| Kratos said: I think people should watch this review for people who think the game is amazing and for the people who think its average It explains what the game does right and what it did not do right, I for one love the Last of Us, i think it was one of the best games this generation But this man below does a very well and balanced review and I can understand the criticsm he has but also appreciate the praise he gives the game for what it does right, unlike some people in this thread who just complain about the gameplay being nothing special because its not fun without cutscenes, or whatever, without explaining why the gameplay sucks (yup almost every person who was negative in this thread never gave concrete reasons as to why they thought some things were bad in the game). Some parts in this review might be nitpicky but I for one hope Naughty Dog takes this advice to heart, and I believe naughty dog is a company that is always looking for a way to improve, it made me realise the flaws the last of us has, but also appreciate the things it did right:
Also check out his Bioshock Infinite review, it made me see Bioshock infinite in a whole different light (from awesome game to realising that it is a quite generic and bad game). |
Well of course a guy posting a 40 minute video review is going to go more in depth than guys posting on a message board merely about the disappointing aspects of the game. There have been numerous people going in depth about their issues with the game. If you want more of that, fine, I'll explain mine a little deeper.
Combat - As my post said I think bad level design resulted in some poor combat. The video goes into this as well, how most of the encounters are ones you can see coming a mile away when you see the typical little area littered with things that just make perfect cover spots. Imho there should have been more of the encounters where you are inside of buildings, going floor to floor and room to room. Those were the most tense fights to me. The ones out in the open where the game gives you loads of cover spots just made it a typical 3rd person shooter.
AI - I don't really give the zombie AI any criticism because they're zombies, they are supposed to be dumb. But the human AI is almost as terrible imho. And it doesn't really matter if you are playing an encounter all out guns blazing or if you are sneaking around trying to take them out silently. A lot of the times they glitch out stuck in the same patrol pattern only they run it super fast, this might have been eventually fixed in an update. Other times they just come right at you. Since the game makes sure to give you ample amount of cover for most of these fights, the enemies should use them as well. A lot of the times they have huge numbers on you yet never really try to smartly flank you. A couple of them might just run right at you with melee weapons, which you can easily pick off. In stealth settings it's equally disappointing. I still remember the last scene with Tess and when the enemy team swarms into the building you're in, I sat in a very small office and just choked them all out one by one as they came in, didn't see half my body sticking out from beside a chair, and then ignored the growing pile of bodies on the floor and slowly walked into a position for me to easily dispatch them. That left only the 2 remaining in the lobby, 2 on 1 and they have SMG's. But they don't work together to take you out, they stand there and just poke their head out and die. In later parts of the game once Ellie is armed you can actually just sit there and let her take all the enemies out as she cannot die, and the enemies will very rarely try to attack you and finish the fight.
Immersion - As the video says, the immersion is broken when anyone tagging along with you can run around unphased by the surrounding zombies or enemies. Once you get the mechanics of the game down, they really just become more of an annoyance during the zombie scenes. I've said it here before, I actually found all of the little side stories and sections to by far be the best part of the SP. When I am just walking through the waste land, scouring for supplies and reading the accounts of all these other doomed players, the immersion is actually quite nice. But when the combat happens the game just snaps you right out of it.
Zombies - I was disappointed with the zombies because somehow even though the runners had speed and awareness most zombies don't have in other games, they're just so easy to dispatch. They never team up on you. There's also a disconnect same as the other encounters as they cannot see the light from your flashlight. There are a lot of gameplay shortcuts in the game and this was one of them. The other two zombie types are stronger and less predictable but extremely easy to beat since you ALWAYS have a brick and a shiv on you. And this sucked because I really dug the clickers, even though, as the video says, their clicking doesn't really make a lot of sense vision wise. If they can still sense stationary objects in their way and walls without clicks, they must have a great sense of their surroundings plus some sense of memory. They should known where the person is even when stationary. I dug the bloaters, mostly just because action was really the only option there.
Survival - Maybe my problem with the survival was that I was coming into this zombie game right out of State of Decay and dabbling in DayZ. Those games present real survival elements. A lot was made of LoU being a survival horror type game before release and it was not. I played the game on the hardest setting available at the start (which, IIRC, is just "hard"? I might be mistaken) and I think I played maybe 1/4th of it through on the hardest (survival?). Supplies are never an issue unless you play the game poorly. And death is not an issue because the game saves a ton and when you die you simply respawn right before where you died. This is a small complaint though, but if they make a sequel I would love to see something where you really need to eat, drink, and sleep or face health consequences. That's survival.
As I said though, it's still a game that simply must be played just for the experience of the story. And it's in my top 5 of 2013 just for the MP. No one ever seems to talk about that but the MP was extremely good, it and the first Gears are really the two best third person tactical MP games of this gen imho. And these might seem like petty complaints or small complaints/non-issues to others and that's fine as well. The guy that posted the video you posted, also posted a Bioshock Infinite video filled with complaints I found to be petty and extreme reaches but to each his own. I simply think the game is a great thing to experience, a pretty ho-hum thing to actually play. Strictly talking SP of course.
