Dyle

This is the sequel to The Last Of Us Part I.

The first installment of this series is a masterpiece.

This is not.

The first part had stunning graphics, an interesting (though already simehow tiresome) world building and an excellent written and presented story line.

The story in The Last Of Us Part I is the main reason, why this one is a masterpiece.

The story in The Last Of Us Part II is disappointment. It seems that the main inspiration of the storywriters have been watching to many “The Last Jedi” and “Game of Thrones season 8”. The demontage of your favorite characters and a boring, nonsensical storyline.

Hard to write without any spoilers, but the game lets you play as Elli and as her antagonist Abby in equal parts, iterating between the two back and forth. There is only one single theme here for each and everything: Revenge! Full stop. Up to some very stupid character decisions. Do not ask, if the uniliteral decision of the Fireflies in the first part to save human kind are worth the costs (and are in accordinace with human values – they are not). Do not ask, why noone in the whole story ever explains his or her actions to the counterpart. Do not ask, if Elli is really the only one immune. Do not ask, if there could be alternatives to this storyline and how they could be turned out, if just people talk to each other. This list can go on and on.

I take the LBGTQ theme as somehow outstanding and a nice touch.

Noughty Dog tries excessively to destroy Elli as a beloved character and to get the audience to like Abby (the Lef storyline or the heavy manipulative playing with Alice, the dog). The fail in both.

E.g. there is a fight between Abby and Elli (not the final one but in the theater), in which you play Abby and try to outsmart and fight Elli, otherwise Elli kills you. I got satisfied by letting Elli kill me. Several times. That felt good. But since the story does not progress if Elli kills Abby, I finally fought Elli and won. That was annoying.

The story just does not work. Too much nonsencial descision, too much doing the same things over and over again, too little of world building (and there could be a ton!), too much of plot armor for the main characters.

Insane good visuals, but a boring, stupid storytelling.

This is the “Game of Thrones Season 8” version of The Last Of Us.

Sad.

6/10

The Last Of Us Part I is a masterpiece. Mainly you play Joel 20 Years into a zombie apocalypse. Joel lost his daughter at the beginning of the cataclysm and struggled to survive ever since. After 20 years he is a grumpy old man living from smuggle jobs. The government, or what is left of it, is acting totalitarian and fighting civil unrest. The situation is very grim. Adding to this is a group of rebels calling themselves Fireflies.

In the midst of all this, Joel and his partner are tricked. To regain their stuff they are urgent to “deliver a package” to some other Fireflies. The delivery turns out to be a 14-year-old girl Elli. The Fireflies desperately need her, since she is the only human in existence – at least to the player – which is immune to the virus infecting fungus turning all people into zombies.

Grumpy old Joel does not want to have anything to do with her and even talks to his friend to turn back and leave Elli, but as his partner dies, he makes this delivery is tasks and wants to bring Elli to some place from where she can go on finding the Fireflies.

What ensues is a journey throughout a devasted landscape. Gradually Joel and Elli befriend each other and finally, Joel feels responsible for her as a father. Which has dramatic consequences in the end.

How the story unfolds is compelling and very well exercised. Even though I could not get any sympathies for Joel, how this storyline is presented and turned is excellent.

The gameplay focuses on stealth and scavenging missions. You get levels with a set of opponents (humans and/or zombies) and a growing array of weapons and skills to beat them. Most time you play Joel, but sometimes you get some missions as Elli too.

The visuals are stunning and insanely detailed. Even though the gameplay gets repetitive the presentation of the story and the world setting is great.

Sadly, you do not have any chances to alter the track the of the story in any way. As a player you have no agency or dialog options or anything. The whole story is pretty railroaded without any possiblities to take turns.

Still, the visual presentation and the narrative are excelling: 9/10

You play either a Ranger (Eradan), an Elf (Andriel) or a Dwarf (Farin) in a team of three to face the lieutenant of the Dark Lord, Agandaûr, which decided to conquer the North of Middleearh for his master. In the course of the game, you visit some landmarks from the movies like Rivendell, travelling through Dungeons and defeat Orcs and Trolls alike.

All in all, not a bad game.

And that’s on the plus side. But the game has some flaws and one major real downer.

The gameplay is some rather fast pace combat hack & slash looter. But without a focus system, which gets pretty chaotic if there are many foes to combat with.

The story is so linear and full of cliché it actually hurts.

The surroundings are pretty nicely done and some places are really new and add to the universe, like Nordinbad, but every time you run against invisible walls. These are mere countless in the game.

Sometimes the designer treated their players like morons, e.g. when you click “Start” the game asks you “Do you really want to start the game?” or the embarrassing attempt to explain the setting and storyline in dialogues. Having played the Ranger my character goes into other NPC like this: “So I’m ranger hero fighting evil all day. Now tell me, who is this ‘Sauron’ you are talking about, and who are you ‘Gandalf’?” Now, this example is a bit stressed and not in the game, but these lines are not far off. There is a better way to introduce the player to the setting than to have the hero of a game silly lines.

Next, I played with a controller and there is no explanation of the movements. I actually learned by accident how to run and roll in the game far too late.

As already said, the story is a bit naive and very railroaded.

But all these flaws are pale in comparison to the one major: the game has no soul. It has no character. It’s a game which was made to have a game adaption of a big movie to milk money from the players.

As such: technically not bad and not a bad game at all.

But, … well.

6 out of 10.

This is not a game but rather an experience. You play Senua a Celtic female warrior from the Pict tribe. You are suffering from psychosis and are hearing voices. So your clan exiles you for been “cursed by the Gods” and been inflicted with “the darkness”. Yet you return and find your whole clan massacred by Northmen. Even more, the only one who has been fond of you, your lover Dillian, brutally slaughtered. It is this moment in which you totally lose it and find yourself in a nightmarish world. Picking up the head of your lover (sic!) you travel to Helheim, the realm of Hela, daughter of Loki, to free the soul of Dillian. All the way you are facing illusions, hear voices in your head and fight your way through Northmen fighters appearing right out of some dark mist.

This is a trip into a psychotic mind and tries to mimick what people with that condition see and hear. Playing it with headphones is crucial since the Ninja Theory did a great job in making binaural 3D sounds. So you hear those voices sometimes right next to you, then from afar back, then on the left in front of you, etc.

And the Unreal 4 Engine is painting a gorgeous environment. This game has a marvellous, breathtaking scenery of the Orkney Isles.

Yet the game mechanics are very, very minimalistic: there is no inventory, no map, no quest-givers, no log, no nothing. It’s just you, the environment and the voices. Sometimes you get some visions from other people. Combat is light attack, heavy attack, parry and dodge. But that’s it.

At first, this feels weird and anachronistic. But after some time one gets accompanied with this interface and starts enjoying it. Even the combat feels intense since often then not you are facing more than one enemy at a time and you have quite some time keeping those foes at bay.

All in all a very, very clever and well done “game”.

On the con: there is only one save file and the games make auto-saves on checkpoints. For me, this is a big downer.

9/10