Aidan Dennehy

WARNING: This review has spoilers. With every review comes a level of bias and my review is certainly no exception. I grew up watching my dad playing Naughty Dog’s best games: Uncharted, Crash Bandicoot and The Last of Us. When I was old enough to play one of those games, the first one I jumped to was The Last of Us. I was blown away by the storytelling and the gameplay. The game went above and beyond my expectations and is today still one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had. It’s fair to say I’m emotionally attached to the game as well as Naughty Dog in general, so when I saw the leaks and learned that Joel was gone, I was as heartbroken as every other fan. I hadn’t waited seven years to just not play this sequel though so I threw the heartbreak aside and set myself a mindset for the game. I told myself that this game was going to be tragic, hard to play and at times disagreeable. I threw away the hopes of the story having a happy ending and I think that that’s what this game requires you to do. I think that when we learned from the leaks that Joel was dead, many of us refused to change our mindset. This is of course understandable as it was for a while unbelievable that they’d kill Joel. So when fans went into the game with the same expectations they had before the leaks, they were let down and faced with a story of pure tragedy instead of a story of justice. With my refreshed mindset I was able to appreciate the game for what it was trying to be: a merciless revenge story that derails into mindless killing. The point I’m trying to make is that when starting a game you must try and determine the tone of the game: is it going to be uplifting, tragic, sad, wholesome etc. Once you’ve determined the tone of the game, switch your mindset to that tone: expect a tragic game to have tragedies, expect a sad game to be heartbreaking. Then base your final verdict on how well the game sticks to its overall tone. A great example would be Far Cry 5. If I had started the game with the mindset that it was going to be an emotional and captivating story, I would’ve hated the game, but I had the mindset that it was going to be a stereotypical, over the top dumb-fun shoot-em-up, and that’s exactly what it was and that’s why I was able to enjoy it. An example of a game I found bad would be Hitman 2016. The series as a whole revolves around Agent 47’s inhuman abilities and how he is a huge misfit in society and takes refuge in killing international villains. So when I saw that the missions in Hitman 2016 weren’t connected in any way and were simply “this man bad, shoot bad man” levels, I was let down. It’s also worth mentioning that for a stealth game it has horrendous AI. It set itself up to be an elusive and complicated stealth game but ended up being an arcade game with a few levels that you can tackle guns blazing as easily as you can in stealth. My final thoughts on this game are complicated but if you’re willing to give up the mindset that The Last of Us Part 1 gave you and adopt a new one for The Last of Us 2, I think that you should give it a try.