My intention in rating this game three stars is to damn with faint praise.
Naughty Dog have always been an archetypal "American" studio in the worst possible sense. An organ of "tech" culture rather than pop-art. Novelty and toys giving way to, not putting themselves at the service of or being taken over by artists, but instead tech guys starting to make a tech guys idea of "OHRT". Serious "OHRT" time now guys, like the oscars (remember which movies were winning Oscars in the 2000s, or god forbid, now?), like HBO! What if there was a video game with a scene as deep as THIS?
Yes, I have absolutely no respect for Neil Druckmann. He is an imbecile. He is an aspirational HBO viewer. A reactionary in the worst and truest sense possible. The Last of Us came with the dawn of New Prestige Television. That was vomitive, and this game is vomitive. What it stands for. What it aspires to be. The Last of Us as a narrative, as a depiction of a world, is almost brutally pointless. Like all darlings of the Obama Era the complete complacency and ignorance alongside triumphant arrogance make for surreal viewing in retrospect. How did this happen? How is this STILL HAPPENING? It's just the high production value Action Game Product shell of the time carrying a hollowed out ripoff of a pop-prestigious science fiction film 'Children of Men' with no meaningful changes on the part of its new "creators". This game is a Mad Libs act.
And the game itself is just functional. Overproduced. There's stuff to look at, hit, shoot, "STEALTH" around, whatever. It's stuff you can do elsewhere. Stuff you have done elsewhere.
If you believe that "video games" are one unified class of experience, all iterations of each other, and you like a good well produced "video game", and occasionally you'll challenge yourself with some "themes", good for you, like vegetables after your burgers, then sure, you'll love this. You've probably played it after paying for it three times. You probably have something that's got a triforce on it hanging on your wall too. I hate you. I don't consider you human.
Naughty Dog have always been an archetypal "American" studio in the worst possible sense. An organ of "tech" culture rather than pop-art. Novelty and toys giving way to, not putting themselves at the service of or being taken over by artists, but instead tech guys starting to make a tech guys idea of "OHRT". Serious "OHRT" time now guys, like the oscars (remember which movies were winning Oscars in the 2000s, or god forbid, now?), like HBO! What if there was a video game with a scene as deep as THIS?
Yes, I have absolutely no respect for Neil Druckmann. He is an imbecile. He is an aspirational HBO viewer. A reactionary in the worst and truest sense possible. The Last of Us came with the dawn of New Prestige Television. That was vomitive, and this game is vomitive. What it stands for. What it aspires to be. The Last of Us as a narrative, as a depiction of a world, is almost brutally pointless. Like all darlings of the Obama Era the complete complacency and ignorance alongside triumphant arrogance make for surreal viewing in retrospect. How did this happen? How is this STILL HAPPENING? It's just the high production value Action Game Product shell of the time carrying a hollowed out ripoff of a pop-prestigious science fiction film 'Children of Men' with no meaningful changes on the part of its new "creators". This game is a Mad Libs act.
And the game itself is just functional. Overproduced. There's stuff to look at, hit, shoot, "STEALTH" around, whatever. It's stuff you can do elsewhere. Stuff you have done elsewhere.
If you believe that "video games" are one unified class of experience, all iterations of each other, and you like a good well produced "video game", and occasionally you'll challenge yourself with some "themes", good for you, like vegetables after your burgers, then sure, you'll love this. You've probably played it after paying for it three times. You probably have something that's got a triforce on it hanging on your wall too. I hate you. I don't consider you human.