- #1
Thread Owner
THE LAST OF US
As requested by [MENTION=1713]fords8[/MENTION], I am going to do a little personal review of The Last of Us and hope that he will purchase it because of how amazing it is. ^_^ I honestly have no idea where to start; I absolutely loved it from start to finish. The storyline, the cutscenes, the music, everything - I am thoroughly impressed, despite several bad reviews. I would not however, give it 10/10 for a few reasons. I was not disappointed though, as many people were when the game was first released having pure 10/10 reviews. If you expect the best, then you?ll look for the worst.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Now, I hate to criticise the game as it really is well made and extremely enjoyable while tugging on your emotions, but the AI is not great. It's pretty awkward the majority of the time, particularly when you are playing as Joel and Ellie is in pure view of the guards and attracts zero attention - but don't make a noise! The slightest wrong movement/sound and all of the enemies are after you. It's a typical trait, admittedly, and I'm yet to play a game where the AI is perfect - or nearing it.
Enemies
While I enjoy zombies/cannibals and the like, I do have an issue with the killing of some enemies - and the unlimited ammunition they have. Ammunition is pretty scarce throughout the game, so why do the soldiers and hunters that have been shooting humongous amounts at me drop nothing, or very small amounts when they are killed? In fact, I found that the majority of ammo drops came from the zombies; who of course, were majority civilians and were not carrying any weapons. Obviously, nobody wants the game to be too easy - but when you're tight on ammo and have no chance of stealthing it, you have to hit, run and hope for ammo drops. Oh - and why do the zombies attack Ellie/bite her. She's infected, right? You don't see the zombies munching on each other, so why her?
Characters
Those of you who have played the game will be aware of how the characters are portrayed - for those of you who haven't: the main characters are important and it shows. You truly meet the characters that you travel with and they even have little conversations while travelling which shows their relationships. This obviously comes out more towards the middle/end of the game, with the relationship between Ellie and Joel becoming extremely obvious. I believe the characters are well written, though I would have liked a little more backstory on the 20 years we skipped in Joel's life. It seemed like a pretty large gap to just... skip.
Music
The music, in my opinion, was very fitting and helped with the scenes effectiveness. You occasionally hear the main theme lightly played over character-progression throughout the game, which I felt was very fitting but I also wanted to hear it for longer. Like many other games, the mood is reflected by the music - it also signals when danger is around. The music even changes when you are in stealth mode and are caught - just in case you didn't notice. ;-)
Other
I really enjoyed how the cutscenes were fitted with the gameplay, some with interaction points within them and made the whole thing pretty conjunctive. It did tend to jump around a bit at times though, such as the giant 20 year gap with no backing story other than the day that everything changed - I guess this allows you to learn more about Joel's character as you go along, but I don't feel the game gives enough away. There were also smaller skips towards the end between the seasons - what happened in that time? We don't really know that much. I would have liked a bit more detail at the end, just to see or gain an idea of how it all went - but I guess that's purely down to us.
As requested by [MENTION=1713]fords8[/MENTION], I am going to do a little personal review of The Last of Us and hope that he will purchase it because of how amazing it is. ^_^ I honestly have no idea where to start; I absolutely loved it from start to finish. The storyline, the cutscenes, the music, everything - I am thoroughly impressed, despite several bad reviews. I would not however, give it 10/10 for a few reasons. I was not disappointed though, as many people were when the game was first released having pure 10/10 reviews. If you expect the best, then you?ll look for the worst.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Now, I hate to criticise the game as it really is well made and extremely enjoyable while tugging on your emotions, but the AI is not great. It's pretty awkward the majority of the time, particularly when you are playing as Joel and Ellie is in pure view of the guards and attracts zero attention - but don't make a noise! The slightest wrong movement/sound and all of the enemies are after you. It's a typical trait, admittedly, and I'm yet to play a game where the AI is perfect - or nearing it.
Enemies
While I enjoy zombies/cannibals and the like, I do have an issue with the killing of some enemies - and the unlimited ammunition they have. Ammunition is pretty scarce throughout the game, so why do the soldiers and hunters that have been shooting humongous amounts at me drop nothing, or very small amounts when they are killed? In fact, I found that the majority of ammo drops came from the zombies; who of course, were majority civilians and were not carrying any weapons. Obviously, nobody wants the game to be too easy - but when you're tight on ammo and have no chance of stealthing it, you have to hit, run and hope for ammo drops. Oh - and why do the zombies attack Ellie/bite her. She's infected, right? You don't see the zombies munching on each other, so why her?
Characters
Those of you who have played the game will be aware of how the characters are portrayed - for those of you who haven't: the main characters are important and it shows. You truly meet the characters that you travel with and they even have little conversations while travelling which shows their relationships. This obviously comes out more towards the middle/end of the game, with the relationship between Ellie and Joel becoming extremely obvious. I believe the characters are well written, though I would have liked a little more backstory on the 20 years we skipped in Joel's life. It seemed like a pretty large gap to just... skip.
Music
The music, in my opinion, was very fitting and helped with the scenes effectiveness. You occasionally hear the main theme lightly played over character-progression throughout the game, which I felt was very fitting but I also wanted to hear it for longer. Like many other games, the mood is reflected by the music - it also signals when danger is around. The music even changes when you are in stealth mode and are caught - just in case you didn't notice. ;-)
Other
I really enjoyed how the cutscenes were fitted with the gameplay, some with interaction points within them and made the whole thing pretty conjunctive. It did tend to jump around a bit at times though, such as the giant 20 year gap with no backing story other than the day that everything changed - I guess this allows you to learn more about Joel's character as you go along, but I don't feel the game gives enough away. There were also smaller skips towards the end between the seasons - what happened in that time? We don't really know that much. I would have liked a bit more detail at the end, just to see or gain an idea of how it all went - but I guess that's purely down to us.
