My sort of review. NO spoilers. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 17:37 (1612 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I think it's fairly obvious that I'm not a very critical media consumer--I tend to just get absorbed in stories, and I don't give it much more thought than "Did I enjoy that?"

The answer for The Last of Us Part II is absolutely "Yes!"

I think this game was fantastic, and I think it was a worthy follow up to the first game, which ranks among my favorites of all time.

The presentation of everything is exactly what you'd expect from Naughty Dog. It's a master class in nearly every regard, from the visuals to the voice acting, the animation, etc. I think that mostly goes without saying from this studio, but they still managed to impress me every step of the way. I want to give particular shoutouts to the voice cast. Everyone absolutely killed it, all the way down to the random enemy barks. Just phenomenal.

I won't comment on the story, so as to avoid spoilers. I'll only say that I enjoyed it. I cried several times (not that that's the indication of a good story--I'm pretty easy to get in that regard with good manipulative presentation). I think it's a good follow up to the first game, and it settles some long standing debates about the first in some ways.

The gameplay, though, is where the game truly shines for me. I really liked the gameplay in the first game. I think it's far better than a lot of people give it credit for. Part 2 takes the same formula and really expands it. I don't want to oversell it, it's still that same gameplay, but everything just feels so much better. I think most of that boils down to the arena design. Most of them are incredibly large, with pathways between sections absolutely everywhere. Getting spotted, repositioning and laying traps, luring the enemies in and scampering away through a hole in the wall . . . it's just so good. There's also a lot more set piece moments than I remember being in the first game, but it has been a few years since I've played it, so maybe that's not true.

I can't think of much else to say without getting into spoilers. I think it was fantastic. I'll be interested to hear what the rest of you think of it.