Last of Us II (SPOILERS)

[Frobisher]

So, gameplay wise, the improvements felt quite subtle, but overall pretty good. As usual in this sort of thing I ended up with full stacks of crafting materials and ammo a lot of the time (which always undermines the survival horror theme a bit), and this was in part because Ellie's knife was a bit too good. The enemy AI often meant that crafted weapons would only rarely kill at better than 1:1 and would alert others, and lining up head shots on a moving target with the DS4 can pop you out of cover for an uncomfortable length of time, so it often feels easier to just sneak right up to people and silently shank them. I'd say both of these problems improved in the second half though. The early section with the horse sort of hinted at a more open structure to areas, but that doesn't really continue at all as the game progresses, and we still, in 2020, have puzzles where you need to explore an area to find a safe code without accidentally leaving the area through a one-way door.

Ellie's part is over so quickly I genuinely thought the game was about to end, so I was hugely relieved when I realised they were actually going to do a Resi 2 style switcheroo (though it's never a retread of the exact same areas). Each murder of one of Abby's group has that same feeling as the end of the first game where you're like, I'm not entirely comfortable with this, and Ellie is clearly turning into a rage monster who places bloody revenge over the safety of her friends. You also have the dawning revelaton of the mess that Seattle has become, though Ellie is largely oblivious to this, merely reacting with contempt and bewilderment that everyone attacks her on sight. An argument could be made that the bleak warzone of Seattle that the characters stalk each other through is the true legacy of Joel's actions, with the Fireflies disbanded and humanity now turned fully into infighting with no glimmer of hope - though probably people would still have found a way to hate each other.

When Abby's half came around I first thought we were going to witness Ellie's killing spree from a different perspective, like a monster movie - the feel of the loading screen with Ellie's snarling face takes on a different tenor as we see her victims as people - but then it went a pretty different way. Probably it would have been quite different if Abby had been aware of all the suffering her revenge had brought upon her friends. Abby is kind of a jerk for dragging her friends into that, but we've already seen that what Ellie does to them is way worse - Nora's death is flat out horrific, and then Ellie's shanking pregnant women. The second half also injects some much needed variety in settings and set-pieces, like the skyscraper and Resi 4 village island.

I loved that the point of the story was that rage destroyed everyone, and they could have built something with the people close to them instead. Interesting that both sides in the war believe the other broke the truce, but their deep mutual distrust and flawed, power hungry leadership basically made the conflict inevitable. After all the morally grey stuff, it was actually a relief to find the slavers at the end. Dressed like Walter from the Big Lebowski, and like every wannabe paramilitary arsehole with a gun, it felt really cathartic to finally massacre some unambiguously trash people.