Zero Punctuation: The Last of Us

[Pink Apocalypse]

I normally get consistent chuckles out of Yahtzee's humor, even when it's crass. But that 'motorboat' joke hit me badly. Jokes about underage characters and sexual acts just aren't funny.

The sad thing is, I may very well be the only one who thinks so.

 

[Paul The Best]

11 / 13 = .84, not .99... math police at your service!

 

[TurkeyProphet]

I am worried about all this murder business when I will probably inevitably handover 19.99USD+tax for this game. I haven't played the Uncharted series, and I have a feeling if I did I would not want to give this game a shot. But it looks like it might be a nowadays rarefied half decent game with its quasi fresh take on zombie game play and potential for attractive everything's gone flowers environs.

Anyway. Yahtzee's review summoned up on old memory of when this game was first being carted out for the public. The publishers promised that murder would not be a necessary element of the game. Did this promise pan out? Or is this game another one of those creepy serial killer simulators or what?

EDITED: Oh well. Taking Yahtzee's full review at face value this one looks like a pass. I think only sociopaths are allowed in the video game industry anymore. You'd probably have to be one to rise up in its ranks I suppose anyway.

Murder isn't particularly necessary for most of the game - although you will have to kill a few zombies and a few men. In fact the killing feels so dirty that I regularly tried to kill no one just because I felt bad doing it. Which is weird for a game because usually I'd happily bazooka people in the face. When you do kill though it feels necessary in a grim way.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

So you have to watch out for that everything-proof shield?

Your attacks will roll of them like water off a... Drake's back

Oh that just gave me a disturbing mental image. X(

 

[Casual Shinji]

This really does come over as a very, very simplistic analysis of the whole game. Poor and actually quite disappointing review overall. The point of the ending seems to have completely sailed over Yahtzee's head.

Especially since it's kinda similar to Spec Ops: The Line (except way better), which he really liked. That too was a game that had way more going on then just its familiar setting.

 

[kailus13]

So basically, Ellie's plot armour removes any sense of immersion? I feel that immersion would be especially important in a story driven game.

 

[themilo504]

Despite owning a ps3 I have not played the game yet because I don?t generally buy games that cost 50 bucks.

From what I?ve seen it does look like the video game equivalent of Oscar bait, which I guess doesn?t have to be a bad thing, but it also has you gunning down entire armies of bandits so it?s still trying to be a mainstream game.

 

[Yuuki]

Wait, if Ellie is of bugger-all use in gameplay and essentially invisible to zombies then why is she even there?

So the devs could stick a female character on the front cover to score an easy win with the "moar female protagonists!" parade?

 

[Bbleds]

I do like the hell out of this game, and I also like how Yahtzee is super critical. He did bring up good points, but here are the two things I disagree with:

I found smoke bombs super helpful, in harder difficulties you have to conserve ammo and enemies can drain your health almost completely with a good power weapon shot. An example is at the very end when you have to get through a hallway full of fireflies all with rifles, I through smoke bombs and was able to take them out tactically because they can't see you nor can they usually shoot you. Also it usually makes enemies think you are at the smoke while you sneak around behind them or avoid them altogether.

Spoiler: Mod Edit: The Last of Us ending spoilers

I thought the ending was great. When you finish your quest you find Ellie will have to die in the process of attempting a cure. You of course have grown attached to her like a daughter and have to save her, but you know deep down she would probably agree to making the sacrifice. So you saved her, but at what cost? Sure it may not have worked but you lie to her about it, and presumably you are going to live your lives without her ever knowing you selfishly saved her life. I feel like this drives home the whole morally ambiguous message the story is going for.

 

[TurkeyProphet]

I think the plant zombies is a fresh idea. It's really weird that its never been done before. I think Yahtzee would've praised it if they were called "zombies" in game. But it sounds like the game keeps saying "infected" over and over instead of just using the natural word for zombie.

Zombies have too much lore behind them and they are fundamentally a ridiculous concept which I think anyone trying to create a sense of realism would be best avoiding. The thing is - they weren't the living dead and a pivotal part of the plot is that there could be a cure for the infection. How can you cure death? We know they are basically zombies - the writers know they are zombies. We don't need to call them zombies though because it's just silly for a world to acknowledge the idea of a mythical creature like that.

 

[josemlopes]

This game is 10/10 therefore this review is wrong and I will waste internetz space whining about it. /sarcasm

Should have brought the popcorn for this

 

[Formica Archonis]

Yahtzee, thank you for this review. As someone who grew up on pulp SF and then spent his teens reading fanzine fanfic, I got worn out on the nihilist theme, particularly in an apocalyptic context, over ten years ago and have yet to recover. Your dislike of the ending fills me with warmth because now I know there's someone else out there who saw the ending and didn't scream "CITIZEN KANE OF GAMING I LOVE YOU!", and indeed had similar misgivings as I did.

It's nice to know I'm not alone.

 

[runujhkj]

Wait. Yahtzee, a man whose legacy depends on him disliking popular games, blew a popular game's faults out of proportion? Let me get my fainting couch. I never understood why people need to defend their favorite games from this guy. I've played Last of Us four or five times now, and I still got a pretty good laugh out of this video. Who cares? It's not even a question of "but then people won't buy it as much" anymore, because the game's already sold better than Bioshock Infinite did across both consoles, and it's a PS3 exclusive.

Live and let live, people. Unless you're the type of person who's just now saying "Well, now that I know Yahtzee doesn't like it, I can safely disregard it." That kind of person is an idiot. So you've seen all the universal acclaim this game has gotten and, despite the fact that it came from all kinds of sources (if you don't like IGN or Gamespot, why not look at Edge, which has only given a perfect score 10 or so times in its entire existence?), you decided that the only thing that mattered was the 4-minute humorous opinion of a snarky British man? You're an idiot.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

I love Yahtzee and all and he does fairly often bring up valid points... but I couldn't disagree more with that review and now I'm just genuinely curious who and what would qualify as good character and good story in his book (except Prince of Persia and Garret).

 

[TurkeyProphet]

No no. Zombie is a word. It's not a mythological creature. If you have something that acts like a zombie its a zombie. Even if its your dog who found a beer on the ground. Its hokey writing to call these things anything but zombies. Maybe to doctors first on the scene they are "infected" but realism, if you are a survivor, two days later, these things are zombies. It's unrealistic to call them anything else.

Sure we use "zombie" all the time to mean a braindead person but there is also the monster that is a "zombie" that is some slow walking dead freak that only wants to eat human flesh and in this context we think of the latter. If someone had some weird plant disease that may them crazy I wouldn't call them zombies and I think it's way more hokey for a character in a story to acknowledge that these zombies used to be a fantasy monster from horror films but are now real monsters they have to face. It's silly and it robs the enemies of any humanity and it raises a bunch of question about what the enemies are. If the enemies are called Zombies I assume something supernatural has happened in the world and that magic exists. If they are infected I know the world is like my own for the most part.

I also seriously doubt that anyone would honestly called their sick daughter a "zombie" the day after they had to murder her in self defense.

 

[wyldefire]

Typical Yahtzee review of a Naughty Dog game. Lot's of superficial critiques and asides, little discussion about the core game, bile for bile's sake since he finds giving positive reviews of well reviewed games boring.

And then in several months he'll off handedly mention something about the game that was "revelatory" like he did with Uncharted 2. Because it is a fantastic game.

It is strange that he didn't grasp the meaning of the ending though. Seems like just about everyone but him understood why Joel made the choice he did at the end, and thematically he's not all that different than the protagonist of Spec Ops: The Line, which was Yahtzee's GOTY last year.



But whatever, cue the fanboys, who had already made up their mind to hate this game because it's a Sony exclusive or because it's just cool to hate on AAA games, storming comment sections using this as "proof" that The Last of Us is bad or overrated.