Gaming clique

[Duffers]

My views on TLOU2 are well documented and don’t need repeated.

Although when Midge is finished I’ll dig out my rant again.

Please dig it out. FWIW, I really, really enjoyed it. Felt so conflicted in a way I don't think another game has ever done. Can understand some peoples dislike of the ending, but as with most things the journey is better than the destination in terms of story telling. My only major dislike was the stalker enemies, were shit, annoying and didn't really fit the narrative of runner > clicker > bloater.

Here you go MIdge...

Had a little dig and found a few of my opinions on TLOU2 from another site. Just reading them again is reminding me how much I hated that fucking game.

The relentlessly grim tone got pretty wearisome after a while. The game has a very simple moral about the cycle of violence and revenge, but it hammered it home with all the subtlety of an axe through someone’s face (which I did more than once). By the end I honesty expected one of the main characters to turn to the screen and say “you know, the real monster is revenge...” or some such shite.

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What I liked:

The setting - game looked fantastic and I loved just exploring Seattle, scavenging for stuff and seeing the aftermath of the plague;
The core mechanics hadn't changed much from the first one, which isn't a bad thing. Combat was still great, sneaking around taking out fools never got old;
A nice diverse range of supporting characters;
Scar Island;
Dina;
Abby;
There were a few moments that forced me to put the controller down and think about what I had just done.
Not having to stop every few minutes to move a ladder or push a bit of wood across a river.

What I didn't like:

As I said before, this game has a very simple moral but bludgeons the player over the head with it. I get the feeling this is a game that believes itself to making some grand statement when really it's very simplistic;
The violence - I've been playing games for over 30 years and am pretty desensitized to computer game violence but there were a few cut scenes that made me feel uncomfortable and a few of the fight scenes, especially the very last one I just didn’t want to take part in. A lot of it felt gratuitous and unnecessary; Story felt bloated, there was lots of padding and flashbacks upon flashbacks upon flashbacks that added very little. Could definitely have been trimmed down a little;
Weak supporting characters - other than Abby I couldn't care less about the other WLF members.
So many flashbacks! At one point there was a flashback within a flashback!

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As I said, I enjoyed the mechanics of the game. But I cannot buy into this view that the game says anything profound or challenging, it’s just misery and gratuitous, unnecessary violence.

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I think my biggest issue with the game is that it doesn’t actually ask the questions or make the points it seems to think it makes. The first game asked questions around the breakdown of humanity in extreme circumstances and how far a person would go to protect someone they cared about.

This one had a paper thin moral about violence spawning more violence and tried to dress the message up with endless and unnecessary brutality. For me it used violence in place of actually saying anything. It was exhausting to play through, I genuinely didn’t want to take part in the very last fight on the beach. I wished there was an option to skip and go home.