The Last of Us is coming out next Friday. It’s by Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Uncharted). I… really don’t know much about it, but apparently it’s a Big Damn Thing™. Judging by what information I can glean at a cursory glance, it’s a third-person action/survival horror game. Aside from that it seems to defy succinct description. Wikipedia mentions stealth, cover based shooting, and melee combat. All with an AI companion – which sounds like a potentially confused recipe for disaster, but apparently it’s not.
Yeah, the thing about this game is that it’s been rated really well. Like, really, really well. Half-Life 2 well. In fact, out of 56 professional reviews it has a 96% on Metacritic, the lowest of which is an 85 (for reference, HL2 has the same score out of 81 reviews with the same min score). Apparently a British film(?) magazine called “Empire” said that it may be a “Citizen Kane moment for video games.” It also seems to have a laundry list of E3 awards.
I’m… cautious. It just seems TOO well reviewed, maybe it is really is teh shitz, but at this point I’m almost worried that no matter how good it is it will fail due to death by hype. I’ll probably have to pick it up though, even if this ends up being a massive conspiracy theory warranting bribeapalooza, I almost want to play it on release JUST to say I was there.
It also gets the award for second major game this year starring Troy Baker (the first being Bioshock Infinite). I love Troy to pieces and would not mind if he became the new Nolan North.
I’m definitely looking forward to getting it - it’ll be a day one pickup for me. I’m worried it might be a little grim for my tastes, but I’m not too concerned about whether the game will be good - The first two Uncharted games were some of the best PS3 games I’ve ever played, and the third was still really good.
They specifically mention that the AI companion is a bit of a hassle sometimes.
Still, it looks pretty good. Love me some survival horror, and this looks like it might be something akin to Stalker meets uncharted (with hopefully more stalker than uncharted).
Hmm, I’ve only seen one Polygon review, but it led me to trust them since they seemed to be one of the only review sites that actually gave Ni No Kuni the score it deserved and highlighted its issues.
Kind of zombies. They’re humans that have been infected with a fungus that destroys their brains, so they wander around with these creepy mushroom-like growths sprouting out of their faces. They’re zombies in the sense they’re predatory monsters who used to be normal humans.
I just sat down and played through several hours of this. If you can imagine what would happen if Uncharted had a humorectomy and then had a baby with one of the earlier Resident Evil games, then you’re pretty close.
The meh:
I was kind of hoping for at least a bit of an open world, but it looks like this is an Uncharted-style rail game all the way through (so far). Run through an area, avoid/kill the zombies/bad guys, find the requisite ladder/plank/dumpster to move so that you can climb to the next level, repeat. Conserve your ammo. Craft your medkit. Upgrade your gun. Etc.
The good:
Naughty Dog knows what it’s doing when it comes to dialogue and story. I just played about three hours worth, which is way longer than I’m usually able to sit in front of my PS3 for.
If you liked/loved Uncharted, then you’ll like/love this game, UNLESS you mainly were into Uncharted for the humor. This game has humorous bits, but it’s not a funny game.
Been playing for a few hours and agree with your early vibes. The opening was intense as hell. Hard to believe th e ps3 is cranking out these graphics.
I find it meh so far. The prologue was really good, don’t get me wrong. And I want to learn more about the world and the story. So far I’m not too fond of the gameplay, though. I’m at what I assume is the end of the first “level”
(Terribly minor spoiler):
Robert at the docks
And I’m finding the game unbelievably tedious, which is odd because I like Metal Gear Solid and love Assassin’s Creed. Somehow the stealth in this game feels obnoxious. Or perhaps a better term is “unsatisfying”. Obviously granted that I’m only a smidgen in, it may get better.
I’m finding the aiming mechanic to be horrible just like Uncharted. Very inconsistent and difficult to hit moving targets even when they are moving slowly right next to you.
Have you gone into the options to change the sensitivity?
One thing I really dislike:
The manual. Because there is none, even with a retail version.
So I was doing multiplayer, and silly me, I thought it would use similar controls to Uncharted…nope. I had no idea how to change weapons, do melee, etc…I figured out most through trial and error, but still couldn’t figure out other stuff. So I went to open the “digital manual.”
Well…can’t do that from inside the game. Because it’s not part of the game, per se ,it’s its own entry in the XMB. And since Sony can’t writer good software, you can’t look at it while in the game. So I exit out, open the manual, and…it has to install…of course it does. And since the PS3 “thinks” it’s a game, it asks if I want to use my PS+ to automatically upload the saves…WTF?
Oh, and then it had to download an update…and install the update (mind you, all this just to open the manual.)
So what should have been one easy button press from inside the game, turned into about a dozen after exiting the game.
I still don’t understand why somewhere in the options menu it didn’t just give a little diagram for the controls…even when they aren’t changeable, at least shoe a picture of the controller with little labels next to the buttons so I don’t have to do that crazy-ass convoluted process to find out that the left/right D-pad buttons change weapons!
I’m struggling mightily with all aspects of combat and stealth in this game for some reason. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it took me over 30 tries to clear the 5 zombies at the bottom of the building leaving town after getting elle. It got easier when I realized that clickers can’t hear you choking it out another zombie right next to them but they can hear the slightest sounds otherwise. Pretty dumb to be honest.
I could never play a game like this, it makes me way too anxious. But my boyfriend is playing it and I’m watching (because it’s like an interactive movie, lots of fun!). The upside-down shooting scene in Bill’s trap was AWESOME! And very disorienting. But mostly awesome.
I’m wondering how long the game is supposed to take. We’ve gotten through about 10 hours so far, give or take.