In short : I did not like this game.
To elaborate on this we'll need a bit of context.
- I am a worker of the industry. I hear a lot about this game from my colleagues, my friends and my beloved sources thinking the videogame as a media (most of them a french, some are international)
- TLOU is considered a masterpiece. That's how I approached it. That's why I played it.
- TLOU has been published in 2013, 2014 and 2022. It's sequel has been published in 2020 and the show is available since january 2023. I believe it's fair to say this game serie had a huge spot in the media this last decade. I was, and I still am fed up with this game being always shown as a pretended masterpiece of both the genre and the media.
- I bought this game less than 10€ last week (either 10€ or 5€, I don't remember).
- This is my first contact with the serie. I never saw the show nor did I played TLOU2 or the other versions of TLOU. I didn't even played it for 10min at a friends' house.
- I dislike the zombie genre.
- I am positive gameplay should always prevail over narration.
- I played it intensively while being COVID. I had fever the first day. I had respiration troubles and headhackes the following days.
- I played the french version. Both voices and text.
- I played on a PS3 absolutely not connected to internet, which means I didn't get any updates. I don't know if there are updates anyways.
- Considering the influence TLOU had over the gaming industry, I must point out I played games since TLOU was out. That means I played games re-using parts of TLOU's design.
- I tend to dislike popular things. Don't laugh, it's more a pain than a pride : every time everybody seem to love something and I don't I feel like I miss something. This is very upsetting. I'm actually working on myself on this point.
- The more time flies, the more I dislike western games (in opposition to eastern and namely japanese games).
This being said, after finishing this looooong game for the first and I hope, last time of my life, here are the qualities I've seen in TLOU :
- Body damages are cool. Please keep in mind Gun was out in 2005, Gears of War in 2006 and Call of Duty 5 in 2008 but let's be honest and admit TLOU's body damages are cool.
- There are bonuses. One of them are gampelay stats, a thing I love.
- Giraffes.
- Underwater scenes are more inspired than the rest of the game.
- The "hanged-by-the-feet" moment.
- Piano.
- The fact that the infection comes from a mushroom instead of a more classical bacteria or virus.
- Planks and ladders puzzles.
- The snow chapter was the better one and should've, IMHO, close the game.
- I'm confident it's easy enough to be beaten by a lot of people.
- Some places are narratively interessting, like the university for instance.
- The box illustration is reversible. It is an ugly composition in a boring black and white but it is reversible.
- There's a promotional flyer of Die Hard 4 in the box. I like this movie. More than Die hard 2 anyway (of course less than Die hard 1 & 3, this isn't even a question).
That's all. That's all the things I thought I would have remembered once I finished this game. Unfortunately, despite I finished it only yesterday, I'm terrified to admit I barely remember anything.
I remember the traduction wasn't good at all. Three examples :
- Ellie speaking about a floating plank : "Look, it walks!"
- Joel "It's pretty isn't it ?", Ellie answers "Yes, allright"
- An untranslated line showing up in subtitles.
To continue on details, I found the game very buggy. During one cinematic, all the voice lanes of one of the character didn't start at the correct time but at the same time as Tess' lines. During another cinematic there was just no voice lines at all.
Gameplay isn't in rest. The game's full of narrow corridors where 2 to 4 people wander. Sometime, they want to climb a ladder your upon, some other time they move forward while you are still. In both cases, it leads to you being forced pushed out of your position in T-pose. Another time, Ellie climbs upon an enemy to finish him with a knife. It does launch the animation, but it doesn't launch its gameplay-side. Consequently, the dude continues to charge me with a pipe while Ellie simply flies. A final example : I shotgun a zombie down on a concrete ground, it is splitted in two halves, its torso is proppeled light speed in the air. These bugs aren't blocking in any way. Unfortunately, in a game supposed to be the jewel of the western industry as well as a game based on immersion, these flashs back to reality are a bit disappointing.
That said, buggy games aren't synonymous to bad games. I myself like Left Alives. So what are the things I really disliked about TLOU? To keep things shorts I'll focus on 3 points : production, gameplay and, who would have thought (you can't see me but I raise my eyebrowns), narration.
Let's start with the production. I know this generation of consoles well : I had a Wii and a 360 at the time. So can you tell me what are those horses? Why are they like that? Why are they made of... glowing clay? You know, if you weren't able to do horses, you weren't obligated to add them to the game... Okay let's forget about horses and talk about your setup. You want to do post apo? Great! Gears of war and Fallout 3 did it very well in 2006 and 2008, you'll do it easily in 2013! What do you mean? You're globally okay but we must not pay attention to details because you wanted to do way too much things for a PS3? That's why your trashbags are squareshaped in the first chapters? Allright but can we talk about your universe a bit? The apocalypse has taken place in 2013 right? So why do pretty much every middle-class american family still have cathode-ray tube screen in their houses? Is there a reason for it? How would this shotgun and these ammo have a chance to work considering they were in the open outside for... Well 20 years? Does that kind of things make any sense? I am okay with this stuff in Resident Evil or The Evil Within because they do two things to counterbalance this :
- 1st, they try to justify they're universe until they cannot do it anymore. RE2 for instance takes place in a police station, that's why there're guns, but it does not explain 4th dimensions infinite chests. As for The Evil Within, it takes place in a nightmare, which is certainly the best way to justify improbable things. TLOU, on the other hands, claims to be realistic.
- Secondly, these games are way more aware of themselves than TLOU. TLOU is serious. RE is absolutely not serious. Saving the president's daughter from spanishs zombies and crows dropping money is utterly stupid. This helps a lot to accept "gamy" things.
All cynism aside, it's easy to tell the game's a bit cramped on the PS3. Some scenes, like the snow scene, are technically great tho.
I don't want to speak a lot about TLOU's gameplay. It is... Lame. You know Uncharted? Well, replace the "okay-tiers" puzzle phases and the bad plateform phases with very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very poor infiltration phases and even more dialogs. Congrats, you have done TLOU. Oh no, wait. Get rid of the mise en scène as well. Now you're good. Gunfeel is unsatisfying. Gunfights are slow. Craft system is a craft system amongst others : I only search for clip capacity to trick the game into carrying more ammos as The Evil Within taught me. The problem is upgrades are a necessity to simply see the end of The Evil Within whereas TLOU do not make you uncomfortable : I finished the game full ammo and armed to the teeth. I said infiltration phases are poor. Indeed they are. Sometime a precise type of zombie sees you. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, in a comparable setup, it's the other type of zombie that sees you. By the way, the game's uplayable until you've bought the upgrade to counter clickers bites with your knife. Chara designing zombies in a way we can clearly differenciate clickers from "normal" zombies using Joel's ear would have been a nice feature to both spice up and increase playability of infiltration phases. Unfortunately, it is not the case : when you understand your heard, you just have to pray for a normal zombi to catch you while your invincible comrade shoots clickers down. Bosses are a straight up insult to boss design : even halo 2 bosses were better. I even think (I'm really not sure of it, I played it a very long time ago) Batman Arkham Asylum bosses might be better than TLOU's. And believe me on this one : Batman Arkham Asylum bosses are NOT good at all.
Gameplay's bad. And what? The consensus isn't we play TLOU for gameplay. So why do we play TLOU?
It would appear we played it for its narration. I tried many times to both write scenarios and dialogs and I miserably failed as many times but... How to say it? With such an established genre, with strong codes... Considering the game was out at the peak of the zombie trend, with the walking dead show being at its peak... Well at least we can say this game's utterly predictable. At a point I once or twice asked me if it was parodistic or not. Some examples :
- Oh, we are seprated from our teammates for... Approximatively 3 minutes in game. Just before we join her again, she whispers "oh shit". I tHiNk ShE's BiTtEn! Spoiler : she was.
- The only character defined by his sexuality is gay and there are jokes about him masturbating.
- You know which character should have been defined by her sexuality? Hint : she's 14.
- Joel is stupidly violent, at a point he certainly is mentally ill. To be fair, living in his world for 20 years would have certainly made anybody mentaly ill. But would it have turn them into psycho? I dont know.
- The end's zofhozhfhkjebrgjherbggizzrhrhfpozekefpopzekff and do not make me want to see those characters again in a sequel.
- I want to point out the tone. It's either the one of a naughty teen, either the image I have of a very cheap parodistic american action movie. In one word : crude. Like way too crude.
- Giving you characters biblical prophets names is either cute either :)
Strangely enough, the main complain I have with the narration is the universe. I talked earlier of the gamy stuff, which honestly I understand. Making games is my job ad I love that kind of things. Unfortunately when you tell a story that claims to be realistic you have to assume it. I have a simple question here : why are there so many people out there? I get it that this amount of people justifies the amount of zombies, okay, but... Wasn't the pandemic utterly infectious? Wasn't there absolutely no hopes of surviving it? If so, Weren't simply a few people park in fascist town, like what's shown at the beginning, whilst the vast majority of the country simply have died? I mean I get that very few communities have survived and organized themslves how they could but... Can zombies die of starvation? It seems so. So why 20 years (20 years!!! 20 times 365 days!!! Elie is born 6 years after the disaster and is now 14!!!) after the pandemic there still are so many people and as a consequence so many zombies? For gameplay reasons yeah, okay, I get it. But that's lame imho.
TLOU marked the videogame industry and my critic won't certainly change anything on this topic. That's not it's goal in any way. But if you authorize me to, I would want to ask everybody, when it comes to videogames, to ask themselves 3 simple questions :
- Do I find this game good ?
- Do I like this game ?
- Do the audience/critics like this game ?
As you've understood seeing my rating of the game : I didn't liked TLOU. But I humbly tried to explain why in this paper. Admittedly, I made it a little bit funny, I made fun of details. But ultimately, I tried to be honest with the game and my feelings about it, and I try to lie them on the internet so you can see it. My point here is : Like the games you like, nobody has nothing to say on it. But please, listen to the ones who did not liked your beloved game, and try to understand why they didn't liked it.
If everybody tries her/his best to explain their feeling about videogames, I am convinced this art will evolved for the better.
Thank you for reading, have a good game.
To elaborate on this we'll need a bit of context.
- I am a worker of the industry. I hear a lot about this game from my colleagues, my friends and my beloved sources thinking the videogame as a media (most of them a french, some are international)
- TLOU is considered a masterpiece. That's how I approached it. That's why I played it.
- TLOU has been published in 2013, 2014 and 2022. It's sequel has been published in 2020 and the show is available since january 2023. I believe it's fair to say this game serie had a huge spot in the media this last decade. I was, and I still am fed up with this game being always shown as a pretended masterpiece of both the genre and the media.
- I bought this game less than 10€ last week (either 10€ or 5€, I don't remember).
- This is my first contact with the serie. I never saw the show nor did I played TLOU2 or the other versions of TLOU. I didn't even played it for 10min at a friends' house.
- I dislike the zombie genre.
- I am positive gameplay should always prevail over narration.
- I played it intensively while being COVID. I had fever the first day. I had respiration troubles and headhackes the following days.
- I played the french version. Both voices and text.
- I played on a PS3 absolutely not connected to internet, which means I didn't get any updates. I don't know if there are updates anyways.
- Considering the influence TLOU had over the gaming industry, I must point out I played games since TLOU was out. That means I played games re-using parts of TLOU's design.
- I tend to dislike popular things. Don't laugh, it's more a pain than a pride : every time everybody seem to love something and I don't I feel like I miss something. This is very upsetting. I'm actually working on myself on this point.
- The more time flies, the more I dislike western games (in opposition to eastern and namely japanese games).
This being said, after finishing this looooong game for the first and I hope, last time of my life, here are the qualities I've seen in TLOU :
- Body damages are cool. Please keep in mind Gun was out in 2005, Gears of War in 2006 and Call of Duty 5 in 2008 but let's be honest and admit TLOU's body damages are cool.
- There are bonuses. One of them are gampelay stats, a thing I love.
- Giraffes.
- Underwater scenes are more inspired than the rest of the game.
- The "hanged-by-the-feet" moment.
- Piano.
- The fact that the infection comes from a mushroom instead of a more classical bacteria or virus.
- Planks and ladders puzzles.
- The snow chapter was the better one and should've, IMHO, close the game.
- I'm confident it's easy enough to be beaten by a lot of people.
- Some places are narratively interessting, like the university for instance.
- The box illustration is reversible. It is an ugly composition in a boring black and white but it is reversible.
- There's a promotional flyer of Die Hard 4 in the box. I like this movie. More than Die hard 2 anyway (of course less than Die hard 1 & 3, this isn't even a question).
That's all. That's all the things I thought I would have remembered once I finished this game. Unfortunately, despite I finished it only yesterday, I'm terrified to admit I barely remember anything.
I remember the traduction wasn't good at all. Three examples :
- Ellie speaking about a floating plank : "Look, it walks!"
- Joel "It's pretty isn't it ?", Ellie answers "Yes, allright"
- An untranslated line showing up in subtitles.
To continue on details, I found the game very buggy. During one cinematic, all the voice lanes of one of the character didn't start at the correct time but at the same time as Tess' lines. During another cinematic there was just no voice lines at all.
Gameplay isn't in rest. The game's full of narrow corridors where 2 to 4 people wander. Sometime, they want to climb a ladder your upon, some other time they move forward while you are still. In both cases, it leads to you being forced pushed out of your position in T-pose. Another time, Ellie climbs upon an enemy to finish him with a knife. It does launch the animation, but it doesn't launch its gameplay-side. Consequently, the dude continues to charge me with a pipe while Ellie simply flies. A final example : I shotgun a zombie down on a concrete ground, it is splitted in two halves, its torso is proppeled light speed in the air. These bugs aren't blocking in any way. Unfortunately, in a game supposed to be the jewel of the western industry as well as a game based on immersion, these flashs back to reality are a bit disappointing.
That said, buggy games aren't synonymous to bad games. I myself like Left Alives. So what are the things I really disliked about TLOU? To keep things shorts I'll focus on 3 points : production, gameplay and, who would have thought (you can't see me but I raise my eyebrowns), narration.
Let's start with the production. I know this generation of consoles well : I had a Wii and a 360 at the time. So can you tell me what are those horses? Why are they like that? Why are they made of... glowing clay? You know, if you weren't able to do horses, you weren't obligated to add them to the game... Okay let's forget about horses and talk about your setup. You want to do post apo? Great! Gears of war and Fallout 3 did it very well in 2006 and 2008, you'll do it easily in 2013! What do you mean? You're globally okay but we must not pay attention to details because you wanted to do way too much things for a PS3? That's why your trashbags are squareshaped in the first chapters? Allright but can we talk about your universe a bit? The apocalypse has taken place in 2013 right? So why do pretty much every middle-class american family still have cathode-ray tube screen in their houses? Is there a reason for it? How would this shotgun and these ammo have a chance to work considering they were in the open outside for... Well 20 years? Does that kind of things make any sense? I am okay with this stuff in Resident Evil or The Evil Within because they do two things to counterbalance this :
- 1st, they try to justify they're universe until they cannot do it anymore. RE2 for instance takes place in a police station, that's why there're guns, but it does not explain 4th dimensions infinite chests. As for The Evil Within, it takes place in a nightmare, which is certainly the best way to justify improbable things. TLOU, on the other hands, claims to be realistic.
- Secondly, these games are way more aware of themselves than TLOU. TLOU is serious. RE is absolutely not serious. Saving the president's daughter from spanishs zombies and crows dropping money is utterly stupid. This helps a lot to accept "gamy" things.
All cynism aside, it's easy to tell the game's a bit cramped on the PS3. Some scenes, like the snow scene, are technically great tho.
I don't want to speak a lot about TLOU's gameplay. It is... Lame. You know Uncharted? Well, replace the "okay-tiers" puzzle phases and the bad plateform phases with very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very poor infiltration phases and even more dialogs. Congrats, you have done TLOU. Oh no, wait. Get rid of the mise en scène as well. Now you're good. Gunfeel is unsatisfying. Gunfights are slow. Craft system is a craft system amongst others : I only search for clip capacity to trick the game into carrying more ammos as The Evil Within taught me. The problem is upgrades are a necessity to simply see the end of The Evil Within whereas TLOU do not make you uncomfortable : I finished the game full ammo and armed to the teeth. I said infiltration phases are poor. Indeed they are. Sometime a precise type of zombie sees you. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, in a comparable setup, it's the other type of zombie that sees you. By the way, the game's uplayable until you've bought the upgrade to counter clickers bites with your knife. Chara designing zombies in a way we can clearly differenciate clickers from "normal" zombies using Joel's ear would have been a nice feature to both spice up and increase playability of infiltration phases. Unfortunately, it is not the case : when you understand your heard, you just have to pray for a normal zombi to catch you while your invincible comrade shoots clickers down. Bosses are a straight up insult to boss design : even halo 2 bosses were better. I even think (I'm really not sure of it, I played it a very long time ago) Batman Arkham Asylum bosses might be better than TLOU's. And believe me on this one : Batman Arkham Asylum bosses are NOT good at all.
Gameplay's bad. And what? The consensus isn't we play TLOU for gameplay. So why do we play TLOU?
It would appear we played it for its narration. I tried many times to both write scenarios and dialogs and I miserably failed as many times but... How to say it? With such an established genre, with strong codes... Considering the game was out at the peak of the zombie trend, with the walking dead show being at its peak... Well at least we can say this game's utterly predictable. At a point I once or twice asked me if it was parodistic or not. Some examples :
- Oh, we are seprated from our teammates for... Approximatively 3 minutes in game. Just before we join her again, she whispers "oh shit". I tHiNk ShE's BiTtEn! Spoiler : she was.
- The only character defined by his sexuality is gay and there are jokes about him masturbating.
- You know which character should have been defined by her sexuality? Hint : she's 14.
- Joel is stupidly violent, at a point he certainly is mentally ill. To be fair, living in his world for 20 years would have certainly made anybody mentaly ill. But would it have turn them into psycho? I dont know.
- The end's zofhozhfhkjebrgjherbggizzrhrhfpozekefpopzekff and do not make me want to see those characters again in a sequel.
- I want to point out the tone. It's either the one of a naughty teen, either the image I have of a very cheap parodistic american action movie. In one word : crude. Like way too crude.
- Giving you characters biblical prophets names is either cute either :)
Strangely enough, the main complain I have with the narration is the universe. I talked earlier of the gamy stuff, which honestly I understand. Making games is my job ad I love that kind of things. Unfortunately when you tell a story that claims to be realistic you have to assume it. I have a simple question here : why are there so many people out there? I get it that this amount of people justifies the amount of zombies, okay, but... Wasn't the pandemic utterly infectious? Wasn't there absolutely no hopes of surviving it? If so, Weren't simply a few people park in fascist town, like what's shown at the beginning, whilst the vast majority of the country simply have died? I mean I get that very few communities have survived and organized themslves how they could but... Can zombies die of starvation? It seems so. So why 20 years (20 years!!! 20 times 365 days!!! Elie is born 6 years after the disaster and is now 14!!!) after the pandemic there still are so many people and as a consequence so many zombies? For gameplay reasons yeah, okay, I get it. But that's lame imho.
TLOU marked the videogame industry and my critic won't certainly change anything on this topic. That's not it's goal in any way. But if you authorize me to, I would want to ask everybody, when it comes to videogames, to ask themselves 3 simple questions :
- Do I find this game good ?
- Do I like this game ?
- Do the audience/critics like this game ?
As you've understood seeing my rating of the game : I didn't liked TLOU. But I humbly tried to explain why in this paper. Admittedly, I made it a little bit funny, I made fun of details. But ultimately, I tried to be honest with the game and my feelings about it, and I try to lie them on the internet so you can see it. My point here is : Like the games you like, nobody has nothing to say on it. But please, listen to the ones who did not liked your beloved game, and try to understand why they didn't liked it.
If everybody tries her/his best to explain their feeling about videogames, I am convinced this art will evolved for the better.
Thank you for reading, have a good game.
2 Comments
This message is much more a recommendation for die hard 4 than for TLOU ahahaha.
You don't have to see Die Hard 5 tho, it's not good at all and features cliché russian bad men. In the other hand, Die hard 4 features flexible keyboards, which is cool.
You don't have to see Die Hard 5 tho, it's not good at all and features cliché russian bad men. In the other hand, Die hard 4 features flexible keyboards, which is cool.
Ardos
6 months ago
I love the good stuff you're highlighting, especially the Die Hard 4 promotional flyer in the game box hahaha!
I never played this game but I will definitively play it one day because of how big and popular the franchise has become!