The Last Of Us

I'm usually not one to complain but paywalls for Multiplayer are super fucking gay.

Most games with online passes are better to just by new. The cost of used is normally not worth it overall.

Whoever made it so you lose your one-shot boosters when the host disconnects is a moron.

just finished the suburbs on survivor difficulty, hard would be an understatement on this game!!

The sniper was by far the hardest part of the game for me on Survivor just because I didn't have a proper strategy. On Hard I pretty much just tanked the shots when out in the open because I thought the only way to get behind the house was to run out into the open right at the end. On Survivor the sniper is pretty much a one hit kill every time though, so that doesn't work. Took a lot of deaths for me to figure out how to get passed him. Now I realize that there is in fact a way behind the house that doesn't expose you and now that part is a breeze.

The only other part that I can remember giving me trouble was Ellie and David defending the mill. At least until you get the hang of Ellie's knife and use it instant kill everything.

Really, Survivor was never all that difficult. I still never felt like I was truly strapped for ammo because after two run throughs (Hard and Hard +) I'd learned proper ammo management and knew where everything useful was. At the hospital at the end I had enough ammo to kill literally everybody just with the flamethrower, and still had full ammo for all my other weapons and crafted items. Shame that the game is still really generous with supplies (except shivs, but it's not like I needed what was behind the shiv doors). But even if it wasn't, guns are never really important once you figure out a brick to the face stuns a guy and opens him up for either an instant takedown or a human shield, while trivializes pretty much every encounter in the game. I wish I would have been able to play Survivor on my first playthrough.

I am so glad that they take away Listening Mode though in Survivor. You don't realize how much of a crutch it is until it's gone and the game is vastly improved once you don't have it. I can never see myself going back to it now that I'm used to playing without it. It's a shame that I'd pretty much already memorized the enemy locations on the my first two playthroughs that I didn't really need it anyway. Again, would have been nice if you could have started on Survivor (or that I knew that you could turn off Listening mode on the lower difficulties in the menu, shame on my for not checking).

Once I finish the last multiplayer trophy, I think I'm going to do one last Survivor playthrough, but with no upgrades and no supplements. Maybe that will increase the difficulty some.

I know it's pretty much just a carefully constructed extended cutscene and not actually feasible to recreate in a full game, but I wish the game was more like the E3 2012 or PAX demos:





You have stuff like disarming enemies, fast crouch walking, corner peeking, much more advanced and more dangerous AI, more brutal hand-to-hand combat, and proper ambushes. Elements of that are still in the game, but they're stripped down significantly. On the subject of disarming enemies, I think the game should've featured the Uncharted mechanic of scrounging new weaponry and dropping old ones. As it is, we're allowed to keep every gun we find and hold all the applicable ammo, which makes the game way less difficult. If we'd only been able to hold a pistol and one type of long gun at a time, the game would've felt a hell of a lot more tense.

Well that's lame. My game just froze entirely during an MP match, couldn't access the XMB or anything. Never had a freeze in this game before. Just the sort of thing you want to deal with after replacing your old ps3 just two weeks ago.

Maybe I just got caught into some wonky crap considering the game's servers are being weird or something right now and booting people off.

Anyway, beat the Firefly journey. Now both of them are complete, woohoo.

ok, done 3 playthroughs now, have all the collectibles and finished the hunter MP section. Need 1 more playthrough to finish upgrading joel (just 5 tablets short), finish upgrading my last weapon, finding 2 shiv doors and trying to get the optional convo's (although i don't know which ones i'm missing).... then i'll do the firefly MP section.

Finally finished my last run on Survivor. As I said before, I wanted to make it as tough as possible to get the most challenge out of the single player before I put it down for a while.

My original plan was to just to play through on Survivor without upgrading Joel with supplements, picking up any training manuals or upgrading any of my weapons at a work bench. However, as I was starting my playthrough, I had an idea: what happens if you don't pick up the weapons the game offers you? Can you beat the game with just the starting Handgun? And what about the crafted items?

I decided to give it a go, and found that it isn't possible and that the game does indeed force some guns and crafted items on you. Nevertheless, I was able to complete the game with just the bare minimum the game dictates that you have.

The only weapons the game forces you to pick up are the Handgun, the Revolver (you can skip picking it up, but one will automatically be placed into your inventory to after you are hung upside down by Bill's trap), and the Shotgun (which is given to you in a cutscene). The Hunting Rifle, Shorty, El Diablo, Flamethrower and Bow can all be skipped.

As for crafting items, the only ones you have to pick up are Medkits and Bombs. You never have to touch a Shiv, Molotov, Smoke Bomb or Upgraded Melee weapon.

I was able to beat the entire game with just the three guns and the two items.  The only exception is during Winter, when Ellie has a Bow, a Hunting Rifle, and can craft every item except Smoke Bombs and Upgraded Melee weapons.  

It was certainly tougher, but not nearly as much as I was expecting. Again, melee rules the day and there is never a combat situation that didn't allow me to take out most of the enemies with stealth and the good ol' bottle/brick + running melee attack.

I did feel the squeeze on ammunition and items. No shivs meant no shiv doors, which was somewhat annoying because I also wanted to pick up every collectable. I was surprised by how few bombs I was able to craft (maybe five or six throughout the entire game) because I guess on Survivor, most explosive is hidden behind shiv doors.

No molotovs meant I could use all my rags and alcohol for medkits, which to be entirely honest I rarely used because I typically just play until the next automatic health refill at the beginning of a new chapter or season. That said, it was nice to have a nice buffer in case things went wrong.

Bloaters were a significantly tougher without the molotov or flamethrower, but you only have to fight two of them and bombs are still super effective against them. I killed a third in the University because I wanted his Firefly pendant.

All in all, I'd recommend everyone try this restricted run at least once. It's fun if you want some additional challenge and it really helps you learn how best to deal with most of the more difficult sections of the game. You also realize how bullshit the game's AI can be at times and how crappy the spawning system is if you're good enough at stealth. It's great when some areas allow you to run through without engaging anyone, but also deeply frustrating when the game randomly has some areas prevent you from doing just that and forces you to fight. The worst example of this is probably in the school, where it's treated like a stealth section but won't let you progress until you kill every enemy.

is it weird that I don't care for a challenge?

I always start games on the easiest mode, just cause I wanna experience the damn game in a fashion that doesn't annoy me. and I always say, I'll go through it later on a higher difficulty for a challenge... but I never get around to it.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

is it weird that I don't care for a challenge?

I always start games on the easiest mode, just cause I wanna experience the damn game in a fashion that doesn't annoy me. and I always say, I'll go through it later on a higher difficulty for a challenge... but I never get around to it.

I don't think many game are all that challenging on normal. So I find that bit odd. The main thing I worry about choosing easy on games is will I be losing or missing out on some cool set pieces, because normal is how i perceive the makers of the game intended a game to be played and the higher difficulties are more for challenge.

That's the way I see it, Buu. I generally play through on normal unless I've been told beforehand that a different difficulty level has a better experience.

I've found that over time Normal has gradually become the equivalent of an Easy mode in most games, with the actual Easy mode has become more like an Amateur mode for people who have never really played a video game before. I feel like this change is purely made in the interest of game reviewers and more casual gamers, who are often terrible at video games and don't have a lot of time to get good at a game but are so egotistical that they refuse to play on anything lower than the "standard" level of difficulty. If they were forced to play on Easy, they would lambast the game for being too hard, so over time Normal has become Easy.

I've found I get the most fun out of game by playing the hardest difficulty available on start up. Endure and survive.

Finally started playing this today, several weeks after picking it up on the PSN store in the Xmas sale. I've done virtually nothing so far, only playing out the prologue which ended with predictably disastrous results. Graphically it looks pretty good, the textures are great but on my screen there are a lot of jaggies and the frame rate seems a little on the low side.

Maybe I really have been spoiled by the jump to next-gen? Anyway, it's a pretty good looking game, just hoping it's got more up its sleeve than it has shown thus far.

Just met up with Ellie, so now is perhaps a good time to take stock of things thus far.

Yes, the graphics are pretty good, bar the weird and distracting blurring effect when anything moves, but gameplay wise I'm really struggling. Not with the game itself, it seems rather easy so far, especially given that if you die you simply get to retry from the same spot (so any thoughts of this being a survival-horror game go right out of the window) but in terms of engaging with the gameplay itself, which is well-executed, if a bit clunky at times, but still feels like I've done it all before. (Super senses? Check. Chest-high cover? Check. Stealth takedowns? Check.)

It is all a little dull so far. I'm hoping there are undiscovered strings to TLOU's bow, because otherwise I can't see myself wanting to play this for ten-fifteen hours, no matter how high the production values, or how good the story.

This must look great on the Xbone

What?

he either cocked up or tried to hit you with wit... really bad wit... wit that made him look a fool... oh i do hope it was the second one

SimianWonder wrote:

bar the weird and distracting blurring effect when anything moves

That seems to be Naughty Dog's trademark now. I hate their motion blur.

testtubebaby wrote:

he either cocked up or tried to hit you with wit... really bad wit... wit that made him look a fool... oh i do hope it was the second one

I got a laugh either way.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

That seems to be Naughty Dog's trademark now. I hate their motion blur.

Uh. I was hoping there'd be an option to turn it off.

SimianWonder wrote:

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

That seems to be Naughty Dog's trademark now. I hate their motion blur.

Uh.  I was hoping there'd be an option to turn it off.  

buy an old analog tv, pop in your red/white/yellow leads & the rest of the game will be a blur... you wont notice it then

testtubebaby wrote:

SimianWonder wrote:

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

That seems to be Naughty Dog's trademark now. I hate their motion blur.

Uh.  I was hoping there'd be an option to turn it off.  

buy an old analog tv, pop in your red/white/yellow leads & the rest of the game will be a blur... you wont notice it then

Smearing vaseline across the TV would likely work to.