Late to the party as ever, I've just finished it - which means I can finally look into this thread.  (Only to find there are so many comments I've decided not to go through them...) 

The ending's great.  I had kind of expected some tiresomely predictable downbeat finale where Ellie willingly sacrifices herself for the good of all mankind, or Joel dies heroically to save her.  The game smartly gave me both (the hospital, and the end of Autumn respectively) without actually giving me either.  What we actually got was more interesting for me at least, particularly as if felt absolutely in character.  

Of course, I guess the symmetry of the thing is kind of hokey, but it worked for me.  Joel loses his daughter to a military who are doing terrible things for the greater good.  The game ends with him saving his surrogate daughter from those who plan to kill her for the greater good.  Once it's happened, you realise that it couldn't have gone any other way.

Getting there though was hard though - I spent the entire last level feeling genuinely guilty (I'm odd like that) about the things Joel was doing. The thought of gunning down a load of people who believe they're saving the world for entirely selfish reasons felt pretty uncomfortable.  And yes, a certain amount of personal bias made killing the surgeon particularly awkward.

Winter for me was the strongest segment.  Ellie's development from passenger to survivor was fairly convincing, and the grooming of her (and the player) by David decidedly creepy.  I thought David was really well done, initially he came across as a potentially better influence than Joel, and even once I knew he was a man hunting bastard, I found myself trying to make excuses for him at first.  Hearing the "She's David's latest plaything" line from one of the guards rammed home that no, this really was a paedophile cannibal I was running from - making that final boss encounter all the more tense. 

What else?  The middle third sagged a bit in my opinion, but maybe you had to grind a bit to make the other stuff worthwhile.

I thought the giraffes were a nice, slightly random, touch.  A brief moment of wonder that rammed home the stakes, both for Ellie, and perhaps the rest of the natural world.  I also liked that the Infected seemed to become less of a threat towards the end - invariably avoidable if handled with care and respect.  Another neat metaphor, intentional or otherwise.

Anyway, enough rambling.  I liked it.  A lot.  However, I'll be kind of disappointed if they announce a sequel.  (And surprised if they don't.)

They've already said that there will be a sequel/prequel but that it won't feature Ellie or Joel haven't they?

I think they've said Joel and Ellie's story is over, but I don't think they've committed to a sequel.

If they do a sequel, I wonder if they'll set it somewhere else in the English-speaking world so they can have a fresh start.

I always saw Joel and Ellie's story as one tiny lil heroic thread of thousands that inhabit the Last Of Us world. I don't think a sequel is a bad idea, another lil story in another country would be great.

oh shit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23166839

So, having studiously ignored both of the TLoU threads for a few weeks, I finally got back to it and finished it tonight.  An interesting game, but one that trips itself up too often to warrant the ten.  Says more about Edge than the game, though.  A few thoughts, if I may, in no particular order:

•  I like Tempy's enviro-reading, although I can't fully commit to it.  Each strain of the cordyceps fungus this is based on is designed to target one species and one species only. There's a cordyceps fungus that targets certain ants, one that targets certain moths, one that targets certain grasshoppers.  Given that there are so many infections that are species-exclusive, I always took it for granted that the infection was human only, and didn't think twice about the dogs/monkeys/giraffes not having it.

•  Similarly, I didn't read much into the giraffe sequence beyond most stories like this having a tranquil wtf moment.  It was basically the diplodocus scene in Jurassic Park.

•  On the theme of the infected, I remember being disappointed when I first learned this game had them.  I still am.  The uninfected human enemies are by far the scariest, in all of their guises, and many times more interesting, story-wise.  If we must have infected, keep it to the brainless running types.  The clickers would be an interesting idea in a different game, one that, for example, could sustain the premise for even a single encounter.  However, between inconsistent clicker radar and consistently poor partner AI, the game repeatedly let itself down badly.  The bloaters were, for my money, jumped sharks that nearly had me switching off for good when I encountered the first one.

•  If we must have infected, I can cope with the inclusion of them biting people.  Although it can be seen as a reasonable extrapolation of such a brain-eating fungal infection, it strikes me as betraying a zombie-not-zombie idea catalyst.

•  The game employs a narrow handful of navigation techniques.  Boost Ellie, put Ellie on a pallet, move a wheelie bin, move a ladder, use something to bridge a gap.  Unfortunately this meant that they became too familiar, and their faults became highlighted.  I never saw a pallet float convincingly, and all but one time I used one they tipped and sank in a manner that suggested they should've been more tightly tied to invisible rails.  The wheelie bins would thump to a halt when Ellie got in the way, and she wouldn't fucking move.  Carrying a ladder felt too restricted compared to other movement.  I liked that Joel's boosting of Ellie got more laboured after his injury, though.  Or did I imagine that?

•  Stealth is as unconvincing in this game as in any other.  Illusion shattering left, right, and centre.

•  I know it's a game, but gaminess kills this all over the shop.  A pile of old clothes, a generator full of fuel running (pointlessly) nearby and glass bottles strewn everywhere, but I can't make a Molotov because the game says so.  I've got zero ammunition for my other guns and an empty rucksack but I can't take those shotgun shells because the game says so. A world pretty much made of hard, broken sharp things but I can't make a shiv because the game says so.  Frustrating.

•  I think David is a horrific monster from the start.  I didn't like or trust him as soon as he arrived.  Nasty bit of work, him.  Irritating as fuck to get rid of, though.  Every Naughty Dog game has me turning to a walkthrough at some point, as six restart-insta-deaths in a row leave me clueless as to how to proceed.  A horribly ill-fitting set-piece considering what had gone on in the build up, and what happened at its conclusion.  Spoiled the climax to the whole season.  And cannibalism in an apocalypse?  Yawn.

•  I could easily see further games in the franchise, but set elsewhere, with entirely different characters.

•  Regarding Joel's decisions towards the end, I have no great issues with a girl being sacrificed to save mankind, especially when she's willing, but I didn't think mankind can be saved, and I think the Fireflies had gone Colonel Kurtz.  Civilisation is too far gone.  At that point, all people have left are their loved ones.  I believed Joel's earlier resentment of Ellie, I believed his change in feelings for her, and I believed he needed to get her out of there.  I wasted all three surgeons with bullets to the head without a second thought.

•  Back to gaminess breaking storytelling.  Each time a season changed, and characterisation and plot had moved on in our absence, my inventory was suspiciously identical to the point we left them weeks ago.  Fuck you, game.

•  If they make a film or TV programme, Tommy needs to be played by Alexander Skarsgård.

•  Other things that I'll remember when it's not half-two in the morning.

To illustrate my point with a poor example, as I always do, this is one of a great many games taking things into an uncanny-valley sort of a thing.  Don't think of that in the usual sense, I do not mean the characters are in the uncanny valley, I just mean that the more games look like a solid, believable world, the more they highlight how hollow and unconvincing they are. Victims of their own severe limitations.  This game screams to me why, for another generation, I hope we don't just get more polygons per model and more pixels per texture. Give TLoU a PS4 makeover so it looks like The Division, and all it will do is highlight its faults, which are already glaring and immersion breaking.

Final words: I have never experienced anything like the gripping tension in any other game as I felt with this one.  The atmosphere is astonishing, from spore-clouded basements, to sun-kissed forest, to desolate winterscape.  Joel and Ellie separately stumbling through the snowstorm ravaged town blindly killing the threats around them was a masterpiece.  I can't remember the last time I played something where I cared about the characters so much I was scared to press on.  Absolute dynamite.

Such a solid nine, it couldn't be further from a ten if it tried.

Indeed, Moto. Clem is the the ultimate.

If you get into the mindset that it's a cracking story and not really a game[citation needed] then yeah. Just imagine it's an interactive comic book or whatever.

Even as an interactive comic book, I can't fathom how people can even abide it, let lone praise it, and its inclusion in this discussion cheapens TLoU and gives TWD a status it doesn't deserve.

Given some of the shite people wank themselves silly over, cynical me isn't in the least bit surprised that an objectively shoddy non-game was so many people's game of the year.

There is a part of me, however, that still has misguided faith in mankind, and that part of me can't fathom it, even in this world of six billion + people with their own outlooks and tastes.

Why a Y?

It's a conflation of Adam/Andy/ADKM

Dick

Absolutely, but I don't think anyone would cite the gameplay as the reason they loved it. The whole game/nongame thing is a tedious old debate though.

stonechalice wrote:

Strictly gameplay wise the Walking Dead is a bit wank though. To say there is any gameplay at all is a bit rich from what i can tell with my short time with it.

For me it was a throwback to my point'n'click days but with a story that really interested me, the same as TLOU which for me was more story than gameplay. To say it has no gameplay is just being stupid in my eyes but we've already been down this particular route.

Probably, but i'll need to do it later.

One point, re your first bulletpoint. I don't get what you mean with being unable to commit due to cordyceps strains being species specific?