I haven't read many reviews, but the reviewer that most understood what I felt is from Kotaku. It's my favourite review.
https://kotaku.com/the-last-of-us-part-ii-the-kotaku-review-1844006193
Quoting:
"My playthrough of The Last of Us 2 felt terrible to experience. Over the course of my 27 hours with the game, it grew to the point of feeling nearly unbearable. This wasn’t because it asked me hard questions about my own capacity for harm or revenge, or pulled some Spec Ops: The Line-style moralizing about video game violence. Despite Druckmann’s promised “philosophical questions,” I never felt like the game asked me anything. Instead, it told me “brutality,” repeatedly and louder, until by the end I couldn’t hear what it was trying to say at all. Characters make hideous, irredeemable choices, over and over. Everybody suffers, physically and emotionally, in graphic detail. This is all intended to prove a point, but the only point I got from the game was simply to be required to stare at violence, and play through violence, and then do that again, and more, and again, and more."
...
"Type of game: Misery simulator"
...
"I didn’t find it prurient—the game doesn’t relish in its gory deaths or emotional suffering. It just takes every opportunity to show them, over and over, and decides that counts as saying something about them. It showed me so much ugliness, and in such detail, that I felt numb as terrible things befell more characters I cared about."
"Eventually, my numbness turned to an anger I’ve never felt about a video game. "
End quoting.
If there's a lesson from this game, despite all other good theories and explanations about everything that went on, I think this game represents a media product of a heartless generation. A story like that would never be produced 30 years ago. I think my parents and grand parents would throw up watching this game (my grandmother probably would call the pastor to bless the house). This game doesn't look like survival horror entertainment, doesn't look like any entertainment at all.
If I had to choose one word to describe this game is "ugly".
I'm not saying it's a 0/0 game at all. This post is still not my full thoughts on the game.
God bless You.
My Total Sales prediction for PS4 by the end of 2021: 110m+
When PS4 will hit 100m consoles sold: Before Christmas 2019
There were three ravens sat on a tree / They were as blacke as they might be / The one of them said to his mate, Where shall we our breakfast take?
