The Last Of Us (PS3 exclusive from Naughty Dog)

[Tired & Broke]

Hope y'all ready for the season pass dlc and all the held back story dlc that will be added on later. This practice in the video game market is very, very annoying, greedy and asinine.

Naughty Dog has announced its DLC plans for The Last of Us, as well as details on the game’s Season Pass.

The first of the game’s downloadable content packs will focus on the single-player element of the game, while the second and third will relate to multiplayer.

“For the first time ever we’ll be offering single player DLC,” said Naughty Dog. “The journey and cast of characters in The Last of Us lends itself to thorough narrative exploration and we’ve got more of the story to tell.

“The two other DLC packs will feature multiplayer content in the form of additional multiplayer maps and other expansions. You’ll be hearing about our multiplayer over the next couple of days. It’s an experience that continues the themes, tone and tension from the single player campaign and we can’t wait to tell you more about it.”

No pricing has been announced for the individual packs, but Naughty Dog has said that the Season Pass will cost $19.99 and offer a 30 per cent saving over buying the DLC individually. It’s available over PSN now, but you’ll also be able to grab it in stores.

The Last of Us is available to pre-order now on the PlayStation Store. A “Day 1 Digital” release, you’ll be able to download the game from midnight on June 14th, in line with the title’s retail launch.

What’s more, The Last of Us will also benefit from PSN’s snazzy new ability to let you start playing “once the game data is a little over half way downloaded.” SO you won’t be up till 5am waiting for the bloody thing to complete.

In addition to this, Season Pass buyers also get a number of bonuses for use in the single-player campaign, as well as a documentary about the making of the game.

• Increased Crafting Speed

• Increased Healing Speed

• 9mm Reload Speed Upgrade

• Rifle Clip Capacity Upgrade

• Grounded – exclusive 90min “Making of The Last of Us” documentary

[Balzac]

ugh....

this newer trend of giving in game single player dlc perks is fucking stupid

i think dead space 3 started it with that scavenger robot?

gta V is doing it with their pre order bonus too:

Special Ability Boost - Michael, Franklin and Trevor each have a unique special ability. With this boost, the special ability bar will generate 25% faster.
Additional Weapons - When visiting Ammunation stores in single player, merchants will have special weapons in their inventory available for free: the Pistol .50, Bullpup Shotgun and melee Hammer.

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/gta5/ ... ealed.html

[naturalborn103]

Review so far have been great. I haven't bought a non-sports game in years, but I might have to with this one.

[Truth.]

OPM UK magazine 10/10
"A work of art in which amazing sights and sounds fuel an emotionally draining, constantly compelling end of days adventure. This is Naughty Dog pushing the PS3 to its limit. Over to you PS4"

Empire online 5/5
"The Last of Us is not just the finest game that Naughty Dog has yet crafted and an easy contender for the best game of this console generation, it may also prove to be gaming’s Citizen Kane moment," "a masterpiece that will be looked back upon favourably for decades."

Edge 10/10
Epic!!!
from Edge Magazine, with the score being revealed as 10/10, making it only the 15th game in the magazine's history to get full marks.

Last Of Us- Gem of this generation
http://s23.postimg.org/44py...

[ThaJim2]

^good to see. Read 2 today and the first one gave it a fairly bad review while the second one was gushing all over it. So its good to see that the gushing one looks to be the norm.

[naturalborn103]

[unclebengi]

Wow, I've been ride or die with Naughty Dog for years, beyond excited for this game. I wasn't sure to make of the characters/storyline, but it's pretty clear this is going to be a great game. Between this, Bioshock Infinite, and the upcoming GTA, it's been an outstanding year for games.

[Smooth Lou]

A very good contrarian piece from Chris Kohler at Wired:

In 1982, PBS aired a documentary about Imagic, one of the earliest independent publishers in the then-fledgling videogame industry. One scene shows its team of designers sitting at a picnic table discussing ideas for new games.

“Not another space shooter,” says one.

“Ryan,” another replies, with no way of knowing that this brief interaction is about to summarize the next 25 years of the industry they are pioneering, “they sell.”

The Last of Us, a PlayStation 3 game to be released by Sony on June 14, is for better or worse the culmination of the last seven years of game development for the high-definition consoles. The graphics are unbelievably gorgeous and the action is smooth and ultra-polished, but the game design is safe and risk-free, emphasizing ultra-violent shooting sequences over any other type of gameplay that could have been used to tell its story. It’s an example of how we, to an increasing degree, Can’t Have Nice Things with big-budget, triple-A multi-million-dollar videogames anymore, not unless we want one very narrow, specific flavor of Nice Thing.

In the world of The Last of Us, society has collapsed, and most humans are dead thanks to a fungal infection a whole lot worse than your garden variety athlete’s foot. Eking out an existence in the remnants of what used to be America are grizzled old smuggler Joel and foul-mouthed 14-year old Ellie. The two soon find themselves unwillingly embarking upon a journey together. If you read this and immediately think that what will happen next is that Joel will initially not want some damn kid hanging around and getting in his way, and that Ellie will attempt to prove that she is a valuable partner, and that they’ll have a falling out, and that Joel will eventually realize that he has come to feel like something of a dad to Ellie, and that Ellie will eventually be put in a situation where she saves Joel, then you are a cynical jaded bastard and, also, completely right.

Created by one of Sony’s star teams, the Uncharted developers at Naughty Dog, The Last of Us‘ visuals are enough to make one wonder who needs a PlayStation 4, anyway. The level of detail in the environments is astonishing, whether you’re looking at a panoramic vista of an overgrown crumbling city or peering with your flashlight into a corner of a room in a dilapidated office building. It’s a slavish recreation of real life, and I wouldn’t call that visually interesting from an architectural or design standpoint. But it’s the pinnacle of technological detail (and as the game’s credits suggest, required dozens and dozens of artists at multiple visual studios to achieve).

The Last of Us is pitched as a stealth/action hybrid, and it is at its strongest when stealth is in play. In some combat situations, you never need to engage the enemy. You can crouch low behind the ubiquitous conveniently-placed waist-high pieces of set dressing, then sneak quietly behind the guards. If you need to eliminate a few to clear a path, you can creep up behind them and choke them out silently.

When you’re up against the infected mushroom-people, stealth has a bit of a different twist: The super-deadly “Clickers” can’t see you, but they can hear you very well. So you can leave your flashlight on and get right up in their hideous vegetarian pizza faces, but woe betide you if you make any noise since they kill you instantly as soon as they grab you. Add in the fact that they usually appear in dark rooms and make a signature clicking noise that causes the hair on the backs of your arms to stand up and these stealth sequences become an exquisitely horrific pleasure.

What hurts The Last of Us, for me, is when the option to sneak and/or silently kill is taken away, which happens frequently. The first time I expertly snuck around a group of thugs only to find a dead end that would only open if I killed all ten of them was a disappointing moment, and one that was repeated quite often throughout the game. Sometimes you can kill them all with stealth moves, but many other times battles begin with you being immediately spotted and fired upon, and you have to go guns-blazing to the finish.

In terms of the actual elements of gameplay, the options available to you, the most attention has clearly been lavished upon the range of ten different guns you can equip, from pistols to flamethrowers. These are upgradable and customizable to a degree not present in any other facet of the gameplay. There is an item-crafting system but it’s mostly just a smokescreen: Instead of finding another health pack you find, sitting right next to each other, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a rag that can be combined together into a health pack. You can explore the insides of houses and offices rendered in minute detail, but not find anything in them besides a few scattered letters from other long-dead survivors that don’t add much to the experience.

I reached my low point when I followed Ellie out to a ranch on the outskirts of a city, set way back in the woods. As I walked into the pastoral scene it was quiet and beautiful, and I as I climbed up the stairs to the second floor where Ellie was waiting, I knew, as surely as I had ever known anything in my life, that after we finished our conversation, that quiet little house would be for no discernible reason whatsoever invaded by a whole squad of dudes in body armor and that I was going to have no choice but to headshot my way out.

It was, at least, a great relief and a pleasure to find that The Last of Us finished strong. Stealth was usually an option in the final sequences and the final boss battle, to the extent that there was one, managed to be far creepier, more hair-raising, more challenging and more exhilarating than any of the Clicker sequences that preceded it. Naughty Dog had something special here, and I wish it had been expanded upon significantly more.

As we prepare to enter into the next generation of super-powered game machines, as gamemakers are going out of business or bailing out of triple-A development, this is reality: We can have games that approach almost a Holodeck level of realism, but the vast majority of these will fall into a narrowly-defined set of experiences. The Last of Us is an impeccably well-made game, but while it puts on the appearance of breaking the mold with what would appear to be unorthodox characters and gameplay, it actually takes great pains to never introduce anything into the design that might turn away the millions of gamers who won’t play anything that doesn’t have at least ten different types of gun.

But, you know. They sell.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/06/t ... us-review/

[Combo7]

[None]

The game is remarkable.

[ric]

game is sweet

but im 8-9 hours in and apparently 42% complete. for 60 bucks gtfo.

also the mechanic where all they have to do is look at you for a split second and your stealth options are taken away and all the bad guys know exactly where you are is a big bag of garbage

also no way can that guy make out whats going on in detail from so far away that i cant even see him

[agony]

perfect, getting my wisdom's out next week get 5 days of sick leave to boot. time to game up

[360]

This game isn't a 10. It looks beautiful but the gameplay isn't that impressive, IMO. Game rankings are so fucked these days. 0-5 no longer exist.

[naturalborn103]

I like that game a lot, but fighting with the people is SO much better then dealing with the infected. With people I try to be stealthy whole time and it is a lot more fun. With infected I just try to get through with it as fast as possible.

[ric]

@naturalborn
agreed that the people stuff is more interesting

This game isn't a 10. It looks beautiful but the gameplay isn't that impressive, IMO. Game rankings are so fucked these days. 0-5 no longer exist.

so so true. most every game is a 7 or 8. this game is not a 10.

[LameAim]

Fucking clickers ruining my vibe

[FAZER]

I'm interested to know how many of you have finished the game.

When I started it I thought it was okay, then it got very good, and by the end it was probably one of the best video game experiences I've ever had.

At this point, Naughty Dog games are pretty much a blind purchase for me.

As for clickers, just stealth shiv those motherfuckers or use the bow and arrow. If all else fails just bash their heads in with a melee weapon (if you have it).

[ruraloutfitter]

I'm interested to know how many of you have finished the game.

When I started it I thought it was okay, then it got very good, and by the end it was probably one of the best video game experiences I've ever had.

At this point, Naughty Dog games are pretty much a blind purchase for me.

As for clickers, just stealth shiv those motherfuckers or use the bow and arrow. If all else fails just bash their heads in with a melee weapon (if you have it).

long gush post incoming.

i think the game's a masterpiece and easily deserving of all the 10s. might be best game experience i've ever played through. shares the ranks with any of the Metal Gear Solids, Ocarina of Time, Half Life, Fallout 3, etc... although it clearly borrows elements from other stories and games, the way it's structured and the amount of feelings it elicits makes it completely unique and like nothing out there. many subtle parts of the story, not necessarily the overtly dramatic ones, felt like twists in the gut. the game world is so gritty and bleak but it's also contrasted with these timeless moments of tranquility. everything is so meticulously crafted in signature Naughty Dog fashion. all the nuances like the amount of variation in the dialogue during the game (all on-point commentary by Ellie and Joel) plus the mini stories that are told in the artifacts, spray paint, posters, etc… you can tell ND put effort and thought into literally everything.

i've never been attached to a game and it's characters like this before. the experience was akin to reading a spectacular book; engrossing throughout and resonates with you when it's all done. i thought it ended on the perfect note and afterwards it put me in that weird, mulling state that's hard to shake off. playing the campaign literally made me feel a little sick as it's constantly this on-edge intense sensory experience. sneaking around areas pitted with enemies makes you worried and nervous that you might attract a horde of deformed looking to tear your face off. and when facing humans, you're hoping that you won't be spotted because you might not have enough ammo to survive facing a bunch of them at the same time (not to mention it's much more gratifying clearing out an entire room with stealth kills.) in between those portions, you're hit with cutscenes where something wild or drastic happens in the plot.

i've completed it twice, first in normal and then survivor mode. i recommend at least playing it in hard as it really drives in that mentality of practicing conservation in order to survive. in survivor mode, the amount of loot that appears in the game is extremely sparse. rooms which had 6 items in normal, you'd be lucky to find a quarter of 1. i fired my gun in only a few occasions throughout the first half of the game. when things start to get significantly tougher, the bow becomes the most valuable weapon (salvageable arrows and able to maintain stealth through headshots) and you're constantly praying that drawers/shelves will carry supplies to create first aid kits. you're also deprived of the focused listening ability in survivor mode which ramps up tension quite a bit and makes stealth imperative. it forces you to use the camera to see what's behind every corner and throwing bottles/bricks to pave routes. thought this gave the game an element of strategy that made it more complex and dynamic than Uncharted's run & gun/taking cover & firing playstyle.

the main complaint i've read about this game is that enemies fail to notice allies that storm past their peripheral. i feel it's a necessary tradeoff. being detectable would of made the game endlessly frustrating. having them wait at the beginning of each area would of felt like a cop-out and wouldn't really make sense in the realm of the game. AI is also quite complex to program and i think ND made the right decisions when implementing the ally system. the AI definitely could of used some honing though. there were times when i murked someone near another enemy who was a few feet away, clearly in scope of my general direction, and nothing happened. also, those Uncharted-esque button driven segments still feels arbitrary and dumbed down. multiplayer is fun but ultimately could of been more fleshed out and varied. in general though i think the flaws of the game are overshadowed by it's brilliance.

this deserves to be played in the dark on a huge screen, loud as fuck on a good surround sound system. i have the settings in LPCM with maximum dynamic range and the gunshots have this awesomely visceral and startling effect to them, very similar to shooting a gun in real life.

fucking brutal and beautiful game, excited for the single player DLC.

[ruraloutfitter]

dp

[ric]

will play next on survivor then. those escape sequences are gonna be a bitch though. ive been stealth this whole game though so no big

[ruraloutfitter]

it's not nearly as bad as i thought it would be. i noticed very late in the game that even in survivor mode, if you consume all of your ammo wasting bad guys, the game is inclined to spawn more ammo through dead bodies. otherwise if you go through barely firing your shotgun, you won't find many shells throughout the whole game (how i played). health was kind of an issue as you take more damage in the harder modes and rags/alcohol are provided in fractions. the autosaving checkpoint system really minimizes the difficulty. if you fuck up a segment, you can just reload the last checkpoint. also, the flamethrower and molotovs still absolutely destroy. great for large groups of enemies and makes bloaters a piece of cake.

[360]

I think where I differ from most is that just because I enjoy a game immensely, doesn't mean I think it deserves a 10. Fallout 3 is easily one of my all-time favorites but I would never give it a 10. I would never give anything a 10 if I'm being honest.

[ruraloutfitter]

all depends on how you define a 10. if it means absolute perfection then i think many would agree, no game deserves a 10 as everything has it's share of flaws. many reviews/publications acknowledge this and a '10' is simply the highest score a game can receive, doesn't necessarily mean they think it's perfect. as a total experience, i think very few games can match up to LoU. so many things are done right and on such a high level that it's flaws are minuscule in comparison. the statement as 'the Ocarina of Time of this generation' is on point imo. easy 10 for me within that context.

[ric]

just finished this morning. shortly after i made that post about the zombies not being that great the zombie sequences got better and the game took off and just got better and better

the fact that they use a ton of stuff you would think about in a zombie apocalypse scenario is awesome; especially the locations. great great use of the environment in that sense.

the ellie/ellie-joel sequence is fucking awesome and the best in the game at probably the best location.

the fact that you really didnt know what to expect next (especially once you pass those first couple groups of hunters who ambush you as in the trailer) is fucking awesome. out of sheer habit i was conserving supplies until the end with the expectation that i was going to have it out really hard. even when i clocked the medical staff at the end i switched to my worst weapon (regular pistol) to conserve ammo. i expected a HUGE boss fight with marlene and some dudes. GREAT way to end the story too as it is not really gimmicky OR cliche but is still satisfying

im not really an item user. played the game on normal but i found that i didnt need to use that many items until the last sequence against those last couple bloaters/clickers and the military dudes. once i found a tomahawk shit was on.

died 64 times. most of those in the beginning and a bunch in the ellie sequence before figuring out whats going on. introducing the stalkers after turning on the key card door thing was a bitch though. just sprinted through that part eventually.

all in all not a 10 but very high. 8.5-9

what are you guys rolling with in terms of items and weapons? i meleed or strangled a ton to conserve ammo but did not use the melee upgrade very much at all for some reason (probably made the game harder)

[ric]

just started again on survivor. game is much better. truly.
listen mode is the best way to do the sonar thing but the game without it is sooooo much more intense and engrossing and it feels so much better when theres almost no items around anywhere at all. it feels so much more like the apocalypse

are the uncharted games this good? why/not? ive never played any of the uncharted games

[Combo7]

The Uncharted games are pseudo-interactive straight-to-video B-movies.

[ric]

@combo
could you discuss that a little bit? ive seen you say stuff like that before. is it really just button sequence after button sequence after cut scene?

[Combo7]

Don't want to derail this thread. I've posted at length about it before.

In a nutshell, the shooting mechanics are run-of-the-mill, the "platforming" is on rails, the quick-time events are awful, and the story, dialogue, and characters are an eye-rolling parade of cliches.

The voice acting and graphics are top-notch though.

[360]

A-FUCKING-MEN

[ric]

@combo/360
got it