I am absolutely godawful at stealth in games. My brain can’t wrap my head around it. I’m already pretty shocking with aiming in FPS, and I’m the biggest wimp around so horror games are something I struggle with. All of this makes TLOU seem like a game I should hate. I didn’t though.

Don’t get me wrong, I still had a very hard time with it. I played on normal the whole way through, and struggled probably far too much. I ended up with 39 deaths, and a 67% accuracy with firearms (I do enjoy the fact that they provide you with these stats). Probably 90% of my encounters ended with me running around and shooting due to being spotted. There’s an encounter right near the start with 3 runners and a clicker that I genuinely died in about 6 times despite it being basically a tutorial. And still I loved this.

The story and voice acting is phenomenal. The games looks amazing. It plays incredibly well. Practically everything feels fluid. I can’t give enough praise to how great this game is.

However, I do have some negatives. It’s probably the same stuff that everyone says about this game. You need down moments in the game, and you get that with exploration, cinematically, conversations and bonding moments between Ellie and Joel. You also get down moments with boring “puzzles” that consist of finding a ladder/dumpster/board/plank to use to get across an obstacle. Anytime these moments include dialogue is a plus but nobody wants to waste time doing these boring tasks frankly. It just isn’t fun. My other main criticism is to do with the swimming, which thankfully doesn’t appear much in the games but when it does, my god do the controls feel incredibly clunky, especially for a game that’s so smooth with every aspect of its gameplay.

That’s probably my main criticisms though. Almost a perfect game in my opinion. I honestly can’t wait to go back through it again and try and find all collectables and conversations to further build on the story and the lore, and earn some trophies hehe.