The Last of Us, it's a game I do enjoy and it's a game that does a good job at having a solid story and solid gameplay even though neither are enhanced by each other in anyway. However, this remake is a weird one that I have complicated thoughts on. TLOU is a game I like but this "remake" just feels souless outside of the fact that Sony needed an easily avalible and accessible version of the game to play when the HBO show dropped.
At first, when looking at all the accessiblity and quality of life features added to this "remake", I thought, "man this wouldn't be too out of place in the PS2 era". With games like Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence, Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition and Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix except those games came out back in a time where consoles had limited internet connectivity and you couldn't install patches and updates as easily as you can now. You could easily patch in all these features in the PS4 Remastered Edition of the game and you would bypass this remake entirely. I thought it also shared elements with Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition with how that version introduced easier aiming through Wii Pointer aim, and TLOU Part 1 has this through gyro aiming except there is just one major issue: gyro aiming isn't as good as Wii Pointer aim.
I tried to make this 3rd playthrough of TLOU as different as I could with me adding things like detection arrows and gyro aim being two of the major gameplay differences since I thought they were major selling points of this "remake" but they were superficial changes at best and with gyro aiming, it's easily the biggest missed potential.
While you could argue that if gyro aiming was better, it could potentially break the game with headshots being much easier to land and being able to aim so fast that enemies won't be able to hit you very quickly, but if you are going to add motion control aiming at all, don't you want to make it as worthwhile of a feature as possible? This could also be due to the PS5's gyro aiming not being that great but while I was playing the game with gyro aiming, it didn't feel that reliable or not as reliable as it could be. Every time I would line up a shot with gyro aiming even with the sensitivity maxed out, I could track and line up my shots fast enough to avoid getting hit and get the headshots I wanted, it felt like I was getting hit due to the gyro aiming being too slow rather than because of my inablity to aim shots in time in quick succession. This shouldn't be an issue since I am using motion rather than stick aiming, then I just started to use analog stick aiming and had more of an enjoyable time that way, so one of it's potentially big game changing features is no rendered rendundant.
Next up is the detection arrows, one of my biggest gripes with the original game's stealth is the lack of detection arrows and the lack of any geniune feedback during stealth outside of a vague sound cue when you are in an enemy's line of sight and I am going to segway into one of the biggest misconceptions I hear about TLOU.
TLOU is not a stealth game. It never was one and that isn't a bad thing, it's perfectly fine but when I play with these detection arrows, it reminds me that TLOU as a stealth adventure is rather basic and dull. Stealth in this game feels like a red herring at times. When I beat the game back in 2013, I tried to play the game as a stealthily as possible and had a miserable time but when I realized stealth is meant to be used in conjunction with the cover system and shooting, I enjoyed the game a lot more. Playing with the arrows made me realize why Naughty Dog never added them in the game to begin with, stealth is basically a game of, "how long can I remain undetected and take guys out from behind until my cover is blown and then you go guns blazing".
With these detection arrows, at times it's easier to avoid enemies entirely but at other times, the game boxes you in and you will probably get caught and at other times, avoidance is easy. What really makes complete stealth a red herring is the fact that certain sections requires you to get caught in order or kill enemies for the game's story to progress. For example, multiple "encounters" in the game requires you to kill enemies in order to move to the next sequence.
To name some examples, the subway level requires you to kill a stationary clicker nearby in order to give Ellie and Tess a boast, in Bill's Town backyard level there is another stationary clicker you need to kill in order to open the door to progress, in the hotel complex level you need to kill all the guys in that small area in order to use the ladder since it will make too much noise and to trigger a scripted sequence where Ellie shoots a hunter in the head, and in the finianical district level, you can stealth kill as many enemies as you can and as long as Ellie does not fire the shot from the hunting rifle, the enemies will keep respawning untill she fires.
This also isn't including the amount of mandatory "cover blows" where you will be alerted in a cutscene and then you have to engage in shootouts with no option for stealth at all.
If you try to play this game completely stealthy, don't, you are going to have a miserable time, and there were better "action games" where you get to play it stealthily that released before, at the time of and after TLOU's release like Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, Splinter Cell Blacklist and Metal Gear Solid 5. Those games gives you more options for stealth than TLOU does and not all your options in those games are offensive options.
Now after all that, I might as well describe the game itself and like I said before it's a pretty good game. I am not a big fan of Naughty Dog after the first Jak and Daxter game with this game and Jak X being the exceptions.
I make it clear I am not a big fan of Uncharted and with TLOU, ND realized they had to make compelling gameplay along with a solid story. The difference here is that TLOU's level design allows for more exploration during the walk and talk sections and the game in general gives you more options in combat than Uncharted ever did. TLOU also requires you to look at body language and expressions more key example being the scene where Henri is seperated from Sam and he is breathing very heavily over the fact that he is seperated from his brother.
That and guns actually have geniunely good feedback and damage animations unlike Uncharted. The game does in fact have actual gameplay, don't let the naysayers fool you. There's plenty of shootouts along with walky talky bits throughout the game. I am wondering how people who say TLOU is barely a game came to the conclusion that they did or if they even played it.
Navacanoo goes in more detail here than I can regarding the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzgSzbMryFY&t=867s
TLOU's story while typical is told well and has very good characters and individual interactions them to be endearing, and unlike the HBO show, the game uses it's gameplay scenarios to give the downtime with characters as a reward for going through so much hell. When you survive a battle in TLOU and hear the characters speak to each other feels like you earned all that where in the show, it's just endless amounts of talking in an empty apocalypse rather than a zombie infested one. Plus TLOU's story just benefits more with following Joel and Ellie at all times like a "seemless take" with occasional cuts as opposed to the show's endless and dull "filler" scenes to pad out episode lengths and explain things that didn't need explaining or fleshing out.
Now even though the story is praised to death and I like it and all, there is just one major issue I wish the game actually covered in some way whether it'd be through DLC or having a prequel game being made instead of this remake: Joel and Tommy during the timeskip.
I am not a big fan of long timeskips in fiction since it goes over major character development and all the changes characters go through happen off screen. With Joel and Tommy's case, I find their interactions so compelling and their conflicts so well acted that I geniunely wanted to know what actually caused the rift between those two. It's compelling backstory and drama that is never actually played and it's hard to understand it since it's never shown.
I am a firm believer that you shouldn't show everything in a story and only things that are important but I argue the backstory with Joel and Tommy is important to the overall story since it establishes the "ruthless" side of Joel that is never shown until the Firefly lab. If Joel and Tommy's backstory was shown, this would make it an easier pill to swallow and show all that compelling drama.
Overall, this review was all over the place, I do like TLOU and if you want to experience the story for the first time, this remake isn't a bad place to start, but I still question if this remake would even get made if it weren't for the HBO show and how souless it feels overall. Much like that infamous remake of Psycho since TLOU never needed a visual overall and already looked back then and even now, it's a great looking game. If you played the game, and want to play it again due to rusty memory, get at an extremely discounted price.
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