list if a bunch of other good games come out. I give this game a B.

Appreciate your opinion and review. Honest and helpful.

 

[yourbeliefs]

On the topic of being helpful, here's a few hints that may help you guys out to not have the same issues that I did:

When it comes to ability upgrades, don't bother putting much into Shiv and Max Health. Putting 1 in Max health is wise but because the health kits don't heal 100% it's not worth throwing so many of your health "pills" into them. The best things to focus on are enemy sensing distance and steady shot. Just ignore the Shiv Master because that'll end up using your shivs, which leads to my next tip..

ALWAYS ALWAYS have a fully powered shiv on you. You always need at least one on hand or to be made. NO, this isn't for combat reasons. It's because throughout the game you will find locked doors that need shivs to open. These rooms are like gold mines. There's at least 2 weapon kit upgrades in these rooms, and they are definitely worth going in. Given how scarce your resources are these will be quite helpful to success.

Craft the extended holsters sooner rather than later. This gives you the option to choose between two weapons on the fly, as opposed to just one.

Although both are handy when used properly, Molotov cocktails seem to work better on infected, as they run further and can make other infected catch fire, while the cup o nails work better on clearing the area of human baddies.

ALWAYS make sure your weapons are fully reloaded, because if they aren't you may miss out on ammo. Ammo that is not in your gun goes against your max, so even if you technically have room for more ammo, if your gun isn't full the game may prevent you from getting more by claiming your weapon is full. So whenever you come up to ammo laying around, make sure you reload that weapon so you don't miss out. I probably was a good 6 hours in before I realized this.

Smoke bombs are almost useless.

Thats all I can think of for now