Dtown
44 reviews liked by Dtown
eFootball
2021
What a fucking shit game!
Mace: The Dark Age
1997
Most of what I said about War Gods remains true to Mace: The Dark Age. It’s another bare bones Mortal Kombat clone with a small amount of 3D movement, once again with extremely generic stereotypes for characters, this time based on medieval times. The one stand out character to me was the training dummy character from the basic practice mode, called Spanky.
Mace does have two points in its favour, though. First are the graphics, which look great for the time. The 3D models for the characters are very well made, with detail in the model itself rather than pasting on photographs. The detail also extends into the stages, with impressive detail. On top of that, the stages aren’t just backdrop.
While it’s awkward to move around the stages, you can try to use the different layers to your advantage. Some stages even have hazards that cause damage. It creates a feeling that you’re actually fighting in a location, instead of fighting in an empty void with artwork pasted behind you.
As I’m not skilled at these kind of games, I’m not really sure how the fighting itself compares – it felt just like War Gods to me – but N64 Magazine rated it highly, so there must be something more to it.
Mace does have two points in its favour, though. First are the graphics, which look great for the time. The 3D models for the characters are very well made, with detail in the model itself rather than pasting on photographs. The detail also extends into the stages, with impressive detail. On top of that, the stages aren’t just backdrop.
While it’s awkward to move around the stages, you can try to use the different layers to your advantage. Some stages even have hazards that cause damage. It creates a feeling that you’re actually fighting in a location, instead of fighting in an empty void with artwork pasted behind you.
As I’m not skilled at these kind of games, I’m not really sure how the fighting itself compares – it felt just like War Gods to me – but N64 Magazine rated it highly, so there must be something more to it.
Resident Evil 4
2023
my interest in any truly structured long-form exercise here is more or less sapped so we'll hurriedly push past the brush and thistle to attempt to address the main points after one and a half playthroughs on hardcore. nota bene - i would have understandably played more if not for my analog stick succumbing to drift, and i would have also liked to squeeze in both a playthrough on standard as well as a professional playthrough in the interests of some nebulous due diligence i inexplicably feel i owe, but honestly the changes to professional seem mostly dull & the idea of learning the perfect parry timing in the game's second half on a ps4 with wobbly frame rate has less and less appeal the more i zero in on the idea. the ps4 version also has a significant problem with whatever technique they decided to use to render scope magnification, with a net result of halving the frame rate which is simply unacceptable for the kind of game this is - you're not zooming over swathes of land in search of a singular lonely target, you're scoping to try and land a bullseye that's five meters away! needless to say this made the regenerator sections tedious as all hell.
alterations to the core mechanical skeleton in RE4R are 'well-considered' but i hesitate to describe them as necessarily meaningful since an uncharitable interpretation would view this as a particularly hasty process of reverse engineering and applying tried-and-true bandaids to stem the hemorrhaging. free movement necessitates expanded enemy aggression, which inadvertently dilutes enemy behaviour, which means the designers had to inject elements of inconsistency to prevent easily optimized patterns of play, which calls for emergency defensive measures to keep encounters fair and level. this shifts the scope of its mechanics from thoughtful aggression to somewhat reactionary kiting. stack up enough of this over the course of a 12-20 hour playthrough and encounters start to blend together, something which becomes a rather serious issue once you get to this game’s fatigued rendition of the island. a shift in combat methodology towards reactionary gameplay wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself since you could argue it’s capturing some of re4’s more experiential qualities, but 1.) lol and 2.) brazenly inviting so many explicit grounds for comparison only serves to crystallize the qualities that made the original so special.
while many practical adages and tenets can be ascribed to and extracted from the original, it's difficult to say it doesn't subscribe to this overriding idea that 'less is more'. stop to consider the implications of this for one second and you might even recognize that the original doesn't have an overwhelming bestiary; there’s only a sparse handful of enemy types in spite of the notoriety of so many of its encounters. it’s commendable that a game built on minute alterations of one enemy unit can be described as constantly escalating and endlessly varied. one ganado on its own is never a threat, easily incapacitated with the swift slash of a knife, but as an enemy unit they are allowed to take on greater meaning through level design, decisions centered around resource management, and their method of deployment. in this sense, the original game has something of a beat ‘em up philosophy in its encounter design. there’s a comforting sense of rigidity set in place by its core mechanics which is then expounded on by the implementation of RNG which can alter the output of actions in ways both dramatic and subtle. a plagas eruption might force you on the retreat; a critical headshot might have robbed you of the roundhouse kick you were looking for; the enemy might have launched from your kick in a way that opens you up to risk if you tried to strike them on the ground. RE4R’s RNG, meanwhile, is most apparent in the way it approaches enemy staggers, and while it’s not something i’ll address too much since you’ve read about it everywhere else, it’s clearly a thorny inclusion which appears to be influenced by, at a minimum, the focus of your aiming reticule, the damage value of your weapon, the enemy’s health pool, and dynamic difficulty considerations which are holdovers from the previous two remakes in this new chronology. we might never know exactly how it’s calculated, but its effect on the game at a macro and micro level is easily observable and will make or break the game for some.
the point is no challenge in the original comes across as repetitious the way it so often does in RE4R and what’s frustrating is that there are moments which offer compelling grounds for expansion but which are rarely capitalized on. red cultists in the original are simply hardier and more physically resistant enemies, which is a misfire, but the remake reinterprets these enemies as summoners who can outright conjure plagas eruptions. it’s a frankly brilliant idea, so it’s shocking that it’s only leaned into a handful of times, two of which are seemingly explicitly designed to be skipped for speedrunning purposes. it’s the kind of change that could really serve to flesh out this game’s identity much further, and it feels wasteful to not consider the ways in which this type of enemy can add a layer of decision-making to its combat design.
there’s no discussion of RE4R without a discussion of the knife (which i mostly think is appropriately satisfying if entirely boring), but rather than exhaustively assess RE4R’s knife or semantically compare knife usage between games, let’s change gears for a second here and just consider the knife in the original. the knife can deflect projectiles, interrupt enemy advances, set up contextual attacks, strike grounded enemies, crumple them – anything that a handgun can do, a knife can do at close range and without wasting ammunition. it’s the ol’ reliable, a fundamentally ‘safe’ option with an appropriately attached high degree of risk. given its newfound metered dependency in the remake, your safe option isn’t the knife anymore – it’s actually the bolt thrower. with its negation of aiming reticule focus requirements, ranged approach which shields you from close-quarters damage, silent nature (a veritable rarity in this title), semi-consistent staggers at the cost of slow firing speed and loading speed, and nigh endlessly retrievable ammo, the bolt thrower is, if anything, a safer option than the knife ever was in the original. deploy it carefully and meticulously, and the most risk you’ll ever be at is if you’re intentionally firing bolts into the ether; they’ve even programmed it in such a way that you’ll often be able to retrieve it from difficult to reach places should you miss.
in addition, you might consider the game’s bolt thrower to be evidence of RE4R’s interrogation and consideration of the lineage of titles which the original inspired – and i do sincerely hope it’s a cheeky homage to the agony crossbow – but it’s also a lesson in poor adaptation. a signature weapon from the evil within 1 & 2, the lynchpin the agony crossbow rests on in the original game is a crafting system dedicated entirely to its output, giving its litany of options distinct value and decision-making potential while reserving its use for player discretion. the second game dilutes this by more broadly allowing you to craft other types of ammunition in addition to bolts, which is the trap upon which RE4R is similarly founded with its crafting system. the system in and of itself is already mostly a needless addition without much interesting balancing relevance, but there's a smaller problem specifically in relation to the bolt thrower - on replays with a more comprehensive view towards where and when your knife could break in relation to its usage and the positioning of merchants, it’s all but certain you’ll be reserving kitchen and boot knifes almost exclusively for the crafting of bolts. it’s a question which at every turn mostly answers itself. the mines which attach to the bolts are interesting since they can be positioned in fun ways with foreknowledge and they also explicitly signal you’ll lose a bolt, but for the most part it’s a safe resource you can be sure you’ll never lose sight of, which is notable if only because it seems to be the opposite of what this game intends to go for. with an eye for long-term planning in relation to bolt usage and knife usage, it’s almost unbelievable how sections of the game i had really struggled with on my first playthrough of hardcore (largely spent surviving minute to minute with shells and rifle ammunition being luxuries) became almost trivial on a second go of it. despite reaching a high level of proficiency in the original, it’s telling that i still never approach things the same conservative way that i often would in RE4R.
in some ways, metered knife dependency the way RE4R approaches it might be the wrong question to be asking. after all there’s nothing stopping players from running away from engagements to seek repairs most of the time if they were so inclined, and there’s precious few chokepoints that make errant knife usage legitimately hazardous. there’s another version of RE4 out there that’s a bit different – it’s called dmc1 – and what’s notable about it is that it remains one of the strongest instances of meter dependency you could reasonably conceptualize in a game. devil trigger is an important resource that you need to tap into – you can build it only by engaging with the combat system, and it allows for a lot of freedom in battles while being tightly designed to prevent abuse, making resource management an ever-present consideration. it was also seemingly designed with a view for a long-term playthrough, perhaps with the intention of allowing players to turn to macro strategy. it’s tempting to ascribe the same quality to RE4R as well, but with every workaround that’s currently in place – whether it’s foreknowledge of merchants, the ability to return to them quickly in certain cases, or kitchen knives/boot knives which will conspicuously be more present in enemy drops thanks to extremely gracious dynamic difficulty if your knife is close to breaking – it seems more clear that it’s intended to act as a measure to get people panicking as a result of the jams they’d enter in their first playthrough while introducing a very slight layer of decision-making. it’s questionable how true this is – after all, every prompt where you could use a knife is very explicitly signaled, which is a distinct contrast from the purpose of something like fuel in REmake or matches in the evil within 1 – but i suppose it’d get people into the groove nonetheless. but if only there was some way to introduce meter dependency to discourage certain actions and reinforce careful thought in a way that was truly interlinked with the game’s mechanics without handing out this many get-out-of-jail-free cards…
ahem, comparisons to resident evil 6 have run amok since the release of the demo and to be sure, this is the only resident evil game since to squarely address action game mechanics, but ironically (and perhaps controversially) most of the comparisons reflect on RE4R poorly. despite its disorganized presentation and severely unsystematic approach, resident evil 6 is still one of the last capcom action games to anchor itself on player agency, and it has an enemy suite which is designed to match this. they're legible in their behaviour and they're consistent in how you can affect them. the game's most compelling qualities might be relegated to side content in its fantastic mercenaries mode versus the vulgar bombast presented in its campaign, but even those mercenaries scenarios are fledgling score attack exercises with legitimate thought given to the waves of enemies converging on your location. mess around a bit and you’ll find a game teeming with an onslaught of strong enemy types which is at no point at risk of illegibility, in which the effect your actions can have on enemies is always consistent, in which enemies still adhere to more classical ideas of encounter design, and in which the resource management imposed by stamina (versus the knife) yields just as many meaningful decisions on a moment to moment basis with similar consequences for misuse without throttling the strongest aspects of the game or precluding the player from engaging on those terms. the game is, almost to a fault, an intentionally spearheaded evolution of principles which are enshrined by both the original re4 and re5 – it’s fundamentally the same type of game. RE4R, meanwhile, belongs to a different caste of games in this regard by eschewing clarity and consistency for a middle ground which neither matches the deliberate rhythms of the original nor the dizzying highs of re6’s combat systems.
if i had to pick a favourite element of RE4R, it would be everything to do with luis, but if i have to choose something else i’d have to pick something which i haven’t seen much discussion of yet – the treasure economy. or at least it would be in theory, because regrettably and frustratingly, it’s still emblematic of a lot of the game’s issues. in the original game, treasure becomes an afterthought on subsequent playthroughs – you know where it is and you attempt to maximize the benefits you’ll reap by virtue of your patience, or you don’t bother and you forego the PTAs. seeing a fitting grounds for expansion, RE4R opts to introduce more layers to treasures – now, the way gems are laid in treasures can be optimized to provide higher payouts depending on the way you’ve combined gems, but it could take even longer to put together. this, combined with a lower turnout on PTAs in hardcore, makes for a tantalizing risk/reward economy – you’re always just on the verge of upgrades, and the treasures are massive boons, but if you’re patient you might be able to reach an even greater payday. the issue is that for all the touches of inconsistency present in the game, treasure is once again consistent for some reason. once you know where things are located on playthrough 1, you’ll know where they’re located on playthrough 2 – why include the gem payout table at all if people are going to go through the same rhythms again so they can optimize their payouts? if they had kept a system in which the treasures were consistent, but the gems were randomized across playthroughs, this would have been a wonderful system which i think would have served as an intelligent expansion of the original’s tenets because it would have kept players constantly thinking. further harming this is the fact that treasures are easier to find than ever, and the spinel trading system is subject to a lot of the same considerations which mostly leave something to be desired in spite of how strong the working concept is.
RE4R is not a bad game, but it’s a frustratingly risk averse one – we’re talking about a game whose hallmarks include attache case tetris and they have decided to include an auto-organizer at the click of a button. its best qualities are rehashes of either the game it’s based on or of contemporary third person-shooters that still arguably retain more to unpack and think about (the evil within 2, dead space 2, debatably the last of us). it’s a shock to the system to play a modern TPS that isn’t meandering in pace or languidly focused on some misguided appropriation of cinematic expression to its detriment, but even RE4R’s slower-paced moments – total anathema to the game it’s in conversation with – still present SOMETHING different that sticks out in my memory, some kind of hook to latch onto. there’s a late game section which uncharacteristically wrests control from your grasp and forces you to march forward which, for a few moments, taps into a new idea which the game could have called its own if it had the gumption. instead it opted to pay homage to the original's action game legacy - it's not the wrong decision per se, but without that substantive design backing it up, i'm not certain it was the right one.
- admittedly great soundtrack though, not exactly an aesthetic quality of the original that shone.
- love the new merchant
- narratively it's tonally confused but there are a few moments that make me think they're a little in on the joke. i'd submit it's not quite as self-serious as you'd expect from one of these remakes but that doesn't mean it has as much fun with the source material as you'd like. the villains are charisma voids here since they don't show up to talk their shit ever and it's telling that they dumped like half of salazar's most iconic lines into his boss fight since he had no other opportunity to reference them. come on guys, do something new, even re3make abandoned the most iconic line from the original game because it was the right thing to do.
- environments look great from time to time, enemies...much less so. the artist who likes object heads and sharp teeth got their hands on re4, now just you wait and see what he does with re5
- oh yeah they're remaking re5, no question about it. funniest decision of all time. im willing to betray all my principles on remakes to see that. at this point im just along for the ride, they haven't put out a resident evil game i've really liked in a long while.
- there's an interesting wrinkle in this game's narrative - it's this newly introduced thread about the capacity people have for change, which i think is a somewhat fitting idea given the parasite motif, but all the strongest changes are basically just reserved for luis and ashley and no one else gets anything neat. not sure where they were going with this ultimately.
- what's up with the minecart section in this. even re6 has a traditional minecart section and that game also has free movement so don't bother trying to say they needed to script it here
- the thing i was really looking for here was some REmake level thread which justified its existence - something that showed they gave a lot of thought to the original game's mechanics and intended to evolve it while providing a fundamentally different experience. REmake is very much a Side B to the original RE1's Side A - you won't get value from it without understanding the original title it's in conversation with. regrettably, this was not the case and RE4R's remixes of the original game's content are much more pedestrian and conventional.
- good on them for making krauser a boss fight this time and i enjoy the krauser encounters in the original
- i'm really underselling how much i enjoyed luis in this game
- separate ways dlc...zzz...
alterations to the core mechanical skeleton in RE4R are 'well-considered' but i hesitate to describe them as necessarily meaningful since an uncharitable interpretation would view this as a particularly hasty process of reverse engineering and applying tried-and-true bandaids to stem the hemorrhaging. free movement necessitates expanded enemy aggression, which inadvertently dilutes enemy behaviour, which means the designers had to inject elements of inconsistency to prevent easily optimized patterns of play, which calls for emergency defensive measures to keep encounters fair and level. this shifts the scope of its mechanics from thoughtful aggression to somewhat reactionary kiting. stack up enough of this over the course of a 12-20 hour playthrough and encounters start to blend together, something which becomes a rather serious issue once you get to this game’s fatigued rendition of the island. a shift in combat methodology towards reactionary gameplay wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself since you could argue it’s capturing some of re4’s more experiential qualities, but 1.) lol and 2.) brazenly inviting so many explicit grounds for comparison only serves to crystallize the qualities that made the original so special.
while many practical adages and tenets can be ascribed to and extracted from the original, it's difficult to say it doesn't subscribe to this overriding idea that 'less is more'. stop to consider the implications of this for one second and you might even recognize that the original doesn't have an overwhelming bestiary; there’s only a sparse handful of enemy types in spite of the notoriety of so many of its encounters. it’s commendable that a game built on minute alterations of one enemy unit can be described as constantly escalating and endlessly varied. one ganado on its own is never a threat, easily incapacitated with the swift slash of a knife, but as an enemy unit they are allowed to take on greater meaning through level design, decisions centered around resource management, and their method of deployment. in this sense, the original game has something of a beat ‘em up philosophy in its encounter design. there’s a comforting sense of rigidity set in place by its core mechanics which is then expounded on by the implementation of RNG which can alter the output of actions in ways both dramatic and subtle. a plagas eruption might force you on the retreat; a critical headshot might have robbed you of the roundhouse kick you were looking for; the enemy might have launched from your kick in a way that opens you up to risk if you tried to strike them on the ground. RE4R’s RNG, meanwhile, is most apparent in the way it approaches enemy staggers, and while it’s not something i’ll address too much since you’ve read about it everywhere else, it’s clearly a thorny inclusion which appears to be influenced by, at a minimum, the focus of your aiming reticule, the damage value of your weapon, the enemy’s health pool, and dynamic difficulty considerations which are holdovers from the previous two remakes in this new chronology. we might never know exactly how it’s calculated, but its effect on the game at a macro and micro level is easily observable and will make or break the game for some.
the point is no challenge in the original comes across as repetitious the way it so often does in RE4R and what’s frustrating is that there are moments which offer compelling grounds for expansion but which are rarely capitalized on. red cultists in the original are simply hardier and more physically resistant enemies, which is a misfire, but the remake reinterprets these enemies as summoners who can outright conjure plagas eruptions. it’s a frankly brilliant idea, so it’s shocking that it’s only leaned into a handful of times, two of which are seemingly explicitly designed to be skipped for speedrunning purposes. it’s the kind of change that could really serve to flesh out this game’s identity much further, and it feels wasteful to not consider the ways in which this type of enemy can add a layer of decision-making to its combat design.
there’s no discussion of RE4R without a discussion of the knife (which i mostly think is appropriately satisfying if entirely boring), but rather than exhaustively assess RE4R’s knife or semantically compare knife usage between games, let’s change gears for a second here and just consider the knife in the original. the knife can deflect projectiles, interrupt enemy advances, set up contextual attacks, strike grounded enemies, crumple them – anything that a handgun can do, a knife can do at close range and without wasting ammunition. it’s the ol’ reliable, a fundamentally ‘safe’ option with an appropriately attached high degree of risk. given its newfound metered dependency in the remake, your safe option isn’t the knife anymore – it’s actually the bolt thrower. with its negation of aiming reticule focus requirements, ranged approach which shields you from close-quarters damage, silent nature (a veritable rarity in this title), semi-consistent staggers at the cost of slow firing speed and loading speed, and nigh endlessly retrievable ammo, the bolt thrower is, if anything, a safer option than the knife ever was in the original. deploy it carefully and meticulously, and the most risk you’ll ever be at is if you’re intentionally firing bolts into the ether; they’ve even programmed it in such a way that you’ll often be able to retrieve it from difficult to reach places should you miss.
in addition, you might consider the game’s bolt thrower to be evidence of RE4R’s interrogation and consideration of the lineage of titles which the original inspired – and i do sincerely hope it’s a cheeky homage to the agony crossbow – but it’s also a lesson in poor adaptation. a signature weapon from the evil within 1 & 2, the lynchpin the agony crossbow rests on in the original game is a crafting system dedicated entirely to its output, giving its litany of options distinct value and decision-making potential while reserving its use for player discretion. the second game dilutes this by more broadly allowing you to craft other types of ammunition in addition to bolts, which is the trap upon which RE4R is similarly founded with its crafting system. the system in and of itself is already mostly a needless addition without much interesting balancing relevance, but there's a smaller problem specifically in relation to the bolt thrower - on replays with a more comprehensive view towards where and when your knife could break in relation to its usage and the positioning of merchants, it’s all but certain you’ll be reserving kitchen and boot knifes almost exclusively for the crafting of bolts. it’s a question which at every turn mostly answers itself. the mines which attach to the bolts are interesting since they can be positioned in fun ways with foreknowledge and they also explicitly signal you’ll lose a bolt, but for the most part it’s a safe resource you can be sure you’ll never lose sight of, which is notable if only because it seems to be the opposite of what this game intends to go for. with an eye for long-term planning in relation to bolt usage and knife usage, it’s almost unbelievable how sections of the game i had really struggled with on my first playthrough of hardcore (largely spent surviving minute to minute with shells and rifle ammunition being luxuries) became almost trivial on a second go of it. despite reaching a high level of proficiency in the original, it’s telling that i still never approach things the same conservative way that i often would in RE4R.
in some ways, metered knife dependency the way RE4R approaches it might be the wrong question to be asking. after all there’s nothing stopping players from running away from engagements to seek repairs most of the time if they were so inclined, and there’s precious few chokepoints that make errant knife usage legitimately hazardous. there’s another version of RE4 out there that’s a bit different – it’s called dmc1 – and what’s notable about it is that it remains one of the strongest instances of meter dependency you could reasonably conceptualize in a game. devil trigger is an important resource that you need to tap into – you can build it only by engaging with the combat system, and it allows for a lot of freedom in battles while being tightly designed to prevent abuse, making resource management an ever-present consideration. it was also seemingly designed with a view for a long-term playthrough, perhaps with the intention of allowing players to turn to macro strategy. it’s tempting to ascribe the same quality to RE4R as well, but with every workaround that’s currently in place – whether it’s foreknowledge of merchants, the ability to return to them quickly in certain cases, or kitchen knives/boot knives which will conspicuously be more present in enemy drops thanks to extremely gracious dynamic difficulty if your knife is close to breaking – it seems more clear that it’s intended to act as a measure to get people panicking as a result of the jams they’d enter in their first playthrough while introducing a very slight layer of decision-making. it’s questionable how true this is – after all, every prompt where you could use a knife is very explicitly signaled, which is a distinct contrast from the purpose of something like fuel in REmake or matches in the evil within 1 – but i suppose it’d get people into the groove nonetheless. but if only there was some way to introduce meter dependency to discourage certain actions and reinforce careful thought in a way that was truly interlinked with the game’s mechanics without handing out this many get-out-of-jail-free cards…
ahem, comparisons to resident evil 6 have run amok since the release of the demo and to be sure, this is the only resident evil game since to squarely address action game mechanics, but ironically (and perhaps controversially) most of the comparisons reflect on RE4R poorly. despite its disorganized presentation and severely unsystematic approach, resident evil 6 is still one of the last capcom action games to anchor itself on player agency, and it has an enemy suite which is designed to match this. they're legible in their behaviour and they're consistent in how you can affect them. the game's most compelling qualities might be relegated to side content in its fantastic mercenaries mode versus the vulgar bombast presented in its campaign, but even those mercenaries scenarios are fledgling score attack exercises with legitimate thought given to the waves of enemies converging on your location. mess around a bit and you’ll find a game teeming with an onslaught of strong enemy types which is at no point at risk of illegibility, in which the effect your actions can have on enemies is always consistent, in which enemies still adhere to more classical ideas of encounter design, and in which the resource management imposed by stamina (versus the knife) yields just as many meaningful decisions on a moment to moment basis with similar consequences for misuse without throttling the strongest aspects of the game or precluding the player from engaging on those terms. the game is, almost to a fault, an intentionally spearheaded evolution of principles which are enshrined by both the original re4 and re5 – it’s fundamentally the same type of game. RE4R, meanwhile, belongs to a different caste of games in this regard by eschewing clarity and consistency for a middle ground which neither matches the deliberate rhythms of the original nor the dizzying highs of re6’s combat systems.
if i had to pick a favourite element of RE4R, it would be everything to do with luis, but if i have to choose something else i’d have to pick something which i haven’t seen much discussion of yet – the treasure economy. or at least it would be in theory, because regrettably and frustratingly, it’s still emblematic of a lot of the game’s issues. in the original game, treasure becomes an afterthought on subsequent playthroughs – you know where it is and you attempt to maximize the benefits you’ll reap by virtue of your patience, or you don’t bother and you forego the PTAs. seeing a fitting grounds for expansion, RE4R opts to introduce more layers to treasures – now, the way gems are laid in treasures can be optimized to provide higher payouts depending on the way you’ve combined gems, but it could take even longer to put together. this, combined with a lower turnout on PTAs in hardcore, makes for a tantalizing risk/reward economy – you’re always just on the verge of upgrades, and the treasures are massive boons, but if you’re patient you might be able to reach an even greater payday. the issue is that for all the touches of inconsistency present in the game, treasure is once again consistent for some reason. once you know where things are located on playthrough 1, you’ll know where they’re located on playthrough 2 – why include the gem payout table at all if people are going to go through the same rhythms again so they can optimize their payouts? if they had kept a system in which the treasures were consistent, but the gems were randomized across playthroughs, this would have been a wonderful system which i think would have served as an intelligent expansion of the original’s tenets because it would have kept players constantly thinking. further harming this is the fact that treasures are easier to find than ever, and the spinel trading system is subject to a lot of the same considerations which mostly leave something to be desired in spite of how strong the working concept is.
RE4R is not a bad game, but it’s a frustratingly risk averse one – we’re talking about a game whose hallmarks include attache case tetris and they have decided to include an auto-organizer at the click of a button. its best qualities are rehashes of either the game it’s based on or of contemporary third person-shooters that still arguably retain more to unpack and think about (the evil within 2, dead space 2, debatably the last of us). it’s a shock to the system to play a modern TPS that isn’t meandering in pace or languidly focused on some misguided appropriation of cinematic expression to its detriment, but even RE4R’s slower-paced moments – total anathema to the game it’s in conversation with – still present SOMETHING different that sticks out in my memory, some kind of hook to latch onto. there’s a late game section which uncharacteristically wrests control from your grasp and forces you to march forward which, for a few moments, taps into a new idea which the game could have called its own if it had the gumption. instead it opted to pay homage to the original's action game legacy - it's not the wrong decision per se, but without that substantive design backing it up, i'm not certain it was the right one.
- admittedly great soundtrack though, not exactly an aesthetic quality of the original that shone.
- love the new merchant
- narratively it's tonally confused but there are a few moments that make me think they're a little in on the joke. i'd submit it's not quite as self-serious as you'd expect from one of these remakes but that doesn't mean it has as much fun with the source material as you'd like. the villains are charisma voids here since they don't show up to talk their shit ever and it's telling that they dumped like half of salazar's most iconic lines into his boss fight since he had no other opportunity to reference them. come on guys, do something new, even re3make abandoned the most iconic line from the original game because it was the right thing to do.
- environments look great from time to time, enemies...much less so. the artist who likes object heads and sharp teeth got their hands on re4, now just you wait and see what he does with re5
- oh yeah they're remaking re5, no question about it. funniest decision of all time. im willing to betray all my principles on remakes to see that. at this point im just along for the ride, they haven't put out a resident evil game i've really liked in a long while.
- there's an interesting wrinkle in this game's narrative - it's this newly introduced thread about the capacity people have for change, which i think is a somewhat fitting idea given the parasite motif, but all the strongest changes are basically just reserved for luis and ashley and no one else gets anything neat. not sure where they were going with this ultimately.
- what's up with the minecart section in this. even re6 has a traditional minecart section and that game also has free movement so don't bother trying to say they needed to script it here
- the thing i was really looking for here was some REmake level thread which justified its existence - something that showed they gave a lot of thought to the original game's mechanics and intended to evolve it while providing a fundamentally different experience. REmake is very much a Side B to the original RE1's Side A - you won't get value from it without understanding the original title it's in conversation with. regrettably, this was not the case and RE4R's remixes of the original game's content are much more pedestrian and conventional.
- good on them for making krauser a boss fight this time and i enjoy the krauser encounters in the original
- i'm really underselling how much i enjoyed luis in this game
- separate ways dlc...zzz...
a crossover of two of my absolute favorite series that ends up being a showcase of everything i hate about the direction both of them have ended up taking
Shin Megami Tensei V
2021
Look at all of you. Complaining about superfluous issues in your vidya. "Waaah, the story's unengaging! The aesthetics aren't as good as nocture/sj/whatever! They changed the gameplay! Too few save points! It looks ugly!" WHo fucking cares bro. This shit is the best playing megaten and it aint even fucking close. Does anything else really matter?
Perhaps blowing my load a little because I haven't fully completed it, but I think I can safely say this is the best game it probably could have been. Top notch gameplay, basically every change made to the battle system from 4 is objectively better (them removing smirk entirely, changing how light/dark attacks work, changes to buffs/debuffs, STATUS AILMENTS BEING ACTUALLY USEFUL).
And sure, maybe the story isn't as engaging as your personas and the like, but you know what this game has that those dont. Fucking cutscene direction. God, after playing FF10 and this I have no idea how the fuck people ever put up with peesona 5's decade long cutscenes of models standing there and doing absolutely nothing but a couple of stock animations. Jesus, jrpg fans have been putting up with that kind of shit for too long.
Anyway. Game's fun. Aesthetic's cool. Doi's design work has increased tenfold from 4a and SJR. I like running around the mountains collecting shit. Sidequests perfectly alleviate any need of grinding while giving you fun new content. Ratio. L. You fell off. Stan Bladee.
Perhaps blowing my load a little because I haven't fully completed it, but I think I can safely say this is the best game it probably could have been. Top notch gameplay, basically every change made to the battle system from 4 is objectively better (them removing smirk entirely, changing how light/dark attacks work, changes to buffs/debuffs, STATUS AILMENTS BEING ACTUALLY USEFUL).
And sure, maybe the story isn't as engaging as your personas and the like, but you know what this game has that those dont. Fucking cutscene direction. God, after playing FF10 and this I have no idea how the fuck people ever put up with peesona 5's decade long cutscenes of models standing there and doing absolutely nothing but a couple of stock animations. Jesus, jrpg fans have been putting up with that kind of shit for too long.
Anyway. Game's fun. Aesthetic's cool. Doi's design work has increased tenfold from 4a and SJR. I like running around the mountains collecting shit. Sidequests perfectly alleviate any need of grinding while giving you fun new content. Ratio. L. You fell off. Stan Bladee.
Dynasty Warriors 3
2001
Say the line, Zhang He-jak!
"I defeated an Officer!"
Haha, I love this little guy
"I defeated an Officer!"
Haha, I love this little guy
Shin Megami Tensei V
2021
The most complete feeling game Atlus has ever made
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers discussed at the very bottom
Not since the ending of Mass Effect 3 has a video game divided audiences as much as The Last of Us Part II. Based on reviews and audience reactions, I got the sense it was a lot like Zack Snyder's Watchmen in that it was very polarizing: you either loved it or hated it, and I was hoping to find myself somewhere in that binary. This is because I've always been an advocate for art that challenges over art that conforms- I would rather an artist or writer try to do something that is emotionally-evocative, even if they falter (and I end up disliking it) than to put out mediocre schlock that no one will care about come next year.
Well, unfortunately, after all the hype and negativity, I can only say that the end result is a mixed bag that clearly has higher aspirations, but ultimately falters in achieving them. It's not average by any means, and it does have moments of artistic daringness, but these are mostly held back by game design issues and faulty narrative premises.
Like its predecessor (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/331510/), TLOUII that has been extensively reviewed by mainstream and indie critics alike, and so I won't waste time going into detail about every technical facet, mainly because there are more-informed individuals out there who can articulate those aspects better (see ACG for example). Instead, I want to use this review space to do what I did with TLOU1- talk about underappreciated feats and underspoken problems.
I'll start with a brief overview of the graphics. Like Black Flag did with seventh generation consoles and Crysis did with PCs back in the day, TLOU2 has pushed the limits of the PS4's hardware, and the results speak for themselves. By no means do I endorse crunch-time (in fact, as a matter of principle, I refuse to buy games from companies that engage in extensive crunch-time like Naughty Dog and RockStar until they go on sale), but that sweat, blood, and tears culminated in a world that is mesmerizing with detail. Textures, manmade/natural, are consistent everywhere; little animations are programmed (ex. hair swaying with kinetic glee), and you even get some surprising moments of physics like destructible glass, movable objects, and realistically disproportioning body parts. Death respawn rates are quick, there's no draw distance issues like with the first, and the baked lighting exceeds AC Unity in terms of diversity and quality (not just morning/night, light/dark, inside/outside, but outright different colors). I KNOW I'm missing plenty of stuff, but hopefully this gives an idea of the effort that was put into conceiving this setting.
There are some downsides, however they are thankfully minor. For one, during the wintry opening, I noticed knocking snow clumps off trees resulted in them dissipating into thin air over collecting on the ground, and two, your horse's hoof impressions are more pre-rendered than naturally-conceived. I also experienced two crashes, but a solid autosave prevented them from causing significant setback.
Sound-wise, we have another huge improvement from the first. One of my biggest issues that was addressed was the Doppler Effect range being sudden whenever you entered a contained sonar space: you can hear a smooth transition this time around, which is saying something considering most of the game is engulfed in precipitation that beats on the surfaces around you.
Once again, though, we don't get any diversity in Infected noises. You can make a strong case that the more mutated variants have too many fungal growths around their esophagus to allow distinct accents and intonations to disperse, but the Runners are inexcusable given that they still resemble their original host.
That being said, TLOU2 makes up for this with the sheer variety of dialogue in the human enemy speech. Specifically, I am referring to them giving every NPC (both human and canine) a unique name that is explicitly stated whenever you off one- it's a small thing that goes a long way towards personalizing them and consequently making the enemies more than just generic baddies. You can tell from the delivery alone these guys had a history together, and that you have officially made things personal through your violent actions (which was no doubt intentional given the thematic threads, but more on that below). Of course, you still have your atypical lines like "I'm going to find you!" and "anyone have eyes?" and "report!" amongst others, but that's always going to be a constant in video games.
The performances are fantastic as usual, and standouts like Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson have been praised to no end. Johnson, in particular, really impressed me with her ability to organically convey Ellie's vocal chord maturation from past to present. The sole voice I couldn't get over was the Asian character, Jessie, having a thick Southern accent. He reminded me a lot of Christopher Gist from AC Rogue in terms of being out-of-place, though the actor Stephen Chang does a good job.
Now, the point of a sequel is to rectify/improve upon the flaws of the original. Granted, flaws absent outright bugs/glitches, can be subjective complaints privy to variation depending on who you ask, but as this is my review, I will address whether or not II fixed my perceived issues with the first game's systems, beginning with the combat. In the first, you only had one attack button and no other options minus an occasional grapple prompt. This became problematic whenever you were engaged in scuffles with hordes of minions who could flank you, the camera and lack of responsive movement preventing you from doing much other than bolting in the opposite direction.
That has only been slightly changed here as the sole addition is a dodge button (quick tap makes you strafe a short beat, holding a longer distance). However, you'd be surprised by how much of a difference this makes in encounters. With the camera still shifting over-your-shoulder, the ability to evade turns 1v1 brawls into more dynamic skirmishes, and combined with your signature brutal takedowns, you will have fun. That being said, in all honesty, the real betterment here is the removal of most mandatory fight scenes. Bar bosses, I can only think of three instances where you were forced to engage openly with hordes, and lo and behold, they ended up being the most frustrating parts of the game for me (the first was alleviated by the presence of allies).+
So, if you're not fighting goons that means you're stealthing them. The first TLOU had a solid stealth system, my only reservations being the lack corner-grabbing, single takedown animation, and having a bow as your sole silent ranged weapon. Thankfully, corner-grabbing has been added in TLOU2, allowing Ellie/Abby to disperse any enemy (minus advanced Infected) who makes the fatal mistake of walking past a nook they are crouched behind! In addition, when an enemy detects you, throwing a brick at them and charging within their vicinity provides a grapple prompt allowing you to quietly disperse them (should there be no adjacent gremlins), thus maintaining your stealth quota.
There are new animations in the sense that Ellie, via her switchblade, kills each enemy with a varied stabbing, though it's still singular per the archetype. Likewise, there are no ways to quickly slice someone with the drawback of noise like in the Arkham series. In terms of silent weapons, your bow is still your best bet, though it is improved by the ability to craft arrows instead of purely collecting them. You can build a silencer for your pistol with limited shots, and Ellie is given trip-mines that, while obviously loud, allow you to booby-trap areas as you depart to a safe distance.
Stealth, as a whole, feels much more riveting courtesy of new avenues provided by the developer. First is the ability to go prone (and its accompanying environmental help, tall grass)- fans of clandestine franchises will find this to be a welcome addition since it allows you to move amidst enemy ranks while they wander menacingly about. Second, two new adversaries have been thrown in to things up: dogs for humans and stalkers for Infected (okay, technically not new since they were in the first, but they were pretty indistinguishable from Runners IMO). Dogs can catch your scent and consequently follow you, leading their owner to your location in real-time lest you throw them off in some way (if you’re playing with listening mode, you can even see your trail!). Stalkers, on the other hand, are immune to listening mode, forcing you to pay attention to visual and auditory cues in order to catch them red-handed before they strike you. The two contribute a lot and, unlike the first game, I didn’t detect any inconsistencies from your allied AI in terms of enemy detection.
Looting/scavenging is relatively unchanged. You still can’t move bodies, though at least those with a firearm tend to have ammunition on them. You gather resources in the world to build tools/items and upgrade weapons, the former able to be done anywhere, the latter restricted to tool benches scattered about (toolboxes have thankfully been removed at least). I will say, while this made no sense in the first game, benches are a lot more palatable here courtesy of Naughty Dog programming animations whenever you build a new mechanism or add-on for your weapon(s). Some are reused, but for the most part you have a lot of unique ones, and seeing Ellie utilize the tools on the table to craft these mechanisms went a long way towards signifying their significance as gameplay elements.
Skill trees are back, tied to training manuals strewn throughout the locales, and all cards on the table, I honestly found this system to be rather dumb- locking off an entire skillpath behind a collectible. It prevents you from strategizing which abilities you want to invest in until you reach the section of the story where that part of the world with the manual opens up. I’d buy this model if the new paths were tied to specific weapons you acquire around the same time Zelda-style, but no, these skills are mostly generic and appeal to the overall capabilities of your character (an aspect made all the worse by you having to find separate manuals for Abby when the game switches to her perspective). And since new upgrades are limited to pills, you already have a cap on which skills can be chosen.
I believe I’ve covered all the gameplay aspects save exploration. In the first TLOU, one recurring problem I had was that there were one-too-many instances of the narrative moving faster than the game allowedfor exploration- you'd get to an area prime for looting, only for an NPC to be simultaneously talking to you, making your constant "detours" immersion-breaking.
Ironically, I'd say TLOU 2 has the opposite issue here, where the exploration is much more abundant at the cost of the narrative's pacing, at least in Ellie's sections. You are provided a lot of buildings and settlements to explore and scavenge throughout your playthrough, and given the revenge thriller impetus driving the story, this often leads to a slow-down of urgency. I can't take the narrative's exigency seriously when Ellie is going to stop caring about the objective to go into a random place. Yes, technically most of these are "optional," but I use that term loosely because, as TLOU2 indulges in survival horror systems (more-so than its predecessor), and stows upgrade manuals/new weapons in these locales, they aren't really optional. In TLOU1, 9/10 buildings you went through were necessary to the story: here, I'd wager it's more like 5/10 for Ellie (I emphasize Ellie because Abby's sections thankfully don't have this problem, and that in many ways make her storyline more engaging, but more on that later).
Naughty Dog's penchant for environmental storytelling through interior decorations remains top notch, though some of the "wow" factor of the world's history has certainly been lost with the sequel. The bigger downgrade, IMO, were the personal tales divulged via stationary and recordings. I found these to be a lot less interesting than the first one's, mainly because they primarily concern an overarching conflict between three groups: the WLF insurgents, U.S. Military, and Seraphite cult. That kind of tale of a city being split apart by war and internal loyalties has already been done extensively (and continues to be a prevalent part of current events), thus making it lose the edge that smaller-scale, post-apocalyptic anecdotes carry. I'm not saying that there aren't any gems, just that they are less prevalent than in TLOU1 (on the upside, I did like how Ellie/Abby would instantly read them upon collection, compared to Joel immediately putting it away).
Now, I'll finally speak on the story, of which there is a ton to say. There is honestly no feasible way for me to do so without spoiling the game, so for those who want to stop reading, I'll just say I disagreed with Druckmann and co.'s take on stock themes and genuinely felt that they didn't have the guts to commit to an ending that would've made the most sense based on the pieces laid out (from my perspective anyways).
Notes:
+All involve Abby: first is the warehouse section, and the second/third involve her initial meeting with Lev and Yara, the second being the forest section with the stalkers and the third being trapped in the abandoned house structure.
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Now, spoilers galore:
TLOU2 primarily deals with the concept of retribution and vengeance. I noted earlier that this is a revenge game, and it is for those very reasons. To my delight, it deals with the aftermath of the first title wherein Joel went berserk and killed a bunch of Fireflies to prevent them from terminating Ellie during her surgery. The head surgeon's daughter is Abby, who dedicates the next four years of her life to tracking down and killing Joel. Through coincidental events, she happens to encounter the man, setting off the first of several controversial story decisions in which she tortures and murders him in front of Ellie.
I personally had no issue with this at all. I get a lot of people liked Joel, and I did as well (he would be an awful protagonist to play as if he wasn't likeable), but let's be clear- he's not a good person. Even if we ignore things he did in the past, the decision to massacre the Fireflies and execute Marlene, while subjectively understandable, is objectively a cruel and despicable move. There were going to be consequences from that, and Abby embodies that aftermath. People have brought up that Joel doesn't exercise caution when amidst all these new strangers (Abby and her friends) in comparison to the first game, and while I can see that, to me it made sense that living in Jackson for four years under a relatively safe roof tempered his survivalist instincts, especially after this group saved him from a horde of Infected.
But look, if you had an issue with Joel's death, by no means am I going to tell you to get over it. Different players bond with different characters, and the polarizing-negative response to Joel's death indicates it was unfavorable from a good sect of TLOU fanbase. What I hope such disagreeants (yes I made up that word) would at least assent to is that the death was well-executed. Listen, it was spoiled for me long before I played the game (not any details, just the event itself), yet, even knowing what was going to happen, my heart started racing. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I sat through the entirety of the ordeal. When a game can elicit that kind of physiological reaction, you know it's done a good job on the execution front (compare this to a certain someone's death in The Force Awakens, which was also spoiled beforehand, and I had no such biological response when it transpired on-screen).
Now, there were other issues SURROUNDING this event that bear greater scrutiny. First and foremost is the introduction as a whole- this might be the cringiest intro to a AAA game I have ever had the misfortune to experience. Ellie's whole part literally consists of such YA cliches as "you kissed my girl after we just broke up?", "this guy is a bigot and serving us bigot sandwiches," "what did you think of our kiss?," and the discovery of a literal weed farm (was Druckmann high when he came up with that nonsense?). Seriously, it felt like a bad episode of Degrassi (or Arrow for that matter) and genuinely made me wonder if I was playing a post-apocalyptic title, let alone a sequel to The Last of Us (which, by contrast, had one of the greatest openings in the history of video games). This cringefest literally takes hours to get through, the occasional lapses to Abby actually being a relief. Why would people who could die any day on a patrol be caught up in this high school idiocy?
The second major issue has to do with Abby and co. opting to SPARE Tommy and Ellie after the death of Joel. What? Yes, the writers go out of their way to try and explain such a stupid decision, but their justifications are as lame as you can get. Three spring up: "we only came for him [Joel]," "we're better than [Joel]," and "we gave you a second chance [Ellie & Tommy]".
None of these hold-up under basic scrutiny. Even if you only came for Joel, you know these are allies of his with full-fledged killer capabilities who now have the motivation to TRACK YOU DOWN. Maybe Abby and co. thought that the two weren't aware of what Joel did, but if that was the case, they don't bother stating things to Tommy and Ellie. Even something as basic as "if you knew what he did, you would understand" or outright telling it would have gone a long way towards making this line of thought feasible.
Regarding whether they're better than him, the answer is no, they're not and they know that. It is widely implied throughout the game that the Fireflies and WLF committed war crimes during their respective conflicts, and Abby most definitely engaged in some such act (supported by her implied guilt down-the-line). You could counter and say that those were (or were perceived to be) enemy combatants, and that executing Tommy and Ellie would be akin to killing unarmed civilians. You could maybe make this case for Tommy, but Ellie literally comes into the room guns-ablazing and slices up one of the WLF crewmen. Also, how is restraining Joel and slowly killing him there any different from a principled standpoint?
And finally, if Abby really wanted them to comprehend this act of mercy as an opportunity to start afresh, she should've SAID something. How is knocking Ellie out as she's screaming "I'm going to f*cking kill you" leaving her to think on things? Especially when she now knows your name and logo?
It was an all-around moronic decision - the cliché "villain conveniently spares the hero" trope.
So overall, not a good opener to this game. But hey, slow starts have been experienced in other titles like Skyward Sword, and the subsequent odyssey can make-up for lost time. Only....that doesn't happen. See, rather than do the smart thing and have Ellie either go solo or team-up with Tommy to hunt down the WLF rogues, Druckmann decides to have Ellie team-up with Dina, the girl whom she had a romantic encounter with earlier, because of course what a revenge story needed was a dumb romantic subplot.
Look, I'm all for diversity and representation, but a romance of ANY KIND was going to be a distraction, especially with a character we barely spent time with and, who, more importantly, barely spent time with Ellie. Seriously, Dina has NO logical reason to tag along on this life-threatening excursion other than being horny for Ellie as she did not extensively interact with her prior to the events of the game. No one does that shit, especially when they have their loved ones back home (and ESPECIALLY when she finds out she's pregnant).
Also, on a side note, anyone else find it interesting how gay romances that feature some kind of sexual scene tend to almost always be depicted via lesbians? It's almost as if such writers have an odd predilection towards the female gender when it comes to "presenting" same-sex intercourse, but I can't for the love of me tell why....
I could've tolerated Dina had she at least presented something interesting to the plot, and you sometimes get that by way of her conversations with Ellie during their time riding together (the Synagogue scene, in particular, stands out). However, for the most part, it's your silly flirtatious convos that are at odds with the serious, foreboding tone of the plot. Perhaps Druckmann intended this as "levity," but it's so amateurish I would've preferred silence.
To make matters worse, the official beginning of Joel's avengement is thrown into a free roam world that sees the couple having to, get this, open locked gates! Yup, you literally and figuratively hit a stonewall in terms of the pacing, with Naughty Dog thinking it a smart idea to abandon their signature linear-driven craftsmanship in favor a semi-open world that is boring. Look, downtrodden Seattle is a stunning dystopia to gaze at, but it gets old fast. The amount of empty space between buildings, the lack of interesting things to do at said edifices, and subtle mandatoriness courtesy of new weapons being out there grinds the pacing to a slow throttle. And as I said before, the convos between Dina and Ellie just aren't engaging enough to fill-in the quiet moments, particularly when compared to the first game's. Even some of the action beats feel like rehashes of events we underwent back then (getting saved last minute by the secondary hero, escaping into the spore-filled sewers). The only praise I can give this chapter (Seattle Day 1) is that it has a map that's actually useful.
The story significantly starts to pick up during the second chapter due to the following changes: Dina is taken out of the picture, causing Ellie to go solo; the open-world is removed in favor of handcrafted linear environments again; and new enemy variants are introduced to spice things up. You still have too many instances of boring side buildings to explore, but at least it's a far cry from the amount in the first section.
One decision that has received mixed reviews from audiences is the incorporation of flashbacks, which start during Seattle Day 2. Critics have said that they hurt the delivery of the narrative; however, considering I thought that was ruined long before, I didn't think they made it better or worse. No, I instead liked them for the most part. They're set between the two main games and give more memories of Joel and Ellie for fans to digest on.
Unfortunately, one of the storytelling decisions I fundamentally didn't agree with is introduced during one of these, and it's the revelation that Joel confessed to Ellie, in turn causing her to become distant from him. Not only did this make Ellie kind of unlikable (and Tommy flat-out despisable) for choosing to pursue bloodthirsty vengeance despite having an understanding of where these people were coming from, but I also think the story could have gone in more fascinating directions had the writers opted to play with when Ellie finds out the truth and what her reaction (and consequent reflection on all the horrible things she's done in the name of a guy she thought was good) is. But look, at the end of the day, you can't criticize what you wanted, only what you got, so it is what it is.
The decision to make Abby a playable character was another big controversial commitment by Naughty Dog, and yet again I find myself on the side of the company. While I do understand people wanting to purely experience Ellie (and absolutely sympathize with those who didn't want to play as the killer of Joel), as stated before, I've always been an advocate for stories that push boundaries, especially in video games which, unlike movies, have an interactivity factor that makes them more potent avenues for morality tales. In my opinion, this was a great decision, and made TLOU2 more than just your typical revenge plot.
Abby is a great character, brought to life by the great Laura Bailey. She's three-dimensional, visually unique (how often do we see a woman rocking guns?), likeable, and relatable. Everything about her, from her motivations to her shifting character arc, is very well-executed, and it's a shame so many people went into her section without keeping an open mind. As I said before, Abby embodies the notion of actions having consequences- even if you had removed her connection with the surgeon and just made her an ex-Firefly out for blood, she still would've been gripping to follow.
What really helps her is her supporting cast and the game design surrounding her sections. In most vengeance narratives, the antagonists aren't given much characterization: they're either blanket evil or bland evil, and this has the effect of dehumanizing them, resulting in players completely empathizing with the wronged party. But, as we all know in real life, people have a tendency to be more complex than that, and Druckmann and company opted to follow that philosophy in conceiving Abby's crew. I'm not going to go into detail about all of them, but know that they end up feeling like realistic folks you could conceivably meet at a point in your life. Some of the hardest-hitting moments in the TLOUII come from realizing the horrific actions you committed as Ellie were done to actual people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Regarding the game design, which I alluded to earlier in critiquing Ellie's comportments, Abby's story progresses at a sound gait, much more resembling the first TLOU in terms of limited exploration and story-driven linearity. It really does make a difference knowing that everything you're doing, every step you're taking, is moving the narrative forward.
Unfortunately, not all is sunshine and roses for Abby. The switch to her takes place after a major cliffhanger for Ellie, which will frustrate you. Part of me wonders how the game would've played out had it been edited differently- that is, have Abby's parts strewn throughout, taking place immediately after its associated Ellie parallel. But I understand this would've had more drawbacks than positives. You will also have to re-upgrade Abby, who is given a different arsenal from Ellie, but one that needs refurbishing regardless. Scouring for gears is already old at that point- doing it again will no doubt rub some people as an exercise in tedium.
Storywise, the two biggest downsides to Abby's yarn are the inclusion of a love triangle (It's as dumb and underdeveloped as you can imagine a side character's subplot being), and the game's attempt at trying to make her seem like this bad person; a bad person whom one of her compatriots outright declares a "piece of sh!t." Like I said, there is implied guilt behind Bailey's performance, but outside of that we're not given anything to deduce where these accusations are coming from. Was it making her friends help her murder Joel? No, because they explicitly state during flashbacks that they wanted to come of their own accord. Was it some atrocity she perpetrated during the war with the Seraphites? Nothing is stated to indicate such. I just didn't buy this line of argument, which in turn made her arc weak from a starting point.
Lastly, I absolutely hated how the game made you spend an inordinate amount of time getting the surgical instruments to save Yara's life, only to then kill her off. It's a pet peeve of mine whenever video games do this: have the player invest a lot of time into completing an activity only for that action to be undone later in the storyline. I hated it in Modern Warfare 3, I hated it in Fallout 3, I hated it in Life is Strange, and I hate it here.
There were more fundamental disagreements I had with the game, primarily with regards to its themes. Like too many postmodernist takes on revenge, it advocates that vengeance is wrong by way of creating a cycle of violence that hurts everyone, and I've always found this to be a simplistic view more interested in taking a holier-than-thou visage than genuinely exploring what revenge does to a society, let alone a person. Now, I understand that The Last of Us 2 was partly inspired by Druckmann's experiences growing up during the West Bank conflict between Israel and Palestine, and I don't mean to downplay the violence and trauma he no doubt witnessed. However, here he doesn't do a good job of dissecting things. TLOU2's biggest issue is that Ellie isn't acting on any semblance of reason, just pure emotion. She doesn't try to understand where these killers are coming from or why they would've been willing to travel across the country just to murder one man. The only thing we see is rage.
You might be thinking, well doesn't that fit right in with revenge being everlasting suffering? After all, since the involved parties are acting on passions instead of logic, they fail to realize how they're destroying themselves in the process of destroying the other. The thing is, the only way that story works is if both sides are sympathetic or both sides are unlikeable- you make one morally elevated above the other, and it creates an uneven playing field that throws a wrench in the mutual tragedy, which is exactly what happens here. Abby's side is inherently more pitiable because she was responding to a wrong Joel did; meanwhile, Ellie is not sympathizable because the developers make the boneheaded decision to have her aware of Joel's actions. If she was coming from a place of ignorance, then at least I would be able to understand her side- she lost a father figure who genuinely cared for her and wants payback for the seemingly senseless violence that befell him. But no, she knows, and despite that knowledge, there's no ethical dilemma on her part, no balancing of reasoning, not even an attempt at discussing things- the closest we get is when Nora asks Ellie in the hospital if she's aware of what he [Joel] did, to which Ellie responds by torturing her for information. Yeah, not likable in the slightest, making Abby's dedication all the more affirmable.
On the other hand, if you agreed with Joel's actions, then no amount of plaintive scenes from Abby's side will sway you, making the anti-vengeance theme even less impactful: you WANT to see Abby and her compatriots die at the hands of Ellie.
Now, what about Abby- she definitely loses all her friends as a result of getting revenge on Joel and setting off Ellie and Tommy (without stupidly killing them). Well, unfortunately, most of her pals get killed of their own accord- Nora, Mel, and Owen only die when they opt to attack Ellie instead of giving her the information she is seeking (Abby's location). In fact, not to go off on a tangent, but that speaks to another small issue I had with the game, which was its unwillingness to commit to Ellie's apparent moral degradation- if most of the WLF members she's assassinating are done in self-defense, how can this be seen as an infliction on her (you might say that this was deliberately done because Ellie recognizes Joel was in the wrong and only wants Abby dead; unfortunately, this is counteracted by the whole encounter with Nora, indicating that Ellie is willing to go far if she doesn't get what she wants).
In terms of the other negatives that befall Abby, they don't have anything to do with Ellie. Getting hung by the Seraphites? Occurs because she went out looking for Owen. Getting exiled from the WLF? Conducted because she decided to aid Yara and Lev. Getting captured by the Rattlers? Done because she was looking for the Fireflies. So basically revenge has nothing with most of the tragedies that befall her. And of the events that it did have an impact on (Nora, Mel, Owen, Manny, Alice's deaths), get this, Abby doesn't give a sh!t! She mourns them for a second before moving on, not reflecting or caring.
One may argue that Ellie does end up losing everything on her end: she's detached from her community, Dina has left her, and she's dehumanized. Except, the truth is none of this is permanent or even implied to be permanent- she can return to Jackson at any point and be welcomed with open arms (her leaving the farm at the end indicates just that); maybe Dina wouldn't take her back, but given how horny she was to risk her life on the trip in the first place, I doubt she'd hold a permanent grudge; and I don't see Ellie being anymore dehumanized than any other individual suffering from PTSD after all that's transpired in her life. If anything, her not having nightmares of Joel anymore is an indication she's getting better.
The truth is the game wants to have its cake and eat it too. You can't say traveling on this path won't lead to anything good if the consequences aren't that bad or the consequences have nothing to do with the act of revenge; and if the consequences aren't that bad or disassociated with the initiator, doesn't that make revenge worth pursuing in the end?
No, it seems the only decent interpretation you can make is Druckmann is saying you shouldn't have embarked on this excursion at all. This isn't supported by Abby's segments (since she almost dies despite sparing Ellie), but it IS supported by Ellie settling down into relative peace after returning to Jackson: she's got a farm, a family, and a future of happiness. It's only when she reneges on her abstinence that she suffers the aforestated aftereffects. And my problem with this take is what I alluded to above, which is that really comes off as a 'superior' person looking down on an 'inferior' person. Like, "oh, you should've known better than to give in to your feelings". What exactly was the alternative? To just suffer from nightmares? To silently forgive Abby? To move on as though nothing transpired? And what about from Abby's perspective- was she supposed to get over her dad having his guts blown out? Her mentor being executed? Her surrogate family and their lifelong mission destroyed in the span of an hour?
You'll notice that these kinds of stories NEVER provide the alternative answer to revenge because they don't know what it is- all they figure is that doing it is bad, which is so smug and simplistic. Tell someone who had a loved one who was murdered or beaten or assaulted in a world without proper law enforcement that they need to just sit on their ass and move on.
No, I'll be completely honest with you all- I have a conspiracy theory that the game had a very different ending initially, one that was much darker and much more controversial, yet that ended things much more succinctly than what we got. And that is that Abby kills Ellie.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time supporting this since it's circumstantial, but keep in mind this was one of the plot details in the pre-release leaks that plagued the title, and considering the vast majority of those other leaks turned out to be truthful, it maybe indicates it was contemplated at one point. Consider this: the showdown with Ellie is presented as a stealth fight akin to the one with David in TLOU1. And consider, more importantly, how tacked on and awful that whole final act is with the slave traders. Seriously, I haven't felt a game that padded in so long- it was convoluted (Ellie not bleeding out from that wound whilst strung upside down?), full of contrivances (Abby and Lev getting crucified THE EXACT DAY Ellie finds them?), and anticlimactic as an endgame compared to the theater scene.
Killing Ellie would've made complete sense. You have Abby rightfully motivated by the death of her friends; you have the element of surprise in the sense that she gets the drop on them; and you have a culmination of that whole anti-revenge spiel wherein you witness Ellie suffer the ultimate consequence for going after Abby.
It makes zero, let me repeat, ZERO sense for Abby to spare Ellie after everything the latter did to her. Zero. As Abby didn't learn from her mistake, so too do fictional writers not learn that the sparing the hero cliche is archetypal fatuity for a reason. Instead, we get a whole "don't ever let me see you again." Yeah, here's some advice- if you want to guarantee her not seeing you again, how about you kill her!
Look, I get that Naughty Dog was probably afraid of someone torching their headquarters to the ground if they had gone through with such a decision (considering the death threats they and Bailey received just for axing Joel, this isn't even out of the realm of possibility), but then they shouldn't have written the narrative to lead up to this moment. It was dumb planning from the get-go (and it begs the question of how tf Ellie got a wounded pregnant Dina and a gunshot-to-the-head Tommy all the way back to Seattle with a broken arm - now there's an idea for a Left Behind-type DLC!).
So yeah, those are all my reasons for eventually finding TLOU2 to be on the lower side of the quality spectrum. It has a lot of great artistic, technical, and even storytelling feats, and I absolutely recommend a playthrough on those merits alone but these are countered by cons in the narrative department. That being said, don't listen to the mainstream critiques that have occupied the discourse from disgruntled fans; there are legitimate flaws with this game that critics conveniently overlooked, but they're more complicated than you would believe.
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Not since the ending of Mass Effect 3 has a video game divided audiences as much as The Last of Us Part II. Based on reviews and audience reactions, I got the sense it was a lot like Zack Snyder's Watchmen in that it was very polarizing: you either loved it or hated it, and I was hoping to find myself somewhere in that binary. This is because I've always been an advocate for art that challenges over art that conforms- I would rather an artist or writer try to do something that is emotionally-evocative, even if they falter (and I end up disliking it) than to put out mediocre schlock that no one will care about come next year.
Well, unfortunately, after all the hype and negativity, I can only say that the end result is a mixed bag that clearly has higher aspirations, but ultimately falters in achieving them. It's not average by any means, and it does have moments of artistic daringness, but these are mostly held back by game design issues and faulty narrative premises.
Like its predecessor (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/331510/), TLOUII that has been extensively reviewed by mainstream and indie critics alike, and so I won't waste time going into detail about every technical facet, mainly because there are more-informed individuals out there who can articulate those aspects better (see ACG for example). Instead, I want to use this review space to do what I did with TLOU1- talk about underappreciated feats and underspoken problems.
I'll start with a brief overview of the graphics. Like Black Flag did with seventh generation consoles and Crysis did with PCs back in the day, TLOU2 has pushed the limits of the PS4's hardware, and the results speak for themselves. By no means do I endorse crunch-time (in fact, as a matter of principle, I refuse to buy games from companies that engage in extensive crunch-time like Naughty Dog and RockStar until they go on sale), but that sweat, blood, and tears culminated in a world that is mesmerizing with detail. Textures, manmade/natural, are consistent everywhere; little animations are programmed (ex. hair swaying with kinetic glee), and you even get some surprising moments of physics like destructible glass, movable objects, and realistically disproportioning body parts. Death respawn rates are quick, there's no draw distance issues like with the first, and the baked lighting exceeds AC Unity in terms of diversity and quality (not just morning/night, light/dark, inside/outside, but outright different colors). I KNOW I'm missing plenty of stuff, but hopefully this gives an idea of the effort that was put into conceiving this setting.
There are some downsides, however they are thankfully minor. For one, during the wintry opening, I noticed knocking snow clumps off trees resulted in them dissipating into thin air over collecting on the ground, and two, your horse's hoof impressions are more pre-rendered than naturally-conceived. I also experienced two crashes, but a solid autosave prevented them from causing significant setback.
Sound-wise, we have another huge improvement from the first. One of my biggest issues that was addressed was the Doppler Effect range being sudden whenever you entered a contained sonar space: you can hear a smooth transition this time around, which is saying something considering most of the game is engulfed in precipitation that beats on the surfaces around you.
Once again, though, we don't get any diversity in Infected noises. You can make a strong case that the more mutated variants have too many fungal growths around their esophagus to allow distinct accents and intonations to disperse, but the Runners are inexcusable given that they still resemble their original host.
That being said, TLOU2 makes up for this with the sheer variety of dialogue in the human enemy speech. Specifically, I am referring to them giving every NPC (both human and canine) a unique name that is explicitly stated whenever you off one- it's a small thing that goes a long way towards personalizing them and consequently making the enemies more than just generic baddies. You can tell from the delivery alone these guys had a history together, and that you have officially made things personal through your violent actions (which was no doubt intentional given the thematic threads, but more on that below). Of course, you still have your atypical lines like "I'm going to find you!" and "anyone have eyes?" and "report!" amongst others, but that's always going to be a constant in video games.
The performances are fantastic as usual, and standouts like Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson have been praised to no end. Johnson, in particular, really impressed me with her ability to organically convey Ellie's vocal chord maturation from past to present. The sole voice I couldn't get over was the Asian character, Jessie, having a thick Southern accent. He reminded me a lot of Christopher Gist from AC Rogue in terms of being out-of-place, though the actor Stephen Chang does a good job.
Now, the point of a sequel is to rectify/improve upon the flaws of the original. Granted, flaws absent outright bugs/glitches, can be subjective complaints privy to variation depending on who you ask, but as this is my review, I will address whether or not II fixed my perceived issues with the first game's systems, beginning with the combat. In the first, you only had one attack button and no other options minus an occasional grapple prompt. This became problematic whenever you were engaged in scuffles with hordes of minions who could flank you, the camera and lack of responsive movement preventing you from doing much other than bolting in the opposite direction.
That has only been slightly changed here as the sole addition is a dodge button (quick tap makes you strafe a short beat, holding a longer distance). However, you'd be surprised by how much of a difference this makes in encounters. With the camera still shifting over-your-shoulder, the ability to evade turns 1v1 brawls into more dynamic skirmishes, and combined with your signature brutal takedowns, you will have fun. That being said, in all honesty, the real betterment here is the removal of most mandatory fight scenes. Bar bosses, I can only think of three instances where you were forced to engage openly with hordes, and lo and behold, they ended up being the most frustrating parts of the game for me (the first was alleviated by the presence of allies).+
So, if you're not fighting goons that means you're stealthing them. The first TLOU had a solid stealth system, my only reservations being the lack corner-grabbing, single takedown animation, and having a bow as your sole silent ranged weapon. Thankfully, corner-grabbing has been added in TLOU2, allowing Ellie/Abby to disperse any enemy (minus advanced Infected) who makes the fatal mistake of walking past a nook they are crouched behind! In addition, when an enemy detects you, throwing a brick at them and charging within their vicinity provides a grapple prompt allowing you to quietly disperse them (should there be no adjacent gremlins), thus maintaining your stealth quota.
There are new animations in the sense that Ellie, via her switchblade, kills each enemy with a varied stabbing, though it's still singular per the archetype. Likewise, there are no ways to quickly slice someone with the drawback of noise like in the Arkham series. In terms of silent weapons, your bow is still your best bet, though it is improved by the ability to craft arrows instead of purely collecting them. You can build a silencer for your pistol with limited shots, and Ellie is given trip-mines that, while obviously loud, allow you to booby-trap areas as you depart to a safe distance.
Stealth, as a whole, feels much more riveting courtesy of new avenues provided by the developer. First is the ability to go prone (and its accompanying environmental help, tall grass)- fans of clandestine franchises will find this to be a welcome addition since it allows you to move amidst enemy ranks while they wander menacingly about. Second, two new adversaries have been thrown in to things up: dogs for humans and stalkers for Infected (okay, technically not new since they were in the first, but they were pretty indistinguishable from Runners IMO). Dogs can catch your scent and consequently follow you, leading their owner to your location in real-time lest you throw them off in some way (if you’re playing with listening mode, you can even see your trail!). Stalkers, on the other hand, are immune to listening mode, forcing you to pay attention to visual and auditory cues in order to catch them red-handed before they strike you. The two contribute a lot and, unlike the first game, I didn’t detect any inconsistencies from your allied AI in terms of enemy detection.
Looting/scavenging is relatively unchanged. You still can’t move bodies, though at least those with a firearm tend to have ammunition on them. You gather resources in the world to build tools/items and upgrade weapons, the former able to be done anywhere, the latter restricted to tool benches scattered about (toolboxes have thankfully been removed at least). I will say, while this made no sense in the first game, benches are a lot more palatable here courtesy of Naughty Dog programming animations whenever you build a new mechanism or add-on for your weapon(s). Some are reused, but for the most part you have a lot of unique ones, and seeing Ellie utilize the tools on the table to craft these mechanisms went a long way towards signifying their significance as gameplay elements.
Skill trees are back, tied to training manuals strewn throughout the locales, and all cards on the table, I honestly found this system to be rather dumb- locking off an entire skillpath behind a collectible. It prevents you from strategizing which abilities you want to invest in until you reach the section of the story where that part of the world with the manual opens up. I’d buy this model if the new paths were tied to specific weapons you acquire around the same time Zelda-style, but no, these skills are mostly generic and appeal to the overall capabilities of your character (an aspect made all the worse by you having to find separate manuals for Abby when the game switches to her perspective). And since new upgrades are limited to pills, you already have a cap on which skills can be chosen.
I believe I’ve covered all the gameplay aspects save exploration. In the first TLOU, one recurring problem I had was that there were one-too-many instances of the narrative moving faster than the game allowedfor exploration- you'd get to an area prime for looting, only for an NPC to be simultaneously talking to you, making your constant "detours" immersion-breaking.
Ironically, I'd say TLOU 2 has the opposite issue here, where the exploration is much more abundant at the cost of the narrative's pacing, at least in Ellie's sections. You are provided a lot of buildings and settlements to explore and scavenge throughout your playthrough, and given the revenge thriller impetus driving the story, this often leads to a slow-down of urgency. I can't take the narrative's exigency seriously when Ellie is going to stop caring about the objective to go into a random place. Yes, technically most of these are "optional," but I use that term loosely because, as TLOU2 indulges in survival horror systems (more-so than its predecessor), and stows upgrade manuals/new weapons in these locales, they aren't really optional. In TLOU1, 9/10 buildings you went through were necessary to the story: here, I'd wager it's more like 5/10 for Ellie (I emphasize Ellie because Abby's sections thankfully don't have this problem, and that in many ways make her storyline more engaging, but more on that later).
Naughty Dog's penchant for environmental storytelling through interior decorations remains top notch, though some of the "wow" factor of the world's history has certainly been lost with the sequel. The bigger downgrade, IMO, were the personal tales divulged via stationary and recordings. I found these to be a lot less interesting than the first one's, mainly because they primarily concern an overarching conflict between three groups: the WLF insurgents, U.S. Military, and Seraphite cult. That kind of tale of a city being split apart by war and internal loyalties has already been done extensively (and continues to be a prevalent part of current events), thus making it lose the edge that smaller-scale, post-apocalyptic anecdotes carry. I'm not saying that there aren't any gems, just that they are less prevalent than in TLOU1 (on the upside, I did like how Ellie/Abby would instantly read them upon collection, compared to Joel immediately putting it away).
Now, I'll finally speak on the story, of which there is a ton to say. There is honestly no feasible way for me to do so without spoiling the game, so for those who want to stop reading, I'll just say I disagreed with Druckmann and co.'s take on stock themes and genuinely felt that they didn't have the guts to commit to an ending that would've made the most sense based on the pieces laid out (from my perspective anyways).
Notes:
+All involve Abby: first is the warehouse section, and the second/third involve her initial meeting with Lev and Yara, the second being the forest section with the stalkers and the third being trapped in the abandoned house structure.
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Now, spoilers galore:
TLOU2 primarily deals with the concept of retribution and vengeance. I noted earlier that this is a revenge game, and it is for those very reasons. To my delight, it deals with the aftermath of the first title wherein Joel went berserk and killed a bunch of Fireflies to prevent them from terminating Ellie during her surgery. The head surgeon's daughter is Abby, who dedicates the next four years of her life to tracking down and killing Joel. Through coincidental events, she happens to encounter the man, setting off the first of several controversial story decisions in which she tortures and murders him in front of Ellie.
I personally had no issue with this at all. I get a lot of people liked Joel, and I did as well (he would be an awful protagonist to play as if he wasn't likeable), but let's be clear- he's not a good person. Even if we ignore things he did in the past, the decision to massacre the Fireflies and execute Marlene, while subjectively understandable, is objectively a cruel and despicable move. There were going to be consequences from that, and Abby embodies that aftermath. People have brought up that Joel doesn't exercise caution when amidst all these new strangers (Abby and her friends) in comparison to the first game, and while I can see that, to me it made sense that living in Jackson for four years under a relatively safe roof tempered his survivalist instincts, especially after this group saved him from a horde of Infected.
But look, if you had an issue with Joel's death, by no means am I going to tell you to get over it. Different players bond with different characters, and the polarizing-negative response to Joel's death indicates it was unfavorable from a good sect of TLOU fanbase. What I hope such disagreeants (yes I made up that word) would at least assent to is that the death was well-executed. Listen, it was spoiled for me long before I played the game (not any details, just the event itself), yet, even knowing what was going to happen, my heart started racing. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I sat through the entirety of the ordeal. When a game can elicit that kind of physiological reaction, you know it's done a good job on the execution front (compare this to a certain someone's death in The Force Awakens, which was also spoiled beforehand, and I had no such biological response when it transpired on-screen).
Now, there were other issues SURROUNDING this event that bear greater scrutiny. First and foremost is the introduction as a whole- this might be the cringiest intro to a AAA game I have ever had the misfortune to experience. Ellie's whole part literally consists of such YA cliches as "you kissed my girl after we just broke up?", "this guy is a bigot and serving us bigot sandwiches," "what did you think of our kiss?," and the discovery of a literal weed farm (was Druckmann high when he came up with that nonsense?). Seriously, it felt like a bad episode of Degrassi (or Arrow for that matter) and genuinely made me wonder if I was playing a post-apocalyptic title, let alone a sequel to The Last of Us (which, by contrast, had one of the greatest openings in the history of video games). This cringefest literally takes hours to get through, the occasional lapses to Abby actually being a relief. Why would people who could die any day on a patrol be caught up in this high school idiocy?
The second major issue has to do with Abby and co. opting to SPARE Tommy and Ellie after the death of Joel. What? Yes, the writers go out of their way to try and explain such a stupid decision, but their justifications are as lame as you can get. Three spring up: "we only came for him [Joel]," "we're better than [Joel]," and "we gave you a second chance [Ellie & Tommy]".
None of these hold-up under basic scrutiny. Even if you only came for Joel, you know these are allies of his with full-fledged killer capabilities who now have the motivation to TRACK YOU DOWN. Maybe Abby and co. thought that the two weren't aware of what Joel did, but if that was the case, they don't bother stating things to Tommy and Ellie. Even something as basic as "if you knew what he did, you would understand" or outright telling it would have gone a long way towards making this line of thought feasible.
Regarding whether they're better than him, the answer is no, they're not and they know that. It is widely implied throughout the game that the Fireflies and WLF committed war crimes during their respective conflicts, and Abby most definitely engaged in some such act (supported by her implied guilt down-the-line). You could counter and say that those were (or were perceived to be) enemy combatants, and that executing Tommy and Ellie would be akin to killing unarmed civilians. You could maybe make this case for Tommy, but Ellie literally comes into the room guns-ablazing and slices up one of the WLF crewmen. Also, how is restraining Joel and slowly killing him there any different from a principled standpoint?
And finally, if Abby really wanted them to comprehend this act of mercy as an opportunity to start afresh, she should've SAID something. How is knocking Ellie out as she's screaming "I'm going to f*cking kill you" leaving her to think on things? Especially when she now knows your name and logo?
It was an all-around moronic decision - the cliché "villain conveniently spares the hero" trope.
So overall, not a good opener to this game. But hey, slow starts have been experienced in other titles like Skyward Sword, and the subsequent odyssey can make-up for lost time. Only....that doesn't happen. See, rather than do the smart thing and have Ellie either go solo or team-up with Tommy to hunt down the WLF rogues, Druckmann decides to have Ellie team-up with Dina, the girl whom she had a romantic encounter with earlier, because of course what a revenge story needed was a dumb romantic subplot.
Look, I'm all for diversity and representation, but a romance of ANY KIND was going to be a distraction, especially with a character we barely spent time with and, who, more importantly, barely spent time with Ellie. Seriously, Dina has NO logical reason to tag along on this life-threatening excursion other than being horny for Ellie as she did not extensively interact with her prior to the events of the game. No one does that shit, especially when they have their loved ones back home (and ESPECIALLY when she finds out she's pregnant).
Also, on a side note, anyone else find it interesting how gay romances that feature some kind of sexual scene tend to almost always be depicted via lesbians? It's almost as if such writers have an odd predilection towards the female gender when it comes to "presenting" same-sex intercourse, but I can't for the love of me tell why....
I could've tolerated Dina had she at least presented something interesting to the plot, and you sometimes get that by way of her conversations with Ellie during their time riding together (the Synagogue scene, in particular, stands out). However, for the most part, it's your silly flirtatious convos that are at odds with the serious, foreboding tone of the plot. Perhaps Druckmann intended this as "levity," but it's so amateurish I would've preferred silence.
To make matters worse, the official beginning of Joel's avengement is thrown into a free roam world that sees the couple having to, get this, open locked gates! Yup, you literally and figuratively hit a stonewall in terms of the pacing, with Naughty Dog thinking it a smart idea to abandon their signature linear-driven craftsmanship in favor a semi-open world that is boring. Look, downtrodden Seattle is a stunning dystopia to gaze at, but it gets old fast. The amount of empty space between buildings, the lack of interesting things to do at said edifices, and subtle mandatoriness courtesy of new weapons being out there grinds the pacing to a slow throttle. And as I said before, the convos between Dina and Ellie just aren't engaging enough to fill-in the quiet moments, particularly when compared to the first game's. Even some of the action beats feel like rehashes of events we underwent back then (getting saved last minute by the secondary hero, escaping into the spore-filled sewers). The only praise I can give this chapter (Seattle Day 1) is that it has a map that's actually useful.
The story significantly starts to pick up during the second chapter due to the following changes: Dina is taken out of the picture, causing Ellie to go solo; the open-world is removed in favor of handcrafted linear environments again; and new enemy variants are introduced to spice things up. You still have too many instances of boring side buildings to explore, but at least it's a far cry from the amount in the first section.
One decision that has received mixed reviews from audiences is the incorporation of flashbacks, which start during Seattle Day 2. Critics have said that they hurt the delivery of the narrative; however, considering I thought that was ruined long before, I didn't think they made it better or worse. No, I instead liked them for the most part. They're set between the two main games and give more memories of Joel and Ellie for fans to digest on.
Unfortunately, one of the storytelling decisions I fundamentally didn't agree with is introduced during one of these, and it's the revelation that Joel confessed to Ellie, in turn causing her to become distant from him. Not only did this make Ellie kind of unlikable (and Tommy flat-out despisable) for choosing to pursue bloodthirsty vengeance despite having an understanding of where these people were coming from, but I also think the story could have gone in more fascinating directions had the writers opted to play with when Ellie finds out the truth and what her reaction (and consequent reflection on all the horrible things she's done in the name of a guy she thought was good) is. But look, at the end of the day, you can't criticize what you wanted, only what you got, so it is what it is.
The decision to make Abby a playable character was another big controversial commitment by Naughty Dog, and yet again I find myself on the side of the company. While I do understand people wanting to purely experience Ellie (and absolutely sympathize with those who didn't want to play as the killer of Joel), as stated before, I've always been an advocate for stories that push boundaries, especially in video games which, unlike movies, have an interactivity factor that makes them more potent avenues for morality tales. In my opinion, this was a great decision, and made TLOU2 more than just your typical revenge plot.
Abby is a great character, brought to life by the great Laura Bailey. She's three-dimensional, visually unique (how often do we see a woman rocking guns?), likeable, and relatable. Everything about her, from her motivations to her shifting character arc, is very well-executed, and it's a shame so many people went into her section without keeping an open mind. As I said before, Abby embodies the notion of actions having consequences- even if you had removed her connection with the surgeon and just made her an ex-Firefly out for blood, she still would've been gripping to follow.
What really helps her is her supporting cast and the game design surrounding her sections. In most vengeance narratives, the antagonists aren't given much characterization: they're either blanket evil or bland evil, and this has the effect of dehumanizing them, resulting in players completely empathizing with the wronged party. But, as we all know in real life, people have a tendency to be more complex than that, and Druckmann and company opted to follow that philosophy in conceiving Abby's crew. I'm not going to go into detail about all of them, but know that they end up feeling like realistic folks you could conceivably meet at a point in your life. Some of the hardest-hitting moments in the TLOUII come from realizing the horrific actions you committed as Ellie were done to actual people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Regarding the game design, which I alluded to earlier in critiquing Ellie's comportments, Abby's story progresses at a sound gait, much more resembling the first TLOU in terms of limited exploration and story-driven linearity. It really does make a difference knowing that everything you're doing, every step you're taking, is moving the narrative forward.
Unfortunately, not all is sunshine and roses for Abby. The switch to her takes place after a major cliffhanger for Ellie, which will frustrate you. Part of me wonders how the game would've played out had it been edited differently- that is, have Abby's parts strewn throughout, taking place immediately after its associated Ellie parallel. But I understand this would've had more drawbacks than positives. You will also have to re-upgrade Abby, who is given a different arsenal from Ellie, but one that needs refurbishing regardless. Scouring for gears is already old at that point- doing it again will no doubt rub some people as an exercise in tedium.
Storywise, the two biggest downsides to Abby's yarn are the inclusion of a love triangle (It's as dumb and underdeveloped as you can imagine a side character's subplot being), and the game's attempt at trying to make her seem like this bad person; a bad person whom one of her compatriots outright declares a "piece of sh!t." Like I said, there is implied guilt behind Bailey's performance, but outside of that we're not given anything to deduce where these accusations are coming from. Was it making her friends help her murder Joel? No, because they explicitly state during flashbacks that they wanted to come of their own accord. Was it some atrocity she perpetrated during the war with the Seraphites? Nothing is stated to indicate such. I just didn't buy this line of argument, which in turn made her arc weak from a starting point.
Lastly, I absolutely hated how the game made you spend an inordinate amount of time getting the surgical instruments to save Yara's life, only to then kill her off. It's a pet peeve of mine whenever video games do this: have the player invest a lot of time into completing an activity only for that action to be undone later in the storyline. I hated it in Modern Warfare 3, I hated it in Fallout 3, I hated it in Life is Strange, and I hate it here.
There were more fundamental disagreements I had with the game, primarily with regards to its themes. Like too many postmodernist takes on revenge, it advocates that vengeance is wrong by way of creating a cycle of violence that hurts everyone, and I've always found this to be a simplistic view more interested in taking a holier-than-thou visage than genuinely exploring what revenge does to a society, let alone a person. Now, I understand that The Last of Us 2 was partly inspired by Druckmann's experiences growing up during the West Bank conflict between Israel and Palestine, and I don't mean to downplay the violence and trauma he no doubt witnessed. However, here he doesn't do a good job of dissecting things. TLOU2's biggest issue is that Ellie isn't acting on any semblance of reason, just pure emotion. She doesn't try to understand where these killers are coming from or why they would've been willing to travel across the country just to murder one man. The only thing we see is rage.
You might be thinking, well doesn't that fit right in with revenge being everlasting suffering? After all, since the involved parties are acting on passions instead of logic, they fail to realize how they're destroying themselves in the process of destroying the other. The thing is, the only way that story works is if both sides are sympathetic or both sides are unlikeable- you make one morally elevated above the other, and it creates an uneven playing field that throws a wrench in the mutual tragedy, which is exactly what happens here. Abby's side is inherently more pitiable because she was responding to a wrong Joel did; meanwhile, Ellie is not sympathizable because the developers make the boneheaded decision to have her aware of Joel's actions. If she was coming from a place of ignorance, then at least I would be able to understand her side- she lost a father figure who genuinely cared for her and wants payback for the seemingly senseless violence that befell him. But no, she knows, and despite that knowledge, there's no ethical dilemma on her part, no balancing of reasoning, not even an attempt at discussing things- the closest we get is when Nora asks Ellie in the hospital if she's aware of what he [Joel] did, to which Ellie responds by torturing her for information. Yeah, not likable in the slightest, making Abby's dedication all the more affirmable.
On the other hand, if you agreed with Joel's actions, then no amount of plaintive scenes from Abby's side will sway you, making the anti-vengeance theme even less impactful: you WANT to see Abby and her compatriots die at the hands of Ellie.
Now, what about Abby- she definitely loses all her friends as a result of getting revenge on Joel and setting off Ellie and Tommy (without stupidly killing them). Well, unfortunately, most of her pals get killed of their own accord- Nora, Mel, and Owen only die when they opt to attack Ellie instead of giving her the information she is seeking (Abby's location). In fact, not to go off on a tangent, but that speaks to another small issue I had with the game, which was its unwillingness to commit to Ellie's apparent moral degradation- if most of the WLF members she's assassinating are done in self-defense, how can this be seen as an infliction on her (you might say that this was deliberately done because Ellie recognizes Joel was in the wrong and only wants Abby dead; unfortunately, this is counteracted by the whole encounter with Nora, indicating that Ellie is willing to go far if she doesn't get what she wants).
In terms of the other negatives that befall Abby, they don't have anything to do with Ellie. Getting hung by the Seraphites? Occurs because she went out looking for Owen. Getting exiled from the WLF? Conducted because she decided to aid Yara and Lev. Getting captured by the Rattlers? Done because she was looking for the Fireflies. So basically revenge has nothing with most of the tragedies that befall her. And of the events that it did have an impact on (Nora, Mel, Owen, Manny, Alice's deaths), get this, Abby doesn't give a sh!t! She mourns them for a second before moving on, not reflecting or caring.
One may argue that Ellie does end up losing everything on her end: she's detached from her community, Dina has left her, and she's dehumanized. Except, the truth is none of this is permanent or even implied to be permanent- she can return to Jackson at any point and be welcomed with open arms (her leaving the farm at the end indicates just that); maybe Dina wouldn't take her back, but given how horny she was to risk her life on the trip in the first place, I doubt she'd hold a permanent grudge; and I don't see Ellie being anymore dehumanized than any other individual suffering from PTSD after all that's transpired in her life. If anything, her not having nightmares of Joel anymore is an indication she's getting better.
The truth is the game wants to have its cake and eat it too. You can't say traveling on this path won't lead to anything good if the consequences aren't that bad or the consequences have nothing to do with the act of revenge; and if the consequences aren't that bad or disassociated with the initiator, doesn't that make revenge worth pursuing in the end?
No, it seems the only decent interpretation you can make is Druckmann is saying you shouldn't have embarked on this excursion at all. This isn't supported by Abby's segments (since she almost dies despite sparing Ellie), but it IS supported by Ellie settling down into relative peace after returning to Jackson: she's got a farm, a family, and a future of happiness. It's only when she reneges on her abstinence that she suffers the aforestated aftereffects. And my problem with this take is what I alluded to above, which is that really comes off as a 'superior' person looking down on an 'inferior' person. Like, "oh, you should've known better than to give in to your feelings". What exactly was the alternative? To just suffer from nightmares? To silently forgive Abby? To move on as though nothing transpired? And what about from Abby's perspective- was she supposed to get over her dad having his guts blown out? Her mentor being executed? Her surrogate family and their lifelong mission destroyed in the span of an hour?
You'll notice that these kinds of stories NEVER provide the alternative answer to revenge because they don't know what it is- all they figure is that doing it is bad, which is so smug and simplistic. Tell someone who had a loved one who was murdered or beaten or assaulted in a world without proper law enforcement that they need to just sit on their ass and move on.
No, I'll be completely honest with you all- I have a conspiracy theory that the game had a very different ending initially, one that was much darker and much more controversial, yet that ended things much more succinctly than what we got. And that is that Abby kills Ellie.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time supporting this since it's circumstantial, but keep in mind this was one of the plot details in the pre-release leaks that plagued the title, and considering the vast majority of those other leaks turned out to be truthful, it maybe indicates it was contemplated at one point. Consider this: the showdown with Ellie is presented as a stealth fight akin to the one with David in TLOU1. And consider, more importantly, how tacked on and awful that whole final act is with the slave traders. Seriously, I haven't felt a game that padded in so long- it was convoluted (Ellie not bleeding out from that wound whilst strung upside down?), full of contrivances (Abby and Lev getting crucified THE EXACT DAY Ellie finds them?), and anticlimactic as an endgame compared to the theater scene.
Killing Ellie would've made complete sense. You have Abby rightfully motivated by the death of her friends; you have the element of surprise in the sense that she gets the drop on them; and you have a culmination of that whole anti-revenge spiel wherein you witness Ellie suffer the ultimate consequence for going after Abby.
It makes zero, let me repeat, ZERO sense for Abby to spare Ellie after everything the latter did to her. Zero. As Abby didn't learn from her mistake, so too do fictional writers not learn that the sparing the hero cliche is archetypal fatuity for a reason. Instead, we get a whole "don't ever let me see you again." Yeah, here's some advice- if you want to guarantee her not seeing you again, how about you kill her!
Look, I get that Naughty Dog was probably afraid of someone torching their headquarters to the ground if they had gone through with such a decision (considering the death threats they and Bailey received just for axing Joel, this isn't even out of the realm of possibility), but then they shouldn't have written the narrative to lead up to this moment. It was dumb planning from the get-go (and it begs the question of how tf Ellie got a wounded pregnant Dina and a gunshot-to-the-head Tommy all the way back to Seattle with a broken arm - now there's an idea for a Left Behind-type DLC!).
So yeah, those are all my reasons for eventually finding TLOU2 to be on the lower side of the quality spectrum. It has a lot of great artistic, technical, and even storytelling feats, and I absolutely recommend a playthrough on those merits alone but these are countered by cons in the narrative department. That being said, don't listen to the mainstream critiques that have occupied the discourse from disgruntled fans; there are legitimate flaws with this game that critics conveniently overlooked, but they're more complicated than you would believe.
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Animal Well
2024
I'm tempted to hold off on review because I hear the postgame is so robust, but I have to many thoughts, so here I am after hitting credits. I apologize for the unstructured ramble; I'll update this review when I've done postgame stuff.
Metroidvania is the genre that I think I like way more than I actually do like: I used to call it my favorite genre, and I STILL have plenty of games I consider favorites and replay over and over. But in truth, I feel like I'm in love with an idealization of the genre that rarely gets met by any game not called Super Metroid: Sequence being only a suggestion, with alternate paths and sequence breaks accomplished not just by glitches and wall clips, but mastery of mechanics and their nuances to master the environment. For whatever reason, the whole genre seems to have collectively decided that abilities, a persistent map, and collectibles are all that matter, with most of them feeling like tightly linear affairs pulling you on a string through a world that feels like it's begging to be truly trekked through, but disallowed by the developer for a myriad of reasons that I probably understand but think are silly.
Animal Well is Super Metroid 2. Not the only Super Metroid 2, but certainly one of the rare ones. (I would not be surprised if the solo developer was VERY inspired by my favorite Super Metroid 2, by the way. I'll leave it unnamed and see how many people guess it. Hint: It's not even a real metroidvania.)
The atmosphere? Moody. The ability upgrades? Unique to the point that I'm not sure I've seen a single one of them in another metroidvania, AND most of them with multiple hidden uses. The handholding? Nonexistent. The "intended" sequence? Hell if I know; I legit could not tell you how much of what I did on my one run so far was the path of least resistance or a sequence break.
There's just so damn much in this game that encourages you to get creative with what you have to see what works, and chances are if you can logically conceptualize something working within the bounds of the game's rules, it will, indeed, work (with or without tons of retry and maybe some luck). The result is the best metroidvania I've played in an absurdly long time, meeting my idealization of the genre in a way almost no others do.
And the fact that what I describe seems to have been a near-universal reaction among people playing it, that this game that doesn't tell you anything and expects you to get creative to progress is based? Man, oh man, I really hope metroidvania developers take note.
Metroidvania is the genre that I think I like way more than I actually do like: I used to call it my favorite genre, and I STILL have plenty of games I consider favorites and replay over and over. But in truth, I feel like I'm in love with an idealization of the genre that rarely gets met by any game not called Super Metroid: Sequence being only a suggestion, with alternate paths and sequence breaks accomplished not just by glitches and wall clips, but mastery of mechanics and their nuances to master the environment. For whatever reason, the whole genre seems to have collectively decided that abilities, a persistent map, and collectibles are all that matter, with most of them feeling like tightly linear affairs pulling you on a string through a world that feels like it's begging to be truly trekked through, but disallowed by the developer for a myriad of reasons that I probably understand but think are silly.
Animal Well is Super Metroid 2. Not the only Super Metroid 2, but certainly one of the rare ones. (I would not be surprised if the solo developer was VERY inspired by my favorite Super Metroid 2, by the way. I'll leave it unnamed and see how many people guess it. Hint: It's not even a real metroidvania.)
The atmosphere? Moody. The ability upgrades? Unique to the point that I'm not sure I've seen a single one of them in another metroidvania, AND most of them with multiple hidden uses. The handholding? Nonexistent. The "intended" sequence? Hell if I know; I legit could not tell you how much of what I did on my one run so far was the path of least resistance or a sequence break.
There's just so damn much in this game that encourages you to get creative with what you have to see what works, and chances are if you can logically conceptualize something working within the bounds of the game's rules, it will, indeed, work (with or without tons of retry and maybe some luck). The result is the best metroidvania I've played in an absurdly long time, meeting my idealization of the genre in a way almost no others do.
And the fact that what I describe seems to have been a near-universal reaction among people playing it, that this game that doesn't tell you anything and expects you to get creative to progress is based? Man, oh man, I really hope metroidvania developers take note.
Exoprimal
2023
why do we always need to shoot the dinosaurs why can't we be friends :(