Review contains spoilers, of course.
But starting with a non-spoiler, the graphics in this game are gorgeous. Definitely a great way for the PS4 to go out before we move onto the PS5, and leaving big shoes to fill.
Ever since games have advanced to the point they became interactive movies, games like TLOU are kinda hit or miss for me due to extreme pacing problems. It used to be that you’d get cutscenes, then gameplay, while now they essentially mix the two, and have you walk through environments at a painfully slow pace while the characters converse. It has tarnished so many games for me, but it never bothered me during The Last of Us due to me just loving the characters and the writing, and the sequel delivers on that front. I actually CARE what happens to these characters as much as I would as if I was watching a movie. Hell there are many scenes that evoked reactions and emotions from me far more than any other game, and I’d possibly say most other forms of fiction. The characters are just that well developed and written that they feel real.
I’ve also often felt like way too many stories involving dangerous situations are too soft when it comes to killing characters, it gets boring when your good guy characters goes through hundreds of life or death fights but you know they’ll never actually die because plot power. This game absolutely shatters that idea within the first 2 hours or so when THE main character from the last game is unceremoniously murdered. It sets the tone that no one is safe, and I actually spent most of the game expecting that Ellie herself could die, because the standard rules are already broken. While Ellie and Abby (the 2 main characters of this game) do end up surviving, almost all their friends die in realistic and swift ways. It’s a game that fully embraces the danger of the world and I love it.
Moving onto gameplay, TLOU is funnily enough one of the few times I actually find myself wanting the gameplay to take a backseat to the story. It’s not bad by any means, but it can be a bit repetitive. It also feels a little broken; obviously stealth is a huge mechanic in the game, but I found I could rarely ever position myself to stealthily take down opponents without notifying the rest of the enemies of my position because the takedown animation takes so long and enemies are placed in ways that they rarely leave each others sight for long. This meant I tended to do 1 stealth kill and perform the rest of the battle in a shootout more often than not.
That said there’s a ton of options in battles, and you can help keep a stealth approach with things like crafting silencers or using throwable objects to distract enemies.
Just like the first game the scare amount of ammo means every shot counts, every single enemy, no matter how “common” they are, demands a decision of how to take them down.
I think the worst thing about the game for me was the level designs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them in general, but they’ve made them more pseudo open world, so even though the way forward may be near enough a straight line, there’s an entire mini-world to explore. That SOUNDS great, and it would be, but the collectables real ruin this experience. If it was just crafting materials it’d be fine, but the game hides weapon and ability upgrade materials, along with new weapons and training manuals which will provide extra ability stat trees. Having these hidden in large open areas, with no kind of map or other way to track progress meant that I spent pretty much the ENTIRE game having this nagging feeling that I was missing stuff. I could never fully enjoy myself because I was thinking “What if I missed an important item? What if I end up underpowered because I missed too many materials?” It’s far worse when you accidentally take the right path straight away, and the game blocks the path back meaning you could actually miss an entire area of collectables because you accidentally went the right way without knowing. Most games reward exploration, this game makes exploration an anxiety-inducing near impossible fare, while straight up punishing the player for going through the story-progressing door.
Going back to the story for a bit, I think it’s worth talking about how the game splits you up into two campaigns that go over the same 3 days, one from Ellie’s point of view and one from Abby’s. I think it’s a great idea, and helps highlight how both have their good qualities and look completely evil from the other side. It’s an idea that has literally divided the playerbase into who was right and wrong. It does feel like a huge risk to make you play as the character most players likely hated at that point though. I’ll admit to letting Abby die on purpose while playing as her multiple times.
I do feel like there’s a huge missed opportunity here though, despite both stories taking place over the exact same 3 days, it isn’t until the last day that we start to hear about Ellie’s story while playing as Abby. It seems like the entire point of doing it this way was to open up so many possibilities to see “So that’s what she was doing while Ellie was doing this” but the two pretty much never cross each other’s warpaths until the end. The closest I can think of is in Ellie’s second day, when she ends up in the hospital basement/lower floors one of the WLF soldiers asks “Why is the power on?” which we later find out was due to Abby turning it on in her playthrough. It’s a neat little detail, but it feels like it would have worked much better if the power came on during that scene, rather than it just being on beforehand.
The playable character swap also introduced a problem in regards to a complete character reset in terms of weapon upgrades and abilities. It feels kind of bad to grow your weapons and character only to be pushed back into factory reset mid-way through the game and have to do it again.
And now I’m going to end the review by talking about the end of the game and its pacing problem. When the game looks like we’ve reached Ellie and Abby’s final confrontation, the game skips ahead about a year to show Ellie and Dina at their new farmhouse. It feels like an epilogue, but it keeps going… Then you’re playing as Abby and you think “Well okay it makes sense to see how both characters get to live their happy endings”, but then a brand new conflict happens to Abby, and suddenly Ellie still has desire for revenge so we get an entire extra chapter that not only feels out of place, but paints Ellie in a really bad light after we got an ending that put her on par with Abby. It’s such a weird decision; the game had already had its climax, having to play an extra 3 hours after that felt way too tacked on.
Good game, not without its flaws. Would have been an 8/10 if the last chapter wasn’t a thing.
But starting with a non-spoiler, the graphics in this game are gorgeous. Definitely a great way for the PS4 to go out before we move onto the PS5, and leaving big shoes to fill.
Ever since games have advanced to the point they became interactive movies, games like TLOU are kinda hit or miss for me due to extreme pacing problems. It used to be that you’d get cutscenes, then gameplay, while now they essentially mix the two, and have you walk through environments at a painfully slow pace while the characters converse. It has tarnished so many games for me, but it never bothered me during The Last of Us due to me just loving the characters and the writing, and the sequel delivers on that front. I actually CARE what happens to these characters as much as I would as if I was watching a movie. Hell there are many scenes that evoked reactions and emotions from me far more than any other game, and I’d possibly say most other forms of fiction. The characters are just that well developed and written that they feel real.
I’ve also often felt like way too many stories involving dangerous situations are too soft when it comes to killing characters, it gets boring when your good guy characters goes through hundreds of life or death fights but you know they’ll never actually die because plot power. This game absolutely shatters that idea within the first 2 hours or so when THE main character from the last game is unceremoniously murdered. It sets the tone that no one is safe, and I actually spent most of the game expecting that Ellie herself could die, because the standard rules are already broken. While Ellie and Abby (the 2 main characters of this game) do end up surviving, almost all their friends die in realistic and swift ways. It’s a game that fully embraces the danger of the world and I love it.
Moving onto gameplay, TLOU is funnily enough one of the few times I actually find myself wanting the gameplay to take a backseat to the story. It’s not bad by any means, but it can be a bit repetitive. It also feels a little broken; obviously stealth is a huge mechanic in the game, but I found I could rarely ever position myself to stealthily take down opponents without notifying the rest of the enemies of my position because the takedown animation takes so long and enemies are placed in ways that they rarely leave each others sight for long. This meant I tended to do 1 stealth kill and perform the rest of the battle in a shootout more often than not.
That said there’s a ton of options in battles, and you can help keep a stealth approach with things like crafting silencers or using throwable objects to distract enemies.
Just like the first game the scare amount of ammo means every shot counts, every single enemy, no matter how “common” they are, demands a decision of how to take them down.
I think the worst thing about the game for me was the level designs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them in general, but they’ve made them more pseudo open world, so even though the way forward may be near enough a straight line, there’s an entire mini-world to explore. That SOUNDS great, and it would be, but the collectables real ruin this experience. If it was just crafting materials it’d be fine, but the game hides weapon and ability upgrade materials, along with new weapons and training manuals which will provide extra ability stat trees. Having these hidden in large open areas, with no kind of map or other way to track progress meant that I spent pretty much the ENTIRE game having this nagging feeling that I was missing stuff. I could never fully enjoy myself because I was thinking “What if I missed an important item? What if I end up underpowered because I missed too many materials?” It’s far worse when you accidentally take the right path straight away, and the game blocks the path back meaning you could actually miss an entire area of collectables because you accidentally went the right way without knowing. Most games reward exploration, this game makes exploration an anxiety-inducing near impossible fare, while straight up punishing the player for going through the story-progressing door.
Going back to the story for a bit, I think it’s worth talking about how the game splits you up into two campaigns that go over the same 3 days, one from Ellie’s point of view and one from Abby’s. I think it’s a great idea, and helps highlight how both have their good qualities and look completely evil from the other side. It’s an idea that has literally divided the playerbase into who was right and wrong. It does feel like a huge risk to make you play as the character most players likely hated at that point though. I’ll admit to letting Abby die on purpose while playing as her multiple times.
I do feel like there’s a huge missed opportunity here though, despite both stories taking place over the exact same 3 days, it isn’t until the last day that we start to hear about Ellie’s story while playing as Abby. It seems like the entire point of doing it this way was to open up so many possibilities to see “So that’s what she was doing while Ellie was doing this” but the two pretty much never cross each other’s warpaths until the end. The closest I can think of is in Ellie’s second day, when she ends up in the hospital basement/lower floors one of the WLF soldiers asks “Why is the power on?” which we later find out was due to Abby turning it on in her playthrough. It’s a neat little detail, but it feels like it would have worked much better if the power came on during that scene, rather than it just being on beforehand.
The playable character swap also introduced a problem in regards to a complete character reset in terms of weapon upgrades and abilities. It feels kind of bad to grow your weapons and character only to be pushed back into factory reset mid-way through the game and have to do it again.
And now I’m going to end the review by talking about the end of the game and its pacing problem. When the game looks like we’ve reached Ellie and Abby’s final confrontation, the game skips ahead about a year to show Ellie and Dina at their new farmhouse. It feels like an epilogue, but it keeps going… Then you’re playing as Abby and you think “Well okay it makes sense to see how both characters get to live their happy endings”, but then a brand new conflict happens to Abby, and suddenly Ellie still has desire for revenge so we get an entire extra chapter that not only feels out of place, but paints Ellie in a really bad light after we got an ending that put her on par with Abby. It’s such a weird decision; the game had already had its climax, having to play an extra 3 hours after that felt way too tacked on.
Good game, not without its flaws. Would have been an 8/10 if the last chapter wasn’t a thing.