[Faithless]

I also tried to get around the doctor without killing him. Then stabbed him in the throat with his own knife. Then punched another doctor ONCE to see what would happen. If Joel is a sociopath, that last action was probably the closest thing to becoming like him, and the game itself induced the behavior.

Then I died like 5 times trying to get away with Ellie. Kept getting shot in the back. That's a funny story, too. "I got ya, baby girl," and immediately: Headshot. What a sad end -- the doctor is dead, so nobody gets a cure, and Joel is dead, too.
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my website

[remote]

curious: does everyone still take shiv master first on survival, or would weapon sway be better?

i'm up to the part with bill and i haven't used a single shiv on anything other than shiv doors, so i'm leaning toward weapon sway or max health...
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[remote]

Adi, I employed the schoolyard tactics outlined in your survival videos on youtube to thrilling success.

Bill almost screwed the whole thing up by getting stuck on the car below, but once he got up it worked like a charm.

Kicksplosionings happened.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Holdypaws]

[stabo10]

Hi guys.

I come here after receiving a ban from 4chan in violation of Global Rule Number 6:

"The quality of posts is extremely important to the community. Contributors are encouraged to provide high-quality images and informative comments."

The post earning this ban follows in full:

"The Last of Us is FUCK suck-trash for teeny PS3 weebles."

Whether or not this was fair, I leave to your common sense and intuition. However, seeing as this is a forum which requires administrator-validated registration, I will use it as a chance to elaborate upon my feelings.

The Last of Us is an Exclusive, AAA title for the Sony PlayStation 3.

The medium has finally matured. It is now en-vogue to develop video games which reflect on what it means to be a video game.

TLOU is Naughty Dog's entry into this already burgeoned field of white phosphorus and male-on-male rape. As a much needed addition to this console's lack luster library, it was hyped beyond belief. I read on message boards that it was getting 10/10s all over the board. What is the ruckus about? However, as a seasoned video game player, actually playing through one of these modern movie games is completely out of the question. It would be an insult to my hard-core gaming skills. I was still curious though. The kids on the Internet are really getting worked up. What's in this game? Do you get to kill a man by shoving your dick through his eye? Luckily I was able to find a compilation of all the cut scenes on You Tube.

After 30 minutes, I became bored and switched an 18 minute compilation of just the kill-shots. But don't let this fool you, I still consider myself well over-qualified for the purposes of reviewing this game.

Dudes hitting dudes with bricks.

Set pieces that were out dated before Resident Evil 4 came out.

A rabbit is impaled in a shout-out to DooM. Its here that I realize that you get to play as the girl-escort-sidekick, and she gets to use weapons. Is this going to be Naughty Dog's Ace in the Hole? She meets a cannibal, who in a world veritably full of giraffes, rabbits, has no reason to be a cannibal other than it was in "The Road". He flirts with her in a cage and she kicks him in the balls. Later, he gets the better of her, gets on top of her, and prepares to show her "what he is capable of." Recently, it is said that video games are nothing more than adolescent male power fantasies. Staying in line with the truest power fantasy held among the beta males who make up this market's demographics, she viciously fends him off, saving her fungi-proofed cunt for Joel, our vicarious nice-guy supplicator.

If games can be more art than movies I think their best chance is against movies based on books. This is a game that fails to transcend "The Road": The Movie which in and of itself failed to transcend "The Road": The Book via the omission of one scene:

The two protagonists wander into a cave in a dream. They find an underground lake, and by the lake is this monstrous creature with see-through skin. He can see its brain and guts and shit. This passage was the most profound thing in the book. When the screenwriter was reading through with his hi-lighter deciding what scenes would need to be reworked for the movie, he must have immediately scrawled a big red X through this entire paragraph next to the words "CG?" It is ordinary for games to quickly shift between contrasting environments. Sadly, there are no battles against giant foetus space aliens to be found here.

But there is one moment of true inspiration in The Last of Us:

It comes shortly after the climax, after being forced to shoot a brain surgeon in the brain for the sake of seeing the end credits. This is where Neil Druckmann takes out his big-boy writing pen and delivers something brilliant. One of the woman-doctors chastises you:

"Oh, God! You fucking animal!"

A man-doctor quickly puts her in her place.

"Kari, you shut the hell up!"

Is this smart? When are we going to see The Last of these murderous kleptomaniacs? How many more games chock full of bloody, 3D death-blows making a statement about violence do we need before the statement has been made?

Naughty Dog has nothing to offer here but bearded guys in flannel shirts, grunting or saying "fuck".

[shrugtheironteacup]

neggy?!
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[Brooks]

Surely he could resist the call of 4chan

[remote]

assumed it was vic
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[CubaLibre]

I think Stabo is just Stabo. You guys remember Stabo.

Hi Stabo. You and The Troops should hang out sometime.

I came up with this last night when justifying my conflicted opinion about this game to my buddy: The Last of Us is "not the Citizen Kane of videogames; it's the The Avengers."

The Avengers is a fun movie and I liked watching it. You can bitch about Joss Whedon and power fantasies or whatever, but it's a well-written and acted ensemble franchise-crossover movie where each character gets just a tiny bit of decent motivation and witty dialogue and the action scenes are well-paced and followable and expansive without being obscene. It's like, congratulations guys, you did it! This is what The Superhero Movie was going for. Within this tiny niche of a niche of a niche of genre formula (one that happens to make bazillions of dollars) you have succeeded at perfecting your own formula. It's Coca-Cola, it's a Quarter Pounder With Cheese. Flavor scientists have decreed it maximally consumable.

But it's a dead end. There are a million other ways for movies to be made and The Avengers explores 0.00001% of them. It's fun to watch, but it's not inspiring. It's simultaneously a celebration of completion and a death knell.

In the same fashion, there's a way in which The Last of Us is itself a telos, the end fulfillment of an Unreal 3 Engine template provided by Gears of War. We've done it, folks. We've made a game out of waist-high cover stealth shooting and reptetitious puzzle "pacing" segments and "crafting" and all other Approved Game Design Elements 2013 that is actually written well enough that you feel a little something. It's top-quality entertainment, but it's also a dead end.

Does anyone really want another game like The Last of Us? 100 more? Every possible genre-movie-genre applied (with really good writing and dialogue and beautiful art assets!) to the same game-design Mad Libs, with the tiniest possible increments of mechanical change to fit the theme?

It's true that the existence of "the AAA game" doesn't essentially foreclose the existence of the billions of other kinds of games. But it does forclose those kinds of games getting 100 million dollars spent on their development. Is this where we want to funnel literally 99% of the money in the games industry? Do we want Mount & Blade, Day Z, Stalker, Raven Shield, Riven, Full Throttle, Hanano no Puzzle, and on and on and on into infinity to exist in the Greenlight greyzone of six-person development teams and five-figure budgets (or less)?
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Let's Play, starring me.

[misadventurous]

[parker]

[Broco]

stabo you're obviously uninterested in either enjoying or fairly evaluating the game -- and that's fine, I don't think it's some kind of "must play".

[remote]

i no longer think there is such a thing as a "must play" videogame, no matter how much i may like it because somebody's gonna hate it
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[TXTSWORD]

The intro to this was really impressive (I got it tonight) to the extent that I didn't even care that I was playing a movie. Past the intro, I dunno it's boring me pretty hard but I just now met Ellie so maybe things will feel better when I'm more "taking the lead". Or maybe ill never be able to stomach a game like this - though its very nice looking.

[remote]

i do think the very first part with tess is a little boring and meant to ease you in

definitely gets better
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Holdypaws]

A lot of good posts about the violence and this being a dead end. Or we know it should be a dead end, and also that it surely won't be.

I think the problem lies in the fact that they are trying to make a serious story by fitting it into the gameplay mechanic of shooting tons of stuff (guys). People noticed this a lot with Uncharted, and in this game it basically fits pretty well, but you still end up with characters that murder so many people you can imagine the movie Commando sitting in the corner with its legs crossed blushing.

I'd like to see it with about 80% of the violence removed, maybe making it more like Raw Danger or something like Tim said.
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https://twitter.com/super_catback

[remote]

as enjoyable i have found the survival mode to be, even with its starker and more desperate murder than the normal game, i couldn't argue: a game like this where more of it is just the journey and a few desperate encounters would be a nice thing to have

i like this game a whole lot, but yes, it certainly is a videogame
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Holdypaws]

I don't want it to stop being a game, but I want it to be a game that services the story more. It just doesn't feel completely right.

That being said, as someone who enjoys videogames, I love it. Started playing through it a second time the other day and am actually enjoying it more, flaws and all. It really does basically sum up a decade or so of games.
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https://twitter.com/super_catback

[remote]

yeah. i mean, i see no reason to plainly write it off as a death knell. and even if i did, a death knell for what? have you noticed how well indie games are doing, lately? it's a great game that accomplishes far more with real characters and acting than most videogames ever do. it makes me feel things. it has problems, like every other fucking videogame ever made. it's not citizen kane or the avengers or fuckin' weekend at bernie's. it is what it is.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Holdypaws]

I think it's a pretty amazing achievement in its own right, and at the same time a baby step for the maturity of the medium. I guess!
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https://twitter.com/super_catback

[Broco]

The problem with all the human encounters is that they strain logic, both that so many guys are out to kill you for some reason, and that you're somehow capable of murdering all of them. The zombie encounters never feel that way because the world is overrun with zombies, and zombies are stupid.

They liked the gameplay of the humans more, so they set the game up to have >50% humans, but really there are only a few of those battles that make sense. Like the initial fight in Pittsburgh, that one makes perfect sense, but then they go ahead and make you fight like 50 more guys before you get out of the city. And then 20 of them chase you into the suburbs for absolutely no good reason.

So the overall impression is of gratuitous violence because violence is fun, not desperation. Not even the Ellie parts feel particularly desperate since the player is quite experienced at the game by then and can still murder everybody without much difficulty despite the limited resources.

[remote]

i'm not yelling at you specifically or anything, holdypaws. sorry if i came off that way. i just think it's a real cool game and i'm normally the guy going on about how everything should look to games like dark souls, la-mulana, starseed pilgrim, etc.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Holdypaws]

I heard no yelling! I thought we were on the same page. =)
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https://twitter.com/super_catback

[parker]

[Broco]

[evnvnv]

I watched a friend play this for a couple hours today

The murders are so graphic D:
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Brooks]

A new tier of graphic murder could be this title's lasting gift

[CubaLibre]

[shrugtheironteacup]

[Ronnoc]

I'm a big fan of The Suffering series. I'm sorry, guys.


(The people who keep making Silent Hill movies should just make a The Suffering movie already. It' clearly what they actually want to be doing)

[remote]

http://www.latestnewsexplorer.com/sony-registers-the-last-of-us-2-3-domains/
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[108]

i hope the full titles are

"More of Us"

and

"Some More of Us"
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[The Troops]

"Look Who's Lasting Too"

"Look Who's Still Lasting"

[remote]

the last last of us

the last of the last last of us
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Ronnoc]

The last of USPS

[shrugtheironteacup]

[CubaLibre]

[evnvnv]

Underrated film IMHO
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[diplo]

[remote]

i'm not despairing or anything. maybe they'll be good, and maybe they won't?
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[misadventurous]