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The Last of Us 2 is "one of the greatest games ever made", according to The Russo Brothers

Bernardougf

Gold Member
Based

Every new thread praising TLOU 2 is great. You see tons of people still butthurt about the game almost 2 years later trying to justify their hate with a bunch of nonsense ("it's a 20h movie")

Love to see it
Yep and two years later the fanboys still use the same strawman arguments to dismiss any valid criticism... is just sad

Cant we all just agree that the game was divisive with the fan base, same love it , some hate it , some think is ok .. and move on ?
 
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sol_bad

Member
And you really believe that? Good for you! But even if they don't...

When they started out 12 or 13 years ago, I was pretty optimistic about MCU future, because it felt fresh and exciting - a whole cinematic universe supervised by a bunch of pretty smart and talented filmmakers. And while they still manage to make an occasional interesting oddity (the last one was probably GOTG2), everything about them feels cynically calculated to the point where it becomes annoyingly visible. Focus group or no, it feels exactly like the stuff where creatives are executives, not creatives. They have lost whatever soul they had long time ago. It's sad to see a giant like Sam Raimi given an opportunity to make a movie and then letting him to do his stuff for maybe 20 minutes of the movie's runtime. They rest is directed by robot.

Nope, writers, directors, producers and actors all collaborate together to make the best possible movie.

Sometimes a director will approach the studio with an idea, sometimes the studio approaches various directors with an idea.

As an example, Thor Ragnarok.
Marvel Studios told Taika Waititi that they wanted Hela, Odins death, the destruction of Mjilnor, Thors long hair gone and it couldn't be set on Earth. Taika worked on a treatment for the script and the studio liked it. Taika was free to do what he wanted to do as long as those elements were in The film.

Another example is Ant-Man. After Edgar Wright exited the film it was Peyton Reed, Paul Rudd and Adam McKay that collaborated on the film. They added the most important thing in the film, they framed the film around family which was completely missing from Edgar Wright's treatment. Paul Rudd also came up with the quantum realm being in the film.

Marvel Studios do not control their productions with an iron fist. Between 2010 and 2015 the Marvel committee in New York were actually controlling many things and frustrating Marvel Studios. They wouldn't allow movies like Black Widow, Black Panther or Captain Marvel be made, they wouldn't allow female villains in Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World, they forced the water scene with Thor in Age of Ultron and the thing that broke the camels back is that they wouldn't let Marvel Studios have Tony and Steve fight in Civil War. At that point Feige was able to get out from under the Marvel committee in New York and secure even more freedom.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Yep and two years later the wet pants fanboys still use the same strawman arguments to dismiss any valid criticism... is just sad

Cant we all just agree that the game was divisive with the fan base, same love it , some hate it , some think is ok .. and move on ?

Your "valid criticism" in this thread and past threads seems to revolve around petty insults of those who like the game. If anyone really needs to "move on" it is you.

Awkward John Krasinski GIF by Saturday Night Live
 

KXVXII9X

Member
I don't know about 99% (sounds like a statistic pulled out of ass) but sadly more and more releases want to be cinematic experiences rather than actual games.

People love it, developers seems to love it so there's no turning back now.
For every true cinematic game (Not games that simply have a story), there are hundreds of games that aren't cinematic. And people's idea of cinematic may vary. Sifu is very gameplay focused, but I would say it is cinematic due to how it is presented. Cutscenes have been around for decades.

We have gotten so many Roguelikes/likes, Metroidvanias, multiplayer games, RPGs, Souls-like games, and you people still talk like everything is a cinematic game. They have decreased dramatically since last generation.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
People who make movies with dumb narratives like games with dumb narratives? *shocked*
 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
For every true cinematic game (Not games that simply have a story), there are hundreds of games that aren't cinematic. And people's idea of cinematic may vary. Sifu is very gameplay focused, but I would say it is cinematic due to how it is presented. Cutscenes have been around for decades.

We have gotten so many Roguelikes/likes, Metroidvanias, multiplayer games, RPGs, Souls-like games, and you people still talk like everything is a cinematic game. They have decreased dramatically since last generation.

Sorry, I forgot to add: AAA. AAA releases.
 
This made me feel better about myself because the last thing I would want is to share taste with the people behind the MCU. Can you imagine?
"The people behind the MCU"? You mean directors for 4 MCU movies? (some of the best MCU movies mind you). Yes...i'd say it's good that the guys behind the 2 best Captain America movies and the best 2 Avengers movies feel this way.
 

Doom85

Member
I'm still shocked that people take the VGA seriously after they declared Dragon Age: Inquisition the Game of the Year.

Matt Leblanc Whatever GIF


I mean, I had a lot of fun with it. Yeah, I’d give the award to Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros U, Dark Souls 2, or Bayonetta 2 over DA:I but I wouldn’t think that much of it either way. Mind you, it’s the only DA title I’ve played, so from what I understand the gameplay was different somewhat but I enjoyed it for what it was.
 
Hugare Hugare take a breather man and then visit other threads. There's no need to see yet another goodbye/ban thread created over a single video game.

Besides, forums are still privately owned so you have to be alright with their terms. If you want something more 'lawless' you know which other sites are out there.
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Staff Member
We just deleted around 20+ posts from both “fanboys” and “haters” that served no other purpose than to instigate and derail the thread away from the topic of the thread.

It has been two years. People love this game, people hate this game, and others are indifferent to it. It’s time to move on and stop entering threads just to antagonize the other group. Stay on topic.
 

Roberts

Member
Nope, writers, directors, producers and actors all collaborate together to make the best possible movie.

Sometimes a director will approach the studio with an idea, sometimes the studio approaches various directors with an idea.

As an example, Thor Ragnarok.
Marvel Studios told Taika Waititi that they wanted Hela, Odins death, the destruction of Mjilnor, Thors long hair gone and it couldn't be set on Earth. Taika worked on a treatment for the script and the studio liked it. Taika was free to do what he wanted to do as long as those elements were in The film.

Another example is Ant-Man. After Edgar Wright exited the film it was Peyton Reed, Paul Rudd and Adam McKay that collaborated on the film. They added the most important thing in the film, they framed the film around family which was completely missing from Edgar Wright's treatment. Paul Rudd also came up with the quantum realm being in the film.

Marvel Studios do not control their productions with an iron fist. Between 2010 and 2015 the Marvel committee in New York were actually controlling many things and frustrating Marvel Studios. They wouldn't allow movies like Black Widow, Black Panther or Captain Marvel be made, they wouldn't allow female villains in Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World, they forced the water scene with Thor in Age of Ultron and the thing that broke the camels back is that they wouldn't let Marvel Studios have Tony and Steve fight in Civil War. At that point Feige was able to get out from under the Marvel committee in New York and secure even more freedom.

There is no point to argue really, because we have a fundamental difference of opinion, but I will say this:

There is a reason they have been choosing young, indie directors to make most of their recent stuff. They are hungry for bigger work, good pay, they are young and probably easy to control. The reason Edgar Wright left is because he was frustrated by creative control limitations. On the other hand, Eternals, Shang-Chi and a few others basically have zero footprint left by their directors - I know that because I have seen their films. James Gunn is pretty much the only one who gets to make a MCU with all of his sensibilities intact. And that is where I want to get back to Russos. They don’t have a signature - they sort of, kind off got away with Winter Soldier being ok, because they were aping 70’s conspiracy thrillers, but the rest has no creative pulse at all. Just loud thrills to sell toys. I wish I shared your enthusiasm, but creatively MCU is at the bottom right now.
 
The only way The Last of Us 2 would have been better is if they asked the player to watch 15 hours of cutscenes instead of 11 hours of cutscenes. The best games of all time always have you ignoring your controller and passively watching instead.

The Latin root word of game is gam', which means "To idly watch a screen".

If you think TLOU2 is a game that you passively watch and don't play, then you've outed your own ignorance, as you clearly have never played the game.
 
We just deleted around 20+ posts from both “fanboys” and “haters” that served no other purpose than to instigate and derail the thread away from the topic of the thread.

It has been two years. People love this game, people hate this game, and others are indifferent to it. It’s time to move on and stop entering threads just to antagonize the other group. Stay on topic.
Can you explain what makes discussing the game’s merits off topic in this case?
 
Can you explain what makes discussing the game’s merits off topic in this case?

It doesn’t take a genius to see. Clearly anyone who enters a thread to dismiss “criticism” by referring to them as “haters/mindless fanboys”, posting pointless mocking gifs to anyone who they disagree with, and refusing to actually debate in an honest fashion. I have only been here a few short weeks proper and been lurking for about a year and even *I* can tell this is a constant issue between the two camps.

If the mod team were truly against the debate and critical opinions on either side, then most of this thread would have been nuked instead of blatantly trolling posts.
 
It doesn’t take a genius to see. Clearly anyone who enters a thread to dismiss “criticism” by referring to them as “haters/mindless fanboys”, posting pointless mocking gifs to anyone who they disagree with, and refusing to actually debate in an honest fashion. I have only been here a few short weeks proper and been lurking for about a year and even *I* can tell this is a constant issue between the two camps.

If the mod team were truly against the debate and critical opinions on either side, then most of this thread would have been nuked instead of blatantly trolling posts.
Then perhaps they should disallow the entire thread. It’s the opinion of some random people, I don’t see why it was allowed.

I can’t help what people post here. If the thread is up I assume mods are okay with the topic.
 
Sure, it probably is. It probably deals with some elements of the human condition (grief, revenge, etc) better than many other games do.

As for gameplay, it's probably good, with minor issues. I have less beef with Naughty Dog gameplay than some people on this forum seem to. (Perhaps they've fixed some things from the first game; I remember it not always registering headshots, for example.)

I'll get to the game someday; when either it comes to PC or I buy a PS5, whichever happens first.
 

boomcrab

Member
Yeah.. people thinking by themselves and having valid criticism is so 90's
Thinking by themselves is the issue here. They didn't. They read forums like these and review bombed the hell out of it without even playing it. Many of the criticisms are valid but make no mistake the severity of these aren't as bad as many have made it out to be.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
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22 hour game w/ 10+ hours of passivity.

That's sacrilege for true gamers. Leave Netflix to Netflix. Games are meant to be played.

Yes so it's a 12 hour game in terms of pure gameplay time.... and?

How does the fact that it includes cutscenes somehow make those 12+hours of gameplay non-interactive?

Your logic (or lack thereof) completely falls over and shat the bed.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Yes so it's a 12 hour game in terms of pure gameplay time.... and?

How does the fact that it includes cutscenes somehow make those 12+hours of gameplay non-interactive?

Your logic (or lack thereof) completely falls over and shat the bed.

Because the game says "Watch a low quality Netflix show for almost 50 percent of the game. Games should be played, not watched.
 
Because the game says "Watch a low quality Netflix show for almost 50 percent of the game. Games should be played, not watched.

Ok so at least now you acknowledge that 50% of the playtime is fully interactive gameplay. So now you just have a problem with the amount of cutscenes included.

Glad you abandoned your original absurd argument for something more tenable.

Now on the subject of the proportion of gameplay versus cutscenes in a game, you claim 50% is not acceptable because "games should be played, not watched".

To this I say, says who?

Who are you to define how much cutscenes are permissible in a game that many millions of other gamers will enjoy based on their own individual tastes?

What qualifies you to speak for all gamers on what constitutes the limit on allowable total game cutscene length?

Sounds pretty arrogant of you to think you can determine this for all gamers. There are many different types and genres of games, with a whole variety of different levels of play interactivity.

TLOU2 has 12+ hours of pure gameplay. Is this not enough? According to who?

You seem to think that you're uniquely positioned to determine what is a game and what isn't for hundreds of millions of gamers worldwide. Protip: You're not.

It's all well and good if you have a pathological fear of cutscenes. Why not just state that from the outset, instead of being so disingenuous and claiming that a game with 12+ hours of pure gameplay (which is more than many many games) doesn't have any gameplay at all.
 

Soapbox Killer

Grand Nagus
I liked Russos when they made hilarious tv comedy 10-20 years ago, but their big screen output is what is wrong blockbuster cinema - no character, no unique voice, just cold, calculated focus group fluff to please as many people as possible. And of course they love games that more or less represent the same in videogame medium.

P.S. I think they are pretty good producers.


I thought The Winter Soldier was pretty damn good by any reasonable metric.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Ok so at least now you acknowledge that 50% of the playtime is fully interactive gameplay. So now you just have a problem with the amount of cutscenes included.

Glad you abandoned your original absurd argument for something more tenable.

Now on the subject of the proportion of gameplay versus cutscenes in a game, you claim 50% is not acceptable because "games should be played, not watched".

To this I say, says who?

Who are you to define how much cutscenes are permissible in a game that many millions of other gamers will enjoy based on their own individual tastes?

What qualifies you to speak for all gamers on what constitutes the limit on allowable total game cutscene length?

Sounds pretty arrogant of you to think you can determine this for all gamers. There are many different types and genres of games, with a whole variety of different levels of play interactivity.

TLOU2 has 12+ hours of pure gameplay. Is this not enough? According to who?

You seem to think that you're uniquely positioned to determine what is a game and what isn't for hundreds of millions of gamers worldwide. Protip: You're not.

It's all well and good if you have a pathological fear of cutscenes. Why not just state that from the outset, instead of being so disingenuous and claiming that a game with 12+ hours of pure gameplay (which is more than many many games) doesn't have any gameplay at all.

There's a reason why the planets most popular and loved games are all gameplay centric, and TLoU2, with all its accolades, production values, and budget has been largely irrelevant outside of its launch week.

There's a reason why it's limping over the 10 million mark. Its failure has forced Naughty Dog to restructuring their entire studio to make multiplayer + open world games moving forward.

Choices are this mediums greatest strength. Trying to poorly Ape film and television, two mediums far better suited for watching - two mediums still filled with garbage, is a misunderstanding of what makes games special.

The Last of Us 2 is ancient design that's going extinct for a reason. It's not very good.
 

Roberts

Member
I thought The Winter Soldier was pretty damn good by any reasonable metric.

It is indeed fine. I will give them credit for convincingly immitating 70’s political thrillers and Bourne films’ aesthetic but even then it is more a producer’s film than a director’s one.

Speaking of TLOU, when I look at it as a piece of dramatic storytelling, I only see stuff that I have already seen in movies before. The writing sounds fine, acting is nuanced, blocking is well thought through, but it never feels fresh, unique, idiosyncratic. And then I play a game like Hades that doesn’t even have real citscenes and yet originality, emotion, wit is right there in fron of you.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
I thought The Winter Soldier was pretty damn good by any reasonable metric.
There's plenty to criticize, weird use(or lack) of guns, the carrier's control center located at the bottom only protected by glass and no guards, a presumed dead person kept Alpha access?

There's also a case to be made that the movie thoroughly assassinates Steve Roger's character(the other movies fix that until Endgame tears it down again):
  • He goes to get his suit(that isn't even bulletproof) when every second counts with 700.000 lives on the line
  • Doesn't care about the causalities when blowing up the carriers where they're hovering when they were neutralized and could be landed first.
  • Not a peep about the people on his side killed in the Triskelion because of him(building wasn't evacuated at all)
 
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Soapbox Killer

Grand Nagus
There's plenty to criticize, weird use(or lack) of guns, the carrier's control center located at the bottom only protected by glass and no guards, a presumed dead person kept Alpha access?

There's also a case to be made that the movie thoroughly assassinates Steve Roger's character(the other movies fix that until Endgame tears it down again):
  • He goes to get his suit(that isn't even bulletproof) when every second counts with 700.000 lives on the line
  • Doesn't care about the causalities when blowing up the carriers where they're hovering when they were neutralized and could be landed first.
  • Not a peep about the people on his side killed in the Triskelion because of him(building wasn't evacuated at all)
If you didn't have such a cool ass username I would be less inclined to be reasonable with my response. (I can hear the theme just reading the name)


MCU movies are grounded in comic physics in both a physical and narrative sense. The guns (or lack thereof) for me adds to the badassness of Cap and his abilities.

  • Cap needs to look like Cap and does not need a bulletproof suit.
  • Good Shield already evacuated the ground upon take off
  • "The price of freedom is high, It always has been"
 
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Ulysses 31

Member
MCU movies are grounded in comic physics in both a physical and narrative sense. The guns (or lack thereof) for me adds to the badassness of Cap and his abilities.
My comment was in reference to the Cap vs WS fight, there's several moments in the fight where the gun could've decided the fight. The stakes are high enough that make ignoring the gun so much sticks out like a sore thumb.
  • Cap needs to look like Cap and does not need a bulletproof suit. ()
  • Good Shield already evacuated the ground upon take off
  • "The price of freedom is high"
  • But it's very uncharacteristic of Cap that he wants to be in his suit before rushing to help 1000s of people.
  • You see the areal shots where the carriers are, there's civilian areas nearby, Cap is being uncharacteristically irresponsible.
  • At least have Cap be very remorseful about the loss of innocent life rather than just 100% ignoring it. In Age of Ultron he won't leave the rock until every civilian is evacuated, that's the Cap people know and love.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Which should tell you all you need to know about what kind of game, and how bad the last of us 2 is.
It's horrible, should have never been made.

On the flip side, what other game that hits so hard on the hyperbole charged and emotionally damaged emotions here on Gaf, that warrants a thread at least once or twice a week since it's announcement and launch...complete with the very same broken records and necro beaten horses?

I don't think some users would even have a purpose, then 🤭
 
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It's horrible, should have never been made.

On the flip side, what other game that hits so hard on the hyperbole charged and emotionally damaged emotions here on Gaf, that warrants a thread at least once or twice a week since it's announcement and launch...complete with the very same broken records and necro beaten horses?

I don't think some users would even have a purpose, then 🤭
Apparently your purpose is to ride in on your horse and defend it.

Not real cinema praises not real game, I just think it's fitting.
 

Samrf89

Member
"the directors of a movie that added to the perpetuation of mediocrity and banality in art think a shit game is one of the best of all time."

FTFY
 
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