Apologies. I’ve read lots in past hour or so instead of working, and take back what I said. This all does seem very shitty.

The alt-right wave of shite on meta critic is nasty though. That Schreier guy arguably didn't deserve the backlash from ND.

I’m assuming that

Yeah don’t. It took me 36 hours but I did end with most collectibles and upgrades. And I stealthed most encounters which sometimes took a while.

regmcfly wrote:

It's the "it's all something over nothing" that gives us Dominic Cummings going to Durham Castle, that gives us protests in numerous cities. That sort of just let it fucking go is why we are in the state we are in.

This is an awful fucking take. Do better than this.

Tempy wrote:

It can seem like a storm in a teacup cos on the surface it's all twitter drama, but it's also showing how devs, including those not even behind the game, and now talent involved in the game are willing strong-arm the media... which hang on... isn't that what GG was all about? Ethics in Journalism? Sarcasm aside, the Polygon article he links to is spot on: https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/30/21307200/the-last-of-us-2-controversy-critics-press-naughty-dog-vice-review-leak-sony-ps4-playstation In a nutshell:

That's a good article. And probably enough of a toe dip for me just even glancing at some of the twitter links in it and even briefer glances at, *shudder*, youtube comments which all seem to be the same type of thing you'd expect. People reeeeeeally need to feel less ownership over pop culture products. You like it or you don't like it so much. That's all. Discuss a little without committing hate crime and then move on.

Aye, can’t remember seeing so much utter stupidity everywhere when discussing a game. It’s like a next gen thread in purchasable product form.

The Polygon article Tempy mentioned is pretty good.  Not the one about muscular women though, that just seems like core targeted click journo.

It's not surprising there's a ton of writing and varying interpretation around this. It's not successful in everything it does and plenty of its ideas have even been done better elsewhere. But there's so much there in terms of characterisation, plot and themes that it's impossible not to have something to say about it.

I felt the same with the first one as well - I didn't like a lot of what it did, but there was so much to talk about regardless. I think both games deserve credit for reaching a level of writing that demands discussion, even if your conclusions are negative. Very few games manage that.

Hey Jon, someone said you had written a LoU review. Where can I read it?

Minnesänger wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

It's the "it's all something over nothing" that gives us Dominic Cummings going to Durham Castle, that gives us protests in numerous cities. That sort of just let it fucking go is why we are in the state we are in.

This is an awful fucking take. Do better than this.

You are 100% correct. Would delete but will leave up as people do stupids and need to learn. I need to not post when I'm getting nervy.

Treating matters as trivial when they are actually important? I think it’s (partly) at my “storm in a teacup” comment which I later apologised for. I was stupid enough to comment without having read more on the matter.

I’m going to come back and read all the comments and reviews properly to understand what the conversation is about. I’m actually finding it hard to “enjoy” playing the game this time around.

I don’t know if it’s because the character models are getting more realistic, the gruesome death scenes or the fantastic direction with the dialogue, but I genuinely feel some dread anticipation when working my way through some of this stuff.

So I’m probably only about 8 hours in and preferring to play other stuff in between my short bursts on this. It’s not that it’s not great technically and some of the minor rope puzzles are great. I’ve just done one that just felt so logical because of how well they’ve done the rope physics.

Some of the scenes when you are with someone and they shout they are coming from X usually turn into Insta death the first time I play them as I don’t think those directions are particularly signposted that well. Perhaps that’s intentional game design to force panic. But then you restart and you clear the scene and it wasn’t that difficult so I think what was the point in the setup.

Anyway I’m not complaining. It’s a solid sequel and the story is keeping me engaged. I’ll see it through.

I've just got this and am about 4hrs in. Loving it so far. It's very pretty, my PS4 fan isn't louder than my speakers and I'm liking the combat.

All good.