My Last of Us Pt. II Review

At this point, there's been so many quality takes about the Last of Us Pt. II, that my thoughts feel redundant--go read Rob Zacny's review on Vice Games, or follow any progressive, left-leaning games critic to get a sense of why this game is a slog.

But one word keeps coming to mind for me: studious. 

The Last of Us Pt. II emerges from this era of mid-2000s to late-2010s era of game design study: what produced the book, The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell, the wave of GDC talks about player usability, and the rise of game design education--pacing, systems design, and analytics all being codified in academia. This era when, after people realized money and prestige could be found in this industry, decided: "Shit, we need to write this down."

This game is virtually unchanged from its predecessor--just fine-tuned. The game-world, Seattle, sometimes becomes more open when the narrative calls for it. All routes lead to a visual landmark; the "Disneyworld" benchmark of good level design. Every enemy encounter ends with a dialogue cue so you know combat has ended and you're safe to proceed. This game generally gets that stuff right. But that's why this game feels so lifeless. 

Nothing seems to happen by accident. Nothing feels off about character interactions or story beats. This game is so afraid to be a video game, afraid of feeling technology producing a visual bug, or that the design treats you improperly, that all excitement is sucked from it.