Megaton! The Last of Us Part 2 announced.

[t0mby]

I'm not reading anything until I've finished the game but from the sounds of it it's a bunch of millennials acting like a bunch of entitled ***ts. I went into this game blind and I'm avoiding any possible chance of seeing spoilers.

I'll read up on it when I've finished.

[lestat]

ok boomer.

Oh wait, didn't you post that before?

[t0mby]

????

[lestat]

[Peppermint Lounge]

Big first party console release gets review-bombed. Well I never. Forbes reportred the game had over 5,000 user reviews only a half-day into release. That's a lot of blitz speed runs, all of them resulting in 0/10 reviews. As to story, politics, etc. that's all subjective. If I play a 95 metacritic game I don't like it doesn't mean everyone is wrong or the scores are fake.

This shit's been going on for every big console release. The same will happen to Halo Infinite.

[t0mby]

Yup, I remember when Halo 3 was getting stellar reviews across the board then suddenly some random new reviews for Ocarina of Time appeared because Halo 3 was ranked higher in Greatest of All Time. You pick the media outlets you trust and stick with them, not some crazy keyboard warriors.

[flipswitch]

There’s volumetric lighting . I’m riding through the forest and it’s all I can see with light shafts.

Must’ve read it from gamefaqs again..

It goes to show what people know without playing the game.

[t0mby]

Finally got the bow. Took me a little while at the previous encounter with all the infected due all their locations. Did however sort out a bit of a strategy that involved making lots of noise and having a vantage point. At the following encounter now after finding the bow, the one with all the WLF gang on the way to the plume of smoke. Had to switch it off, was getting too intense hiding in the grass, striking that fatal blow, trying to sneak off again. Bloody enjoyable though. I haven't had this much fun sneaking around since Splinter Cell.

[Froggy]

Did I do this for God of War or Spiderman?

I think not. I praised those games because they were good games and OMG the metacritic user score agrees with that statement.

What I don't like is the lies and deception, it gets my back up, I don't like reviewers being blacklisted, I don't like E3 showings with fake visuals used to create mindshare in the gaming community, I don't like games being used as a vehicle for shoving political opinions down our throat, I don't like fake scores.

This has nothing to do with PC gaming, it's all about honesty/transparency and the lack of it coming out of Sony for decades now.

100% this. It's why I don't bother with movie reviews now, you can guarantee a high score based on the story or attempt at making a movie to satisfy some woke crowd. Ghostbusters 2016, The Last Jedi, Oceans 8 etc etc. If anyone strays from the good review then they are ostracised and out of work so you are guaranteed a universally good score. As soon as I read the leaks on this, no matter what the game ended up like it was getting really high scores it just checked off so many woke boxes. Like the shit movie reviews the mental gymnastics some of them have made to excuse the story to still give it a 10 is worthy of an extra bonus from Sony.

You then get to stage two where like everywhere else in our lives, anyone who says the games shit because the story is complete crap is attacked for having the wrong opinion. Metacritic user reviews say it's shit, oh it must be a planned review bomb they are all just sad nutjobs who hate women etc. It's all just part of the same crap who've been pushing to take over the industry and force it to conform to their world view for years now. Yeah there's some stupid reviews in there but it's the same going the other way where fans of naughty dog give stupid reviews too far the positive way but if you actually took the time to read a lot of them, the anger about how terrible the story is the main theme. For a game that's story driven one would think that's a major factor in enjoyment no?

I'm not saying this directly about Sony either, money hats unfortunately still rule gaming reviews and it seems now more than ever.

[t0mby]

You can't single out those genuine user reviews on Metacritic though. You know it went up by over 20k reviews overnight and you go in the, click on their name and they've done only 1 review. It's had 20k reviews in the first 48hrs, 65k in 4 days mostly because of the coordinated attack arranged on Reddit. I'm not defending the story as I'm not that far through but to have tens of thousands all spam 0/10. The game play is top notch, looks the biz but fuck this 'woke' term, I'm sure it's being used out of context or the definition has changed.

[Froggy]

The game also sold a crapload on it's launch so it's a minute number of user reviews to the day 1 sales from pre-orders etc, it was pushed hard for months.

Whilst talking about the reviews going up, bare in mind that it works both ways and there's bot reviews for positive as well. As I said, the story is why people are fucked off, everyone agrees the game looks great etc but it's about the story that sucks because they went woke. I hate streamers so in a way this games great knowing they are all suffering through something they all seem to universally hate.

[t0mby]

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait and see where the story takes me. I'm not expecting a happy ending given the first few hours though.

[Twiztid Elf]

I just play games. If I like them, I like them. It's usually to do more with the overall entertainment value to me.
Sure, better and better graphics are nice, but I've never really cared too much about the technical analysis unless it breaks the game. I laugh at texture pop-in - I find that funny. I think the only thing that really bothers me is bad screen tearing.
They always just seem to keep setting the bar higher and this game certainly does that. It looks amazing. Whatever dishonest bullshots Sony/ND released before launch doesn't change that.

Look at all the horrible tech issues Days Gone had. And I know for a fact I slightly prefer Days Gone over TLOU2.
And it's nothing to do with wokeness. I just preferred the game design and systems. The loot collecting, the open world, the hooning around said open world on a great sounding motorbike. All of Days Gones To-Do lists were fun to tick off.

As for the review bombing, I don't even understand that. Just another sign of the rampant stupidity that surrounds us these days.
Like tomby, I'll avoid reading anything till I'm done. Like usual I'll let you all know my thoughts when I get there. It certainly isn't all good, but graphics are one thing I won't be moaning about.

tbh I'm just happy to be playing a solid AAA big budget game. They seem to be rarer and rarer these days.

[Peppermint Lounge]

PC and 'wokeness' like any plot vehicle works if it's done well. You can't say there isn't an audience of wound up try hard alphas ready to slobber over any hint of gender and/or race diversity in commerical fiction. When diversity initiatives are obviously shoe-horned in there and do not come across in a plausible way then it's up for criticism. Funny though that these plot purists didn't ark up when attractive, highly sexualised women were cast to play physical roles they obviously weren't trained for. Why does Sarah Connor in T2 come off so well? She's a woman but she trained her arse off to bring a believable physical presence to her action/warrior character.

This is all great marketing for TLOU2 because I'm way more interested in it now than I was given it's a series I haven't played on a system I don't own.

Looking forward to Twiztid's review.

[Rorschach]

PC and 'wokeness' like any plot vehicle works if it's done well.

When has it ever worked? 'Wokeness' and political correctness is destroying popular culture.

[Peppermint Lounge]

When has it ever worked?

When any female, minority or racially diverse protaganist(s) come over in a plausible way. Ripley in Alien, Sarah Connor in Terminator, Charize Theron in Mad Max Fury Road, the predominantly black cast in Black Panther, any good movie involving a minority/disadvantaged character overcoming a dominant establishment etc.

Why do you think it's destroying popular culture? A bad movie, book or game will go down as just another bad movie, book or game. Others will follow.

[Rorschach]

It's interesting you use examples of movies pre-2015 when 'wokeness' wasn't really a thing. I mean, through the PC lens they don't really count because those movies were directed by old white male directors. At least that's how the argument goes these days. A good character is a good character. Doesn't matter what their gender is or the racial background. A better example is Strange Days from 1995. Here was a hyper-masculine, mysogynistic movie directed by one of the best directors in the last 20 years, Katheryn Bigelow. And the best character in that whole storey is Lornette Mason - Angela Bassett, and she kicks all the male arse in that film. Bigelow gets no love though because she does enjoyable films with likeable characters regardless of who they are and what their background is. Stories tailored just in the service of minority group/character doesn't serve ot benefit that character or group, it has the opposite effect of denigrating them IMO.

And Black Panther was average at best. Not because of the skin tone of the actors in it but because it was two good acts let down by a poorly handed third with a CGI final fight that made little logical sense. There are plenty of awesome movies that you could have mentioned - Cry Freedom, basically anything made by Spike Lee or has Denzel Washington in it, Fresh by Boaz Yakin, In the Heat of The Night. There are plenty of others. These are movies from all eras. Sure, there was a period in time when the stereotypes were horrible and still are. However no one seems to get upset about how Japanese were portrayed during the 60-80s when the yellow peril was at it's height in American cinema.

And what is this dominant establishment? I think it's a just a construct so humans can have yet another label to put on each other and create divisions. Technically I'm apart of the 'dominant establishment' (which again, is poorly defined by people who toss the term around) as well but my entire adult life bar the last 2 years I've lived and worked in places where I was firmly in a minority group (nearly 9 years in Japan and 6 years in the largest Aboriginal community in Australia). There's a massive difference between living in a minoirty and thinking you are in a minority.

Wokeness and PC culture is just Animal Farm by any other name - All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Thanks to wokeness and PC culture words are changing meaning or being banned/'cancelled'. There is groupthink and groupspeech and safe spaces and trigger warnings. Just look at the debacle that is CHAZ - that is where all this leads. If we aren't careful this world will end up like an episode of Black Mirror. Patrice O'Neal nailed it best before he died - if you say something and it offends someone or some group, that's bad, but the attempt should be allowed. If not, you end up in a society which is one large echo chamber.

TL;DR version - I'm not hating on The Last of Us 2 yet because I haven't played it. However I have my reservations given the negativity surrounding the story. IF it's a good story with characters that make logical sense in the context of the setting, great - no complaints from me. However, if characters have been inserted because of a certain oritentation/skin tone/creed/whatever, then that's no good at all.

[Peppermint Lounge]

‘Woke’ became a popular pejorative around 2015 (as did the hyper sensitive alphas sending vitriol directly to actors who did nothing but take a job offered to them) but it has plenty of history prior to that. And it’s just one descriptive for the overall social and racial justice movements over time. There is *nothing* wrong with seeking more race/gender representation in commercial media. Like anything it’ll be measured by how good or bad it is.

‘Dominant establishment’ as it applies to fiction. Eg: The Accused – a movie about a lawyer seeking justice for a girl gang raped at a bar that goes heavily into victim-blaming territory given Jodie Foster’s character dressed provocatively, was on drugs and was flirting. There are tonnes of good movies where the little person prevails.

I don’t know enough about CHAZ to talk about it really. All the shit unfolding in the US is a highly nuanced, domestic affair taking place on the other side of the world.

All the stuff you're talking about, safe spaces, cancel culture, the recreationally outraged, is easily side-stepped by me. It's just people and opinions.

[flipswitch]

Played up to Seattle Day 3 then turned it off. 14hrs42mins. Even though I’m playing on Hard, which strangely doesn’t feel like a hard mode, survivor difficulty sounds like the way to go. I’m still finding tons of resources and enemy and infected are doable. One more thing: there is SSR. I saw some in a puddle of water inside a kitchen, but the most obvious was in the water, tilting the camera down and they vanish. So it’s a mixture of SSR and cube maps.

[t0mby]

Geez, day 3 under 15hrs? I need to step up my game, but not tonight, just about to crash, gotta be at work at 2am. As I said on the previous page in case you missed it, I just got the bow and I'm at around 15hrs I think.

Survival is the way to go.

[flipswitch]

I’m taking my time playing through it. Making sure I search every location and yesterday I was stuck on a puzzle ( wasn’t sure how to progress) for a good 30 minutes or more. I always try to get the best play through on my first go, but it’s weird seeing you behind with more hours .

[t0mby]

I search every location too although I think I missed a bit just before the bow. Looked like you could jump up on a low roof but there was also a fence so I tried the fence and it was lower on the other so couldn't jump back up. I tried reloading the checkpoint but the checkpoint was when you landed from the fence hop.

A friend of mine completed it today, this was his spoiler free reply. I take his opinion over Metacritics 70k user reviews.

[flipswitch]

Looks to be similar from what I’ve read from whirlpool users. I’m kind of eager to complete it now.


I know I missed a building in the Seattle section when you have the horse. The map had a “?” but I couldn’t manage to find the location, so I thought I would be able to come back to it, but uh nope.

[Madmya]

Ugh, user reviews, even critic reviews these days, they mean little because they've been inundated with agendas.

Into the bin! *cracks whip*

[t0mby]

Man that bunch of encounters after getting the bow, got intense in some parts. Without spoiling it I am currently on my way to a music shop.