i feel strange about being one of the few outliers in review section of this game but i feel as though the last of us series aren't at all the masterpieces everyone claim them to be. don't get me wrong, several aspects of the games are indeed spectacular and feel unmatched by most games, those aspects aren't at all what make a masterpiece game to me.
sure, the visual style is genuinely beautiful and awe inspiring at times and i found myself just immersing myself in some of the games environments and cinematic moments. the music was incredible and felt impactful in the emotions they intended on making you feel. the acting by some of the actors in this genuinely are some great performances, keyword some.
this is where i start going in the direction of some of my negatives.
like i said, some characters i feel did a great job in their acting but i also felt the overwhelming thought that most of the other actors felt extremely one note and dimensional in their performances, especially when paired up against the better actor. this, the whole time i played the game, was genuinely distracting and i felt detached from the story throughout the whole game. there's something about low tone one note vocal fry acting that just completely destroys the illusion. i can handle it when its one person doing it, but when its almost all side characters and most companions i just stop caring about your story. the first game didn't have it as tough because ellie and joel both had incredible actors that had a range of emotion throughout, that the characters felt alive and real. i couldn't even remember most of the characters in this game because of my disinterest in them as a whole, and that's not good at all for a story driven game.
story driven game is another critique when it comes down to my enjoyment of the game. i did the math, a quarter, 25% of the game are cutscenes and limited control gameplay. okay, fine enough. 75% of gameplay seems fine, but i absolutely found the gameplay to be whatever to put it bluntly. i saw several people point out how the gameplay was s tier but i cant find a reason why. zombies, clickers, bloaters, most human encounters felt cheap and unfun. big bad's who could tank 2 headshots to the head ruined immersion for me and also weren't fun to play against. several scripted hand to hand combat moments that felt cringe. and most interaction types are copy pasted but spread apart so it pads out gameplay. some very lame boss fights, (i say some i can only remember one, but i also don't remember much about this game even though i just finished it.) i can only recall a single moment where i genuinely had a lot of fun with an encounter so ill type it in spoiler text because the sudden nature of it was a huge part of the excitement.
[spoiler]i cant recall at what point of the story it was, but its when you first encounter the stalkers in the office space. i genuinely felt immersed, i genuinely felt the pressure that they could pounce at any moment and my limited ammo made me take my time and think about my approach in a way that didn't feel like it detracts at all from the experience. i loved watching them peek their head out at me and go hide, it felt like the call and response i desperately was looking for throughout this game, and it sucks it was limited in this one moment.[/spoiler]
on the topic of limited resources, i understand its a survival horror game but when i kill someone who didn't have time to shoot their weapon, and i try and loot them. why cant i? why is it rng based? sure, maybe don't give me a whole mag, but it feels like i'm cheated when i kill a group of 5 people who didn't even get to use their weapons and i get maybe 1 or 2 things of ammo from them. if you're going to punish me for fighting, at least make stealth more of a viable often in some of these levels. there's certain sections of levels where you cannot progress without fighting, and fighting in turn makes everyone aware of you. it just felt like annoyances sometimes to even play the game.
i have a lot more grievances with gameplay but ill just hold off on it i suppose. i guess i should start talking about the story now.
where do i begin? i guess ill just start off by saying the story is a mixed bag for me. i really thought certain decisions were strong, bold, and well executed. while others, not so much. i really like my takeaway from one of the many morals of the story which is a sad take on the eye for an eye idiom. to me, its always been an eye for an eye doesn't stop until everyone's blind, and this story is just that. i'm going to get into spoiler talk.
[spoiler]joels death made sense, i wasn't upset about it in the sense that other people were when this game first came out and people gave this game ♥♥♥♥ for it. i did however, find abby's side of the story COMPLETELY uninteresting. the gameplay, and story felt like it hit a complete brick wall when we switched to her side. i don't even mind the idea of playing through the 'antagonists' point of view so you sympathize and understand the bigger picture, but the way that they handled it felt like the writers weren't even sure what to do. none of abby's crew are memorable and abby isn't only memorable enough because you play as her for half the game, and because she killed joel. god i just finished this game and i'm realizing i cant remember so much of this game, (not good,) so i'm just gonna start listing things. ellie fights a giant mutated zombie monster thing that felt so out of place in this world it took me completely out of the immersion. on top of that, she NEVER MENTIONS IT AGAIN. speaking of that, so many moments of the game are like that someone will die that's apparently important to the main characters and then they aren't brought up anymore, (aside from joel.) i tried to look at it from the angle of survivors surviving pushing through it, but if we mourn joel the whole time i'm sure we can also mourn all these other characters who these characters supposedly have deep emotional bonds with. i looked it up, the main characters get knocked out 4 times. doesn't sound like a lot but it was super distracters after the second one because it felt like, "we have zero idea how to progress this story, oh uhm just knock her out." the amount of flashbacks were also very distracting, unfun, and we get several repetitive ones that add little to nothing in terms of the story's narrative.[/spoiler]
overall, although i had more than a lot to say in terms of how much of this game was a disappointment, i would say it's highs were high. and i suppose worth a single playthrough. buy it on sale, its f*** sony. but people worked hard on this and it shows.
6/10
