First impressions of Last of Us Part 2:

As others have said the accessibility options are terrific.

Nice job with the graphics and art design of both games because just from the opening my brain isn’t saying that this is obviously meteorically better. Just a nice upgrade.

I gather not long has passed between the last game and the beginning of this one but they dialed up Joel’s old and grizzled by at least 35%? Little odd.

Somewhere on a Naughty Dog bulletin board: “Number of gruff sighs to introduce a character needed? 5? 10?”

Controllin all kinds of characters in this one already, dang.

Ellie is both a horse girl AND a space girl. The ultimate combo.

Serious question finally: I enjoyed TLoU Part One but I thought it could have just as easily been a movie or TV show (and it looks like it’s going to be?) which I do not consider a criticism. That said, I’m hoping Part 2 asserts itself a little more.

For all of my little jabs at this series and my opinions in the last tweet I never gelled with any of the Nathan Drake series and those are gamey games so its not like just being Extra will work for me

That said too, holy cow we can jump wherever we want AND there’s a dodge button now? The Real The Last of Us Starts Now

Wish not granted between games: Companions who search for things with you.

Wish not granted between games: Being able time carry two bottles. Why can’t I pop enough pills for that? :-(

Actually story spoilers maybe: Not really a weeder so could be wrong but since they weren’t coughing I’m guessing Eugene’s stash wasn’t great or they weren’t really trying that hard?

Also the asshole part of my brain is wondering if Ellie is supposed to be “Aw nerts I sure wish she were MY girlfriend” but then I also wonder if there are any romances where you aren’t supposed to like one of the participants.

ARE there any love stories where the creators deliberately make one or both the the people terrible? Maybe that is antithesis to the concept but it would be funny reading “the greatest love story ever told” if it were true, resonant, salacious, AND everyone hated the characters.

One of the characters looks kind of like the guy from the Educated Barfly YT channel to me.

Hmm, the combat feels tighter (yay!) but that dodge button I like so much can get kind of spammy if they throw more than one zombie at you still. :-/

I see they tried to make the “right 3rd person camera makes crowd control difficult” problem work with arrows above enemies.

Those plastic flowers or did they spare some greenhouse space for lillies and hydrangeas? I mean, it’s nice to have pretty things even in the apocalypse but Hydreangeas grow REALLY big and they are shockingly poisonous to cats, dogs, horses, and people.

Kind of annoyed that Ellie has picked up the journaling/sketching/picking up specific props to wobble them around in close-up from Nathan Drake. Is it a decent storytelling mechanism? Yes. Does this make #TLOU2 feel more derivative? Also yes.

Spoilers The Last of Us Part 2: the scene of looking through Joel’s house is really effective but was his revolver that iconic or am I reading too much into that “reveal?”

More spoilers TLoUP2:

Okay, the reveal of the book next to his bed is a gut punch. Well done.

Maps that are actual maps!!! That’s a nice upgrade over Part 1. Here’s hoping they make it worthwhile.

Ellie is the definitely the type of person to bring her guitar to a party and play without anyone asking so any previous praise has been RESCINDED.

Also there is no way the other character in this scene doesn’t question the lyrics to sad hipster version of Take on Me.

Also, c’mon game I’m really thing to stick with you but wow. This is so “cinematic” that in comparison the first game looks quaint. We are dangerously close to Hideo Kojima territory.

The hint thing popping up and becoming more insistent over time with its only little “bwam” noise is annoying since you can’t make it go away and it’s hard to ignore.

There have only been two already but I’m going to say that’s too many 80s pop culture references.

These characters could reference ANYTHING from the old world, expand out a little.

Three, technically four now. Boooooooooooo

One thing I miss, even if this isn’t that kind of scavenging game, is loot popping up in a little more logical places as in the 3D Fallouts.

Medic bags and medicine cabinets had chems, munitions containers at checkpoints or security stations had ammo, etc.

Some of that is also true in The Last of Us but for the most overt anything could be anywhere. Found a bottle of hooch in the pastry cabinet in a coffee shop. We don’t live in a world that generous.

Also my realllllly nit picky brain still thinks the way “cloth” works in these games is silly. There’s fabric everywhere but you must find the specific small sheet of fabric perfect for either medkits OR Molotov cocktails.

If the idea is that they need to be *sterile* to be medkit worthy then I have bad news for any fabric ever left outside a package for more than 10 seconds after the end of the world.

Side note: legit think it would be funny to have a survival game where you need to check the little tag on a piece of fabric to see the percentage of natural fibers to see if they’ll burn.

Wish not granted between games: Not having to do that pointless shake the controller thing when your flashlight starts going out. Unless they added a bunch of other motion-based actions to the game it’s just annoying.

Feels like they got maybe my largest complaint half-fixed between games. Companion characters are better about staying in earshot of you for conversations so you aren’t talking to no one but they don’t always stay close enough for you to actually hear them clearly :-/

Feel like this has been a pretty negative thread so far so I will say the improvements to the combat system have really built it into something special. I never thought the first game was “just a cover shooter” but this expands on it so well.

Still not the hand to hand/melee system of my dreams but everything else especially the ways they’ve expanded stealth all blend together nicely. And the expanded level design makes those tools even better.

Just wish it were possible to see enemies further off. Funny, everyone is sick of Ubisoft-style base clearing (I’m not entirely but I don’t play that many games) but one of those with this kind of gameplay would be a lot of fun.

Now how Ellie gonna stuff a pistol in the back of them tight jeans with a coke bottle silencer on the end? This game isn’t very realistic 7/10

Oh wait, no wonder I like this combat system, it reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 3!

It only took 16 years

Actually Far Cry 3 and 4 (haven’t played 5) sort of hit some of the same buttons but they’re the turbo charged 80s action version.

Also to whoever effectively subtweeted this game saying developers should ditch detective mode entirely? Nah. 1) I don’t know what you replace it with which doesn’t give you some other kind of “obvious” visual cue and 2) You’d still want one for the hearing impaired.

I think making it drastically less detailed and cutting the range way down (before upgrades) was a really good idea though. Makes it useful for orienting yourself in these complex combat zones.

Back to negative, if there isn’t a battle game to play with all the GD super hero cards I’m picking up then they shouldn’t have put one every ten feet.

There’s so much more dialog in this game to fill time since there’s so much more space to fill and a lot of it is very insubstantial :-/

“Thing?”
“Half-response to thing”
“But thing though...”
“More directly dismissive response to thing!”

Repeat.

It’s so much talking AROUND a thing instead of talking ABOUT it, even if that thing is inconsequential. It’s like the conversation @mermaid_seph and I have almost every day about lunch...

“What do you want?”
“I don’t know, what do YOU want? I can eat anything and am incapable of deciding.”
“Most things do not sound good to me so I am also incapable of deciding.”

Only at the end we actually pick something!

...even if it’s Panera Bread.

I really REALLY wish o had a little more control over my inventory. I’ve passed up at least 10 rifle rounds because you can carry 9 total. Let me ditch the revolver and pass up any ammo for it!

Booooooo, I’m willing to stretch video games logic pretty far but c’mon, these soldiers have semi-auto M14s with at least 20 round magazines. Even if they aren’t great rifles there’s no way Ellie doesn’t ditch her bolt action that holds 5 for one.

Depending on if she’s yelling or not Ellie’s voice kind of breaks and sounds younger. Is that an intentional choice to show that she is otherwise pitching her voice down to indicate Ellie is also pretending her voice is deeper or is it kind of a flub?

Okay, I just need to be patient, clearly they are going somewhere with Ellie being such a dick in the present based on how SPOILERS she’s abrasive but in a charming way in the first flashback with Joel in the woods.

They know the difference since they can write the difference so something DID happen during those 4 years to go from one to the other, right?

Spoilers: museum scene confirmed they knew what they were doing with the giraffe scene in the first game and it being a “homage” to JP. Vindication.

Spoilers: Is this business about Ellie loving space a comment about the indelible nature of the human spirit to explore, a weird way of saying that we do dangerous things even if they don’t really make sense, a way of making Ellie seem cooler, or a way of redeeming Joel?

Triangle button practice guitar
Play necessary chords for Classical Gas
Insert gif of Lenny nodding along
Post to YouTube.

This is a minor world building/environment detail but I wish ammo came in larger numbers in sparser caches or largely came from defeating enemies. Even if this is America every bank, bike shop, and patisserie doesn’t have some shells behind the counter like the Old West.