Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger “To be honest, I'd be more worried about its runtime, as it's one heck of an investment in that regard” — Interestingly, I was wandering through my PS5 games tab and noticed at some point they changed the system slightly where it shows the playtime data — it used to show it up front, but now it shows “last played” and gives the amount of time elapsed since the game was last launched, which to me is much less useful or interesting. Anyways, you can still see playtime but you have to go over to the left and click the filter to filter your game list by ‘time played’ so I did that and MGS5:TPP popped up at the top of the list with something like over 250 hrs played (I forget the exact number) and I had forgotten just how much time I invested in the game. It was far and away the most hours of anything in my library. I can’t even remember what was second. I think it was actually Dragon Age Inquisition at somewhere around 180 hrs… and to think — I didn’t even finish that game! 😂

Anyways @Ralizah to reiterate what Rog said, I don’t recall the base building mechanic to be all that intrusive. You can interact with it very sparingly and still get through the main game.

@RogerRoger I wish the app had that capability, but no it’s on the console. I’ve not enrolled in any beta testing that I know of. I’m not sure when or why it changed but maybe I accidentally adjusted a setting or something. I’ll have to mess with it at my next opportunity

@RogerRoger Thanks for adding me to the tag for Survive. It’s cool to hear you enjoyed it so much and it does sound fun! Like I said before, it seemed to end up falling into a gap where MGS fans were put off by the fact it wasn’t Kojima and non-MGS fans out off by the fact it still had the MGS title.

The dust sounds like a clever way of trying to hide the fact the map is just reused for MGS5 too!

I really umm’d and arr’d over posting this, because I know what is about to follow is not going to offer any fresh perspectives, or break any new ground or offer some kind of hot take. And while trying to offer any one of those things in every review written would be a fool’s errand, it is a little different when a review comes so long after the release of a title.

That said, my understanding is Part 2 does some pretty extensive retconning and reframing of Part 1, so I am sorta half posting this here as an anchor point for a future me who comes out of the other side of Part 2. If as a by-product of that this becomes an enjoyable read for others, or promotes any sort of discussion, then I’ll take that as a win.

So, without further ado, here is my review of The Last of Us Part 1.

The work they put in to improving the visuals, lighting and facial animations cannot be understated. In fact, at times, it is so profound you almost can’t truly appreciate it properly. Like it looks incredible, and runs just as well, but then you put it side by side with the remaster and like… holy *****.

Remember when we played games on PS3 and reviews would remark about how graphics were probably not going to get much better than this?

Yeah, so about that.

I know some console gamers like to pretend power and performance do not matter, but regardless of what you think about that, this generation of consoles were sold on the power and performance they would offer. Now some three years into the lifespan of them, this promise has rarely been delivered upon and if anything, it almost feels like we have gone backwards in some regards from the expectations the PS4 Pro set.

Here, ironically, two PS3 remakes show the PS5 at its absolute best, coming side by side only to games like God of War Ragnarok, which somewhat shattered the idea that games being made for PS4 and 5 together would somehow hold them back. But that is a discussion for a different review.

All I am saying, is I played this on Performance Mode on my PS5 and this is the standard I expect from all PS5 titles. Anything less than that, and I dunno what you are doing. The PS5 apparently couldn’t run an empty open world like Gotham Knights in 60 fps, yet can run this at a rock steady 60 fps when the frame is packed full of rich detail, raytraced or some sort of equivalent lighting and reflections and more. This is the promise of the PS5, delivered. You add onto that a deep suite of accessibility options to really tweak and tailor the experience to your needs and man, if only Sony weren’t so damn greedy, I’d be telling everyone in the world to pick this up.

It is worth pointing out for balance, that for as good as this is on a technical and visual level, I wouldn’t say any of this really transformed my experience of this title in any meaningful way. At least not in the way I hoped with that price tag slapped on it.

You look at something like the Dead Space remake in how it stayed true to the original, but still took the time to take many years of feedback on board. Changing sequences people didn't like, overhauling old systems, streamlining and tweaking others. I think The Last of Us really could have used this kind of pass over it. This is pretty much exactly the same experience you would have on PS4, only it just looks and runs significantly better, which is great, but I am not sure it is enough when you are trying to charge me the same price as a brand new title.

Because of this, a person who has played this multiple times will probably care more about the work done here than a general audience person will. Was that always the intention? For this to be a niche collectors item rather than the ‘ultimate’ way to play this title? Well if that is the case, I still feel like this is overpriced. This isn’t like some beautifully packaged, extras packed, Criterion edition of your favourite movie or whatever, it is just a regular old release.

That isn’t to say they haven’t made some meaningful touches to gameplay. I dunno whether it is just years of exaggerating the idea in my brain that the worst part of The Last of Us was playing it or because of the inclusion of things like gyro, a massive suite of accessibility options to tweak your experience to your liking, and improved companion AI and animations - or maybe just some combination of the both - but this is probably the most I've ever enjoyed playing through this, for whatever that is worth.

For real, the game at times feels extremely dated. And they really frontload the experience with a lot of incredibly frustrating, forced stealth, encounters against the Infected which honestly kinda suck. This is at a point in the game where you basically have no weapons or resources making the opening hours of this game kind of a slog, and a big barrier of entry to some of the game's best moments. Best moments which come more in the second half with a shift to a focus on Human enemies, with a Joel who is far more kitted out. Now, again, being real, I dunno whether the human enemies are “more fun” to face in the traditional sense, so much as they are simply less frustrating to face, but I’ll take it.

For whatever reason, the accessibility tweaks don’t seem to apply to Humans and Infected equally. Even with the difficulty at the lowest, and the accessibility at the max, stealthing my way through Infected sections was always extremely frustrating. And one mistake was usually an instant failure. Without touching any of my settings, I would go into an encounter with Humans who were so blind and deaf it was laughable, meaning I would have to go back into my settings to turn everything back up again so it wasn’t so cartoonishly easy. I got so fed up with this, that I got to the point where if there was an optional path in an area and my survivor hearing thing told me Clickers were down there, I’d just skip it. I was groaning enough whenever they switched from a Human encounter to an Infected one during the main story, there was no way in hell I would take on optional Infected encounters.

I think what makes the Infected so annoying is they have seemingly way more health than Human enemies, the two Special types can insta kill you if they get into melee range and the regular ones will run into your face and will stunlock you with stagger animations. All of this is not fun, and you have very little answers for when things go sideways, as Joel has no real mobility and most of the Infected soak up bullets like massive sponges.

That isn’t to say Human enemies won’t attempt to flank you and grab onto you themselves, but they couldn’t insta kill you even if they did grab you, they also can’t trap you in animations as they run into your face and flail at you until you die and for whatever reason no matter how much I turned the settings up, they seemed way harder to balls up stealth against.

Now in fairness to the game, this isn’t really an action game in the traditional sense, it is probably closer to an immersive sim or a survival horror game. Sure you aren’t like dealing with your oxygen or hunger levels or whatever, but resources are generally fairly limited and Joel is pretty damn fragile, even with the difficulty at the lowest and the accessibility options at their maximum. Well up until the end. You will eventually have enough gear, upgrades and resources where you can turn the game into an action game if you want, but I think you will spoil some of the best hours the game has to offer if you do that.

It is clear that you are expected to feel vulnerable as that feeds into the wider narrative and the characters, likewise, they want killing to matter to the player, and this would have less impact if Joel was taking on waves and waves of enemies in every encounter, rather than small collections of Infected/Bandits.

However, while I get they don’t want you having the dissonance of Joel kicking down the door and blasting his way through everything with an unlimited ammo shotgun, I just don’t feel like they executed this idea very well at all. If every section against the Infected makes me groan in annoyance, and the best case scenario for me is to basically just skip the encounter by sneaking past everything, then I don’t see that as a positive for the game design, whether intentional or narrative supporting or not.

However, while I don’t love that aspect of the design, I do feel in a general sense The Last of Us is really well constructed and paced, in a way that we sorta don’t see a lot of anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love an open world game where I need to clear out bandit camps for new loot and make narrative decisions, but I don’t want every game to be that. Again, a discussion for another review.

The best part of The Last of Us is Joel and Ellie’s story, and the game tells that story, nothing more or less. It is 12 to 15 hours of linear spaces, rich with detail and environmental storytelling - which admittedly aren’t immune to repeated assets - but I feel like the developers here are really set free, when they are able to create environments of intention rather than just of scale.

Each location serves the narrative that is playing within it, reflecting back where Joel and Ellie are in their journey, in a literal and more thematic sense. Nothing is here just to increase the square mileage on the map.

The game does now have a New Game+ mode with optional stuff unlocked at the end (groan), but the game isn't built around the idea that you are going to play this over and over again in loops. When the journey is over, it is over. I dunno, it just feels like you just don’t get a lot of games like this anymore and it is one example where this feeling “dated” is actually a good thing.

I mused to myself as I played this, that had this been made today - and even if those 12 hours or so hours of story and performances were identical - but they took the narrative and spread it out over a massive open world with a bolted on 40 hours of busy work bandit camps and radio towers, where Joel had to hit X level to do the next story mission (with XP boosters available in the cash shop, of course) whether we would hold the game in the same high regard, that we do today.

I will say, talking of the story, they changed the ending right? I swear the ending was different. I remember the hospital being really spooky and grubby. I don't remember Joel seeming so damn sad, remorseful and regretful about everything. Did they change this to make it line up better with Part 2? No spoilers please.

It is a shame, as ending aside, this is a masterclass in nuance. The Last of Us exists in a world of grey we don’t see in a lot of video games and I really admired the restraint to not spell out the themes of the title too overtly. The game very much holds up a mirror to the player, and it is really up to the player to realise the mirror they are looking into and it is really up to the player in what they perceive of the thing looking back at them in that mirror.

Early 20s me would have just admired how cool the brutal melee animations were and probably not really thought about much else. 30 something me is like that Kombucha meme, where I am thinking about how ***** cool that animation was - which were apparently improved for this remake, I dunno if that is true - while also remarking about how that person I just brutally slaughtered with a machete was exactly that, a person. A person who might not be any worse than I am, and is just another person trying to survive in this ***** up world through the same means I am using.

That isn’t to say there aren’t characters who are presented as far more obviously evil, like David. But I think it is fascinating that Joel is not trying to be a better person, he doesn’t come across some sort of comeuppance and must go on a path of redemption, he isn’t really trying to help anyone. Joel is a mostly self serving mirrored force to whatever forces he himself faces along the way. This is why the ending worked so much better, at least in my memory, maybe he always sounded so damn sad?

It is an idea as old as time, granted, but I just think it is executed here to near perfection. There is no need to preach to the player, no need to do the mask reveal like the end of a Scooby Doo episode, it is simply a mirror held up and what you perceive in that mirror is personal to you, hell, if you want to you can just look away from the mirror entirely if you want.

And in a way, this could have only worked in a game, because while the game doesn’t truly give you a choice in a lot of things, it was still you who pulled the trigger every single time. Granted no one expects you just to turn off the game and walk away, but as much of an illusion as it may be, the choice was always there.

This is important for the final moments of the game, because regardless of whether you sneak by everyone or whatever, Joel is always going to take Ellie, kill Marlene and tell the lie. Maybe he'll doom the whole damn world. But maybe if he didn't do what he did, Ellie would die for nothing based on the Firefly's track record throughout the game. Either way, this is Joel's choice, not the players.

Other than that tunnel with all the Bloaters and Clickers which kinda spoils the momentum of the last couple of hours of this game, I still love them anyway. They might be my favourite last couple of hours out of any game I've ever played.

That torture scene? Oh baby. Maybe we have always been seeing Joel through Ellie's eyes. Maybe Joel has always been, consciously or unconsciously, restraining himself in front of Ellie. But in this moment, there are no masks, we finally see who Joel has always been. And we have pulled the trigger every time. An explosive culmination of a man who has experienced so much pain and loss, finally given something to fight for one last time.

Before that, we also suddenly become so acutely aware of the weight on our shoulders that has been there the whole time, as we take control of Ellie for the first time. We pull the trigger and watch as we make her do unspeakable things. That conversation between Joel and Tommy suddenly echoing loudly in your mind with each trigger pull. Did Joel create a monster? Will Ellie be forever haunted by these events? Do either of these things even matter in the context of this world? Would she have survived these events without Joel? Would Tommy have?

Then there is the power of the quiet moment with the giraffes and how it truly means something because of everything you’ve been through as a player with these characters over these ten or so hours. Like I would have rather not been as frustrated as I regularly was playing this, being honest, but all my frustration really enhanced this moment for me in a way I don’t really experience as I don’t like difficult games. And again, they didn't put some cheesy flashback in here with still shots of stuff that happened during the game to some plinky plonky moments. Like with the mirror this game holds up, here, it offers a quiet moment of reflection for the player, where your mind goes in that moment is personal to you and how you have processed this experience.

Talking about it more generally though as a product, while the improved visuals and facial animations do enhance the story to a degree, the writing and performances are as far as I know untouched, so you are still going to get the same masterpiece of a story and those incredible, medium defining performances, even if you play the Original or Remaster. And I swear they changed the ending. I am saying it again.

Also, maybe a controversial opinion, but I actually kinda like the original character designs better. I am sorry. I know they were heavily stylised and kinda clashed with the realism the game was meant to go for, but I’m sorry, a lot of the new character designs to me just look like they took the old ones and ran them through those Mobile Apps which turn you into old people in your selfies. I know some people online get really mad at those kinds of takes, so I apologise in advance, but it is just how I feel.

Anyway, my TL;DR is this, The Last of Us is one of the best games ever made. And Part 1 is both the best way to experience this game, and also the most unnecessary way to experience this game, all at the same time.

At half the price this is an absolute no brainer of recommendation. At its existing price I do not feel it does enough that is truly transformative to justify a purchase over the other versions that exist. In fact, I am pretty sure The Last of Us Remastered is free for PS Plus subscribers.

About the only person I’d recommend Part 1 to is the most diehard The Last of Us fan, as I think you are about the only person who is going to really appreciate what this has achieved.

...Well at least until the PC version comes along, as I am pretty sure you’ll be able to get this from a legal key reseller for the price this game should have always been. Then I’d recommend Part 1 to everyone who has a PC that can run it

Kandagawa Jet Girls (Steam) - It's like Wave Race, but by the Senran Kagura guys.

• An arcadey jet ski racer with a touch of Mario Kart, as you can pick up special weapons along the way like rocket launchers, gatling guns, shotguns, etc (which can be fired in forward or behind you). You also have a basic gun equipped at all times that's mostly useful for clearing out obstacles in your path (it doesn't seem to do enough damage to other racers' shields to break them).
  
  Cause other racers to spin out by blasting them with special weapons.
• That doesn't mean it doesn't (theoretically) require a more skilled touch as well. You can get a race start boost by reving up your engine at the right point during the starting countdown, you gain a bit more speed (at the cost of control) if you tilt the left stick back & you get a bit more control (at the cost of speed) if you tilt it forward, which is useful during tight turns. There is a guage which builds up (located on the lower right corner of the screen) as you complete actions during the race (such as passing through rings that charge it), and you can expend 20% of it for a temporary boost, or if it's fully charged you can unleash a special (if you're holding a weapon item you'll unleash an extra powerful variant of it. If not, you get temporary unlimited boosts).
  
  the guage is fully charged, so I can unleash a super variant of the gatling gun weapon I'm holding.
• There are various elements on the track to keep an eye out for, such as the aforementioned rings you can pass through to charge your guage, but also balloons & holograms (of cute cartoony mascots) you must shoot to clear the path forward (they don't cause you to crash, but can temporarily slow you down), as well as boost pads which temporarily speed you up. Of course there are ramps as well which you can use to catch some air & pull off some tricks. There are four different trick commands, & while 3 of them are shared between all teams, the 4th is unique to each team. Tricks grant buffs such as increased speed, tighter control, or a charge to your special guage. The team unique trick always grants two buffs instead of one, which sometimes includes special buffs like temporary invincibility.
  
  Performing a team exclusive trick.
• There are 8 or so teams to play as (you unlock them as you play through the story mode), which run the gamut in terms of cliches (you have the garyu delinquents, the foreign exchange American weebs, the rich girls, the idols, etc.). Is there a particular gameplay mechanic between having two girls per craft? Not really it seems, just an in game explanation as to why they can race & attack at the same time.
  
  These girls don't seem to be as multitask talented as your average MK racer, so have a dedicated driver & attacker.
• There are about 5-6 different courses to race on, though each has two or three different variants, so there is ultimately quite a bit of choice. These are likewise unlocked as you play through the story mode, and run the gamut from Japanese castles, futuristic city scapes, sewer systems, & more.
  
  
  
  
• I spent most of my time in the story mode, which consists of 64 races spread out over 8 chapters. Each chapter usually centers around the story of a specific team, with the first chapter being the longest, following the titular "Kandagawa Jet Girls" team (I assume this is the canon story, and is what the anime adaptation also follows). It's mostly bubbly fluff (though the California Coast High story mode, the "American weeb" team, is absolutely hilarious) though the last team introduced tries to add a "serious" tone/threat that they ultimately gloss over.
  
  
  
  The "Unkai Surfers", team of California Coast High, are absolutely hilarious (I've posted more of their gems in the screenshot thread).
• It's actually pretty technically sound of a racer all things considered. Certainly no Mario Kart (or probably Wave Race), however it's noticeably of a very much higher quality than the absolute drek of the genre like Garfield Kart. The biggest issue is that Story Mode is almost never a challenge. You can easily blitz the first chapter without having to upgrade your team's jet ski, and although the challenge does slowly ratchet up in subsequent chapters, by then you should have enough points at any given point to buy enough upgrades to stomp whatever comes your way. I assume you could probably get more of a challenge by taking on human players (it has an online mode of course) & maybe you can set the CPU difficulty to a higher standard in exhibition races, but I haven't really tested those things out.
  
  You can barely see the next closest racer at the edge of the mini-map.
• That said, Story Mode does attempt to mix things up with optional objectives attached to each race (tasks such as "don't touch a wall", "perform tricks more than 3 times", "pop 10 balloons", "use more than 4 types of weapon items", "don't use any weapon items", "reach X maximum speed", etc.). Now, sometimes you'll have to hold yourself back in order to complete some of these (can't exactly fire off a bunch of weapon items if you're too far ahead of the pack, as they won't fire unless you're close enough to target someone), but they do give you something extra to think about. For your trouble you'll be rewarded with new accessories & costumes for the girls to wear (remember this is from the Senran Kagura guys, so you'll get stuff like bunny suits, nurse bikinis, wedding bikinis, & the like).
  
  Lots of different costumes to unlock, such as sailor fuku bikinis, or bikinis that are barely there.
• Outside of the racing action (& kitting out the cast & jet skis), there are also a handful of minigames to take part in which you can use to earn extra points. These range in scope from a jet ski cleaning rhythm game, mopping auto runner, treadmill running, & a ring race mode, all of which have multiple difficulty modes.
  
  
  Earning extra credit.
• Given that this is from the Senran Kagura peeps it shouldn't come as much surprise that there's some crossover material. While they don't have a story mode, Ryobi & Ryona (from the SK series newer batch of "Hebijo" students) serve as an extra pair of racers. Of course you can obtain further SK characters (such as Asuka, Yumi, Homura, Ikaruga, etc.) as paid DLC, though I haven't partook.
• I know I've brought up it's Senran Kagura connections a few times now, so I think it's relevant to point out that it never goes as far as those games go in terms of the "fan service". Yes, there's lots of jiggle & bikinis, but that's about it (similar to the recently released Samurai Maiden in this regard). There seems to be little to no sexual innuendo in the dialogue/narrative (other than maybe some slight Yuri undertones depending on the team), no mode where it's possible to virtually "grope" the girls (before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing such a mode is absent, just that it's a feature that was relatively common in such games once upon a time like the older Senran Kagura games & Gun Gun Pixies), and no clothing breakage mechanics (for what it's worth, clothes breakage very much IS a mechanic in the aforementioned anime adaptation, whenever a team has their shield shattered, but whether it was added to the anime or removed from the game is unknown AFAIK).

Conclusion:

• Actually a pretty fun & bubbly racing game when is all said & done. Granted, it's a very fan servicy game so know what you're getting into, but it's definitely a much more solid game than 90-95% of the games that make gratuitous sexualization part of their core appeal.
  
  Celebrate that victory.

@Pizzamorg Wonderfully written thought-provoking breakdown of your Part I experience. So many valid and interesting points that you bring up. So much so that I won’t try to comment on them all or rehash what you’ve already said so well, but I will say that I really enjoyed the discussion.

I liked your provoking ‘thought-experiment’ of the alternate universe where this game was a modern 40 hr open-world action RPG. It’s very true that the linear set-piece based construction of the game lends itself to really flex the understated environmental storytelling. The forthcoming “Factions 2” (or whatever it will be called) will have some real issues in keeping with the tone of the franchise and yet having the ability to pull off the bombastic multiplayer endless GaaS loop that it will surely be targeting. I wonder if it will take the shine off the IP and cheapen it somehow. It’s no spoiler to say that Part II evolved upon some of the gameplay criticisms and was able to pull it off. Well, I guess it depends on who you ask, but for most of Part II’s critics the game’s problems weren’t gameplay related.

I also like the metaphor you use of The Last of Us Part I being like a mirror through which you may see (or not see) what you’re personally bringing into the game. I think it’s possible that the game resonates more with people who have lost loved ones, are dealing with life regret, or have some personal helplessness or failure they are dealing with. Players coming into the game for “a good bit of fun” could feel disappointed.

Regarding the remake, its price and justification for existence, I said it over on another thread but I give credit to Sony for seeing what they had here with the synergy of the HBO show. I was a critic of them spending resources on a remake of this game, but now I see the wisdom in it. The game has probably reached a height in public consciousness far above what it was even at its release in 2013. It’s never been a hotter topic than it is right now, I would wager. So to have a full-priced masterfully remade version available for current gen and PC is quite genius. I’ve not bought it, but I’m tempted to with each episode of the show I watch and each impression piece like yours that I read. Great stuff.

@Th3solution - thank you!

I am definitely interested to see what Part 2 does with the formula, Part 1 is very much a product of its time and that is at times a good thing, and at others not so much. I think it would be reductive to say games were just all better X number of years ago, as we will probably be saying that about games released now ten years from now. But we've definitely seen a shift in triple A gaming, and a normalising of practices that maybe just wouldn't have flown, or at least not in their current quantity, in older games. Part 2 may be set free by technological advancements, or may become shackled by them, and that is something I am interested to discover.

I appreciate you liking the use of the concept of 'the mirror', I thought maybe it was kinda cheesy, maybe a little pretentious, but it was the only thing I could really find that would fit. The Last of Us could have been a really cold, sterile, product but instead it is deeply emotive, but finds ways of being that without ever casting judgement on characters actions. That couldn't have been easy to do, and elevates what is otherwise a fairly simple story.

@Pizzamorg It's interesting: they definitely talked about modernizing aspects of the game in Part I, but from everything I've heard, it's an extremely faithful remake of the original. Just with a higher quality presentation overall.

I'm not at all surprised that ND is able to get so much more out of the PS5 than WB did with Gotham Knights. Putting aside all of the differentiating factors between the two releases, some teams are just more skilled at doing more with technology, and Sony's core first-party teams are VERY skilled at exploiting the technology for all it's worth.

And yeah, cross-gen development hasn't really been a limiting factor for PS5. While it's theoretically possible for the SSD to enable setpieces and level design that's impossible on PS4, that's not something that developers have been exploiting yet. Games that make full use of a console generally don't come along until late in a generation.

It is pretty funny how the most impressive releases on PS5 so far have been PS3 remakes and cross-gen releases!

The PS4 remaster is currently a lot cheaper, but knowing Sony, this will be in the bargain bin within a couple of years. I constantly see $9.99 deals for TLOU Part II, for example.

Anyway, this game never particularly resonated with me, but, dated gameplay aside, I'm glad to hear it still does so much for you.

@RR529 I really should play this one day. I've been bitter about Takaki abandoning Senran Kagura instead of just focusing on non-Sony platforms for a while now, but I had also wanted him to kinda... reign in the sexualization a bit and just go back to making games that were fun brawlers first, like the SK games on 3DS. It sounds like he did that, just... with a genre I'm not typically a fan of. But the gameplay sounds reasonably fun here, as do the characters.

I am curious about the DLC practices. You mentioned unlockable outfits. Is there a lot of DLC, or is the majority of that stuff in the base game?

Love the plethora of screenshots, btw

This is really fascinating to me, and makes me think I wasn't so off base with my analysis. I guess because the game really lets the player frame a lot of the events themselves, without really overtly telling you how to feel about each event, I never really thought about people who would basically just not feel much at all as a result of this.

But I guess if you have no frame of reference to the experiences these characters have either had, or experience during the course of the game, or maybe just have no strong feelings towards things like the use of violence to achieve your goals, then yeah, I guess when you look into that mirror there is nothing to look back at you at all.

I'd love to imagine what experiencing this game must be like in that scenario. Given the gameplay isn't great and the story/characters aren't exactly new or pioneering just on their own, this game must feel pretty flat overall.

@Pizzamorg I wouldn't call the game flat. My opinion has always been that it's a decent post-apocalyptic narrative that primarily stood out because of the medium it found itself in, because I never really felt like the themes or subject matter it tackled were particularly unique for the genre. I think one's expectations and wishes regarding the medium played in as well, because this was very much a ground-breaking release in terms of how thoroughly it tackled the filmic potential of video games. And if video games-as-interactive-cinema is what you think big budget games should evolve toward, I'm sure it made quite an impression. I've always felt like video game narratives should avoid the storytelling methods that work so well in TV and cinema, because the unique way the medium draws the player into its world gives it a potential that other mediums just don't possess.

Anyway, in this case, I'd say it's less that I don't have strong feelings toward the themes in this game, and more that I'd already been well-exposed to them in other formats. And... I just didn't feel like the game had anything unique to add. And as you acknowledge in your piece, the element of player agency isn't there either, so there's not really much else left to the experience at that point.

But, you know, this is a popular story, even in TV show form, so I'm willing to acknowledge my perspective is a minority one.

I think that is an interesting thought experiment too @Ralizah as I do think The Last of Us would have definitely found a cult following had it been a movie or whatever, but I'm not sure it would have made the same splash as it did as a video game. Because even some ten years on, I feel like we have still had very few games that have matched the cinematic sensibilities of a Last Of Us. Games like Red Dead 2, for sure, maybe even the God of War 2018/Ragnarok games, but they are few and far between for sure. This has allowed The Last of Us a staying power, it also may not have had, had it been realised in a different medium.

And even with stuff like the TV show, people love The Last of Us show, but had it not been a beloved videogame first, I wonder if it would have found the same success and praise as it has now found. We of course can't ever know, but I have to wonder if things would have been different if it had always been a TV show. Especially as we don't have the same kind of zombie fatigue in 2023, as we did around the original release of The Last of Us. We also have a very real pandemic to now frame everything with, too, which we didn't before.

I will say the fact the player has to commit the acts of Joel and Ellie themselves does enhance the experience for me, in a way it wouldn't if this was a more passive medium like a movie, but I can agree it doesn't do a whole lot to make itself unique through the use of it's medium.

@Ralizah, it appears there are only 4 Senran Kagura DLC packs (2 characters in each pack, and they each have a unique swimsuit that I assume would be available to everyone else as well). Other than that the other 5 or 6 DLC swimsuits are just pallet swaps of variants already available in the base game. All in all I'd say there's quite a bit more available in the base game than out of it.

And yeah, while I certainly don't have a problem with fan service in games (obviously), if the greatest effect of Sony's policies seem to be the removal of modes that exist purely for voyeurism, I won't be too upset (I assume this is why you're able to see underneath the skirt of the protag in Samurai Maiden during gameplay, but it blacks out in photo mode, where you'd be able to linger on it). I mean, I guess if you can't see under the skirt of one of these characters in the dressing room of one of these Japanese anime games, yet are able to be fully nude in an equivalent mode in a western title like Cyberpunk 2077 (haven't played so can't confirm) I guess I could get the feelings of "double standards", it just doesn't matter that much to me.

Playing games like the new Star Ocean & One Piece Odyssey, it doesn't look like Sony is out to remove all the busty cleavage bearing women from Japanese games like some people believe. In fact, they seem to be directly backing one in the form of Stellar Blade, which was very prominent in showcasing the "jiggle" in it's earliest trailers. Kinda interested in seeing how that one's gonna turn out.

@Pizzamorg It's going to differ from player to player. There was a lot of dialogue following the release of TLOU Part II about the game's approach to violence, especially with regard to animals and instilling a sense of moral guilt in the player. For a lot of us, no matter how immersive the murdering is, if they're not given a choice in the matter, then that sense of responsibility isn't instilled, whereas, for other people, it's enough that their finger pressing a button directly caused an event to happen in-game.

I do really like it when games force us to question our unflinching recourse to violence in video games, though. For what it's worth, I've yet to find a game that better explored this than the 2015 indie hit Undertale, which quickly became pretty notorious for the way in which it confronts players with the consequences of their actions when they opt to kill monsters they encounter throughout the game. It's a bit gimmicky, and the magic wears off over time, but that first time you feel devastated over killing a character because you just assumed that was what you had to do, and especially if you attempt to load an old save and the game sort of knowingly mocks your attempt to rewind time, or how engaging in a genocide route playthrough permanently alters small aspects of all future playthroughs (at least on PC)... I knew I was experiencing something that was leaning hard into the unique aspects of the medium to explore themes in a way that less interactive mediums simply couldn't.

Would TLOU on HBO be as popular if it wasn't based on a well-loved video game? I'm tempted to say it wouldn't have been as highly regarded, but that's unknowable, sort of like those "would Breath of the Wild have been as highly regarded if it wasn't a Zelda game?" questions. It's possible that, given a different universe, there wouldn't have been a "The Last of Us" TV show at all. For better or for worse, the way things happen in our universe is intimately tethered to an unbroken string of cause-and-effect that goes back billions of years.

Anyway, the experience clearly works for a lot of players, including yourself, so I'm inclined to say that Naughty Dog's game is effective at being exactly what it's supposed to be.

@RR529 Well, the bigger issue with Sony's new censorship policies were how they were introduced and implemented. For a lot of developers, they were just sort of dropped on them without warning, and there were reportedly communication issues with Japanese developers at the time (even some larger ones; recall the DMC5 censorship controversy years back). At least one game (which eventually saw a re-release on the Nintendo Switch) had its Western localization effectively banned from the platform, forcing the company that was bringing it over to eat the cost of the localization. Things have calmed down now, although mostly because a ton of smaller Japanese third-parties that previously released games on PS4/Vita have now shifted toward PC/Switch instead.

If you're going to implement some huge change like this, you want to clearly outline what is or isn't allowed, and preferably grandfather in titles that were deep in production before the change. I think the entire debacle would have been less infuriating if they'd gone about it in a more measured, dev-friendly way.

Not that it was needed in the first place. Sony's platforms were far more permissive in the past with little issue. Nintendo, a company that was notoriously puritanical in the 90s, has largely maintained its family-friendly image despite its current laissez-faire attitude toward third-party content.

The Playstation brand has become increasingly westernized in recent years, though, and this was clearly happening much of last-gen as well. I think the leadership was probably embarrassed by the way their largely abandoned handheld was being kept alive by Japanese indies that catered to a sketchier segment of the otaku crowd, and they seem to have tailored the language they used to enforce their new content standards in such a way as to cull most of this sort of stuff by maintaining an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion.

Anyway, no point in relitigating this now. I am also interested in Stellar Blade, although, like a lot of Korean and Chinese games, how much the advertising reflects the quality of the actual end product is up for debate. A lot of titles from these regions feature really impressive-looking marketing and footage, but the games themselves often never materialize. Considering Sony's focus on this title, though, I'd guess the dev won't simply take the money and run.

@Ralizah, yeah, Sony definitely could have handled the situation better in terms of how the policy was/is implemented.

Maybe the issue is that it wasn't a new policy? Maybe it's been in place for years and the only difference is how HQ interprets it between when they were based in Japan & when they moved to California. Perhaps they didn't send out new guidelines because technically their policy never changed, & Japanese devs were blindsided when Sony's HQ started interpreting them in a stricter manner. I have no idea if this was the case, though.

Anyhow, it looks like the dust has settled in the past couple years (since I've heard less stories about it), with devs either abandoning PS or getting accustomed to the new rules behind the scenes.

Stray (Review) - Cute cats and not a lot more.

Stray is a shallow experience. Its gameplay consists of running, button prompted jumping, and solving extremely rudimentary puzzles. There is combat every now and then but it doesn’t bring much to the table either.

It’s a shame because the world of Stray is gorgeous: its cute cats and rickety robots making a home of the neon lit city streets. And much to my surprise, the underlying narrative premise was intriguing enough that I wanted to reach the answers at the end of the road.

Stray’s biggest weakness is that it fails to do anything at all with its gameplay despite the unique premise it holds.

In Stray you play as a cat. Separated from your kin at the very start, you must make your way through a run-down futuristic city inhabited by quirky robots but infested by mutant organisms.

After meeting your flying droid companion, B-12, you set about uncovering the secrets behind Walled City 99. The ultimate goal: open the gates of the city and learn what the outside holds.

Narrative is ceded to the player through dialogue. Robots you interact with, both ones who serve as companions and those who simply populate the world, feed interesting new information about the world and its systems.

For instance, upon arriving in Midtown, you learn how it is harshly governed by Sentinels and Peacekeepers. Throughout your time exploring Midtown, you witness these cruel machines at work, arresting citizens and ruling with an iron whip.

During the course of Stray’s roughly 4-5 hour runtime, there are plenty of interactions between you - the cat - and the friendly robots who live in the city. These interactions are always a joy to witness due to unique dialogue. Most characters you meet, especially in the Slums, have their own little story.

Two friends playing catch across the rooftops with buckets of paint. A musician who doesn’t have any sheets of music to play. A grandma who loves to knit. Learning about these characters is a joy, and while some of the tasks they make you do are extremely rudimentary, you feel empowered to complete them due to the bond between cat and robot.

The game’s narrative elements are simple enough. But when put together they are intriguing and enjoyable enough to keep the player motivated to play on. And that is important because Stray’s core gameplay loop is a massive let down.

For a game that lets you play as a cat, one of the most nimble and agile creatures out there, the platforming in Stray is awful. The most egregious sin being that you can’t jump unless prompted to.

This strips the player of all freedom and creativity while traversing the urban jungle that is Walled City 99. Instead you must stick to an extremely linear path crafted by the developers.

This aspect of the game would have been so much fun and actually engaging if instead of telling the player “ok, you can jump here but not any of those other very plausible places,” the game just allowed the player to turn anything into a ledge. Stopping the player from wandering off would’ve been as simply as streamlining all the possible routes in a forward direction and none sideways.

I get that the developer’s intention was to make a more atmospheric and narrative focused title, but I can’t help point out what a mindless bore the platforming was, especially when it could have easily been so much better.

The combat is Stray is perhaps as rudimentary as it is unnecessary. In Chapter 7 (there are 12 in total) a robot you a working with called Doc will give you your one and only weapon: a Defluxor. Created with the sole purpose of killing zurks, the mutated organisms that infest the streets of the city, the Defluxor is essentially an extremely powerful flashlight.

To use it, simply hold down L1 and turn the camera in the direction of the enemy. To prevent players was abusing the system and keeping the Defluxor on at all times, it will overheat if used continuously for a short duration of time. The Defluxor is pretty strong, so this tweak makes sure it can’t be abused.

However despite this, combat is not very good. Zurks come at you in hordes and they are easy to run around. Their AI isn’t that good either, and out-manuevering them is a piece of cake. In many instances, you don’t have to actually face the zurks, you can simply run past them and onwards.

Later in the game, when you face off against machine enemies, the Defluxor loses its purpose and instead you must “defeat” them in unconventional ways: running circles around them or tricking them into locked rooms. However even here, there is only one way to take care of the enemies the game throughs at you, and once you have dealt with one foe, all that’s left is to rinse and repeat.

Stray feels like game where combat didn’t need to exist. If platforming was more than just linear button-prompted movement, then combat could have been replaced with obstacle courses or environmental puzzles that require you to think on your feet as enemies chase you around.

There are a healthy mix of puzzles in Stray. They come in a wide variety of forms from finding objects littered around the area, to deciphering visual hints to find the correct passcode. I can’t complain about the pacing of puzzles. They come at well-spaced intervals and they rarely feel tacked on.

However I do feel obliged to point out the shortcomings of these puzzles. They are extremely basic and easy to solve. I often found myself figuring out what the clues were and how I might proceed with deciphering a puzzle before it was even presented to me.

The mission structure in Stray also leaves a lot to be desired. They usually involve some simple platforming with a couple of combat encounters sprinkled in the middle before being made to solve an unimaginative puzzle at the end.

I tend to gravitate towards games with enjoyable gameplay. My two favourite games, Celeste and Spider-Man, have extremely strong core gameplay loops. So naturally Stray’s lack of any engaging gameplay mechanics - whether it’s platforming, combat, or puzzles - leaves me feeling empty inside.

Sure, BlueTwelve Studio chose to make a game that places greater emphasis on its world and story but its decision to not fully embrace that very focus leaves Stray with half-baked gameplay mechanics that sadly fail to inspire.

To its credit through, the world of Stray is absolutely gorgeous. Rain soaked streets shimmer under a sea of neon signs. The rare vista provides a breathtaking overview of the concrete jungle below.

Every locale is as beautiful as they are unique. The rundown buildings and littered streets of the Slums are a far cry from Antvillage, where houses and paths snake up the sides of a giant cylinder creating a lush treehouse like village.

My favourite part of the game-world has to be the Slums. You are free to take your time exploring its height and width, meeting new faces as you go. There are random activities to partake in, like rolling a basketball into a dust or spooking robots into dropping cans of paint off the rooftops. In this rare instance of minimal handholding, the game shines best.

The only drawback of Stray’s world, other than its poor utilisation as a sandbox for the player to run around in, is that sometimes objects in the distance take time to load in resulting in awkward instance of pop-in. It’s not bad by any means but I thought it would be worth pointing out.

Stray’s shorter runtime of around 4-5 hours on a first-playthrough was quite refreshing. In a climate dominated by games stretched out far beyond the limits of their enjoyability, it is nice to experience such a short and crisp title.

I also found an odd joy in ticking off some of the game’s easier PSN trophies. I found myself going out of the way and doing stuff like scrolling through all TV channels, dunking a basketball, ruin two robots’ mahjong game, and wearing a paper bag just to unlock certain trophies.

It’s not even that I wanted to go for a platinum, it was just some plain old nonsensical fun of seeing what absurd stuff I could get up to for a little dopamine rush when the trophy finally pops. I even tried playing billiards in the hope that it would unlock some cool little easter egg. I don’t know why. It just seemed fun.

When I finished the game and went through my notes in preparation for writing this review, I concluded that I would give the game a score of 2/5. Because despite its cool premise and wonderfully bizarre world, the gameplay systems just weren’t up to it. Platforming, combat, and puzzles were all for the most part mindless and overly basic.

But as I sit here and look back at my review, that score seems a bit harsh. Because my writing doesn’t seem to critique the game down to this score. I get that gameplay is not the game’s focal point but it still detracts quite a lot from the experience to the point where I can’t justify giving the game a 3/5.

I think it comes down to this. I did not like Stray all that much because I look for gameplay in my games. And without sufficiently engaging mechanics for me to toy around with, the game falls flat in my eyes.

Everyone out there has different tastes and preferences, and I think many people will find a lot to like about this game. So take my word with a large slice of perspective. Because to me, Stray is all style and no substance.

2/5

@DominusPlatypus Fair, if cutting, review, and one that confirms some suspicions I've had about the title for a while. Aside from having meme appeal (similar to something like Untitled Goose Game), it very much struck me as being a game that leaned hard on atmosphere and worldbuilding to drive the experience, which works much better for some people than it does others. The restricted interactivity and focus on immersing the player in the visuals of the world remind me of a number of Western AAA titles I've played, and it's similarly alienating to me. Some people really dig these 'interactive experiences' that pay excruciating detail to the visual presentation, but, frankly, they almost always restrict player agency in order to achieve the full realization of their artistic goals, and it takes me out of the game big time.

Nice analysis of Stray!

How do we feel about endless gushing in this thread?

Thanks to it's long-awaited release on the Switch, I'm playing Persona 5 for a third time and I have a lot I want to share...but I'm not sure I really have anything negative to say about the game. Anything I write will be less a review and more "why I love Persona 5"...

@Buizel How you write about a game, and what you choose to write, is entirely up to you. There's no requirement to be critical, or to write something in the form of a traditional review.

@Ralizah Thanks!

I might spend a bit of time on this one actually as I really want to do the game justice...

I really wish I liked Persona 5 as much as other people do. Looking forward to reading your thoughts though, always nice to read something inspired by someone's passion for something.