R. P. LaRose

First the good: Man do I love the balance of stealth and up-front combat. The weapons and upgrades, the perfect mix of horror, action, and quiet moments in nature-scapes and fallen cities. And I never liked Joel, so I am glad he died in the first acts of the game, honestly. I dont believe in capital punishment, but the man slaughtered a hospital full of people, many of whom were trying to do the right thing for humanity, even if the whole situation was ham-fisted and completely forced. It's philosophy 101 type stuff: if a train is running down the track and you have the controls, do you direct it towards the track with one person tied up or a group of people? More or less that kind of fsrcocle situation was the end of LOUS 1. And I love how the 1 star reviews here mention that (they think) the character who kills Joel is a 'lesbian" or "trans" because she has large muscles and that would somehow be relevant to their review anyway. It's clear this is a "them" problem (🤏) in these cases. That said, I do have serious issues with the story of this game, in some ways for the opposite reasons of these reviewers. I would have given this game 5 stars. The gameplay loop is perfect (aside from the collection aspects, which I found tedious and pace-killing by the end). I just played almost nonstop for days, even pulling an all-nighter last night to get to the end, which was...extremely disappointing, then somewhat ok, then annoying, then meh, in turns. Spoilers ahead: I thought it was commendable how the two stories of Abby and Ellie interweave, and I've never seen such epic turns and locales and graphics in a game. Truly stunning. Long story short, I really just find Joel to be an insufferable, whiny, done-a-thousand-times trope of a male-patriarch-with-girl-side-kick character (see: the Witcher 3, Leon the Professional, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, and a thousand other pieces of media written by white men for examples). So the whole premise of Ellie going off on a revenge tour for her murderous/pathetic father figure (and the continuous flashbacks to him) make the experience iffy from the beginning, despite, as I say, my absolute enjoyment of the gameplay. I'll bet the times a male character mansplained in this game, or said things like "come here" sit down, or most of all "let me show you something" to a female character was just embarrassing and painful to sit through, over and over. Not just that, but almost every story action and dialogue in this game even between the women protagonists was about men. It barely passes the Bechdel test, if it does at all. Tl:dr: amazingly fun to play game with strong female leads ruined by a faulty insufferable patriarchal premise that is pointlessly bleak: two women fighting to the death over their mutually murdered father figures.