The Last of Us - The Pepsi Max of Rendering Effects

[Zombie_X]

There is definitely tension, especially the parts with many Clickers. They are slow and easy to dodge, but if they take notice of you, you better run.

[TheSelfishGene]

Even seeing the glittering reviews; I'll get it second hand later down the track.
I swore I'd never by a ND game first hand after they ruined UC2 multiplayer, and this won't be the one that changes that

[News Bot]

I'm unsure if it's fair to say this game wipes the floor with BH4, BH5 and BH6, but it sure feels that way for me.

[Rombie]

Even seeing the glittering reviews; I'll get it second hand later down the track.
I swore I'd never by a ND game first hand after they ruined UC2 multiplayer, and this won't be the one that changes that

Your missing out on wonderful SP then. Screw the MP for sure but you're only stopping yourself from one of the best games of this generation.

[Carnivol]

It's a good game, but like with BioShock Infinite ... Not really deserving of its 10/10 scores on a technical level. Dunno if that says something about the consumer's expectation or the general quality of the alternative ... maybe a bit of both.

I'm unsure if it's fair to say this game wipes the floor with BH4, BH5 and BH6, but it sure feels that way for me.

Narrative/Setting? Sure.
Stability/Tightness of the underlying clockwork? Not really. (exclude RE6, it's a little sloppy, but 4-5 are as tight as they come)

[alexdz]

It's a good game, but like with BioShock Infinite ... Not really deserving of its 10/10 scores on a technical level.

Apparently all you have to do is put a cute girl for the player to take care of and have an emotional connection and it's a garanteed 10/10.

[Carnivol]

Apparently all you have to do is put a cute girl for the player to take care of and have an emotional connection and it's a garanteed 10/10.

I guess this trend will soon pave the way for;
Spoiler:

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A game that tells the story of a pedophile main character that kidnaps an underage girl, but through events taking place during his escape from the law he discovers that circumstances pertaining his victim makes him unintentionally redeem himself - making him, in the eyes of this easily affected and emotionally confused teen, a hero in disguise - and through out the game she will experience a transformation of her own - a transformation to maturity - whilst dancing what may appear to be a fine line between Stockholm Syndrome and genuine affection and appreciation for her new found Knight in Shining Armor.

[Dark_Chris]

TLOU fully deserves 10/10. It's the best game I played on PS3 by far.

Carnivol you are most probably THE biggest Xbox fan around here. I wonder what's 10/10 for you? Gears of War? Halo?

[News Bot]

TLOU's stability is fine for me. Aiming isn't as refined as I'd like, but everything else is solid.

[Carnivol]

There's a lot of cool ideas in it, but I feel there's a lot of stuff that could be much more refined and polished. Checkpoints are retarded at times (especially when combined with manual saves), the save issues on launch day were quickly swept under the rug (why the fuck did a server side error at Naughty Dog's cause the game to not save properly anyway?), the game is horrifyingly forgiving of many things, just as it can be horrifyingly broken with shit grabbing you through walls, and so forth (But what annoys me the most is the audio bit of both the presentation and its integration in the gameplay - enemies during "action" scenes not following their normal behavior patterns, suddenly just homing in on you at all times, and then you have the stuff that at first is hilarious, but then gets a bit sad when you realize how easy it is to reproduce, when you can interrupt a 3 man convo by strangling the first guy ... whilst it sounds like someone's having aggressive sex or something, but then it gets extra stupid when you knee the second guy in the face so he shouts out in agony, and the third guy just stands there as if his conversation was never interrupted, ignoring the fact that you less than 2 meters away from him strangled and kneed his friends to death.)

As News Bot mentions too, aiming is stupid in it. The game STILL uses Naughty Dog's god awful aiming from the Uncharted series, which means that when you're in aim mode, you are no longer your character, you're an invisible object in the center of the screen, you basically become the reticle, so line of fire between you and the enemy is based solely on the reticle and not your actual coverage and line of sight (oddly enough, the latter bit about coverage is not a problem in Uncharted. While you can magically "aim" through/around corners in UC, enemies can't shoot your reticle to kill you; in Last of Us they can)

Also, the framerate drops are insane at times (I don't care about that, really, but I know lots of people go apeshit over framerate in other games, to the point where anything but rock solid 30 FPS = unplayable garbage 2/10), not to mention the "vehicle" sections always have insane amounts of pop in for the foliage (they should've just dropped some of the bushes and grass in the woods, during a certain "search".)

TLOU fully deserves 10/10. It's the best game I played on PS3 by far.

Carnivol you are most probably THE biggest Xbox fan around here. I wonder what's 10/10 for you? Gears of War? Halo?

Nah. I just follow games. So far I've yet to see anything I'd dare to say with certainty that I'd call "perfect" or give a 10/10. I don't like scores like that. 10/10 brings us back to the numbers without context thing and expectations and all that jazz. When I see a high rated movie I don't like, I can still acknowledge the good acting, the filming style, the quality of the writing, the special effects, etc.. When I see a high rated game and don't like it, it's often because something isn't delivering on the quality expectations its rating has set. Basically, I've had just as much fun with this game as I've had with stuff that's averaged in at 6.5/10. I've seen stories that've been just as moving to me and less predictable too.

I think people are just starved for good games, to the point where they don't know how to have fun discovering things on their own and rely solely on external media to inform them of how to, when to, or where to have fun.

[imacwesker]

There's a lot of cool ideas in it, but I feel there's a lot of stuff that could be much more refined and polished.

Pretty much how i feel, even if not for the same reasons as Carn.

Love the dialogues between the 2 heroes (which never sounds forced or god awful cheesy like RE's), love the attention to details in creating the sets/backgrounds, love the various weather changes.
The gameplay and story telling becomes repetitive extremely fast, thought.
And I just plain hate the ending - makes me feel like I am reading a comic-book (and I love comic-books, but that's not the kind of story i expect in a video game. Each medium its own, if you see what I mean).

I think that Naughty Dogs came very close to make a master piece and ended up with a B+ game, certainly not the AAA that all the journalists are talking about. I am quite curious for the next game in the series. Hopefully they'll fix some of TLOU's flaws.

[Rombie]

I think you're both crabby old men who are picking at the flaws far more because reviewers gave it good marks you dont agree with than rather just the game alone :p haha

Jokes BTW.

Probably though as far as your comments go I'd be right along side you but for some reason there is just a certain something the game has that allows me to over look most of the flaws. It's not that I don't notice them but its just the rest is enough to make me not care.

I'm not saying its a 10 either and I'm not saying its a perfect masterpiece but its a coherent and compelling game for what it is flaws and successes both are. It's for that reason that it is a game people should be playing. They may not like it all in the end but the journey is worth the ride. To me that's what makes it a must play game. I think considering you both saw positives and potential in even the not so successful parts I think you'd agree.

[imacwesker]

I think you're both crabby old men who are picking at the flaws far more because reviewers gave it good marks you dont agree with than rather just the game alone :p haha

Thanks for the pict, really made me laugh
And yes, if the game wasn't so much hyped, I may not have care so much either.

They may not like it all in the end but the journey is worth the ride.

I see what you are saying but it really depends what one expect from a game. It is these expectations that will allow you to enjoy TLOU, or not.
The end of the game, the literarily 5 last minutes of it, completely destroyed my experience. During the whole game, the 99% of it, I saw its flaws but keep playing and overlooked them, because I liked the direction where the game was going. Then

Spoiler:

show spoiler

the developers pulled a 180, negating the whole purpose of the game

and that ruined it for me. I was ready to forgive a lot of things if the end was up to my expectations, but this wasn't the case and that's why I am complaining about it.

The developers said that TLOU was the story of Joel and Ellie, that this story was told, but that other stories can be told in this world. I agree with that, because i think that this world got a lot of good potentials. I will buy the next game of this series, because I like the attention to details that ND bring to their games, but as used game because I don't trust them anymore to deliver what they are advertising.

[Dracarys]

I've almost finished my second playthrough, I've not hit one bug, one texture glitch, anything bad. In the single player anyway.

The MP has a bunch of issues, blind matchmaking, no region filter, no host identify, no backing out from a MP menu once voting starts. The locking people to a firefly or Hunter for 84 matches so if a friend picked the other faction when starting cannot play with them is just all new levels of stupid. In-game the aiming system and corner shooting is flat out broken, thanks to several of the matchmaking issues you'll often get shot when there is no line of sight on you for several seconds, get melee'd from several feet away with enemies hitting where you used to be, not like Uncharted where they teleport several feet to melee you, they just hit air where you used to be and do damage still. Likewise smokebombs and molotovs often hit direct at a players feet and do not choke/burn them, other times they miss but somehow you still get hit by them.

There was so much complaining about lag and connection issues in Uncharted 2/3 due to no region filter, was so heavily requested, so ND release TLOU with no region filter and the same shitty matchmaking that pairs UK people with mexicans or west coast US, even japanese players. Cocks.

The fact if you do not move you're immune to listen mode makes camping a major issue too, if a team wants to a camp a set area they can just win a match easily due to being hidden and seeing the enemy coming through walls, it is especially an issue in the one life mode, I've tried five matches of that and each one both teams just camped near there start areas and didn't move, waiting for the other, I quit all five after 5 minutes of nothing, that was one round, there are several per match.


Aside from the listen mode for none movers the MP actually has really great design, I like the slow pace, limited resources tactical nature of the mode, but lots of technical issues detract heavily from it.

[News Bot]

I haven't encountered a single technical issue. No glitches. No crashes. Solid framerate. No pop-in. At least, nothing noticeable.

Haven't tried MP yet though.