The Last of Us Part II Remastered

where do i even begin…i genuinely don’t think i’ll ever be able to explain just how much this game means to me. tlou has been my favourite game franchise for so long now and part 2 somehow made me love it even more. i’ve replayed it more times than i can count at this point and every single playthrough still makes me feel exactly the same as the first. it never gets old. i know this game gets a lot of mixed opinions, but i genuinely couldn’t care less bc i absolutely adore it. i love games that aren’t afraid to make you feel absolutely everything and this one definitely succeeds at that. it made me smile, laugh, cry, stress, sit there staring at my monitor questioning my entire existence and then immediately want to start another playthrough bc apparently i enjoy emotional damage T_T one thing naughty dog absolutely nailed (as always) is making the environment so unbelievably beautiful. i spent soo much time just wandering around looking at everything. i had to open every drawer, read every note, go in every room and admire every lil detail bc there’s just so much love put into these games. it honestly feels like there’s always something new to discover no matter how many times i replay it. the gameplay is honestly chef’s kiss too. every encounter feels different depending on what you decide to do. sometimes i actually manage to be sneaky for once and other times everything goes horribly wrong within abt five seconds and i’m running around panicking while every infected in a five mile radius decides i’m today’s lunch. it’s stressful in the best way possible :’) the soundtrack to these games deserves so much love too. and don’t even get me started on stalkers…i swear they’re specifically made to take years off my life ;_; if you’ve somehow managed to avoid spoilers after all these years, i’m begging you to try keep it that way and experience it for yourself. it’s one of those games that’s best played knowing as lil as possible. overall this game completely ruined me emotionally and i wouldn’t have it any other way. i wholeheartedly think this franchise will always be my favourite of all time and i don’t see that ever changing. tysm naughty dog for creating something so special. 10/10. i will forever defend this masterpiece with my entire soul<3 endure and survive 🌿

An absolute masterpiece. The gameplay is brutal and fluid, the environments are stunning, and the story is absolute cinema. Easily one of the best games I've ever played. 1000/10.

man this can be a tough game to play... I'm a sensitive/emotional chappy so the story was painful but also realistic, absolutely brutal and harsh but that's how life is, so also beautiful and precious no return is pretty sweet also :D fantastic experience! never watch the show tho, what a mess... triple-A S-tier combat loop & coupled w amazing gore-fx and OST, which is ironic as it's story is really advocating against conflict/violence... animation framework, gore, textures, lightening, environment LOD, audioworks etc, all super well polished. not many games that exist can actually contend with TLOUpt2 tbh but man what a story!! also mac quayle is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ best!! absolute legendary master of the DAW. it frustratingly feels like TLOU1&2 were written from different story-telling philosophies. there's always been something about the "revenge only furthers along the cycle of violence" and "an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind" approaches that has never sat well with me. mostly because by definition it is preached to a victimized party, someone who didn't initiate the violence being asked to, essentially, sit with it and not retaliate. I think we as thinking rational people tend to forget the emotional axis of these conflicts. that asking people who have been subjected to inhumane conditions not to fight back, and without any alternative means of retribution, basically just stay out of the way is ALSO incredibly cruel and inhumane. if justice isn't available and revenge is morally bankrupt, then what are people supposed to do, exactly? then what are people expected to do. the greatest mistake a sequel can make is apologizing for the story that made the original so punchy, one of the central ideas of TLOU1 is that every survivor, no matter how insignificant they may seem, is an entire world to the people who love them. joel’s decision at the end is tragic because there isn’t a clean moral answer. it's a very human response, something you can suspend your belief that this is a 'game' and lose yourself in that world. part 2 had an interesting premise by showing the consequences of joel’s actions through big abbs, but the moral framework never felt internally consistent. ellie kills countless people in pursuit of revenge, yet we’re asked to believe that killing abby is the one act that would finally be a step too far. after everything that happens to reach that point, it feels less like a genuine moral revelation and more like the story arriving at a conclusion it had already decided upon. I usually like stories that challenge the audience or refuse to provide a happy ending. what matters is that the moral logic remains internally consistent. TLOU1 achieved that beautifully. part 2 sadly never quite did. its annoying that when bruce was writing TLOU1 he mentioned he found the idea of 'travelling across a dangerous perilous nightmare of a wasteland, when moral corruption and injustice is dispensed more than death itself, for what? revenge? you jus don't buy into it, when the stakes are so high' so him making these kind of statements during TLOU1 development is really odd as that's one of the main points of the second title, it's like the story/ending is trying to take the 'redemption' component of RDR2's story and hammering it in with a pillar sized nail and again has no consistency with the previous world that was just built for us (TLOU1) if this game wasn't connected to TLOUpt1, I'm convinced people would love the story/chars more. [spoiler] godamn abby is pretty evil tho, to kill sweetie dad joel INFRONT of sweetie ellie is just excessive, then forcing me to play as her and try to kill ellie :( :( :( joel killed abbys dad before he was about to dice up an innocent child (ps that didn't ASK to be immune btw) for the 'chance' of a cure, to save what? 20x people, maybe a few hundred, maybe none joel was merely goal driven, obstacles in the way whereas abby wanted that torture time to really revel in it just really wished the writers added more depth with this. the realization that revenge isn't going to give ellie peace is kinda nullified after the fact that she's slaughtered hundreds of people to get to abby. by not killing abby, that means everyone that she killed died for nothing??? a lot of people that joel/ellie have killed have been from a survival perspective where as abby is not defending herself or desperate, running around in a hit-squad, willing to traverse the dangerous wasteland for... revenge??? she is literally putting her and her group at risk and ends up getting them killed because of her petty journey, but she is the 'top scar killer' so a dunno... it's such a tough one as on my first playthrough, I was blood-thirsty and wanted ellie to get revenge on abby no matter the cost, years later on my second visit, i felt kinda bad for abby, especially at the end when ellie is killing her, i felt horrible, i just wanted the violence to stop, wanted it all to end and that feeling mirrors how I've felt and feel with real world conflicts. abby's dad is written horribly though, i wanted to like the chap but it's a bit on the nose. levs condition by the end of the game is barely changed somehow, same with char growth, abby atrophies and loses mass which makes total sense and her char develops throughout the story. [/spoiler] controversial take i know but presenting yourself as male in a world where females are being raped, murdered, abused etc (most wasteland depiction will show this in some form) the brutal essence of humanity, greed, power, evil completely makes sense to me, escaping being labeled as a sex doll is desirable and at times critical to ones health/survival but the writers did not write it like this, they do not make any metaphorical takes on the difficulties of being a woman in a post-apocalypse environment and the unique difficulties they would face, which makes this choice even more frustrating and feels like fake corporate performative leftism again and serves no other purpose than 'look guys aren't we woke?' weirdly enough it seems like the opposite, writing abby so that she exhibits the 'traditional' stereotypes of a masculine male is aka big muscles, violent, stoic etc trying to evoke elements of what we as a society generally consider 'strong or masculine'; these attributes can be assigned to a woman, but it loses it's punch when you use traditionally accepted standards of what's considered 'masculine'; can be plenty fine but having it as the ONLY reason person = strong makes no sense. abby could be written to show attributes that show strength regardless of gender or western stereotypes. i thought 'strength' was defined by emotional maturity, lack of ego, wisdom, capable, emotionally intelligent all traits exhibited by admirable humans, deities even, not just muscle = strength i'd love to see a TLOU3 with ellie and abby, maybe even a DLC for tommy's journey or a prequel to meeting ellie but spending money on a PEE PEE AAAAAAHH show seems the priority :( :( :( ending could be better, came away jus not feeling that much compared to the first game - lev is not even close to ellie in TLOU1 if the game is trying to mirror that experience which it feels like it is. 9.5/10