The Last of Us

[Hendo]

Finished Left Behind, really good stuff. Thought I did everything as I found all the collectibles but somehow missed some of the conversations.

I'm going through again on Hard.

Played a couple of matches of Factions. First game I did really well and our team won easily. Second game, we got destroyed.

[Hendo]

Yeah I did all of them and all of the puns. I think I missed the water soaker one.

[Sly Reflex]

PSN was down so I took the opportunity to finish this. Yeah...

[Sly Reflex]

If I can be bothered I'll write up after I finish the DLC.

Quick question before that though, did people really think this was a deep and involving believable story?

[Craymen Edge]

I keep meaning to give this another go some time. I didn't play a whole lot. I got to a subway station, died, and then stopped because I was a bit bored.

[DisturbedSwan]

The story is one of the absolute best ever in games, spell-bindingly good, incredibly deep and emotional, punctuated by a melancholic beauty that permeates every inch of the game.

[dante76]

Having just got a Ps4, this was high on the list. Enjoyed it especially the ending and soundtrack. Also finished a grounded run through

[HandsomeDead]

If I can be bothered I'll write up after I finish the DLC.

Quick question before that though, did people really think this was a deep and involving believable story?

I thought it was a good character piece. Thematically, its exceptionally good use of the medium. I'd say I believed in the characters. Can't think of a reason why I wouldn't.

The science is a stretch, but as a back drop for the themes it works,especially the ending.

[Sly Reflex]

That's Left Behind done. You know what? That was pretty good, although it did get a creep of what pissed me off most in the base game.

Game design wise, The Last of Us is pretty fucking awful on several accounts. It's the very definition of sexing up something that at its base it borderline unpalatable and that at their root graphics and good voice acting can divert attention from the issues in a slight of hand that will age this game really quickly once other studios are able to output a similar graphical fidelity as a baseline.

[DANGERMAN]

I wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay, but it's certainly effective, and it does improve. It gets very tense, and I liked how there's a shift from the infected being the most dangerous enemy to the humans being far more deadly. An example of gameplay working with narrative

[HandsomeDead]

That's Left Behind done. You know what? That was pretty good, although it did get a creep of what pissed me off most in the base game.

Game design wise, The Last of Us is pretty fucking awful on several accounts. It's the very definition of sexing up something that at its base it borderline unpalatable and that at their root graphics and good voice acting can divert attention from the issues in a slight of hand that will age this game really quickly once other studios are able to output a similar graphical fidelity as a baseline.

That's absolute bollocks. Try taking in what people say about the game. I don't like my intelligence insulted, Sly.

[Sly Reflex]

I've read what people have said and I think it's shite.

[HandsomeDead]

Okay, so were all morons impressed with graphics and voice acting, then?

Not that the combat and stealth mechanics work amazingly well together with the gear shift style control system that is really intelligently designed, along with the good gameplay driven geometry. It's not the subtle and effective crafting system that doesn't confuse.

And the story and voice acting, while decent, isn't really the draw. I'd say the game is kinda about the conflict of nature and man. What if nature properly tried to shake mankind off this planet... what do we deserve... I'll just say that to avoid spoilers, as that's what I feel the ending is about.

I'm not saying you have to like that game, all I'm saying is does it hurt to not be a cunt and take on what's been said. I can't stand to play Metal Gear games (I played Ground Zeroes on + recently... still can't get into it), but I really do appreciate them from other people's perspectives. It's worth trying to look at things that way, that's all I'm getting at.

[Sly Reflex]

Right, I'm going to spoiler the majority of this post. Don't go reading this unless you've finished everything to do with TLoU or you're never going to play TLoU.

Okay, so were all morons impressed with graphics and voice acting, then?

Not at all. I've said before that what they have done is stunningly good regarding those areas. It is the best mocap I've seen in a game. It's up there with some of the nicest graphics I've ever seen. Voice acting and scripting is of the highest caliber too. It is impressive, but to hang a whole game on that is a bit of a push.

Not that the combat and stealth mechanics work amazingly well together with the gear shift style control system that is really intelligently designed, along with the good gameplay driven geometry. It's not the subtle and effective crafting system that doesn't confuse.

It's not that the combat and stealth work within a control system, it's that they're fucking boring, frustrating and in certain circumstances unfair and impossible. Sitting and watching patrols through stealth bits boils down to standing near a patrol and grabbing and then strangling or stabbing the target. If a situation goes loud which is sometimes does for no good reason you're forced into this shitfest of crappy constricted shooting where you're 50/50 on getting shot yourself whenever you put your head up. I get why it's like that, it's meant to ape the horror survival tank controls without using tank controls. It's just that it feels luck for the most due to how it drops ammo.

First of all the shooting, or the rules of what enemies could take was all over the place. An arrow in stealth can kill in one hit. An arrow out of stealth wouldn't, usually 2 arrows was a kill out of stealth. Fine? What about when you're in the middle ground and they're looking for you after knowing where you were. If I only have 2 arrows left am I going to be able to kill the patrolling gunmen leaving the melee weapons open to my normal gunfire making them easy targets? How come I can kill some guys with my pistol with 2 body shots, but others take 5 or more. Why when I shoot people in the head does it take as many shots to kill them as it does from body shots? In fact on the sniping bit back when you have to cover the other guy and kids advance the game penalises you for making headshots with a sniper rifle. I couldn't figure out why the enemies couldn't be kept at bay until I noticed that body shots were a one hit kill. But for some reason wearing a hat stops bullets that make saucer shaped holes in people. That is nonsense gamification. It's bullshit.

The other thing that really grinded my gears were ammo drops. I get it, we're riffing on the survival horror thing again, but the way the ammo drops really makes parts of the games either a cakewalk or impossible. For example when you're fighting alongside Dave in the siege I had no ammo. Nothing. Nothing dropped and I was at a complete reliance of the AI. No surprises I failed there. When I started again it dropped a little better for ammo and I managed to pass. Later on in that area of the game I had so many shells I could sit from my little nest and kill everyone, my ammo supplies being refilled after scouring the area from people I'd killed. I don't understand why they went down this route. If my targets take up 10 shots to kill if I aim perfectly and in the next area I need 9 shots to dispatch foes, then why drop 3 bullets for a gun that doesn't befit the next task?

Fast forward to where you take control of Joel and the only drops it's giving me are for the sawed off. There's no cover to move up and I'm being pelted with fire from a distance that means I have no options but to restart or die. That is bollocks. I've gone through whole areas of the game stealth killing and got just enough bullets from the drops to get through certain encounters that have to go loud. There's times where I've actively had to use bricks and bottles as my main way of killing enemies because I've looked at my ammo supplies and thought "Hey, I better keep onto these 3 revolver bullets, I might need them for the next area" despite the people I'm bumping off all using revolvers. You're telling me that that makes sense? It's perfectly logical for that to happen? If so, I don't believe you. In the DLC I didn't use any bullets until the very last area. I pissed through everything I had and ended up using 1 arrow that somehow didn't break over and over again. I didn't miss a shot in this area and used stealth takedowns where possible. That's just nonsense that a situation can present itself like that when you're killing so many things.

The drops significantly have an effect on how hard the game is. In the hospital I was facing off against guys with assault rifles. I'd work my way up to their entrenched position and get killed. I thought it was hard. Nope, just the game not giving me drops, turns out that the AR can drop from any of those guys.When it eventually did drop and I was able to get ammo for it, I waltzed through the rest of the game. That's a wall that shouldn't exist, as you go into that area the game should be like "Hey dude, here's a AR on the table where you can't miss it, have fun with the rest of the game!" instead of being like cards waiting to fall in my favour so I can take out guys that mow me down if I'm so much as out of cover for a microsecond.

The guns feel off. The AR I assume is meant to be a death dealing machine, it just felt so unresponsive and weak. It sounded like a sewing machine. The only guns I enjoyed using were the shotgun and the bow. They didn't feel punchy enough, they felt like nerf toys.

The AI is atrocious. From an immersion point of view it's super retarded, running from cover to cover and going right of eyeshot of enemies is completely stupid. In those section there's no reason why they should be in front of you. That's not even the worst thing about it though, for some unknown reason when you're being sneaky and kill someone it can just open fire for no reason at all. That's great, that is. I'm fucking stealthing for a reason, one being that there's no chance I can shoot my way out of this and two I don't have enough ammo to kill all these cunts.

Good gameplay geometry? Honestly this depends on what you have on you. Like I mentioned, some of the areas are super hard to bypass if the game is being a cunt with drops. If you like standing for ages for a patrol to pass so you can grab them, then great. Personally that wasn't for me. The Ellie bits where you could do stealth takedowns were much better handled than the Joel ones, I found her to be a lot better to play like that due to not having to worry about degrading shivs. Also while we're on the topic of geometry, the puzzles that required you to give Ellie a peg up has stupidly small zones for them to register. In general the areas are just places with boxes for you to hide behind while using your prefered method of play, I wouldn't say that there was anything special about them.

The areas in game had a lot of nothing in them. I mean a lot of the game is genuinely beautiful to look at. There's hella loads of nothing though, there's a lot of space without a lot of reason to go and look at it.

You're praising the crafting system? OK. I don't get why, but OK. I mean I used it, but I wouldn't say it was special or anything like that. It was just there.

And the story and voice acting, while decent, isn't really the draw. I'd say the game is kinda about the conflict of nature and man. What if nature properly tried to shake mankind off this planet... what do we deserve... I'll just say that to avoid spoilers, as that's what I feel the ending is about.

It's not about the story, but it's about the story? OK, then. For me none of it really carries any weight. So a kid dies. A woman dies. Some guys die. A guy learns his lover was a dick. A kid gets bitten and then his brother shoots himself because reasons. Estranged brother recoup and fall out. A serious wounding happens. A person grows because of it. A creepy guys does creepy and ends up getting killed. They find the place they are meant to go. Turns out it was all a rouse. We learn one or more of the main characters is a bit of a cunt more than we already knew. Even the general message that you're picking at isn't that well done in game. It could have placed the idea into your head and as a consequence made you think about. That's cool that something made you think like that but that's rationalisation outside of the game. I think it's closer to the old needs of the few vs the needs of the many with added morals thrown in on top rather than what you're getting at. Whatever, open to interpretation I guess. I'd be interested to see what others thought and see what they think about the events that happened and the consequences of them once the credits roll.

I'm not saying you have to like that game, all I'm saying is does it hurt to not be a cunt and take on what's been said. I can't stand to play Metal Gear games, but I really do appreciate them from other people's perspectives. It's worth trying to look at things that way, that's all I'm getting at.

I actually liked a lot of the game, I'm not saying it's without merit, just that it's massively overrated. I liked the decay. I liked exploring. I liked the company and having someone around to chat to made me miss it when she wasn't there, the bonding between two very different people. The score was beautiful throughout. The scripting and dialogue aside from a few parts was solid. I liked how you could see your objective in the distance and how it got closer and closer as you traversed the level. Little touches like weapons being harder to manage while blocking the blizzard with your free hand or enemies grabbing at you as you go into vents we unneeded but it's nice to see an eye to detail on stuff like that. Stuff like removing parts of the hud by making them appear as part of your backpack similar to how Dead Space did is cool too.

There's a lot to like, it's just that for me it was marred heavily by gameplay not being up to par. When you have people writing stuff like this...

The story is one of the absolute best ever in games, spell-bindingly good, incredibly deep and emotional, punctuated by a melancholic beauty that permeates every inch of the game.

... Over and over again all over the internet you expect to have that delivered. For me it didn't deliver, it fell really short in the part that you actually play and to me that's the most important part. I mean is it a better story than something like Spec Ops: The Line? It it as deep as Braid or as emotional as Aeris being killed? Is the melancholia as harsh of that found in Fallout 3? Are there really no flaws at all?

Hype is a game killer. The Last of Us has been elevated to such a position that to players hearing that praise can't ever play the game the people are talking about because it doesn't exist.

I say when we're coming to the end of the PS4's life we play this game again and see if it stands up and have a talk about it then. I've a feeling it'll be one of those games that has a lot of fond memories surrounding it that'll be sullied on a revisit.

[Duck]

It's not a PS4 game though. It's a remaster, it'll hold up for a while yet.

I enjoyed the gameplay elements of it.

Making a expensive new IP a mainly a stealth one was a ballsy move. I thought the pacing and set pieces mixed it up enough that I never fatigue or got bored of it. Ground Zeroes nicked a few of its systems too to improve the way that series plays, so it must be doing something right. Right?

I don't think Last of Us has the best story in a game. But I think it might be one of the best in the way the story is told. And again I think it made some brave moves especially Left Behind. Not really a spoiler but I'll spoil it if people want to go into blind.

Left Behind is basically about 2 teen girls dealing with their sexuality.

[DisturbedSwan]

I'd like to know which gameplay elements are going to apparently age badly and ruin the game within the space of about 4 or 5 years, because I just can't see personally.

The amount of time I spent with the game on release and from my point of view it didn't put a foot wrong, i'll definitely be going back for another run through when we hit a quiet patch.

Hear, hear.

The story is one of the absolute best ever in games, spell-bindingly good, incredibly deep and emotional, punctuated by a melancholic beauty that permeates every inch of the game.

... Over and over again all over the internet you expect to have that delivered. For me it didn't deliver, it fell really short in the part that you actually play and to me that's the most important part. I mean is it a better story than something like Spec Ops: The Line? It it as deep as Braid or as emotional as Aeris being killed? Is the melancholia as harsh of that found in Fallout 3? Are there really no flaws at all?

Hype is a game killer. The Last of Us has been elevated to such a position that to players hearing that praise can't ever play the game the people are talking about because it doesn't exist.

I say when we're coming to the end of the PS4's life we play this game again and see if it stands up and have a talk about it then. I've a feeling it'll be one of those games that has a lot of fond memories surrounding it that'll be sullied on a revisit.

I have an easier explanation of why you didn't like it Si. It didn't have enough shooty bang bang bits in it for you, and the shooty bang bangs that were in the game didn't feel meaty enough for you to get your true shooty bang bang fix, that and you're shite at stealth games obviously

[DisturbedSwan]

This is one of my favourite games of all but for some reason I’ve never played the DLC - Left Behind. Having just finished FFX HD and with just over 2 weeks until TLOUP2 I decided the time was right to rectify that.

Going in I didn’t know an awful lot about it

Spoiler

other than it explains how Ellie got bitten. So imagine my surprise when straight away you’re in a Colorado Mall trying to save Joel after he falls on the Rebar during the main game! 
 

The game flits between the harsh realities of this world in the Colorado side of the DLC with the childhood irreverence and a brief reprieve from the harsh realities of the world in Ellie and Riley’s story. There’s a nice duality to it, you get to be a kid and do a little of what ‘normal’ kids of Ellie’s age would get to do back in Boston for awhile and then get thrown kicking and screaming back into this dark, desperate world filled tinged with sadness and misery. It keeps you wanting to play as well as frequently a chapter of either side of the story will end on a cliffhanger which means you’ll have to play through the opposite chapter to see what happens back at the previous one. 
 

There’s also a stark contrast in the lack of combat in Boston and the harsh visceral combat in Colorado. The Boston side of the story is just filled with neat little mini-games and experiences with Ellie and Riley, with an underlying romance brewing under the surface. It’s just nice to see these characters having fun, being kids and enjoying themselves with dumb little games at the Mall. Whereas Colorado has quite a lot of combat in it, I didn’t remember how quite how difficult, intense and unrelenting it can be. Clearing out a room full of Clickers and Infected after all these years was so damn tense you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. 
 

The duality of the separate stories plays into the endings too. With Ellie ultimately saving Joel in the Colorado Mall and losing Riley in the Boston Mall, whilst thinking she was going to die too - due to getting bit right near the end in a botched escape attempt as things go pear shaped. It’s just beautifully written and perfect how everything ends up so intertwined. It’s because Ellie went through this experience years ago that she now has what it takes to save Joel. After she lost Riley she didn’t want to lose another loved one. 

It was just great to be back in this world again after 7 years as well. The graphics still hold up really well, this was the first time seeing the game run in 4K and it was glorious. Some of the facial details don’t hold up today and look a little wooden but everything else feels still holds up very well today, I honestly can’t believe how good the animations are for a 2013 game, it’s pretty crazy how ahead of the curve ND were with this. There are a few weird graphical anomalies around the faces from time to time which is a little jarring but that’s the only noticeable issue I saw. 

 

So yeah, really can’t recommend it enough. It’s short at just over 3 hours so no reason not to give it a go, I wish I’d played it earlier as it gives even greater context to the ‘Winter’ Chapter of the main game. 
 

Pics:

 

Spoiler

 

[AndyKurosaki]

Definitely a great piece of DLC. I didn’t play it myself til the PS4 remaster. But I loved it so much on PS3 that I was happy to replay the whole game.

[Maf]

BRICK FUCKIN’ MASTER!! lol

 

I think the DLC for this is the best piece of single player DLC I’ve ever seen. Fair enough there’s not much to beat, but Left Behind is probably #1 for me

[Craymen Edge]

On 04/07/2015 at 18:19, Craymen Edge said:

I keep meaning to give this another go some time. I didn't play a whole lot. I got to a subway station, died, and then stopped because I was a bit bored.

 

I never did give it another go.