…Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.
Spoilers, obviously. So…yeah, going into this post recklessly (or
at all)? Not a good idea.
*sigh*
*sigh*
*sigh*
…Remember when good
guys were just allowed to be good guys? Remember
when good guys were just allowed, period?
Remember when Mario was just out to save the princess, or Sonic was just
out to stop Robotnik from burning down the forest? Remember when characters were allowed to
smile and laugh, and have good times? Remember when games didn’t always have to be
set in the middle of a war, a dystopia, or the middle of the apocalypse du
jour?
Those were the
days. And yeah, I know those days are
still around -- but they’re just that. Days.
The rest of the year is week-by-week gloom. And I’m just so tired of it all. I know I’ve said that before, multiple times,
but I just can’t stress it enough. For every
one thing that isn’t gloomy-grit-darkness-time, there are a half dozen more
that are. And people will eat it up
regardless.
…You know what,
though? I get it. I totally get it. Why do I get it? Well, I’ll explain. But first, I’m going to let you in on a
little secret -- and you’re going to want to be sitting down for this.
I don’t like
chocolate. I never have, and I never
will. My brother swears up and down that
I do, because I once pretended to enjoy it (he said that he was giving me
raisins, but my palate isn’t fooled so easily).
But I don’t. I really don’t. I’ve taken a lot of guff over not liking chocolate,
or eating anything with chocolate in it -- cake, ice cream, milk, cupcakes,
candy, you name it. It’s all stuff that
I avoid, because I know I don’t like it.
I don’t hate anyone for liking it, though, because I know that they’re
still good people. Our preferences are a
non-issue, because we’re not trying to force each other to eat (or not eat)
something we have no interest in even touching.
And that’s really the
crux of how I feel about The Last of Us. It’s like chocolate to me. It wasn’t made for me. It’s not suited to my tastes. When we cross paths, it’s certain to leave me
with a bitter frown, and the product itself to be devalued and
underappreciated. We don’t mix. Period.
Trying to force myself to like it, and think that it’s a tasty experience
is just going to leave me in a bad mood…and given that the time I’ve spent
digesting it has already left me in a
bad mood, you can bet I’m going to look like I’m about ready to smack someone.
So I’ll go ahead and
say it plainly. No, I don’t like The Last of Us. Yes, I
do think it’s overrated. No, I don’t
think it’s objectively awful; subjectively,
yes, but it’s not the worst game I’ve ever played, and it won’t be the worst
you’ve ever played either. No, I don’t
think it’s going to revolutionize video games.
Yes, I do think it’s decidedly average at best. No, I don’t think it lived up to its
potential. Yes, I do hate the ending.
There. That should pretty much cover all my
bases. So you can probably close this
page now. Maybe go look at some footage
from EVO. I hear those KOF matches were pretty hype.
…
…Still here? All right.
Let’s keep going then.
So let me start by
asking a question: what is the purpose of a story? There are plenty of answers, sure, and
they’ll depend on the person being asked.
I can think of a few possible ones: the purpose is to entertain. To excite.
To teach. To shock. To challenge.
To bring to life. All valid
answers, no doubt. But you could make a
pretty strong argument that the reason a story exists -- the one reason above
all others -- is to make the audience feel something. And there’s a pretty good chance that, yeah,
that’s the one answer that matters most.
The one thing that all the others feed into.
The one thing that, for
me, The Last of Us completely failed
to do across well over a dozen hours.
Let’s not dance around
my bias. I know that I don’t like gritty
stories. I know that apocalypses and
dystopian worlds are going to turn me off.
I know that I want something more from a game besides violence,
cynicism, and pessimism porn. But I can
get past my biases. I can like a story,
or game, or whatever if it gives me a reason
to like it. In the grand scheme of
things, TLoU doesn’t. I don’t feel like I’ve gained anything from
it. That game and everything in it was
THE big chance to turn me over to its side, and let me believe that I was wrong
for shaking my head in disdain at gritty fare.
That game was supposed to make a compelling argument for itself, and its
kin, and let me believe that it was Game of the Year material. It didn’t.
And it isn’t. Not to me.
If I wasn’t intent on
finishing the game for the sake of this blog, I would have stopped playing a
long time ago. But I did finish it. I made it through every bit of the game, from
start to finish. And when the final
scene played out…I just leaned back and sighed.
The credits started to roll, and I just laid there for a bit. I thought about sitting through them to see
if there was any more content during or after the credits, but my dog started
getting antsy, so I got up to feed him while the credits rolled. I didn’t mind missing any other scenes. At that point, I just didn’t care
anymore.
I didn’t care about the
ending. I didn’t care about Joel “doing
what he had to do”. I didn’t care about
Not-Ellen Page looking sad (given that she does that in virtually every bit of
promotional material around). I didn’t
care about the world. I didn’t care
about the people in it. And truth be
told, I hadn’t cared for hours. Even
after I made it past the mythical “Bill’s house” foretold in my brother’s
prophecies, each time I booted up the game I’d just bury my hands in my face
and groan. Hours after meeting Bill I’d
often find myself thinking “what new level of hell is this?” whenever anything
happened. I’d be playing The Last of Us, but occasionally eyeing
other, better games nestled on the side.
I just wanted it to be over so I could do something else.
And when it was
over? I didn’t feel anything. It was just…over. The game, my playthrough, the
story…nothing. None of it mattered. It all just feels like such a waste. And god damn it, I don’t want to feel this way.
Not for this game. Not for the
so-called Game of the Year.
*sigh* All right.
Let’s just talk for a bit. Even
if you don’t end up agreeing with me in the end, I can at least use this space
to explain why I feel the way I do. I’d
say that there’s a chance at redemption for the game at the end, but given
historical precedents, it’ll only get worse before it gets better.
So here’s my immediate
problem with The Last of Us: it’s
almost completely flat.
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This is the point that
I will furiously contend with everyone else who argues otherwise: this game is
NOT tense. At all. You may be outnumbered in any given combat
scenario in any given area, but you have more than enough tools to stack the
deck in your favor. Joel’s Listen Mode
allows him (and the player) to control the situation, and with enough skill
it’s more than possible to dominate squadrons of enemies -- human or zombie --
with relative ease. Listen Mode may be
problematic in some ways, but I can and will tolerate it; it’s a necessary evil
that takes some of the guesswork (and frustration) out of the combat. What ISN’T quite as tolerable is that, even
if you screw up severely, you still have a slew of deterrents on your side. Explain to me how I’m supposed to fear these
guys when well before the endgame I’m carrying around A FULLY FUNCTIONAL FLAMETHROWER.
And even if I run out
of flamethrower ammo (I didn’t), I still have/get a pistol with a scope, a
one-handed shotgun, and an assault rifle.
And again, that’s all stuff gathered alongside a pistol, a revolver, a
hunting rifle, a shotgun, a bow, bombs, smoke bombs, Molotov cocktails, melee
weapons, and upgraded melee weapons (including a hatchet that’s pretty much an
instant-kill). And even beyond that,
Joel can still punch most enemies to death from head-on, or strangle them into
perma-sleep from behind. The only time
I’m worried for my life is when I’ve accidentally gotten too close to an
insta-kill Clicker, have to start over, and decide to be more careful so I won’t
have to do it over again…and again.
There’s no tension, and
not just because of the combat; there’s no penalty for failure. You just pop back a few paces to your last
checkpoint, with all the items you might have used -- the key element of the
survival aspect of the game -- fully restocked.
If anything, dying makes things even LESS tense; now you have the
knowledge of where enemies might travel, how many there are, starting
positions, and where to throw bricks/bottles.
Rewinding and trying an area over
might work for a game like Braid, but
here, in a world so adamant on creating an atmosphere of survival and tension,
it doesn’t work.
And there’s not much
tension throughout the rest of the game, either. This being a game that tries so desperately
to be a movie, it’s only natural that there are set pieces that put Ellie and
Joel in bad situations. Oh no, the
gang’s being chased by zombies…that came out of nowhere and couldn’t possibly
have been able to enter the area you’re in, and even if they did you can’t help
but wonder why they didn’t chase after you from the start. (Such a missed opportunity to be attacked
from the front and behind -- or
better yet, have encounters where there are humans and zombies simultaneously,
instead of keeping them separated by an iron gate of gameplay
convenience.)
All you have to do to
escape from trouble is to run after your NPC partners. No need for a second thought. Same goes for when somebody jumps Joel and
demands a quick mashing of buttons to survive; there’s no tension there. Just mashing buttons; it’s not happening to
you, and you KNOW neither you nor Joel are in any real danger because there’s
no way you’ll lose to that. And again,
this being a Naughty Dog game it’s only a matter of time before there’s some
environmental damage (i.e. something falls down noisily), but that just feels
like a distraction. That’s not the meat
of the game. Just window dressing, in a
sequence where it’s extremely difficult to fail if you’re doing it right. Though of course, you can do it wrong if
characters will go off without you when you weren’t expecting a transition from
gameplay to set piece.
Dunkey got it exactly
right. There’s not enough game in this
game; if it was about half as long as it is now, then I bet I’d have a better
impression of it. And there are things
that could be cut out; too much time is spent wandering around areas in slow motion
-- which wouldn’t be so bad if Ellie and Joel engaged in as much banter and
conversation as the setup would have you believe, but HUGE swaths of time are
spent moving in silence with neither conversation nor music to fill the dead
air. The chief ideas conveyed here are
“society is dead” and “this element of our culture is gone forever”.
Nearly everything past
the opening sequence -- from the game’s opening seconds to the time skip that
puts us in the story proper -- is spent wallowing in grit, gloom, and
gore. Even if you find files scattered
about (which I’d argue they shouldn’t have had to do if the game was conveying
itself properly), several of them have the same general message of “shit’s
gettin’ real, yo” -- even in the endgame you find audio recordings that, in
spite of being in at least two separate places, have the exact same main idea with
different words. And you didn’t even
need to find that main idea, because there’s a character that explicitly
explains to you that main idea in a conversation from half an hour ago.
There’s nothing worth
taking in -- or at least nothing worth spending seventeen hours getting drilled
into your head over and over again.
There’s nothing to be felt from the combat, because it’s about as
straightforward as it gets…and it doesn’t do itself any favors by repeating the
“you’re in an area full of hunter dudes” and “you’re in an area full of
zombies” angles ad nauseum. There’s
nothing to be felt from a world where your most meaningful interaction with it
-- areas that are at least 50% dedicated to showing off urban decay -- is to
walk briskly in search of ladders, planks, and ledges. There’s nothing to see in a world that
pretends to be massive and harrowing, but is almost as boxed-in as Gears of War (and telegraphs where
skirmishes will pop up by throwing in chest-high walls by the dozen). There’s nothing to be felt from “cinematic”
experiences that wouldn’t feel out of place in Crash Bandicoot, for all the influence and impact you have on
them. There’s NOTHING to hook me. NOTHING.
Now, I know what you’re
thinking. I’m thinking the same thing
right now. A story is built on the
backbone of more than just its world, or themes, or even plot; above all else,
it’s the characters that matter. That’s
true. I won’t argue with that, because
I’m the sort of guy that builds stories around
characters (and the superpowers they have).
It goes without saying that my expectations for TLoU were based on my understanding that I’d be getting a story
about the journey and transformation of these two characters -- the
fledgling-yet-fiery survivor, Ellie, along with the hardened-and-hard-edged
Joel. That was what I wanted most. As long as I got that, I wouldn’t mind the
“fluff” added by side characters.
Important fluff, but fluff all the same; it was supposed to be the story
of a man and his daughter. A girl and
her father. Two travelers, roughin’ it
on the deadliest road trip imaginable.
Having thought about
it, having reviewed pieces of the story, and having had time to digest the
story in my head, I can say pretty confidently that I’m not satisfied. Why?
Another underlying problem with the game: almost everyone in The Last of Us is
an asshole.
It really doesn’t bode
well for a game when I’m more intrigued by and sympathetic toward the average
goon than I am virtually every main character.
The “hunters” in Ellie and Joel’s way may be treated as little more than
obstacles, but they still have conversations with one another. They’re fighting their own battle to
survive. At times, they have more
camaraderie and chemistry than Ellie and Joel.
What are their lives like? What’s
their world like? Who are they? What were their lives like before the end of
the world?
I get that the game is
trying to force a player-character disconnection. And it excels at that…to an extent. But here’s the problem with that approach
(and it’s something that’ll feed into my talk about the ending): Joel is
portrayed as the good guy throughout the entire game. The entire
game. His actions are always excused
and never questioned, with the general excuse being “because he has to survive”
or “because that’s how the world is”. Except…when
you think about it, that’s not much of an excuse. The game engineers ways to force you to take lives; even with all
the stealth mechanics and tools at your disposal, many of them are aimed
towards taking the lives of enemies.
Unless I’ve been playing the game wrong, I’m fairly confident that
entire situations are engineered so that you can’t go to the next area without
taking a life -- not just for story purposes, but for pretty much every other
(if not every) entanglement.
Not ONCE is the concept
of not-killing brought up as a possibility, which you’d think would be an
option -- if not to please gamers who enjoy pacifist runs, then to suit the
needs of a story where “every last bullet counts” and “resources are
limited”. Joel -- and Ellie before even
reaching the halfway point -- is a murderer by choice. And that’s especially baffling, considering
Ellie; if at any point in the game she had bothered to say “I don’t want to
kill anymore” or “Why do we have to kill?” instead of going “Jeez, Joel!” or
“Holy shit!” at the sight of my hundredth dropped body that day, I guarantee
that I’d have a better opinion of the game.
(Side note: since the game doesn’t give him a last name, I’ve decided to
christen him Joel Grumpybuns.)
There’s supposed to be
a disconnection between the player’s thoughts and the characters’ actions,
which is fine. But the problem is that
by nature, these people are being “excused” for their actions because they’re
portrayed as the heroes. That’s not an
opinion; that’s their role in the plot.
Ellie is holding the key to curing the infection inside her body, and as
such is a biological savior (I wouldn’t call her a messiah so hastily, but
given that she’s played with relative innocence alongside her moxie, once could
make the connection). Joel Grumpybuns is
tasked with saving and protecting her, and his losses -- his daughter and to a much lesser extent Tess -- are played
for sympathy and justification for his actions/thoughts/gruffness. Their methods are extreme, but the game goes
through great pains to ensure that these characters are the heroes. And the end result is that the
player-character disconnection is forced into an unwilling reconnection. The end result? Everyone else has to be warped to compensate.
This being a zombie
story, the message here is “humans are the REAL monsters!” And to show that -- besides the general
dickishness of the cast -- is to have everyone go out of their way to perform
some questionable acts. The hunters are
the most obvious example, of course; as the cannon fodder enemies, they’ll
shoot you on sight and rush you down for a melee strike if you’re just running
around carelessly. They’re justified in
that you’re in their territory and you’re not their friend, but the fact that
they go into standardized goon dialogue (“You’re dead, asshole!” and colorful
variants of “I’m gonna getcha!”) doesn’t do anything to make them more than
targets.
But even then it’s more
than what you get from the soldiers you encounter along the way; I don’t think
their organization even get named out loud over the course of the game. One of the first things you see them do is
line up a bunch of people, force them to kneel, and shoot someone in the back
of the head for being infected. After
that, if they’re not directly antagonizing you they’re driving off to
antagonize someone else, indirectly antagonizing you with the threat of violence,
or just plain being window dressing in a set piece moment. I guess since
they’re working for THE MAN, they don’t need characterization and they don’t
get any understandable justification for their actions. People doing their jobs? Pshaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!
I’ve compared TLoU to The Walking Dead TV series in the past (and others have made
similar connections), and I stand by that.
They have similar problems, after all.
A key issue that I have with the show is that for all the energy spent
trying to make the zombies out to be a genuine threat, only once or twice a
season does that threat level actually hold true…and even then, it’s only for a
few minutes at a time. More than half
the cast has shown themselves capable of killing off zombie attackers, whether
there’s a horde of them lurching forward or a single one sneaking in for a
kill; when you’ve got one character swinging a katana without a care in the
world and another who’ll stab a walker with a knife, somehow it’s hard to take
them seriously as a threat. The
tradeoff, then, is that these people become their own worst enemies -- both in
terms of their poor decisions AND in terms of constantly defaulting to asshole
mode. Because if there’s one thing I’m
always looking forward to in a story, it’s people standing around and arguing
over arbitrary issues. Can’t these
people just build a moat, or a ditch, and let the zombies fall right in? Or just retreat to higher ground and build
around that? Zombies can’t climb;
they’re slow, and stupid, and if their decomposing bodies can be broken apart
by basic effort from the average man, how can they even begin to support their
weight if they --
What’s important about TLoU in its similarities to TWD is that there are two issues,
separate, yet intertwined with the main problem of virtually everyone being an
asshole. The first problem is that like TWD, at several points these characters
will suspend being characters and become mouthpieces for the sake of
conflict/themes/reinforcement that shit’s gone down. Tess ends up flip-flopping from not believing
in anything -- least of all the fact that Ellie is a living cure for the
outbreak -- to being ready to risk everything for a one-in-a-million chance…and
note that this is BEFORE she gets infected, so it’s not a matter of
desperation. Whatever the case, she and
Joel have an argument that ultimately has no consequence, and if I remember
right doesn’t even get a conclusion; some soldiers start pursuing them, and
they put the talk on indefinite hold.
Henry forces his little
brother Sam to drop the toy he’s been eyeing and continue being miserable
for…reasons…and manages to butt heads with Joel for…also reasons. Joel and his brother Tommy reunite after who
knows how long, and shortly after their reunion their going at it over a
conflict that doesn’t need to happen.
Tommy rages at Joel because Tommy’s group doesn’t have any gear to spare
(which is false, because I found a pistol with a scope just lying around), and
in the midst of their fight Joel Grumpybuns throws their past and how he “took
care of Tommy” in his face. Nothing
comes from the argument, because it’s interrupted by another gunfight and
invading hunters…who would have had to travel an incredible distance to reach
the same area, given that the Grumpybuns brothers were in the back end of a
power plant behind a well-fortified gate and countless other defenses, along
with at least a five minute walk. (I
suppose the chest-high walls outside teleported them in.) Nothing comes from suddenly forcing their
past into the mix, and nothing comes from their argument at large; Joel just
ends up packing his things and leaving alongside Ellie.
This is, of course,
after Joel and Ellie have their own
argument, in which Ellie runs away to a cabin, holes up in some girl’s
well-furnished room, and calls Joel out for not wanting her around. It’s worth noting, though, that in order for
Ellie to run away, she has to steal a horse from the power plant’s stables and
ride off…which should have been impossible,
because A) she was stealing a horse in broad daylight, B) she’d have to go
through a gate guarded well enough to nearly have Joel turned into grumpy Swiss
cheese, and C) her noisy escape would have had to not alert anyone who was even remotely close to watching the gate
and the area ahead of it. (How the hell
is this game so comfortable with randomly repositioning people for the sake of special
events?) This one’s not quite as
pointless as the others, in that Ellie brings up several legitimate points --
like when Joel fails to comfort her after she makes her first kill -- but the
effect is dampened when Joel Grumpybuns declares that Ellie isn’t his
daughter. Because that’s bound to last. And
once more, the purpose of the room they’re in is to blare “See this stuff? That’s what the world used to be like…and now
they’ll neeeeeeeeeeeeeever have it again!”
There are only two
named characters in this entire game that don’t devote ninety percent of their
energy to being selfish, aggressive survivors (with “survivors” apparently
coming to be a synonym for “dicks” in the future). Not five minutes after we meet her, Tess
shoots a guard in the face just because he was doing his job and got in her way
-- and not even a half hour later, she shoots an old business associate in
spite of him being remorseful and trying to bargain…and also holding no
shortage of information she’ll never get.
Bill has gone into full-on hermit mode in a town he’s taken upon himself
to make his kingdom…and would rather live there, in a place crawling with
zombies, than head anywhere else. (Even
Bill’s dead friend Frank has been bitten by the douche-bug; a cutscene that
tries to force some last-minute sympathy and redemption for Bill is immediately
spoiled when you find a note left by Frank saying that he was going to leave
Bill behind ; he’s effectively giving Bill the finger.)
Henry abandons Ellie
and Joel on the grounds that the incoming zombies -- which are never, ever a threat -- would have killed him and his brother,
and declares later that Joel would have run away if he got the chance. (Joel the character probably would have, but
Joel the player’s proxy would have had to save him in an impromptu mission
objective.) Tommy may get into an
argument -- Joel wants Tommy to take Ellie to the Fireflies in his stead --
that goes to a weird place, but he has a point in that he’s got a mission to
protect and develop the power plant so everyone can stop living in
squalor. But then Tommy’s wife comes out
to make the argument drag on even longer, and doesn’t add much to her character
besides “doesn’t want to see her husband go.”
The only genuinely good people in this game -- and even that’s debatable
-- are Henry’s little brother Sam and Firefly leader Marlene. Both of them die.
And then there’s
David. But I’ll get back to him.
I was more than willing
to accept TLoU as a groundbreaking or
challenging title, provided that it offered something more than just
top-of-the-line murder. It didn’t. And it isn’t groundbreaking or challenging. It puts on airs, but it regularly presents
itself as an average game with several tons of gravitas strapped to its
ankles. The second problem with the game
(and one arguably shared by TWD) is
that for all the posturing as an emotional experience, it’s too even, too lax,
and too blasé to be as emotional as you’d hope.
Why? Simple. TLoU
can’t challenge you -- or me, at least -- because it doesn’t challenge itself.
I said in an earlier
post that after Tess’ death and the escape from trouble that follows, Joel
Grumpybuns pretty much tells Ellie flat-out that they aren’t going to talk
about her ever again...and while I was joking around that it would completely
remove every trace of her from the story to follow, I was just saying that as a
joke. Turns out Joel was serious;
outside of Ellie paying a bit of lip service to Tess in one of the VERY last
lines in the game, and Bill trying (and failing) to work her into a conversation,
Tess and her impact on Joel and the story at large is MIA. Can you imagine what would have happened if
Joel did decide to talk about Tess? Can
you imagine what it would be like if Ellie just kept pressing Joel about her
until she forced him to crack?
There’s a distinct lack
of consequence in too many aspects of the game.
The gameplay shows it off readily; even if you screw up and get spotted,
it doesn’t take long for you to be able to organize another Stranglepalooza --
and sometimes it’s easier to do so because
you screwed up. Death is a slap on
the wrist in this game, and while that’s true of a lot of titles, it creates an
unintentional disconnection between the player and the game. What’s the point of being careful if you can
save yourself from dozens of hairy situations?
What’s the point of caution if a Molotov toss or a shotgun blast is
enough to wreck an enemy’s day? What’s
the point of combat if it’s a tensionless affair that just acts as a roadblock
between you and the next bit of meandering across a landscape story
segment?
But where the lack of
consequence really kicks in is how certain events -- and their aftermath, more
importantly -- are handled. Sam ends up
getting infected (because of course he does), forcing him to become the group’s
next target. When the deed is done,
Henry loses his mind and shoots himself -- and then the screen cuts to black,
there’s a subtitle that says “Fall”, and the next thing I know, Ellie and Joel
are gallivanting across the wilderness.
Um, are we not going to talk about what just happened? What was the aftermath of that? How did it affect the characters? Did you just relegate a vital source of drama
to off-screen character development? Why the hell couldn’t I see Ellie and Joel
talk about that, instead of nothing?
And believe it or not,
that’s not the only time it happens.
Joel gets into a punch-up in another school, and ends up falling on a
spike of rebar. You spend the next few
minutes stumbling through halls and bleeding out as Ellie guns down whatever
enemy comes your way -- that is, until the two of them ride off on their horse
and Joel collapses. So how is Ellie
going to save Joel? Does Joel have
enough strength to give her instructions?
Hell if I know. The screen cuts
to black, and suddenly I’m in the winter chapter of the game. In a completely different location. With different clothes. With several inches of snow all around
me. With Joel nowhere in sight (but come
on, like they’re really going to kill off Mr. Grumpybuns). And even the winter chapter ends without a
gradual glide into the next string of events…and if you’ve played that far, you
know that that’s the ONE instance where a sudden time skip won’t be enough to
set aside what happened.
Some of the most
important moments in the entire game happen before a sudden time skip -- and
because they aren’t given the proper time to be processed or explored, the
effect is cheapened. Sam’s death and
Henry’s suicide are never brought up afterward, barring Ellie (again) mentioning
Sam as a bit of lip-service, and you’d think she’d want to talk more about that
given that he was her first onscreen friend.
Ellie effectively saves Joel’s
life…somehow…but we never get to see
what comes from that with our own eyes.
It’s implied that Joel is thankful, but what could have been a
transformative moment for both the characters and their relationship ends up
getting shoved aside. And the transition
from the winter chapter to the spring chapter -- the last in the game -- is
among one of the most jarring I’ve seen in ages. It almost makes those sequences feel like
cutaway gags from Family Guy.
Thinking back on my
experience with the game -- every last hour and every last sequence -- I can
say with some confidence that, in my eyes, TLoU
settles into a rut and rarely tries to crawl out. It is, in its own right, a zombie too feeble
and too single-minded to crawl out of the hole.
What could have been a compelling, post-world road trip ends up being
hamstrung by adherence to safety and tradition.
It’s a game designed to leave you weary and disgusted, but it does so
for all the wrong reasons. It’s
impossible for me to sympathize with characters that might as well be aliens,
since their chief justification is “it’s a different world.” I haven’t been challenged by the game since
it started, and too much time is spent spinning its wheels or having the player
faff about with ladders. The few moments
where there MIGHT have been a chance to shake up the story are glossed over, as
if the mere presence of them without the consequences to follow are enough to
win me over. And with nothing to grasp
from the gameplay, the world, the themes, and certainly the characters, then
what in the fuck am I supposed to like about this game?
*sigh* Chocolate.
I think that’s about
all I can say for now, guys. But I’ll be
finishing this up soon enough. It’s
about time I put this zombie that’s been hounding me down. And once I do, it’ll all be over.
Guess that’ll do it for
now, then. See you soon.
This game sure knows
how to make me sad and tired. I’ll give
it that much.