Austin Leibowitz

The story/writing is the only problem with this game... too bad that’s 90% of what this game relies on. Spoiler alert: Abby beats Joel to death with a golf club an hour into the game, setting up what I thought would be a fantastic story of Ellie getting her revenge on a psycho, juiced up murderer. Ellie’s story is great for the first half of the game. Love interests, interesting character developments and relationships... and then you are forced to play as the Abby for basically 50-60% of the game. I guess the plan was to try to make you see abby’s reasoning for what she did to Joel and have you sympathize with her... it just didn’t work. There was no attempt to set up any kind of emotional connection to abby’s father, her friends, or anyone else that would leave you feeling Abby is anything other than a psycho juiced up murderer (who was almost gleeful about the opportunity to slice a pregnant woman’s throat). I hated her for the entirety of the game and was frustrated to have to play as her character. The gameplay is difficult (which I consider a good thing) but the story you get for completing the gameplay isn’t worth it. Through the many hours of this game, I found myself hoping for the end. Since the first game had such a good ending I figured the ending they wrote for this game could probably make the countless hours of horrible build up worth it. Boy was I wrong. I literally boo’d out loud as the final credits started rolling. The reason this game gets 2 stars instead of 1 is because the actual gameplay is good. Also graphics, sound, etc. and the first half of the story were good. Everything following that (basically when you start to play as Abby) all the way up to one of the worst endings I’ve ever seen, is why this gets 2 stars. Would not suggest buying this game unless you enjoy being severely let down.