Ambassador_Kong

@StylesT I always ignore people that use the word "entitled" in an argument. They use the word in place of an actual relevant argument which they don't have or can't express. Kind of like all the people calling things "woke."

Is it just me or does the Ridge Racer game look terrible to anyone else? Really pixelated, text is blurry, and the opening cutscene has a lot of artifacts. I've not noticed this on any of the other ps1 games.

@Octane Easiest birth ever. Happened in 30 seconds. Really tired of how the show gives people bites after the fact. The fungus zombie's teeth were never anywhere near her leg.

@Octane Neil Druckman obviously didn't understand the power of the game he created. It seems obvious that Amy Henning was the reason that the first Last of Us game was great and her leaving ND is the major reason that the Last of Us 2 was the disaster that it is. The final episode of the season seemed to be Neil Druckman filling all the holes that critics of the second game have pointed out. In the end they tried to make Joel look like a selfish psycho that wanted to save Ellie for his own reasons, but that undermines the story itself. The reason for Joel's actions was that he realized that there was no saving humanity. He (and the player) has a front row seat to what the world had become - Raiders, cannibals, and fungus zombies. Joel weighed the value of Ellie's life against the value of saving a world that was already dead and made the correct choice. Any parent would have made the same choice. I really feel for Neil's children knowing that they have a father that would sacrifice them on the altar of the "greater good."

It's funny that Neil attempted to tone down the bleakness and make the world seem more worth saving actually had the opposite effect. We're left with a world so devoid of danger that the sacrifice of Ellie seems even less reasonable.

In the end, Last of Us series was a complete failure in my opinion. I'm glad it's over and I won't be around for season 2 when Neil attempts to make the world sympathize with the true psycho - Abby.

@Corc11 Opinions. I feel very comfortable predicting a future when the hype of the show has died down where people will reevaluate the show and ask themselves why they thought Bella did a good job.

@CaptainBasch
Yep, they should have cut to black. Instead the final shot is them walking towards a lake. My son was laughing at it and asking - "Where are they going? Are they going to swim?"

@LeeHarveyOzgod When I first saw Bella I too thought, "she's not Ellie."

Difference is I still look at her and think, "she's not Ellie."

Honestly, I don't think she could act her way out of a paper bag. When I see people writing how luminous and brilliant she is, I just don't see it. Opinion is subjective and I'm glad so many people are enjoying the show, but I'm hate watching at this point. I'm just not enjoying it at all.

@PhantomMenace84 I'm really at a loss. If there was ever a time for Joel to Hulk out, this would have been it. Like the last episode where Ellie's trip to the mall for medicine was completely stripped out, it feels like they have removed all of the action scenes from this series and just left us with characters sitting around and talking.

@GreatAuk Considering the game was so brilliant in letting the player come to their own conclusions about Joel and his actions, it seems really odd that they're really trying to go down the route of Joel deserving to be beaten to death because he was such a bad man. Of course we don't see him being a bad man, but his brother said they did bad things, so it must be true.

I would think all the survivors of an apocalypse would have done bad things or they would be dead. The original game boiled down to a question - do you allow someone to die to save a world that is already dead? Anyone with a child already knows the answer to that.

Every episode has resiculous and lazy aspects that make no sense. Here are a few for this one:

1. That was a very clean horse. Never pooped in the garage.
2. Notice that it went from snowing to not snowing between one camera cut at the end.
3. Building was burning down and no one showed up to help.
4. Why were Joel and Ellie walking towards the lake at the end of the episode? Where were they going?
5. How does a man on foot get in front of a galloping horse?
6. Awfully convenient that Joel and Ellie come across the town that just happened to be the home of the person that they killed two episodes ago.
7. If they know Joel is dangerous, why do they search in partiesbof one?

I could do this for every single episode. The show just feels cheap and thrown together.

I've been hate watching the last few weeks. The show is just terrible and has missed the entire point of the game. The core of the game - Ellie and Joel - just seems to be an after thought. The best parts of the game are ignores. The world doesn't really feel threatening at all. Bella is a terrible actress and doesn't have the gravitas necessary to carry the role. Worst of all, the show is suffering from one of the worst problems of scriptwriting from the last few years - it tells and doesn't show. Joel's a bad man because the show says so. Ellie is a natural leader because the show says so. Ellie knows how to survive because we're told she can.

The first game was obviously great despite Neil, not because of him. One more episode and I can be done for good. Such a disappointment.

@cragis0001 Because COD is the largest gaming franchise and would tilt the gaming industry in favor of any platform that owned it. I'm not sure why people are missing the actual not secret bone of contention in this buyout. If Sony were attempting to buy Activision the same regulators would be having the same problem.

Square Enix is nowhere near the size of Activision.

@PlatinumKing Probably because no one goes on and on about how brilliant the writing of GOWR was. People love to talk about how awesome, spectacular, amazing, etc... Last of Us 2 is, but there are really compelling arguments for why it is flat out terrible. Not the least of which is the game trying to make you identify with a psychopath or trying to convince you that Joel did something wrong when he saved Ellie (spoiler: he didn't do anything wrong). Ultimately though, the moralizing on the cycle of violence and pointless of revenge is severely is jaw droppingly hypocritical in a game that gives the player no other option than carving a bloody path through hundreds of NPCs. Ultimately, you see lots of people dismantling the story of part 2 because it's entire premise is fundamentally flawed. The game play is at odds with the message and the theme is at odds with that of the first game.

Problem is I see the cracks occurring in the series already. The most recent episode is humanizing the faceless killers of the game. Why? What purpose? I suppose Druckman is trying to set the idea in the audiences mind that every side of a conflict has a point of view in an attempt at trying to presell the plot of season 2. It's not going to work. Abby will still be a psychopathic monster and Joel will still have done nothing wrong.

This constant humanizing of all the characters just makes the world feel like a safer / less threatening place than it should.

I tried playing it, but the dialog was just very, very, very terrible. Really terrible. Not good. I quit after 30 minutes.

@TheCollector316 Microsoft buys great developers and then they produce terrible games. Perhaps the problem is Microsoft management.

@IOI No, she doesn't have a point at all. COD is the biggest gaming franchise and making it a console exclusive would unfairly tilt the market in Microsoft's favor. Remember she's a paid shill and her job is to argue a position regardless of the logic of that position. If Sony hired her tomorrow, she would be making arguments for why Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to by Activision Blizzard. There is nobibtellectual integrity here.

@grapetrap I just reread my comment and couldn't find the part where I said anything about anyone needing to have knowledge of the game to understand the episode.

What I did say was that in an 9 episode series, a complete departure from the plot to tell a backstory that had nothing to do with the main story, was a waste of the viewers time. If they needed a car, the plot could have dropped one from the sky. Same with bullets and supplies. The episode served no purpose other than Neil trying to get himself an Emmy.

I also refuse to think that the audience is so stupid that they have to be told things explicitly. The final scene could have had Bill return to the dinner table with two glasses of wine. They both drink the wine, go to bed, and we cut to Joel and Ellie arriving at their door to find the letter explaining that Bill killed himself as well. Instead we got that ham fisted conversation with Frank saying, "I should be mad."

That said, Bella Ramsey is still the absolute worst thing about this show. She acts as if she is in an entirely different series. Pedro Pascal is doing all the heavy lifting.

@Zanao i really didn't like the episode simply because the show has no respect for my time. It spends an hour and a half on a side story that didn't impact the plot. Yes, they got a car, but we didn't need an hour and a half backstop on two characters that didn't impact the plot.

Also. I just think the script doesn't respect the viewer at all. We don't need everything spelled out for us. It would have been better if Bill just drank the wine and went to bed and Joel and Ellie found them dead. We didn't need the characters explicitly telling us everything.

And the letter... did we really need a backstory for why Joel decides to care for Ellie? The writers really think the audience is too stupid to figure things out without being explicitly told.

It looks like the trophies don't award retroactively, so you'll have to play through the training levels again.

@Grimwood i said Abby NOT Ellie, but you're right Ellie was turned into a psychopath too. Just another reason to hate a game that wasn't needed and only ruined the integrity of the original.

But let's be honest, Naughty Dog had a lot of nerve creating a game that forced you to kill hundreds of NPCs and then tried to moralize about the cycle of violence.

@Boucho11 Part 2 is amazing only if you aren't a parent or never been around a child and consider saving a child's life as an immoral act. I have a three year old named Ellie and I would have acted exactly like Joel did. The fact that so many people don't have a problem with part 2 makes me worries that we have raised a generation of emotionally stunted sociopaths that only see the world in black and white.

@jmac1686 Abby was a psychopath. No audience is going to sympathize with her.

Part 2 proved that there should have only been one game to begin with.

I'm in the minority. I'm just not really feeling this adaptation. I think Bella's acting is okayish, but not great. She acts like she is ina tv series and not reacting to real situations. She is way too casual about everything. Her lie about being alone when bitten, in the hands of a better actress, could have been very special. There was no clue that she was lying.

The Clickers just felt like people wearing makeup and weren't frightening at all.

The change away from spores makes no sense. If the fungus is only spread by a bite, how did the grandma in the first episode get sick? If she was bitten at a hospital, I'm pretty sure it would have been discovered.

Biggest gripe was the lighting. Everything looked and felt like a set. No dust particles in the air. Convenient ceiling collapses.

Also, had did Tess get bitten through a jacket and shirt without obvious signs of blood? Just reeks of laziness.

Overall, not impressed.

Nintendo and Square must be smoking from the same stash. They both seem to think their million year old games are worth premium prices. It's bonkers.

Do they have LeChuck kill Guy in the first scene and have you play as Elaine out for revenge, only to switch to LeChuck at the half-way point and you discover that Guy killed his daddy.

@JustPlainLoco It's not just Joel's death that was the problem. It was the developers implying that Joel did something wrong in the first game (he didn't). They also think that having the gamer play as a psychopath for half the game was a good idea (it wasn't). Worst of all, they seemed to be saying something about the cycle of violence in a game that requires the player to murder hundreds of people (by design).

Sorry, Last of Us was a complete failure if you look past the gameplay.

@jrt87 Nothing more needs to be said. You've said it all.

Is it really a remake? Seems more like a re-skin.

@Casco i figured that, but I can't even stream a game trailer from Sony, so I'm not sure why they think they can manage game streaming.

@ShogunRok Sony is delusional. I can't stream a game trailer through my PS5 without it stuttering and losing picture. No problem with any of my streaming services, just Sony.

Also, haven't been able to stream a single game. Apparently I don't have fast enough internet. Works with everything else though.

Ridiculous that the most expensive service got nothing new. Total madness.

@BartoxTharglod You've invested way too much time and emotion in this thread to suddenly pull the "it's just vidoegames" argument. Also, the "entitlement" argument should just be an instant lose the debate argument. People are absolutely entitled to their opinion and dismissing their opinion as childish or whining is insulting and immature.

You want to spend $70 on a graphical upgrade that does nothing to update the game play of a 10 year old game? Have at it. But don't insult or degrade people for having the opinion that the amount of work doesn't justify the price. Their point is absolutely valid especially when you can see the amount of work that goes into updating older games at a similar price point (Demon's Souls).

The point that supporting this game may send a message to developers that they can just make an old game a bit prettier and ship for full price is also valid. One thing about the videogame industry is that it will always gravitate to any practice that makes the most money for the least amount of work. Gamers that care are entitled to express their opinion when they see the industry doing something they don't like. Message boards are for discussions and debates. In the adult world people might not always agree with you and using words like "whining" and "tirade" to dismiss a person's opinion marks you as the child in the room.

And not to hit the point too hard, but the "just videogames" argument? You are aware that the "just videogame" industry is worth more than the movie and music industry combined, right? This hobby is worth more than the GDP of many countries.

Voting with the wallet is absolutely essential when people have a grievance with an industry. But just like a political election, one vote isn't enough. You need to build a voting block. You need a large enough chunk of voters to have an effect. Just like a political election, you create a movement by repeating a message over and over. I understand your tired of seeing the same message over and over, but rendless repetition is the only way to be heard.

@Constable_What As I just wrote above, Metal Gear gives you the option to play the game without killing anyone. I maintain that there is something disgustingly cynical about a company trying to preach about violence in a game that spends so much time forcing the player to commit atrocious acts.

But, maybe they did succeed with me. I broke they cycle half way through the game. I put down the controller, deleted the game, and never looked back.

@kcarnes9051 I didn't misunderstand the lesson of the game. I think the lesson (assuming that there actually is one) is misguided. First, if you want to make a grand statement about perpetual cycles of violence, I don't think forcing the gamer to murder hundreds of hundreds of people for entertainment is the best way to go about it. Hideo Kojima did a much better job of this with Metal Gear Solid. Yes, you can blaze through the game killing everything, but you can also complete the game without killing anyone. Good luck trying a no kill run with a Naughty Dog game. So, please forgive me if I'm not going to be preached to by a company that forces the player to become the thing they're proselytizing against.

So, as far as everything else is concerned - nope. Naughty dog can't deconstruct perspective in this because there is nothing to deconstruct. Joel saved Ellie in the first game. It was a justifiable, correct, moral act. It was an act any parent would perform for their child. It was an action any decent person would take without a moments hesitation. Abby's revenge was the act of an evil psychopath and there is no other way to see it.

Abby's father earned the death he got. No doctor should ever harm a living person and certainly not a person who hasn't given consent. You can rationalize the action with all the "good of the many over the one" nonsense, but it doesn't suddenly make an evil act not evil. No one has the right to take another person's life for any reason. The only life you can sacrifice is your own.

Joel saved his daughter's life from an evil man who is not made any less evil because he was kind to animals. Abby hunting down and killing a man who killed her father to save his own daughter doesn't make her actions justifiable or reasonable - her actions were evil. The fact that Joel risked his life to save her moments before make her even more of a monster. She's evil full stop. The fact that Naughty Dog wanted us (and many people were able) to relate to her is deeply disturbing.

@TheArt i had a controller in my hand and played part 1, so I know why Joel did what he did. Joel's actions were morally correct and Abby's actions were those of a monster. What Abby did or didn't know is irrelevant. The game designers wanted to foist a story about perpetuating cycles of violence on us which was a really stupid idea considering they made a murder simulator that requires the player to kill hundreds of people to succeed. On the other hand. I stopped playing about an hour after they forced Abby on me so maybe I did learn the lesson. Sometimes the best solution is to just walk away.

@kcarnes9051 Abby was a monster. The inability to sympathize with her is a good thing.

Making you play as a psychopath and retconning Joel's defense of his surrogate daughter as an evil and selfish act was an interesting choice.

And by interesting, I mean stupid.

Can anyone imagine a scenario in which the actress would say, "fans are going to hate this show?"

@kyleforrester87 Journalism is journalism regardless of the topic. I agree that this issue is nowhere near as important as Global Warming. I read your comments quite often and find you to be insightful and intelligent. Please believe me when I say I'm not trolling. I comment because I care about this site and the writers.

@LiamCroft @get2sammyb There is a very simple solution. Update the article, but keep the original after the new text. It's a journalistic standard for a reason. Removing my comment as "unconstructive" makes zero sense because I think my comment was entirely relevant.

I also don't know or care what you've done in the past. Journalists don't disappear articles. They update their articles to show changes in the story while retaining their original text. It shows you have the integrity to admit your mistakes.

I don't think any of you guys are shills. I like this site and I enjoy your reporting, but I don't like the way this situation was handled. Friends don't always have to agree to be friends. If I had no respect for you. I wouldn't have said anything.

@kyleforrester87 i agree that Push deserves credit for all the hard work they do, but disappearing a critical article down the memory hole is bad journalism. It's a real bad look and they deserve the scorn.

The video reeks of desperation. Talking heads trying to rationalize why cleaner folds in fabric justifies a $70 price tag. What a waste of time and energy.

@OrtadragoonX You know quantum leap is a real small distance, right?

@Zombiechris Are people still whining about people whining about a game that they can still purchase even though the majority see it as a cynical cash grab?

@Humaniac GTAV PS5 edition: $9.99.

TLOU PS5; $70.

See the difference?

Are people really arguing that this isn't a cash grab?

@naruball an assertion made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

@dark_knightmare2 I'll bet you money they're retconning the doctor scene.

This feels like how George Lucas kept tinkering with the original Star Wars until he killed it.

Will part of the remaster be retconning the ending so Joel appears to be a selfish psychopath instead of a loving father? Sorry, I stopped playing the second game when the developers decided it was a good idea to force the player to play as a psychopath. If I want to play as the bad guy, I'll play GTA.