The Last of Us

[zerocool84]

I upgraded both holsters first. Then I did clip capacity for my favorite weapons,

Spoiler

rifle with scope

/shotgun, and reload speed for revolver. Then I kinda just spread upgrades out over the rest of my weapons, with most going into bow, though I skipped doing anything to the

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flamethrower

.

For traits, I maxed each of these in this order: listening distance > health > weapon sway > healing speed. Might have thrown a point into crafting speed. I saw shiv master as useless, because if a clicker gets you, the situation is likely screwed anyway and you might as well restart.

This x2

Exactly what I did as well

 

[Bill Brasky]

I upgraded both holsters first. Then I did clip capacity for my favorite weapons,

Spoiler

rifle with scope

/shotgun, and reload speed for revolver. Then I kinda just spread upgrades out over the rest of my weapons, with most going into bow, though I skipped doing anything to the

Spoiler

flamethrower

.

For traits, I maxed each of these in this order: listening distance > health > weapon sway > healing speed. Might have thrown a point into crafting speed. I saw shiv master as useless, because if a clicker gets you, the situation is likely screwed anyway and you might as well restart.

I'm definitely already regretting not doing both holsters first. It seems the shotgun upgrades, other than 'clip capacity' don't make much difference, or not as much as I'd hoped. It's brutal only having 5 workbenches in the game. It makes those upgrade opportunities super valuable!

After doing more reading, it seems bow distance is pretty important. That makes sense now because each arrow can essentially be considered a shiv, with the capacity to silently take out a clicker with a headshot. That allows me to save shivs for doors and stuff.

Question: I've just been ambushed by the gang, chapter 4 I think... And I've found one door that requires a shiv thus far. Am I missing a bunch of doors or do they become more common later in the game? I feel like I'm exploring pretty thoroughly and taking my time, but from the Internet chatter you'd think there were 20-30 of them in the game.

I think I've decided to skip shiv master and go with health and weapon sway first. Good points on both accounts about being screwed if clickers get that close and being able to restart.

Also, it seems that upgrading melee weapons is a total waste of time since it requires a shiv!

I can't wait to have a couple screwdrivers and play again tonight! Thanks for the input!

 

[chimaxi83]

Shiv doors aren't super common, there are only 12 or 13 in the game I believe. I missed one early on, didn't have a shiv, but I've opened every other one after that. Well worth it, and you can normally get a new shiv out of what you find inside anyway. I'm not sure if you've missed any other than what you mentioned, don't remember when they started appearing.

Upgrading a melee weapon isn't really all that effective in my opinion, with the use of valuable shiv materials, but it does give you an insta kill or two. I really only used mine as a last resort.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I found shivs easy to craft so I would upgrade melee weapons just to see the animations lol

 

[torpid]

Finally finished it.

I was rather surprised that, at the end,

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you wind up at his brother's town. I thought that the scene with Ellie on her own was in the same power plant and town, and that the implication was that it had been overrun by the cannibals or otherwise destroyed.

Like others, I

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hesitated significantly in the scene with the surgery room. In retrospect, however, I thought it was a genius bit of storytelling. If it had been a cut scene it would have had nowhere near the same emotional impact. I was literally forlorn as I was forced to do it, and then afterwards came to realize how sneaky and smart it was to make me do it.

I am not sure if the final sequence was poorly written or what, because

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it seems like I was supposed to perhaps feel remorse for having killed all of the fireflies, but I didn't. Their plan was unethical and wrong. As mentioned above, she clearly didn't give consent. What's more, unless Joel experienced severe complications from being knocked out, they had at best a couple of hours with Ellie. They perhaps were able to tell a couple of very basic things in that time, and yet their plan immediately escalated into an experimental brain removal that would have killed the only person known to be immune. What if it's some dna attribute she has? What if she has a hormonal imbalance that makes her immune? What if you learn nothing from her brain... you just killed her you damn idiots! Why don't you try to assemble an MRI, CT Scan equipment, or anything else first?

How about just removing PART of her brain? What would have happened then? I would like to think Joel would have done the same thing but it would have been more clear that he would do ANYTHING to protect her, not just prevent her from being murdered probably needlessly.

I also question how much Marlene really felt the weight of her decision. She had no problem giving Ellie to a smuggler of dubious character. She seems to use and discard people like they are nothing. When faced with the same choice, Joel ultimately did choose to remain with Ellie and escort her instead of dumping her on his brother. I am not sure if we are supposed to believe her when she claims that the decision weighed on her and she wanted Joel alive because he alone could understand the decision.

I wish they had explored

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what happens when Ellie bites someone. They mentioned it in the scenes with David but nothing ever came from it. He dies well before we got to see what happens.

I also am uncertain whether we are supposed to think

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that Ellie is immune or, as they seemed to indicate explicitly, her version is a mutated, non-lethal form. In which case the entire time she should have been very, very afraid of getting contaminated and the spores would have harmed her, because it's a different species of cordyceps, right? I have to assume I misunderstood that point because it also would be dubious whether they could actually learn anything meaningful from her brain.

All in all, I thought it was an outstanding game. There was a period of time when I felt that it was not going to live up to the hype. It seemed to drag on with repetitive encounters. I kept comparing it to Half Life 2 which, though also a bit long in places, had widely varied gameplay. This game never really felt highly varied. There were moments here and there where you had a different modality, such as shooting while hanging upside down, but all in all the combat scenes were repetitive for a while. Only once the plot picked up big time and the combat scenes are tied together better did I really start to feel like the game earned its reputation. I still hesitate to call it the greatest game of its generation because of the relative weakness of the combat scenes in places.

• The early end to the encounter with
  Spoiler

  the humveeended up quite anti-climactically. I assumed there would be a more significant battle with it.
  Perhaps it was a conscious story decision... I felt kind of deflated.
• The variety comes from the sets and your weapons and your enemies weapons for the most part. You don't get to interact with the environment all that meaningfully in combat. You never really
  Spoiler

  get to drive a vehicle in combat
  or anything fun like that. The closest is
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  briefly having a horse
  .
• The behavior of your allies is downright ridiculous and takes me out of the game a lot when they are running full speed to keep up with you or unable to down an enemy after shooting him 500 times.
• Although there were hundreds and hundreds of bricks and bottles, I found them of limited use. Maybe I just never understood how to use them properly but their primary function seemed to be to either stun someone or distract them. The latter did not work reliably at all, and certainly not so reliably that I needed hundreds of bottles per battle scene.
• The AI did not seem to hear sounds one foot away. I can be choking a guy (more on this below) one foot away and nothing seems to attract their attention.
• Pet peeve... I hate the fact that he uses a rear naked choke. It even looked like relatively proper form, yet somehow it kills the person instantly and somehow he's unable to make any noise at all.
• Some of the melee weapons seemed awfully brittle. I believe you even get a machete at one point near the end yet it only has three uses? WTF? And the solid metal pipes break fairly quickly.
• Sort of more of a consistency point or question, but
  Spoiler

  why doesn't Joel have to have his mask on when bloaters throw spore clouds at him? Seems like he should have been infected if near the spores with no mask on.
• The "puzzles" in the game were trivial and added only minimal value for me. They felt like filler and mostly a waste of time.

One other thing that annoyed me was how Joel always leaves the path open behind him in some scenes, then is surprised when scores of enemies pour in. They should have had a scene where he chokes someone out and then about 30 seconds later they stab him through the back.

So, it is certainly one of the best games I have played because the storyline is by far the best I've experienced in a game. Maybe other games have better ideas and would make better novels, but the way you are immersed into the storyline here makes it possible for me to overlook how derivative the story is. I just loved the story. As such, the game ranks pretty highly. With some improvements to the variety of the gameplay and some tweaks, it would without question be the best game of its generation.

 

[tdawg]

I started again on Normal+. I love this game. inFamous was the first single-player game I started a second run through, but it took a while for me to start back up. With this game, I held off for about a week or 2 before I just couldn't not play; I actually missed the characters and the world and the story.

 

[Nintendesert]

So my brother lent me his copy to play, so far I have to say it's good and I'm enjoying it. I like to read a book or take a nap each time I load it up too.


...loading...


...loading...


Not sure how anyone can game on systems like this. SSDs have ruined me when it comes to loading.

 

[purbeast0]

it does have a sort of long initial load time, but the game has 0 load time while you are playing it. i'd take that trade off any day.

 

[Nintendesert]

it does have a sort of long initial load time, but the game has 0 load time while you are playing it. i'd take that trade off any day.

Yeah, so would I. I just look forward to even less loading with the next gen consoles.

 

[Bman123]

The load time on that game is horrendous, I remember the first time I started it I was like WTF this is taking forever

 

[torpid]

it does have a sort of long initial load time, but the game has 0 load time while you are playing it. i'd take that trade off any day.

Sometimes there is load time if you die and start an encounter again. Not always, though! And given how long it takes to load initially you'd think that manually saving a game would actually save the exact position of everyone and your reserves... but all it seems to do is save the beginning of the encounter. And often it saves things in an incorrect/inaccurate state -- I sometimes find myself in a different spot with enemies in a different place than when I saved or when it auto saved.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Yeah, so would I. I just look forward to even less loading with the next gen consoles.

Absolutely this. That always wrecks the immersion when a loading screen pops up unexpectedly.

I finally finished the game on normal and only used the last gun once for a short period. I found that I had become so trained to sneaking past enemies, even when my character was fully speced out I'd still try to use stealth. I felt I was easily overwhelmed by enemies, and that it was much was easier to just not deal with it. LOL

 

[Fingolfin269]

OK guys I know I'm a little late to the party but...

Wow, end of summer.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Just finished...

Fantastic game. Not sure I'm ready to call it the best of this gen but it's definitely in the discussion.

 

[Arkaign]

Absolutely this. That always wrecks the immersion when a loading screen pops up unexpectedly.

I finally finished the game on normal and only used the last gun once for a short period. I found that I had become so trained to sneaking past enemies, even when my character was fully speced out I'd still try to use stealth. I felt I was easily overwhelmed by enemies, and that it was much was easier to just not deal with it. LOL

It's the price we pay for the absolute best looking games of this console gen. With such a tiny amount of ram, everything you see has been compressed to hell and back to fit it in, and it just makes things more intensely long in loading.

IIRC, swapping to an SSD only has limited gains on PS3 (and basically impossible on 360?), due to the SATA controller not truly being able to take advantage of the SSD performance capability. IOW, even a dirt-cheap bottom-end SSD is just as fast in a PS3 as something like an 840 Pro. It's not that it doesn't show any gains, but a lot of the delays are due to also waiting for the CPU/BD/RAM/etc to deal with all of the compression and such.

 

[supermag24]

One of the guys i work with said that this game made him cry at the end. He is 22. No joke.

 

[lilrayray69]

Yeah it made me tear up a few times...and I'm 22, so.

Any news on the DLC??

 

[exdeath]

3+ million world wide. Ok good.

 

[exdeath]

It's the price we pay for the absolute best looking games of this console gen. With such a tiny amount of ram, everything you see has been compressed to hell and back to fit it in, and it just makes things more intensely long in loading.

IIRC, swapping to an SSD only has limited gains on PS3 (and basically impossible on 360?), due to the SATA controller not truly being able to take advantage of the SSD performance capability. IOW, even a dirt-cheap bottom-end SSD is just as fast in a PS3 as something like an 840 Pro. It's not that it doesn't show any gains, but a lot of the delays are due to also waiting for the CPU/BD/RAM/etc to deal with all of the compression and such.

Being a console the game is optimized to stream and precache from the optical drive. Running from an SSD wont really benefit a game that has been built around hiding storage delays in the first place. Loading data 10 seconds faster when the game doesn't even need it yet for 30 more seconds provides 0 tangible benefit.

Unfortunate.

 

[exdeath]

And holy crap, my Post Pandemic Edition is starting to edge up to $400-500.

I preordered at $149 IIRC.

Got the survival edition too, its also worth twice what I paid now.



Not selling, just nice to know I'm not pissing money away on depreciating worthless crap.

 

[sze5003]

And holy crap, my Post Pandemic Edition is starting to edge up to $400-500.

I preordered at $149 IIRC.

Got the survival edition too, its also worth twice what I paid now.



Not selling, just nice to know I'm not pissing money away on depreciating worthless crap.

Nice, I wonder why though. Probabably the best and last game for the ps3 generation.

 

[exdeath]

Nice, I wonder why though. Probabably the best and last game for the ps3 generation.

Yeah its one of those generation defining once a generation games.

By contrast, Borderlands loot chest and Bioshock songbird and such editions are barely over what they retailed for and its just squatters and resellers holding the price fixed hoping to cash in on recent collector frenzy. They aren't actually selling. Games are multiplatfrom, too many sold for too long, and could be considered mainstream franchises now. I enjoy them both but they are too mainstream and not collector material.

I have a feel for these things. I knew The Last of Us was going to be BIG like over a year before its release. Its just the type and quality of game I personally demand in this new era of cookie cutter Call of Doodoo money grabbing. So I didn't hesitate when the special editions posted.

Ni no Kuni and The Last of Us: my fav games of this entire miserable shooter infested generation. Better late than never I suppose.

 

[sze5003]

Yeah its one of those generation defining once a generation games.

By contrast, Borderlands loot chest and Bioshock songbird and such editions are barely over what they retailed for and its just squatters and resellers holding the price fixed hoping to cash in on recent collector frenzy. They aren't actually selling. Games are multiplatfrom, too many sold for too long, and could be considered mainstream franchises now. I enjoy them both but they are too mainstream and not collector material.

I have a feel for these things. I knew The Last of Us was going to be BIG like over a year before its release. Its just the type and quality of game I personally demand in this new era of cookie cutter Call of Doodoo money grabbing. So I didn't hesitate when the special editions posted.

Ni no Kuni and The Last of Us: my fav games of this entire miserable shooter infested generation. Better late than never I suppose.

I know and it was easy to see it would be ps3 only. I just never thought of the special edition model. Mainly because I never buy any special edition games. But this game had little to no advertising. Only reason I found out about it and did more research was a month before it came out I saw a cutout at best buy and from that point on I just kept tabs on it online.

It reminds me of Shenmue how good of a game it was, just underrated. Games like that come silently. Feels like those game which you see tons of commercials for, you know what to expect.

 

[purbeast0]

the last of us had a ton of commercials and is not underrated at all, it's got the #1 spot on metacritic for ps3. i just don't see the comparison to shenmue at all, but maybe part of that is because i wasn't a fan of that game

 

[sze5003]

the last of us had a ton of commercials and is not underrated at all, it's got the #1 spot on metacritic for ps3. i just don't see the comparison to shenmue at all, but maybe part of that is because i wasn't a fan of that game

You have to be a fan of it to get it. The story and characters give a similar feel to what the last of us does. For me at least it did, and felt that way in terms of story too.

I saw maybe one commercial. Then again I rarely watch tv but I would notice I've seen more commercials for mainstream games vs games like this.

I have yet to finish the game though.