The Last of Us Part II

[Magnagarde]

the ratings show that there is a loud minority of people who cannot accept anything going outside the bounds of their personal headcanon, and so they are having temper tantrums online. that is ALL they show.

as for critic reviews vs critic scores? have you just looked at the scores, or did you bother reading reviews? i have read plenty of legitimate criticism of the game. I kept my preorder, knowing what i'm getting into. I don't expect a perfect game. I expect that critics bumped up their scores, knowing that developer bonuses depend on them and put their criticisms into actual review articles.

What do you mean with loud minority? The majority of the reviews across sites that don't disallow negative reviews are largely negative about the game's story. It's almost exclusively the story and characters players have an issue with.

[Witchblade77]

/while data disk is working - checking back here. are you all telling me... that ordering from gamestop as a last resort, cause everyone else was sold out... was actualy the BETTER CHOICE? truly, we live in a bizzaro world....

P.S. if the positive review is saying something to the effect of "came here to upvote to stick it to the haters" yeah, its not super legit. i mean.. there were a ton of positive reviews of AS unity after Notre Dame burned down and uplay not only helped with restoration, but also gave away the game for free - that had nothing to do with quality of the game, and everything to do with people review bombing the game, just in a positive direction. as in - fake reviews. (and I know for a fact that a TON of positive reviews on amazon are bought and you can very easily see which ones, by looking at actual text of the reviews)

but at the same time - so far positive reviews actualy seem to go into details WHY they are positive, while extremely negative reviews are all "die SJW scum for ruining my childhood" or some nonsense like that. so..... there's that

[SirCowdog]

I have zero intentions of buying or playing the game. It's simply not my cup of tea(although I'm open to arguments for the gameplay if anyone has them).
But I wanted to educate myself fully on the story and get a real first-hand opinion of it before commenting further. But the versions I've been able to find are....10+ hours long?

For those who HAVE played the game, does this sound accurate? Are there really that many cutscenes and critical story elements in the gameplay parts?

[Antipathy1018]

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/reviews...2224?variant=A

If it was anything like the Best Buy reviews, it's because the reviews have nothing to do with the game and are instead complaining about the stores failure to deliver on time. So not too much of value was lost.

Trying to see if there's any actual info/way to see what they were before but not turning anything up so far.

@Edge I took the time to bother to read the reviews before Amazon wiped all of them. You are right 10-20% were bitching about delivery but most were bitching about the story, and since they were verified purchases they already had the game. I know first hand you can't review stuff without getting it first, tried to review digital, and hardcover novels before and was not able to b/c either I had not gotten it in the mail yet, or had not even opened it in my PCs kindel. Or are you trying to say 1 of the most anticipated games of this year has no reviews on Amazon after over a day of being avalible in the English speaking parts of the world.

@keelr You do realize this game came out mid-evening last night in the US correct, and that US Amazon posts reviews from most if not all its English speaking sites, so that means the people in NZ that got it around 3pm Thursday in the US were already playing it +/- a few hours therefore could review it.

Or are you trying to hand wave away Amazon nuking a few thousand verified purchased reviews?

[Witchblade77]

What do you mean with loud minority? The majority of the reviews across sites that don't disallow negative reviews are largely negative about the game's story. It's almost exclusively the story and characters players have an issue with.

I mean majority are probably still playing the game, or aren't interested in leaving reviews, while loud unhappy majority is complaining. story issues... I mean... I had issues with ME3 that went far FAR beyond the ending, but I also know multiple people who actualy loved the game AND its ending and thought it fit perfectly, so... when it comes to story, your milleage may vary.

[Magnagarde]

There's a difference between genuine criticism and the enraged manbabies who are review-bombing it before they even play it while telling the guy who wrote the game to get AIDS/cancer etc.

Most of the criticism seems genuine to me because many point out having the same issues with how the characters were handled. As someone who got pretty far into the game and just stopped, with little to no intention to continue, I can relate to many. Just because many dislike it doesn't mean we're manbabies. To be fair, most of those who review it haven't touched the game, but that goes for both the positive and negative reviews. The critics themselves seem to not have played the game properly and have just gone off ND's reputation for making good games, while giving it high reviews to stay in Sony's and ND's good graces for the future. There is absolutely no way that this is the best game anyone has credibly seen, across the board and for every single critic, just like there's no way that all these negative reviews are genuine playing experience.

- - - Updated - - -

I mean majority are probably still playing the game, or aren't interested in leaving reviews, while loud unhappy majority is complaining. story issues... I mean... I had issues with ME3 that went far FAR beyond the ending, but I also know multiple people who actualy loved the game AND its ending and thought it fit perfectly, so... when it comes to story, your milleage may vary.

Well yeah, that's obviously the case. Games sell multiple times more copies than there will ever be reviews. I'm sure many will like it, but my personal experience - friends in real life, friends on the internet and the internet in general - is that the majority dislike the way the story was handled in general. The single biggest issue that I've noticed most people are pointing out is how the story and characters panned out to be.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I have zero intentions of buying or playing the game. It's simply not my cup of tea(although I'm open to arguments for the gameplay if anyone has them).
But I wanted to educate myself fully on the story and get a real first-hand opinion of it before commenting further. But the versions I've been able to find are....10+ hours long?

For those who HAVE played the game, does this sound accurate? Are there really that many cutscenes and critical story elements in the gameplay parts?

I'm watching through it now as i don't own a playstation and the one i'm on is about 8 hours though i don't know if it misses parts.

[Antipathy1018]

I mean majority are probably still playing the game, or aren't interested in leaving reviews, while loud unhappy majority is complaining. story issues... I mean... I had issues with ME3 that went far FAR beyond the ending, but I also know multiple people who actualy loved the game AND its ending and thought it fit perfectly, so... when it comes to story, your milleage may vary.

I would normally agree @Witchblade77, but Amazon nuking the reviews from all 3 versions of the game kinda says it is other than what i guess you were meaning to say is the loud minority, not the "loud unhappy majority", I am just going to think that was a typo.

[eschatological]

10/10 scores usually don't mean that a game is perfect since there'll never be a perfect game. That being said, I still don't think all the 10/10 scores are reasonable but that's just my opinion on the matter. Ultimately, the game really suffers from ludonarrative dissonance while having very little redeeming qualities beyond looking pretty. But it's a good thing that AAA devs are willing to take risks with narrative driven games like they did with TLOU2. I just don't think it paid off this time (though financially it most likely will).

Really? I've read exactly the opposite.

Uncharted is all about ludonarrative dissonance.

TLOU, fwiw, justifies all its violence through the disintegration of society and the tribalism that arises in its place.


Reading the last few pages of this thread, it sounds like people who thought Walter White was the good guy in Breaking Bad also lionize Joel, for some reason, who was an outright piece of shit, in the first TLOU.

Then, compare it to GOW which people who are criticizing this game seem to think is the pinnacle of gaming so far. For its gameplay? Sure? Its world building is great too. But the story? It's all about a dude so broken he can't even convey basic emotions to his son. That's A) not original, and B) not a good story. It hides in its silence. Kratos never confronts anything emotional, he just funnels it into a rage that kills gods and valkyries. I think people are going to be in for a surprise in GOW2 if Atreus (AKA Loki) turns out just as shitty as Baldur, with just as many daddy issues, but it would be wholly justified by the story. Likewise, Ellie being too attached to Joel to let go of him is.......well, pretty standard.

[minteK917]

The scoring system is actually part of the scam reviewers use to soften the blows to the access people. Because the reader is a human and humans are dumb. Its like penis size, if the average is 5 inch, everyone has a 7 inch dick, so the average is 7 inch dick. If the average game is 5, but actually people just put the average game at 7, 7 is an average game. This is why you can get away with giving copy pasta sports game 7-9 every year. Because with a real scoring system, they would be 5 or bellow. This also inflate the scoring at the top, well if fifa copy pasta is a 7... then yes last of us two or breath of the wild are fucking 11/10 on those scoring system. Anything under 7 is considered down right garbage all the way down. But the human brain is dumb, since the scoring system use 1-10, you told me this average game is 7, 7 is good. It looks good when you read it, so it might just not be average after all!

And this is why, only an idiot look at any scoring system to buy ANYTHING.

[Witchblade77]

I would normally agree @Witchblade77, but Amazon nuking the reviews from all 3 versions of the game kinda says it is other than what i guess you were meaning to say is the loud minority, not the "loud unhappy majority", I am just going to think that was a typo.

yes, I did and yes it was, typing is not my forte, especially while distracted. I haven't seen reviews on amazon before the nuke, so I'll take your word for the general contents. knee jerk reaction? who the heck even knows with amazon at this point. and on that note. seems like its ready to play now, so lunch and some game time for me it is

I expect to be gutted and I expect to have plenty of issues of my own that may or may not be similar to some of the other people. I do not expect to hate the game, knowing what I know so far from spoilers. I do think that its quite possible to tint the narrative and how it affects you on a bases of both prior preconceptions and other people reactions. sometimes more positively. sometimes negatively. /shrug

[SirCowdog]

I'm watching through it now as i don't own a playstation and the one i'm on is about 8 hours though i don't know if it misses parts.

I'm not so much concerned with perfect exhaustive details, I just want the general idea so I don't jump to conclusions about the game. I've already seen enough of the gameplay to know that I despise that stealth/run/you're always the weakest in the area nonsense. I'm sure it's perfectly functional and bug-free, it's just not for me. So that just leaves the story elements(which are the source of the controversy anyway).

[Antipathy1018]

yes, I did and yes it was, typing is not my forte, especially while distracted. I haven't seen reviews on amazon before the nuke, so I'll take your word for the general contents. knee jerk reaction? who the heck even knows with amazon at this point. and on that note. seems like its ready to play now, so lunch and some game time for me it is

I expect to be gutted and I expect to have plenty of issues of my own that may or may not be similar to some of the other people. I do not expect to hate the game, knowing what I know so far from spoilers. I do think that its quite possible to tint the narrative and how it affects you on a bases of both prior preconceptions and other people reactions. sometimes more positively. sometimes negatively. /shrug

No worries @Witchblade77 I know all about having a hard time typing, I lost the use of my non-dominate had at the end of 2016 so I give people much more slack when it comes to spelling. or obvious mis-typing these days.

As for "Gutted" do you mean for your opinion of the game, or in-game while playing? As for me either way I won't do so, I may not like what is going on, but I also know that others are not even close to a carbon-copy of me and therefore like stuff I don't.

As for "prior preconceptions" if you look back to a tweet Druckmann sent out in 2017 you can see the writing on the wall for what would happen to Joel, once he pushed out who made TLoU 1's story great, that being Amy Henning. She was the one that made the first 3 Uncharted games so loved, and before her work at ND she was the force behind the Legacy of Kain series at CD, after she was gone from ND Neil Druckmann had free reign over the company, and we get his vision in this game.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I'm not so much concerned with perfect exhaustive details, I just want the general idea so I don't jump to conclusions about the game. I've already seen enough of the gameplay to know that I despise that stealth/run/you're always the weakest in the area nonsense. I'm sure it's perfectly functional and bug-free, it's just not for me. So that just leaves the story elements(which are the source of the controversy anyway).

your looking at atleast 8 hours then maybe a bit less depending on the version you found.

[Edge-]

As for "prior preconceptions" if you look back to a tweet Druckmann sent out in 2017 you can see the writing on the wall for what would happen to Joel, once he pushed out who made TLoU 1's story great, that being Amy Henning. She was the one that made the first 3 Uncharted games so loved, and before her work at ND she was the force behind the Legacy of Kain series at CD, after she was gone from ND Neil Druckmann had free reign over the company, and we get his vision in this game.

She didn't work on TLOU 1 though, as far as I remember and my casual searching to back up my memory is telling me. Unless I'm missing something?

[Kallisto]

She didn't work on TLOU 1 though, as far as I remember and my casual searching to back up my memory is telling me. Unless I'm missing something?

Amy had nothing to do with the first TLOU. The naughty dog games she worked on was Uncharted 1-3

[eschatological]

As for "prior preconceptions" if you look back to a tweet Druckmann sent out in 2017 you can see the writing on the wall for what would happen to Joel, once he pushed out who made TLoU 1's story great, that being Amy Henning. She was the one that made the first 3 Uncharted games so loved, and before her work at ND she was the force behind the Legacy of Kain series at CD, after she was gone from ND Neil Druckmann had free reign over the company, and we get his vision in this game.

I mean, are you telling me you didn't watch that first ever reveal trailer, where Joel walks out of the light as just a shadow figure, into a house where Ellie has slaughtered everywhere, and didn't think, "Man, I wonder if he's some sorta ghost or flashback."

Cause that's literally what I thought, and what everyone I watch thought, pretty instantly.

[Mirishka]

You do realize that you wiki plot summary literally leaves out 1 of 2 major plot points people hate
about this game right, since icba to look up how to do spoiler tagging. Just google Joel+golf club+Abby.
Maybe next time don't be misleading in your posts.

Its a basic summary of the end stretch, not the game as a whole. So go whine to wikipedia about it.

[Nerovar]

Really? I've read exactly the opposite.

Uncharted is all about ludonarrative dissonance.

TLOU, fwiw, justifies all its violence through the disintegration of society and the tribalism that arises in its place.


Reading the last few pages of this thread, it sounds like people who thought Walter White was the good guy in Breaking Bad also lionize Joel, for some reason, who was an outright piece of shit, in the first TLOU.

Then, compare it to GOW which people who are criticizing this game seem to think is the pinnacle of gaming so far. For its gameplay? Sure? Its world building is great too. But the story? It's all about a dude so broken he can't even convey basic emotions to his son. That's A) not original, and B) not a good story. It hides in its silence. Kratos never confronts anything emotional, he just funnels it into a rage that kills gods and valkyries. I think people are going to be in for a surprise in GOW2 if Atreus (AKA Loki) turns out just as shitty as Baldur, with just as many daddy issues, but it would be wholly justified by the story. Likewise, Ellie being too attached to Joel to let go of him is.......well, pretty standard.

I neither played the new God of War nor Uncharted so I don't really know what you're talking about. When I was referring to ludonarrative dissonance I'm referring to the fact that you brutally kill not so nameless enemies in droves without flinching on your way to revenge but the protagonist has a breakdown after killing two other characters in a cutscene. It's like the actual gameplay speaks a very different language than the story that is presented to you because hey, it's a third person shooter after all is said and done. You can't really circumvent this problem as a AAA studio either since there's probably nothing that sells as well as violence but overall it's pretty detrimental to your message if you want to portray violence without glorifying it. This will only get worse/more apparent as video game narratives get more "sophisticated"/overly intellectual.

[Witchblade77]

No worries @Witchblade77 I know all about having a hard time typing, I lost the use of my non-dominate had at the end of 2016 so I give people much more slack when it comes to spelling. or obvious mis-typing these days.

As for "Gutted" do you mean for your opinion of the game, or in-game while playing? As for me either way I won't do so, I may not like what is going on, but I also know that others are not even close to a carbon-copy of me and therefore like stuff I don't.

As for "prior preconceptions" if you look back to a tweet Druckmann sent out in 2017 you can see the writing on the wall for what would happen to Joel, once he pushed out who made TLoU 1's story great, that being Amy Henning. She was the one that made the first 3 Uncharted games so loved, and before her work at ND she was the force behind the Legacy of Kain series at CD, after she was gone from ND Neil Druckmann had free reign over the company, and we get his vision in this game.

1. Amy Henning was never involved in the last of us

2. he didn't push her out, by actual accounts of Uncharted 4 development, she left for reasons we are still not fully aware of (my personal theory based on comments she made later - is crunch culture) and Neil and Bruce were roped in to finish the game, despite not wanting to. Bruce left ND after the game was done, instead of taking a sabbatical like he originally planned. I love Amy Henning to pieces, she is awesome, but in this case - she had nothing to do with it. the person you are missing from TLOU 1 is Bruce Straley, who was responsible for all of the lighter character moments. given that current co-writer worked on first season of Westworld - I'm expecting fewer lighter moments, more tragedy and exact level of violence and gore I see people complaining about.

3. I never expected Joel to survive. given that the game was inspired by children of men and fate of THAT protagonist, I was surprised that Joel was still alive at the end of first game these are not the preconceptions I'm talking about. I'm talking about all those youtube etc analysis.
4. I expect to be emotionaly gutted by the narrative. judging by spoilers do far, its going to be more of a "Walking dead the video game and Clementine's choice" sort of gutted, rather then "Mass effect 3, especially its ending" sort of gutted.

P.S. I'm in a very small, tiny even minority of people who vastly preferred Uncharted 3 (AND 1) to Uncharted 2 (I have replayed 1 and 3, I have NOT replayed 2). but by most people Uncharted 2 is considered to be a superior game in every way and also a vast improvement over the first.

of the original trilogy, Druckmann had most involvement in 2 and left for a separate team developing last of us before uncharted 3. he had no involvement in it at all. take it as you will.