Since I don't have my own PlayStation, I played this game together with a friend who has one. Of course, playing such an atmospheric game not solo is still a pleasure, but at least somehow.
TLOU 2 is the most anticipated game of recent years, before 2020. And it was not in vain that they waited for her. Of course, the first part is better than it, but by a lot.
The gameplay is made in the traditions of the first part, a typical “masterpiece” in a post-apocalyptic setting. A lot of stealth, shooting, horseback riding, climbing through the abandoned abandoned cities of long-dead and overgrown cities. By the way, in these abandoned places you can find a lot of lore, mostly some notes or diaries of those who once lived here and ended very tragically. Even the heroines give their comments when reading them, which makes them even more alive, and not just beautiful models that can be controlled. Honestly, I don’t want to talk much about the gameplay, it’s incredibly varied, atmospheric and comfortable. But I can note that it has hardly changed since the first part, from this we can conclude that the developers are lazy, but this is even better.
The enemies are also classic: infected of different types, each of which has its own chips, ordinary bandits, sectarians and only one Mutant Boss for the whole game (albeit one, but the battle with him is memorable)
But in terms of the plot, everything is much more interesting:
The main character of the first part (Joel) is killed almost at the very beginning of the game, which causes incredible shock and a desire to tear apart his killer, but no, we still have to play for her (Abby). And when such an opportunity arises, the first thing that comes to mind is to lose it in the very first battle with the weakest enemy, but soon this desire disappears, because we are imbued with the difficult history of this character, and at some point we don’t understand at all, who is better in this situation: Abby or Ellie?? This is real. Naughty Dog are geniuses, at the end of the game they turn the killer of one of the best game characters into almost a holy martyr, whom you not only don’t want to kill, but you also sympathize with her, and to some extent you choose her as the main character of this game, and not Ellie.
As a rule, games about post-apocalypse are open-world projects (Dying Light, Days Gone, Dead Island, etc.), but TLOU 2 is absolutely linear, and this also makes it a masterpiece, because the open world is some kind of then additional activities, the temptation to be distracted from the main story and suffer from outright bullshit, but here there is no such opportunity, and therefore you plunge headlong into the plot.
The graphics in the game are one of the best that I have seen in games, everything is so detailed that sometimes it seems that this is some kind of movie and not a game (well, it also seems so because the display of this masterpiece is a TV, and you are lying on the sofa and twitching the buttons on the gamepad, like on a remote control for a program box).
Excellent optimization, perfect sound, top voice acting.
What I didn’t like was the agenda, which further reduces Ellie’s karma)). But this is not a critical detail.
Conclusion:
The Last of Us: Part 2 is deservedly recognized as the best game of 2020. I hope that in the future they will transfer it to PC, and perhaps make some kind of sequel.
Thank you, Naughty Dog and Sony ❤