James Street

A misguided effort. The Last Jedi is strictly Rian Johnson’s vision, like a fan-fiction. You either see eye-to-eye with him or, like Mark Hamill, see the failure to recognise what Star Wars has built up previously in relation to the characters we know and love.

Spoiler free section: A modern day masterpiece, this game redefines the audience experience in video-game storytelling. With the taste of the beautiful story of the first game still familiar to most players, what this sequel supplies is not that. Instead, this story relies heavily on twisting what made the first game so special into something immensely darker. There are twists and turns that caught me entirely off-guard, and like waking up on a rollercoaster in the dark, you’re unlikely to enjoy the experience unless you just yell ‘screw it’ and commit yourself to the experience offered. If you allow yourself that however, and embrace this narrative with open arms, you’ll still be greeted with a hard pill to swallow, that at times will make you want to put the controller down and abandon the game out of pure anger, sadness, or hatred. This is what makes the game such a rewarding experience. Push yourself to swallow that pill, and what emerges is a narrative unlike any you’ve experienced, full of grit, lessons, depression and surrounding all of that, the beautiful and horrific clicker-inhabited world of The Last of Us.