The Last of Us

Lanx said:

eh? fighting the infected are not difficult, just sneak and kill, clickers insta kill you, so thats it.

i figure since i'm on lesbo revenge quest i'll be hunting humans and that'll be a whole different story

comparatively, i'm playing god of war also and that is way more fun, so far it's just a cutscene romp with the occasional character controls to progress it to the next cut scene

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I wasn't going to post anything as I really do not like naughty dog games, but the bolded is exactly why. I just cannot get into games where the only reward is story beats period. It's why I can't get into Witcher 3 either. I feel like I'm playing a giant collection of short stories, and i know for many people that's awesome, but not for me. I'm not saying they are BAD games at all... just absolutely not for me. God of War and Horizon both were heavy narrative games, but they had actual game play with rewards that were not just story beats in there (various builds, gear, levels etc).

Cohhcarnage finished the game. Gave his thoughts video which he tried to do as nice as possible without spoilers. Then he finished that, and said "let's talk about the game". Like others, loved environments, combat was ok, though he felt it was off due to them saying that it would offer a lot of character customization, and he didn't feel like that was the case at all. Then he got to the story. Other than Fallout 76 I don't think he has ever been as negative about a game. "Hard ok at best, meaning 4- 5 out of 10." But that was the story, the delivery of the story, he rated it "2 fingers out of 10". Again, doing what Tyler did, saying that as a stand alone game, it is "ok", but compared to the original, it fails.

I would guess most people who are early adopters of the game have played the first and I don't see how this doesn't impact the reputation of Naughty Dog as a whole. Probably the trust of the mainstream review sites as well.

People who frequent forums/youtube/streamers are not the majority of the people who buy games. The leaks for instance were probably only known by a fraction of the people who pre-ordered it, and a fraction of those looked at them, and a fraction of those might have cancelled their order, but overall, most people who play this now know nothing about the game except that they liked the first one, and this is getting 10/10s. A mostly reviewed 10/10 sequel of what was also mostly reviewed as 10/10 game. Last of Us is currently at 55th place of all games on Metacritic and Last of Us 2 is at 46th. This is higher rated than the original. It's the 46th best reviewed game of all time on all platforms. This should be amazing right?

Due to the popularity of the first game, and the reviewer hype for this one, I have no doubt it will sell a lot of early copies and be marketed as a success. Where I do think that where the disparity between review scores and the general markets satisfaction with the game will be clear is in the remaster. The sales comparison for instance of the TLOU remastered (Ps4 edition) and the eventual TLOU2 remastered (PS5 edition). The first remaster sold really well and many double dipped to play it again on a new and more powerful console. An old game, re-released, where old review hype doesn't matter that much, but overall word of mouth does. And how many will double dip for this? To experience the story again with better visuals and 60fps?

Sony did their best for Naughty Dog during the leaks. Suppressing news, DMCA claims and the likes. They are after all financially motivated to do so for the sales. Sony owns Naughty dog. And no doubt, Sony was loving the 10/10s. But, in the end, sales are what matters. This might hit their expected launch sales. However, if Sony also has expected long term sales and have expected sales of the remaster....

As others have mentioned, I have yet clicked at a vod of a streamer that has finished the game that viewed it as a 10/10 game. Youtube is flooding over with negative videos. The disparity of the mainstream reviews and the general audience reaction is huge. Word of mouth for this title is not good and I do think the long term sales will reflect it.

In a future not far away, I would not be surprised if Naughty Dogs name was brought up in a financial board meeting at Sony in anything but a positive light.

Bubbles said:

I use yt part for DoS2 builds. Sometimes fextralife pops up on recommended.

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Fextralife has way too high a search rank for the quality of their DOS2 builds, Sin Tee / Lost Sinner would be at the very top if the system wasn't so easy to game.

I'm probably slower than most people playing through these games as I try and search for everything in an area and will tackle combat more slowly so I can stealth kill and conserve my resources. I am just over 6 hours of playtime in and they just introduced my first dog encounter I think (saw 2 guys run into the school with their dogs, but thats where I stopped playing for the night). So far the game has not been bad. I largely enjoy playing as the Ellie and Dina team even though things really haven't gotten too dark yet (I know its coming). Story aside, Naughty Dog still does a lot of things right. The visuals and sound are great and the little cut scenes that go into the game to break up the combat sections. I thought Ellie playing A-Ha's "Take on me" in the music shop was a good scene and really humanized her and Dina (despite the laughable idea that an acoustic guitar that hadn't been touched in 20+ years was not rotted out and only needed 1 string tuned). So far they have really been able to convey realistic emotions from the animations and facial expressions I think. Ellie's sense of loss was very apparent as she started to play the Pearl Jam song that Joel had sung to her but had to stop after the first line or two.

I have not enjoyed what little time I have played with Abby at this point and even though the Joel death scene could work in the grand scheme of things, I am sure as I see how the story plays out, it will just make me angry in retrospect. So I guess, what I'm trying to say is that playing as Ellie and Dina feels like a Last of Us game, but I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm hoping I catch up to Tommy alive and he makes it back to his wife.

The sales problem won't be an issue for this game, much like they weren't for Last Jedi. But hopefully/likely you will see it be an issue for them going forward with other ND or Druckman titles. Then they will come up with all new defenses that will be even more bullshit.

Noodleface said:

Dont support Fextralife. He games twitch views (to the tune of 20k+ viewers daily) by embedding his twitch in every wiki page

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Quick derail. This comment just stood out as odd to me. So this guy made a gaming website, which I recognize from googling stuff from souls games before, and embeds his twitch on it. He is then able to skim some extra $$ from twitch in the form of views to his stream? It is basically like running his own ad and getting ad revenue from twitch?

I guess I don't see the issue. Seems like he is just leveraging his own site's success to get some extra cash from twitch. I am legit curious why this is something to be angry about?

Phazael said:

Witcher had the benefit of multiple ways to do many things, open world design, multiple endings affected by your agency and choice, and--- oh yeah---- no fucking trannies and shoe horned in minorities. Its story telling is also top notch all through the game (which the TloU1 had in spades). I am pretty sure Drukman did not come up with the good parts of the first game, as has been suggested here earlier. Sony drew the wrong conclusions after he claimed credit for its success (probably had much more to do with the woman he forced out's original outline and the influence of the voice actors, notably Troy Baker) and this is him trying to massage his ego and pimp trannies for the privilege of being the latest Tanoomba to beta orbit Sark. There is simply no other plausable explanation for the complete tonal shift and agenda pushing between the two games. And remember the whole "gays everywhere" shit started with Bill, who was done well, but the moment Drukkman got control with the DLC it was prepubescent interracial carpet munching right out of the fucking gate.

There is zero excuse for this when another fairly SJW heavy studio was able to put out a top tier game (GOW) under the direct watchful eye of Sony. They let him run rampant because they bought his bullshit and did not want to upset the american SJW cult for bad publicity. I would LOVE to see the reaction of the critics in Japan to this game and its "story". Fucking Sony fucked this up so bad they likely hurt their PS5 sales with this fiasco. And they are STILL not reigning Drukkman in at all.

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Not disagreeing with that at all... just saying story and story alone just doesn't do it for me in any way. I am not comparing TLoU2 in any way to Witcher or even the First TLoU for that matter, because legit it looks like a train wreck and it's obvious the talent that remains is not what made the previous stuff so great for folks at Naughty Dog.

And yeah if the sales aren't like the 1st one's remaster, I can guarantee you they will do something. I'll stop there, because frankly I think Naughty Dog is given way too much credit anyway and I know that's not a popular opinion. But money talks and this Druckman guy sounds like he took shit too far with this one (and showed he has no real talent in the process).

i remember my dad used to rant at MTV when i was growing up and yelling about how kids didn't appreciate music and these "long haired faggots dancing like a bunch of queers" is ruining America. Doubly funny whenever Money for Nothing would play.

sadly thats us now, we all rant and rave and can't understand how woke zoomers bitching about white people and capitalism intend to lead productive lives but still the shit they "make" sells like hotcakes. TLJ made $1.2b, Captain Marvel made $1.1b, and I'm pretty sure even though I consider TLOU2 one of the worst video games ever made, it'll sell 10m copies in the first six months. Only thing I can say is they didn't get a penny from me.

Ghosts of Tsushima releases in 3 weeks, that should be sorta interesting to see if they fuck it up or not.

China Bat Soup said:

Thanks for sharing. What does your wife's boyfriend think of the game?

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I’m not sure. She has never introduced us.

Dude is a train-wreck. Holy shit.

yimmien said:

Quick derail. This comment just stood out as odd to me. So this guy made a gaming website, which I recognize from googling stuff from souls games before, and embeds his twitch on it. He is then able to skim some extra $$ from twitch in the form of views to his stream? It is basically like running his own ad and getting ad revenue from twitch?

I guess I don't see the issue. Seems like he is just leveraging his own site's success to get some extra cash from twitch. I am legit curious why this is something to be angry about?

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There's extra cash, and then there's viewbotting to be #14 most watched twitch channel in all of June 2020. I'm not talking small numbers - I'm talking 20-30k average "viewers" and 850M+ total views. It's horse shit. Anyone else who bought view bots would be instabanned. It's a garbage practice.