It’s not often a game leaves me as astounded as The Last of Us Part II.
Astounded in a good sense? I’m not sure, I really can’t even tell myself. There’s so much to unpack in this game that I feel even a limitless amount of characters wouldn’t be enough to give a thoughtful review.
What I will say is that Part II is not really a step-up from the tedious, dreadful gameplay of the first one. I am constantly hating going through dimly lit, poorly designed areas in a game that claims to be linear, but seems to want to be semi-open world. It seems like every 40 minutes someone is falling through something, being forced to climb their way up, fighting the exact same enemies over and over. It’s truly a drag.
Which is unfortunate, because I thought the storytelling in this game was phenomenal. We don’t do that homophobic bullshit around these parts, so you can go ahead and fuck right off with that if that’s your biggest complaint.
These are extremely complex characters in a not-so-complex environment. It’s post-apocalyptic, there are zombies, we’ve all seen it before. There are hundreds of movies about the exact thing that’s happening, WITHIN the world of these characters. Hell, Joel references Jurassic Park once. The “humans being humans” trope I feel has yet to be done better. As both the protagonist and antagonist, (if there even is one or the other), you are constantly forced to do things you’d never choose to do playing any other game. But that seems to be where this game stands out, is that’s it’s not like any other game.
Which to me, wasn’t always a good thing throughout. Sometimes, I feel like the profound message gets lost in between a game that, at its core is horror, but wants to be drama.
I just wish there wasn’t so much downtime in between the story, when it’s nothing but zombie after zombie after zombie. It’s like even Naughty Dog knows zombies are nothing more than a placeholder in modern media. No more zombies, stop it. 8/10.
Astounded in a good sense? I’m not sure, I really can’t even tell myself. There’s so much to unpack in this game that I feel even a limitless amount of characters wouldn’t be enough to give a thoughtful review.
What I will say is that Part II is not really a step-up from the tedious, dreadful gameplay of the first one. I am constantly hating going through dimly lit, poorly designed areas in a game that claims to be linear, but seems to want to be semi-open world. It seems like every 40 minutes someone is falling through something, being forced to climb their way up, fighting the exact same enemies over and over. It’s truly a drag.
Which is unfortunate, because I thought the storytelling in this game was phenomenal. We don’t do that homophobic bullshit around these parts, so you can go ahead and fuck right off with that if that’s your biggest complaint.
These are extremely complex characters in a not-so-complex environment. It’s post-apocalyptic, there are zombies, we’ve all seen it before. There are hundreds of movies about the exact thing that’s happening, WITHIN the world of these characters. Hell, Joel references Jurassic Park once. The “humans being humans” trope I feel has yet to be done better. As both the protagonist and antagonist, (if there even is one or the other), you are constantly forced to do things you’d never choose to do playing any other game. But that seems to be where this game stands out, is that’s it’s not like any other game.
Which to me, wasn’t always a good thing throughout. Sometimes, I feel like the profound message gets lost in between a game that, at its core is horror, but wants to be drama.
I just wish there wasn’t so much downtime in between the story, when it’s nothing but zombie after zombie after zombie. It’s like even Naughty Dog knows zombies are nothing more than a placeholder in modern media. No more zombies, stop it. 8/10.