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Customer Review
- Reviewed in Canada on August 14, 2020TLOU2 is a bit of a polarizing game when it comes to fan and media reaction, but you don't have to take a hard stance on it. There's a lot to love about it and a lot of the "issues" are really more of a perceived interpretation rather than full-on facts. Kind of like Disney's Star Wars trilogy.
This game picks up about 5 years after the last one ends. If you haven't played the first one, go play it. It is a masterpiece of storytelling and a fantastic thrill ride of a game. Most of the controversy of its sequel comes from the narrative, not the game. Fans don't agree with the direction that Naughty Dog took with beloved characters and that's absolutely fair, but that doesn't make TLOU2 a bad game. There are claims of a social agenda behind the game, but I honestly don't believe that's the case. The game makes no point to really beat you over the head with social issues, though it does include elements of today's ongoing gender and identity battles. The fact is that these characters simply exist and the game makes no point to tell you who is good or bad or what's acceptable or not - pretty much everyone in this game is a piece of crap and it's really that the state of the world that made them that way. It's really not all that different from the first game. It's more that if you find the mere presence of a gay character or whatever offends you, then you're not going to have a good time. Otherwise, the characters are absolutely not defined by what they are, but rather who they are and that is more important.
The game itself is actually not that impressive. The art direction, the cutscenes, the lighting and all the little details are incredible. The amount of work that went into the game's presentation would have been better spent on its gameplay, which remains static throughout the entire journey. When you remove the narrative from the game, what you are left with is a stealth cover game that is repeated ad nauseum and this game takes several hours to get through with very little to differentiate what you started doing with what you end up doing besides some new weapons and tools. Like the first game, you can explore the environment, pick up components and craft them into handy things on the fly. Sometimes you will find a work bench to use arbitrary parts in order to upgrade your weapons. Most of the time, you move from one empty area to a populated area and have to traverse it by stalking around and taking down patrolling enemies one by one. While this doesn't make for a bad game, it does make for a pretty boring one in the long run, especially if you aren't behind the narrative (which, for the record, I actually thought was pretty decent).
The biggest flaw with TLOU2 is simply that you're not fighting a whole lot of zombies (or infected, whatever you want to call them) anymore. While the first game had a good mix of extremely thrilling and dangerous zombie-infested areas with people-infested areas, I feel that the story here is too focused on the human aspect of the world, as if the infected have somehow migrated to other areas and left all the humans to their drama. That's not to say that the infestation is not present, however, but I found myself fighting people way more than I was trying not to get swarmed by a horde of zombos. The end result is that you're often simply luring really dumb AI people into bottlenecks and taking care of them without breaking a sweat. Even if you alert them all, you can simply disappear into some long grass and they'll just give up their search. It's silly and stupid. The encounters with infected are absolutely way more thrilling and engaging than most of what the game offers so I feel that the imbalance is a pretty big hit compared to the first game.
The end result is that TLOU is a middling stealth game with an elaborate narrative that looks extremely pretty, but doesn't really evolve at all through its gameplay. Some encounters are more engaging than others, especially when fighting infected bosses, but most of the showdowns are against regular humans who don't do much but shoot at you from a distance. The terror is gone and the intensity is lacking.
Should you get it? Sure. If you're looking for the latest spectacle and a prime example of squeezing the last bit of juice out of the current generation of hardware, then look no further than TLOU2. If you're sensitive about your world view and don't want anything to challenge it, there are safer bets, narratively speaking, for your video game needs, but regardless, the narrative doesn't save the game from its inherent flaws. The first game is a far better outing on all fronts and its sequel really just doesn't bring anything new to the table and that's the real shame of it all.
