Just finished it. Whoever says this game deserves less than 8/10 in its genre deserves to be offended.
Great gameplay and great story about revenge and its consequences. Characters are depicted as real people in a harsh world with no need of happy moments just to make kids happy while playing it.
I must say I preferred the first game for one single reason: what it gave to videogames as a whole back in 2013 was more than what TLOU2 adds now. BUT part 2 is better in every single aspect.
After this and RDR2, all third-person perspective games for the next 3 years at least will look very old. Graphics (not just pixel count and effects) and in particular animations are something else.
Some of the people who don't like this game just wanted (SPOILERS)
The others haven't played at all but the herd behavior on the internet feels so good not to bully a game. Which is the worst thing.
P.S. it is absolutely possible not to like the game for proper reasons, I guess, but I haven't heard any of them at all (saying "I don't like the genre itself" can't qualify to TLOU2's objective flaw)
Great gameplay and great story about revenge and its consequences. Characters are depicted as real people in a harsh world with no need of happy moments just to make kids happy while playing it.
I must say I preferred the first game for one single reason: what it gave to videogames as a whole back in 2013 was more than what TLOU2 adds now. BUT part 2 is better in every single aspect.
After this and RDR2, all third-person perspective games for the next 3 years at least will look very old. Graphics (not just pixel count and effects) and in particular animations are something else.
Some of the people who don't like this game just wanted (SPOILERS)
not to play abby at all, joel survived and went with ellie in search for revenge, they killed the bad guys no matter who they were, Ellie understood dick is better than pussy, Joel found some victoria's secret model who loved him and they build a nice house where the three of them lived happily forever after. The vicotria's secret model is also a super scientist and found by herself a cure for cordyceps in a couple of days working with a couple of Ellie's hair.
The others haven't played at all but the herd behavior on the internet feels so good not to bully a game. Which is the worst thing.
P.S. it is absolutely possible not to like the game for proper reasons, I guess, but I haven't heard any of them at all (saying "I don't like the genre itself" can't qualify to TLOU2's objective flaw)
Yeah, my sentiments also unfortunately. I've written so much about it on so many forums, hearing the same counter-points over and over. I could compile a large essay at this point :S
You get people acting like how much you enjoy a story is almost a mathematical equation. "So and so did this because of that so 5+5=10 and therefore it makes sense to me and if you don't like it then there's something wrong with you."
You either buy into a story and its characters.....or you don't. I didn't but am glad for people who did.
More importantly, TLoU2 made me realise why a dev like CDPR is so vital to moving games forward in terms of stirring emotions in the player. People like Druckmann aren't embracing the medium. They're just treading water; doing the same thing that has been done for ages and merely enhancing the technical delivery. They're trying to blend gaming and Hollywood. Fair enough from a business sense.....but don't tell me it means gaming has grown up, or it's pushing the medium forward. Stories in gaming don't always have to simply be a narrative chopped up into cutscenes and then sprinkled throughout. They don't need to try to imitate movies. It's a valid design, don't get me wrong, but it's not an evolution.
For example, I keep hearing that TLoU2 is supposed to make us think about 'our' actions, to make us have to deal with 'our' guilt. What actions? What guilt? None of what happens is down to me. None of the actions are mine and so I didn't feel guilty about any of it. Interactivity with choice and consequence are one of two big weapons gaming has when it comes to narrative and making the player feel something. CDPR understands that.
I felt more emotion and guilt from using white phosphorous in Spec-Ops The Line or killing Dwayne in GTAIV than anything in TLoU2, save for one particular moment the game buys itself using the 'emotional bank savings' it had from the previous game. I'm simply far more likely to feel more emotion and be more invested in my own decisions. Just as in life.
Devs like CDPR are using that kind of design and that's what really moves the medium forward, rather than just increasing production values, animations and visuals in cutscenes. Imho, of course
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You must be having very low standarts then. It was lame story with full of incoherences.
Story is so bad that Abby is trying to get revenge because of Joel's massacre in the first game but at the same time she is killing a lot of people just to save a kid she doesn't know at all and she never thinks that "This people can also have children and they might try to get their revenge from me in the future". Abby kills dozens of people again only to take the kid to the hospital because he was slightly injured. What kind of stupid motivation does she have? And this kid has been just added into the game because devs noticed this at some point "Hey guys, do you remember that people liked the first game mostly because of father-daughter relationship progression, lets add some another kid for Abby to revive this kind of feelings again and let's not put that much brain into it."
Final fight was lame as hell. It is impossible for Abby to move after all those stabbing damage, especially when she was in her weakest condition. Just like the whole game. The number of bullets you can hold in your body before passing out is weirdly much. But you still grade this game as 8/10 and praising it with its graphics which is just as expected. In each generation the graphical quality progresses. This is natural outcome. Even after seeing these many inconsistencies in both gameplay and story, i can't believe people grading this game that high. You have quite low standarts.
Final fight was lame as hell. It is impossible for Abby to move after all those stabbing damage, especially when she was in her weakest condition. Just like the whole game. The number of bullets you can hold in your body before passing out is weirdly much. But you still grade this game as 8/10 and praising it with its graphics which is just as expected. In each generation the graphical quality progresses. This is natural outcome. Even after seeing these many inconsistencies in both gameplay and story, i can't believe people grading this game that high. You have quite low standarts.
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Must be, because I don't see any problem or incoherency in what you wrote in the spoiler. Good, realistic, and non-obvious characterization is a pro of the game for me.
Oh, I don't rate this game 8/10, it's at least 9.5/10 for me. And not only for the graphics, I really liked gameplay and story as well.Now, I can explain point by point what I think you're getting wrong there, but is it worthy and lead to a polite conversation or just to another attack to my "low standards"?
There seems to be this big hang up on some people's part about certain characters acting out of character, which strikes me as patently absurd. How is some random off the street going to tell the guy that wrote the first story these dissenting individuals are claiming is the foundation for these characters' "true" behavior how these same characters should be acting in the second story he wrote? He knows these characters, he knows their world, their ups and downs, their ins and outs and he knows what's been going on with these characters far more intimately than anybody who played the first game ever could, no matter how many times they play it. You may not like the trajectory the character's development took, but that's too damn bad. When you partake in someone else's creation, you get what they give you, good and bad.
Hey, if you really feel so strongly about it, I hear TLoU 2 fanfiction has exploded across the web...maybe you'll find a version more to your liking there?
Hey, if you really feel so strongly about it, I hear TLoU 2 fanfiction has exploded across the web...maybe you'll find a version more to your liking there?
I think it really doesn't matter how high this game gets rated. if there's an IGN guy that thinks he should give this game a 10/10, just because that's what (he thinks) the public wants to see, who cares? you think it's rather a 8/10? Great. But it actually doesn't matter, it won't impact the sales at all.
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I think it's more complex than that. Abby's arc is going from victim of someone who did something out of love and becoming a person who's driven by love and has to kill to protect it (basically put in Joel's shoes). War is shown as something tribal and dehumanizing. Nothing personal, us vs. them. Ellie's arc is about uncompromising hate, about the toll, how someone becomes a prisoner of it and if anything can rescue a person from this cycle of violence. About love and forgiveness.
There are flaws to the execution like convenient plotting, at least one plot hole, some on the nose metaphors, and dialogues, some supporting cast is being cannon fodder, some tasteless and voyeuristic violence ... But overall, I believe, the game has something to say. A lot more than vast majority of games. It dared to risk and try new things. I'll give the story 8/10. Gameplay - 9/10. And technical side (graphics, sound, animations) - 10/10. Overall - 9/10.
Full disclosure; I have not, nor shall I play either of the TLoU games. My two cents will be as to why this is the case;
They are games that don't really want to be games. They are like if a self-described photographer made a sculpture and took photos of that sculpture and then displayed those photos. Photography in this case is the analogue of gameplay.
Now, I don't know how reliable they are, but I have heard some reports that once you calculate the moments in which you as the player are making meaningful decision in the game, those moments only comprise 15% of total gametime.
And even if they are bunk, I would say that a game where meaningful gameplay accounts for just 50% of total gametime is starting to lose it's identity as a videogame.
Videogames as a medium are about interaction and if that reality is not recognized and respected by the devs then that results in ludo-narrative dissonance;
From what I understand in TLoU2, the heroine is about to kill the end boss, but stops; Because life is precious. But to get to that point, you as the player have mowed down countless nameless mooks. Watering down the ultimate message of the story.
Now, no dev thus far has managed to fully avoid ludo-narrative dissonance, at least not in games with storylines more complex than; Save the Princess. But it does become possibly particularly egregeous if there is not much player agency in the game in the first place.
That said, I have nothing against the interactive miniseries type of a game. If there was one of say Dune, let alone TNG or B5, I would eat it up. It's just that the grimdark zombie apocalypse genre is played out.
Devs like CDPR are using that kind of design and that's what really moves the medium forward, rather than just increasing production values, animations and visuals in cutscenes. Imho, of course
From what I hear there is 93 minutes of cutscenes in TLoU2, in 2077 there are four individual instances where control is taken away from the player.
Even when you are linearly instructed to sit next to Jackie, the game waits for your prompt to do so. A small, yet iterative step forwards for the medium.
Quality storytelling can elevate experience even with lacking player agency, like the first TLOU. Yet the effect can be much more powerful if two things are combined. One of my absolute favorite moments in gaming history (and one of the most underrated) is saving Faridah Malik in Human Revolution. Doing something against odds by your own choice and succeeding - the feeling is absolutely unreal.More importantly, TLoU2 made me realise why a dev like CDPR is so vital to moving games forward in terms of stirring emotions in the player. People like Druckmann aren't embracing the medium. They're just treading water; doing the same thing that has been done for ages and merely enhancing the technical delivery. They're trying to blend gaming and Hollywood. Fair enough from a business sense.....but don't tell me it means gaming has grown up, or it's pushing the medium forward. Stories in gaming don't always have to simply be a narrative chopped up into cutscenes and then sprinkled throughout. They don't need to try to imitate movies. It's a valid design, don't get me wrong, but it's not an evolution.
For example, I keep hearing that TLoU2 is supposed to make us think about 'our' actions, to make us have to deal with 'our' guilt. What actions? What guilt? None of what happens is down to me. None of the actions are mine and so I didn't feel guilty about any of it. Interactivity with choice and consequence are one of two big weapons gaming has when it comes to narrative and making the player feel something. CDPR understands that.
I felt more emotion and guilt from using white phosphorous in Spec-Ops The Line or killing Dwayne in GTAIV than anything in TLoU2, save for one particular moment the game buys itself using the 'emotional bank savings' it had from the previous game. I'm simply far more likely to feel more emotion and be more invested in my own decisions. Just as in life.
Devs like CDPR are using that kind of design and that's what really moves the medium forward, rather than just increasing production values, animations and visuals in cutscenes. Imho, of course
ND doesn't change it's blockbuster approach, but tries to improve the medium by presenting more challenging and thought-provoking material.
Just a couple of things: you understood wrong the spoiler part, that is not the reason.
Saying a game is not good because of its genre, IMHO, is nonsensical. In their genre, both tlou games are masterpieces. I would never say super Mario Bros is shit because all you do is jump and run.
I can say I don't like it, but moving an objective critic to a genre because doesn't fit my tastes, IMHO again, is absolutely nonsensical.
The good thing about videogames is that they are vary and let you live completely different experiences, from simple fun (super Mario), to deep emotional cinematic experiences like tlou or fantasy setting like the Witcher 3. Or playing a sport, driving vehicles, playing Tetris...
Point is that if you engage in behaviour A and then in a cutscene protag endorses behaviour B, there is dissonance.
Video games are interactive experiences. From the simple mechanics of Super Mario emerges three, pushing on four fucking decades of varied gameplay.
Super Mario is a titan looming over the video gaming landscape as the so called blockbuster games like TLoU live short, stunted and forgettable lives.
If you took away the already rudimentary story of Super Mario, it would still be engaging. If you muted the game, it would still be engaging. If you replaced the graphics with washed out rectangles, it would still be engaging.
Because Super Mario is true art.
First off, I noted that the thing that separates video games from other forms of art is their interactivity.
In addition to that, in my post I outlined why I find TLoU disinteresting, let's recap;
I'm all zombie'd out. I now find zombie apocalypse to be the most boring paint by numbers setting. Judging by the trailers the gameplay loop is a boring paint by numbers covershooter with light stealth elements.
Why would I play a shitty verson of the recent Deus Ex:ses in a setting I don't like? The story? Nah. I'm not going to struggle through a video game that I find unappealing and frankly seems to be ashamed to even be a video game, for a halfway decent story.
Speaking of Tetris, if TLoU was a 3D animated movie intespaced with games of Tetris, I might just be more interested in it.
You should really play a game before saying its gameplay is boring because TLoU2 combat is state of the art. Now, just say you don't like the genre and setting and everybody is happy, but don't claim what you don't like are objective flaws.
There seems to be this big hang up on some people's part about certain characters acting out of character, which strikes me as patently absurd. How is some random off the street going to tell the guy that wrote the first story these dissenting individuals are claiming is the foundation for these characters' "true" behavior how these same characters should be acting in the second story he wrote? He knows these characters, he knows their world, their ups and downs, their ins and outs and he knows what's been going on with these characters far more intimately than anybody who played the first game ever could, no matter how many times they play it. You may not like the trajectory the character's development took, but that's too damn bad. When you partake in someone else's creation, you get what they give you, good and bad.
Hey, if you really feel so strongly about it, I hear TLoU 2 fanfiction has exploded across the web...maybe you'll find a version more to your liking there?
Well, the "guy", or to be precise a woman, who wrote the first TLOU didn't wrote the second one, because she was sacked from ND. At least that's what I've read.
Both games have been written and directed by Neil Druckmann. Who is a man, ofc.
The writer you are referring to is Amy hanning and she has worked on the Uncharted series in her last years at ND. Also, not sacked, she just left.
Then I understand even less how the dude who wrote original TLOU could create such a mediocre history in TLOU2. Weird.
That particular gameplay loop was state of the art a decade ago. Ever since cover based shooters have needed something extra to make the gameplay pop.
And neither of the games has that extra something.
Why would I lie? The new Deus Ex:ses are cover based stealth shooters, I liked those. Metal Gears are the same, liked those as well. Resident Evils are zombie survival, been there done that.
And that's the problem, done that. Why would I put down 60€ to do something that I've already done?
Especially since there is nothing in the story that particularly grabs at me. I watched the story trailer just now and it managed to lose my interest in under two minutes.
That's absolutely fine not to like the game, saying it's gameplay is not good (and it's not just a cover shooter) it's just your opinion though and hardly shared by people who have played it. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you to play the game, if you are not interested, you shouldn't play it. Ignore it and move on.
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To me it's the opposite of mediocre, it's actually better than the first one who had it's best in the last few minutes. Part 2 is deeper into the human mind and "soul" throughout the whole game. What made you think in the first game ending here is repeated many times in different occasions.
It's a very different story but the concept behind it is very similar.
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I'm not saying that the gameplay is bad, I'm saying that the gameplay is not a step forwards. And that cover shooter mechanics just happen to be one of those gameplay styles that eventually becomes boring.
Unlike for instance platforming, which by empirical evidence is evergreen.
I have not finished it yet, but I must say that it's boring for me!
Some points:
- Gameplay hasn't changed, only minor tweaks, feels boring and repetative;
- Setting is stiil amazing, but looks the same (town, forest-grass, basements etc);
- the beginning was too long, I think, until that shocking scene...
- story is not bad yet, but I think there is no story at all by now! Nothing happens. I cant understand where I go and why;
- sometimes there are scenes from the past, long scenes (museum?? Sniper??), It doesn't make sense to me;
- also, I hate so small ammo limit!
- almost nothing new by the moment I'm in now.
Part 1 was one of the best game ever.
This one by now is very boring.
Some points:
- Gameplay hasn't changed, only minor tweaks, feels boring and repetative;
- Setting is stiil amazing, but looks the same (town, forest-grass, basements etc);
- the beginning was too long, I think, until that shocking scene...
- story is not bad yet, but I think there is no story at all by now! Nothing happens. I cant understand where I go and why;
- sometimes there are scenes from the past, long scenes (museum?? Sniper??), It doesn't make sense to me;
- also, I hate so small ammo limit!
- almost nothing new by the moment I'm in now.
Part 1 was one of the best game ever.
This one by now is very boring.