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The Last of Us - Review Thread [Emargo up, scores in OP.]

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K

Kade

Member
BurnOutBrighter said:
Here's my cover... did I get the wrong version?

iF9cGVJ9UCtLN.png
Click to expand...

This is great.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
spannicus said:
Many stores probably have the game already, Im guessing a few people work at game stores or know people who do. Nobody ever explains how they get them lol they just show a picture like na na na na na naaaa, look at me. lol
Click to expand...

Yes, the games usually arrive 5-7 days prior to release to make sure initial pre-orders, etc are filled. I know of employees at GS who will be given their copy early(if they paid in full) then will be rung-up on release day to make it official. I work PT at a retailer that does not allow this, and we do not have our copies of this yet, but we did get "New Leaf" game on 3DS coming out, lol...
 
G

Gbraga

Member
Sorry for asking this again, but still didn't get an answer. How dark is the demo supposed to be? I don't understand the brightness settings in the menu.
 
M

MilesVor

Banned
Pop On Arrival said:
Skyrim PS3. Look, I don't like Polygon and I'm excited as fuck for TLOU, but let's not pretend reviews aren't just dogshit 95% of the time just because a game we like is getting good scores. Fuck that shit. Game breaking issues are KNOWN to get past these guys.

but anyway, I really doubt anything as bad as what I mentioned above is in TLOU, haha.
Click to expand...

In the 90's, when I would read reviews of games in proper gaming magazines (not like PS-MAGAZINE, or NINTENDO MAGAZINE), but proper impartial ones, they would spend pages and pages breaking down the game to its tiniest elements. It didn't matter if it was a small game or huge blockbuster (well, as "huge" as it got back in the 90s).

Nowadays though game reviews tend to focus on the superficial elements of AAA games, like how "cool" a game is and how "edgy and emotional" the story is. Gameplay and technical aspects are relegated to secondary status.
And when technical aspects are discussed it's about how the framerate goes down a few frames during certain scenes, and what the rendering resolution is, etc.
That's like having a "technical" talk about cars, while only talking about the colour, the speed and effectiveness of the windscreen wipers, and the sound of the engine.

Gone are the paragraphs about the effectiveness of the art style, about the satisfaction and weight of gameplay actions, of the fittingness of the gameplay to the story and vice versa, etc. Even with Bioshiock Infinite, probably the most gorgeous art design I have seen since Wind Waker, it was mostly referred to in non-review articles and briefly mentioned perhaps in the reviews proper. People were mostly focusing on the utterly manipulative but FUN story that has been done a billion times before in movies and novels, but was utterly broken and full of holes and contradictions.
The voice recordings were cool and told you important part of the story? Tough luck, you missed a few. Major plot points were divulged during gameplay? Tough luck, they were, but during huge battles with people screaming and explosions everywhere.
Omg, this was one of the most striking conversations I've had with a NPC in a game before... so emotional. OH WAIT, HERE'S SOME MONEY/AMMO!!!!!
They were focusing on the socio-political context of racism, religious fanatism, and all that gunk, while ignoring that they only formed a simple backdrop to the game. Having no more importance than wallpaper.

Meh, I could go on for hours.
Nowadays it's more important to SOUND smart in a review than to actually be smart.
They want to sell the IDEA of a game, rather than the game itself.
I've read so many damn reviews on TLOU, and it's just mindboggingly bizarre.
Most of them mention "minor irritations" tied to immersion-breaking AI, less interesting side-characters, combat and crafting that have some issues or aren't that well done, of puzzles that can get repetitive, of generic shooting parts that are forced on the player even though throughout the game you were always able to choose whether to sneak past enemies or take them out, etc, etc, etc, etc.

So, the game is hailed as the crowning achievement of this generation, hailed so because of how immersive it is, how awesome the NPC are, how awesome the gameplay is, how great the worldbuilding, the morality themes, and how you can choose wether to sneak or kill...
but it has major immersion-breaking moments, generic controls, boring puzzles, and despite all your sneaking, still forces you to fight the same tired waves of generic baddies (totally breaking its internal moral immersion), etc.

Huh?

Huuuuh?

In the end, in my humble opinion, reviewers will in general always give good scores, perfect scores, to huge AAA games with great production values.
The exceptions are perfectly explainable. Uncharted 3? Uncharted 2 was the high point, this is the third installment, we can risk to give a bit less.
Crysis 3, and other FPS games have amazing production value... but lots of "hardcore gamers" are getting tired of FPS! We can risk giving it a lower score...
Etc.


This is all understandable of course. Need those clicks, bro.
 
S

Sn4ke_911

If I ever post something in Japanese which I don't understand, please BAN me.
PuppetMaster said:
Catching up on a lot of Troy Baker interviews. He is an awesome man.

In this one he was particularly awesome. And it was from IGN even!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLo5buz5Hmw
Click to expand...

Wait, did they spoil the game at the beginning? fucking drunk Baker maaan...
This better not turn out like The Walking Dead

Dat Kiefer Sutherland pic on the wall.

2013-06-0614_58_52-e3wwk5v.png
 
G

Gen X

Trust no one. Eat steaks.
I should be doing hw said:
You can get it new for $65-70 AUS from eBay sellers or elsewhere online. I don't understand who in their right mind would pay ridiculous Australian retail prices for games when there are a vast amount of online alternatives to choose from. It doesn't even involve looking that hard to find them.
Click to expand...

Price didn't bother me this time around. Preordered the Joel Edition from EB in Australia and didn't even ask what the price was. Think I've paid around $45aud off it so far. Booked the Friday off to play this although my missus is dead keen to watch so will probably have to restart when she gets home.
 
S

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
MilesVor said:
When I would read reviews of games in proper gaming magazines (not like PS-MAGAZINE, or NINTENDO MAGAZINE), but proper impartial ones, they would spend pages and pages breaking down the game to its tiniest elements. It didn't matter if it was a small game or huge blockbuster (well, as "huge" as it got back in the 90s).

Nowadays though game reviews tend to focus on the superficial elements of AAA games, like how "cool" a game is and how "edgy and emotional" the story is. Gameplay and technical aspects are relegated to secondary status.
And when technical aspects are discussed it's about how the framerate goes down a few frames during certain scenes, and what the rendering resolution is, etc.
That's like having a "technical" talk about cars, while only talking about the colour, the speed and effectiveness of the windscreen wipers, and the sound of the engine.

Gone are the paragraphs about the effectiveness of the art style, about the satisfaction and weight of gameplay actions, of the fittingness of the gameplay to the story and vice versa, etc. Even with Bioshiock Infinite, probably the most gorgeous art design I have seen since Wind Waker, it was mostly referred to in non-review articles and briefly mentioned perhaps in the reviews proper. People were mostly focusing on the utterly manipulative but FUN story that has been done a billion times before in movies and novels, but was utterly broken and full of holes and contradictions.
The voice recordings were cool and told you important part of the story? Tough luck, you missed a few. Major plot points were divulged during gameplay? Tough luck, they were, but during huge battles with people screaming and explosions everywhere.
They were focusing on the socio-political context of racism, religious fanatism, and all that gunk, while ignoring that they only formed a simple backdrop to the game. Having no more importance than wallpaper.

Meh, I could go on for hours.
Nowadays it's more important to SOUND smart in a review than to actually be smart.
They want to sell the IDEA of a game, rather than the game itself.
I've read so many damn reviews on TLOU, and it's just mindboggingly bizarre.
Most of them mention "minor irritations" tied to immersion-breaking AI, less interesting side-characters, combat and crafting that have some issues or aren't that well done, of puzzles that can get repetitive, of generic shooting parts that are forced on the player even though throughout the game you were always able to choose whether to sneak past enemies or take them out, etc, etc, etc, etc.

So, the game is hailed as the crowning achievement of this generation, hailed so because of how immersive it is, how awesome the NPC are, how awesome the gameplay is, how great the worldbuilding, the morality themes, and how you can choose wether to sneak or kill...
has major immersion-breaking moments, generic controls, boring puzzles, and despite all your sneaking, still forces you to fight the same tired waves of generic baddies (totally breaking its internal moral immersion), etc.

Huh?

Huuuuh?

This is all understandable of course. Need those clicks, bro.
Click to expand...
It's no large stretch of the imagination to identify the moments when many people stopped reading bloated reviews about nothing and started to favour raw gameplay impressions.

I miss the days when a review meant half of it deconstructed the game itself.
 
H

hlhbk

Member
#1 rule in my watching a ton of video channels on Youtube: Never read the comments for a game you are worried about being spoiled.
 
V

vehn

Member
does anyone know if you have to go hard -> survivor -> survivor + for the platinum, or is it just survivor -> survivor +?
 
M

MilesVor

Banned
speedpop said:
It's no large stretch of the imagination to identify the moments when many people stopped reading bloated reviews about nothing and started to favour raw gameplay impressions.

I miss the days when a review meant half of it deconstructed the game itself.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand you completely, but if you mean that you miss those old "bloated" reviews that would utterly and completely deconstruct a game, then yes, I do too.
Sometimes it could be a chose, but you'd leave it with a lot more realistic impression of the game.
Bloated isn't quite the right word though o_O It wasn't useless.
 
G

Gen X

Trust no one. Eat steaks.
vehn said:
does anyone know if you have to go hard -> survivor -> survivor + for the platinum, or is it just survivor -> survivor +?
Click to expand...

You have to unlock Survivor by playing hard first. Haven't heard of a Survivor+ though.
 
A

Andrew.

Banned
Gen X said:
You have to unlock Survivor by playing hard first. Haven't heard of a Survivor+ though.
Click to expand...

There is Survivor+. Its gonna have to take four runs Im guessing.

Hard -> Hard+ -> Survivor -> Survivor+

That Hard+ run is gonna have to be my collectible cleanup run.
 
T

Tricky I Shadow

Banned
Soka said:
So, at the end of the day, this is going to be one of the highest rated games of all time.
Click to expand...

Yeah....to be perfectly blunt it’s also looking like one of the greatest videogames of all time.


Andrew. said:
d'awwww shit. 8 days!
Click to expand...

Only 7 more days for me!!!


Linconan said:
GIFSoup

Same.
But EB (AU) had an update day before yesterday, an had more Joel editions coming in. So i upgraded :) alittle bit more,
but...

*cue Muscle Man*
"It was worth it..."

;)
Click to expand...

**bro-fist**
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
I've read several of the reviews, but can't seem to find out anything regarding the differences between difficulty levels. I typically play the hardest one that's available.

Anyone know the differences?
 
S

Sethista

Member
My problem with reviews is transparency and consistency. And this week polygon gave us the best example to show this problem

Last of us - 7.5

State of Decay - 8.5

My problem is not with the review scores per say, I am completely hyped for both games, but it seems like the criteria to define the scores are more focused on subjective information than factual.

It seems like last of us had very few flaws, but polygon demanded perfection. State of decay had various flaws,but it was better than polygon expected. Hence, last of us gets punished, and state gets a "pass". And I want to emphasize punished, because it impacts metacritic, and unfortunately the industry uses that for rewards.

If they could be transparent and show just how they go about analyzing a game, it wouldn't feel like its completely without base and rules.
 
W

Wind's Howling

Member
Ourobolus said:
I've read several of the reviews, but can't seem to find out anything regarding the differences between difficulty levels. I typically play the hardest one that's available.

Anyone know the differences?
Click to expand...

Enemies are tougher.
Less resources to find.

About the only two differences I know.
 
lucius

lucius

Member
Anyone know the size of the game?

I guessing it will be big, I have PSN credit but if it's more than like 22 gigs I think I will just go with disc.
 
A

Andrew.

Banned
Any of you guys play "I Am Alive"? I bought it awhile ago and never really started. I figured it'd be a nice warmup to this.
 
B

b0bbyJ03

Member
MilesVor said:
In the 90's, when I would read reviews of games in proper gaming magazines (not like PS-MAGAZINE, or NINTENDO MAGAZINE), but proper impartial ones, they would spend pages and pages breaking down the game to its tiniest elements. It didn't matter if it was a small game or huge blockbuster (well, as "huge" as it got back in the 90s).

Nowadays though game reviews tend to focus on the superficial elements of AAA games, like how "cool" a game is and how "edgy and emotional" the story is. Gameplay and technical aspects are relegated to secondary status.
And when technical aspects are discussed it's about how the framerate goes down a few frames during certain scenes, and what the rendering resolution is, etc.
That's like having a "technical" talk about cars, while only talking about the colour, the speed and effectiveness of the windscreen wipers, and the sound of the engine.

Gone are the paragraphs about the effectiveness of the art style, about the satisfaction and weight of gameplay actions, of the fittingness of the gameplay to the story and vice versa, etc. Even with Bioshiock Infinite, probably the most gorgeous art design I have seen since Wind Waker, it was mostly referred to in non-review articles and briefly mentioned perhaps in the reviews proper. People were mostly focusing on the utterly manipulative but FUN story that has been done a billion times before in movies and novels, but was utterly broken and full of holes and contradictions.
The voice recordings were cool and told you important part of the story? Tough luck, you missed a few. Major plot points were divulged during gameplay? Tough luck, they were, but during huge battles with people screaming and explosions everywhere.
Omg, this was one of the most striking conversations I've had with a NPC in a game before... so emotional. OH WAIT, HERE'S SOME MONEY/AMMO!!!!!
They were focusing on the socio-political context of racism, religious fanatism, and all that gunk, while ignoring that they only formed a simple backdrop to the game. Having no more importance than wallpaper.

Meh, I could go on for hours.
Nowadays it's more important to SOUND smart in a review than to actually be smart.
They want to sell the IDEA of a game, rather than the game itself.
I've read so many damn reviews on TLOU, and it's just mindboggingly bizarre.
Most of them mention "minor irritations" tied to immersion-breaking AI, less interesting side-characters, combat and crafting that have some issues or aren't that well done, of puzzles that can get repetitive, of generic shooting parts that are forced on the player even though throughout the game you were always able to choose whether to sneak past enemies or take them out, etc, etc, etc, etc.

So, the game is hailed as the crowning achievement of this generation, hailed so because of how immersive it is, how awesome the NPC are, how awesome the gameplay is, how great the worldbuilding, the morality themes, and how you can choose wether to sneak or kill...
but it has major immersion-breaking moments, generic controls, boring puzzles, and despite all your sneaking, still forces you to fight the same tired waves of generic baddies (totally breaking its internal moral immersion), etc.

Huh?

Huuuuh?

In the end, in my humble opinion, reviewers will in general always give good scores, perfect scores, to huge AAA games with great production values.
The exceptions are perfectly explainable. Uncharted 3? Uncharted 2 was the high point, this is the third installment, we can risk to give a bit less.
Crysis 3, and other FPS games have amazing production value... but lots of "hardcore gamers" are getting tired of FPS! We can risk giving it a lower score...
Etc.


This is all understandable of course. Need those clicks, bro.
Click to expand...

I've seen a lot of opinions like these lately but the one thing that many of us need to take into consideration is that many people have different tastes and that is why we have all these genres.

I'm 32, been playing since 5, and i've been between casual and hardcore my whole life. some years i play nonstop and others i barely turn on my console but i can tell you one thing, my taste has completely evolved. i play games to have fun, and that is the only thing that i demand out of them. If a developer can make a story that is entertaining and mix it up with some cool scripted moments, then it might capture my imagination enough to make me feel like a badass when im playing because i am invested enough to feel something.

i think the problem comes in when there is an unbalance, like if there is too much focus on story or graphics, but not enough on gameplay. for me personaly, Assasins creed is the epitome of this. Its a beautiful game but i feel like the mechanics are so broken that it doesn't even "feel" fun to play. That is a problem. I think that many games hide their gameplay shortcomings with superficial components. Either way, i've noticed some people absolutely love the series. so in the end, its really about choice, u can go all gameplay, all graphics, all story, or a mixture of any of these. there is no need to criticize the reviewers for enjoying the game, because at the end of the day all that matters is how much fun you had playing the game and only your personal tastes will determine that.
 
iNvid02

iNvid02

Member
Andrew. said:
Any of you guys play "I Am Alive"? I bought it awhile ago and never really started. I figured it'd be a nice warmup to this.
Click to expand...

i did, i thought it was pretty good for a downloadable game.
has some interesting ideas, quite challenging and has great atmosphere (pretty much the road).

perfect to get into the survival mood before tlou
 
M

MilesVor

Banned
b0bbyJ03 said:
I've seen a lot of opinions like these lately but the one thing that many of us need to take into consideration is that many people have different tastes and that is why we have all these genres.

I'm 32, been playing since 5, and i've been between casual and hardcore my whole life. some years i play nonstop and others i barely turn on my console but i can tell you one thing, my taste has completely evolved. i play games to have fun, and that is the only thing that i demand out of them. If a developer can make a story that is entertaining and mix it up with some cool scripted moments, then it might capture my imagination enough to make me feel like a badass when im playing because i am invested enough to feel something.

i think the problem comes in when there is an unbalance, like if there is too much focus on story or graphics, but not enough on gameplay. for me personaly, Assasins creed is the epitome of this. Its a beautiful game but i feel like the mechanics are so broken that it doesn't even "feel" fun to play. That is a problem. I think that many games hide their gameplay shortcomings with superficial components. Either way, i've noticed some people absolutely love the series. so in the end, its really about choice, u can go all gameplay, all graphics, all story, or a mixture of any of these. there is no need to criticize the reviewers for enjoying the game, because at the end of the day all that matters is how much fun you had playing the game and only your personal tastes will determine that.
Click to expand...

Thank you for calming me down with a perfectly rational response ;)
Yup, I agree.
However, reviews... are an awkward sort of thing, where a reviewer's opinion needs to be mixed with objective technical facts.
Game reviews skew way too much towards the subjective side of writing.
Those long reviews I mentioned would sometimes spend MOST of the review talking about the negative points only to conclude the review explaining why it's still an absolutely amazing game. Reviewers just don't have the guts for that anymore (in general).
If you want to evangelize a game, write an editorial?
 
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