The Last of Us: Part II

Finished The Last of Us Part II and started Survival+. Blew me away! The editing in this game is beyond impressive. It reminds me of the editing in Pulp Fiction, which took some people time to get used to. Now, this kind of editing is common in cinema, but to have it in a game is really impressive. I gotta say, I was expecting a bad ending, too but was pleasantly surprised. Technically and gameplay wise it is the best 3rd person shooter I've ever played and best stealth game, too. Better than the first and my new all time favourite game tied with God of War.

This game and the first have been given different themes. The first was, 'The journey, companionship, fate and destiny', while Part 2's themes are, 'vengeance and the cycle of violence'. Makes so much sense now, after playing the game in full and seeing how it ends. I'm happy. I definitely would not have had the same experience if I hadn't played the whole game myself and just watched the cut scenes, or watched someone else stream a play through. You slowly grow to feel empathy for Abbey by playing the entire game. This is why I believe some of the haters did not play through the whole game themselves.

The people who aren't happy with the story wanted to hate Abbey, but instead were forced to feel empathy for her. Funny, cause if the first part of Abbey's story never happened these haters would have really liked her and not disliked the story.

You do not have to like Abbey (I eventually did), but you are meant to feel empathy for her. This is the part some people struggled with. The whole point of the script is to feel empathy for every single human in the game, even the lesser enemies as you kill them. I commend Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann for taking such risks. If they never did what they did with the story we would more than likely have had just another game instead of this masterpiece.

Yes this game has flawes. I think the game is too long and because of that the pacing suffers sometimes. I also disagree with some minor decisions that were made.

But you cannot deny how beautiful and engaging this game actually is. This game did something most games before have never actually touched upon and used its medium in a clever way. Trust me when I say in 5 to 10 years time, people will look back and say this game was severely misunderstood.

Most people get what this game was going for, they just don't want to except it (yet)....

Like damn, this 30-hour game hasn't even been out for a day in most countries and y'all act like you finished it already

I simply can't understand all the disappointed low reviews. I imagine it's people who don't like to think and simply want to point and shoot.

This game is a master class of storytelling, character creation, paradigm shifting... all wrapped in a beautiful shell. No other game had ever made me throw the control away because I simply couldn't decide which character to hurt. And that's the whole point: this game makes us question violence in games and the futility of violence in general as a response to conflict. If nothing else, just for that, it deserves every recognition in the world.

The way it introduces the different characters and makes you realise that your antagonist may be someone else's protagonist, is flawless.

The characters are full of life and truth. They're believable and 3D, not flat archetypes.

I could go on and on. And I genuinely feel sorry for those who feel disappointed by this game. I honestly believe they missed the whole point of it.

10/10.

First thing's first, play the game for yourself. Buy the game, turn the lights off, and get cracking. In the end, this is a video game, and the only thing that matters is your own personal experience. You might hate it, you might love it, but it's your opinion, and nobody should be able to change that. I have played all the way through the game, and I took my sweet time. What follows are my honest opinions:

The Gameplay: Putting everything from the story to one side, this is stellar, top class gameplay. Combat is fluid, tense, and really exhausting in the best possible of ways. It takes everything we loved from the first game and only builds on it. You're able to approach encounters however you please, but playing smart (using stealth and your tools) feels immensely rewarding. I thoroughly enjoyed scavenging for materials and planning ahead to decide how I could be the most effective predator in combat while utilising as little resources as possible. Whether you're up against human foes, or the infected (Including the absolutely terrifying new infected types!) it's up to you as the player to determine how you can be the most effective against each very different enemy type. This is a true post-apocalypse experience.

The Story: It's extremely difficult to talk about the narrative, for many reasons. First and foremost, spoilers. (I won't be spoiling anything!) Reading the leaks and not playing the game will not give you the faintest idea of the direction this story takes. It's a video game, and it must therefore be played in full, by you. In my opinion, the story is truly complex and multi layered. Sometimes you want to cry, sometimes you want to laugh, sometimes you want to throw your controller through the TV. There's a lot at work here, and my understanding is that most of these emotions you feel are intentional. There are points in the game where you will NOT be satisfied with the outcomes of events, and this is the way it's designed. This is a story about the cost of revenge, sins of the father, and the near impossible ability to swallow hatred. The game is a message, and only by playing through the entire story could I piece together -and comprehend- the message I was being taught.

But given this, I believed the story was far too long, with some really odd and dissatisfying decisions mixed in. There's a particular sequence of the game that has you go back in time to relive events from a new perspective. There are moments here that are crucial to the overall narrative arc and your understanding of the plot, but it turns into a 10+ hour deviation. I found myself wanting to get back to "the game" as if I was playing something completely different. The game lost it's flow for me here, and I began to feel disconnected from all of the characters on-screen. There are moments (that I can't go into) Where the game wanted me to perform actions that I simply did not want to perform. This did not feel intentional to me, all I was feeling in these particular moments was confusion and disappointment. But, the final hour brings it all back together, and finally concludes what the game is setting out to say in a really intelligent and hard hitting way. I am likely to carry these feelings for years to come!

In conclusion, I saw this as a heavily flawed masterpiece. It added upon things I loved about the first game, and it took away things I loved about the first game. It was an exhausting journey through just about every emotion a person can feel. It was incredibly intelligent, well constructed, and beautifully rendered. I often found myself admiring random, totally unimportant spots in the game world, considering just how much work had gone into creating such gorgeous environments. But it's far from perfect, the concept of "If you don't like it, you don't get it" is preposterous, nobody can tell you how to feel. You are perfectly in your right to dislike this game, but only once you have played it for yourself.