Your Gripes - Share Them!

I don't have any gripes but I do have some grapes. I like grapes.

Played a few hours of it and so far the combat is just annoying. The gameplay works fine when it's basically a stealth puzzle (although, this is straight up a stealth game out of the 90s, with no implementation of innovations to the genre), but if it breaks into full on combat it's just... bad.

I will say though, I had been "going dark" on this game holding off any previews or anything, and for a game that turned out to be probably one of the genres I dislike the most it's not completely turning me off. It does reek very much of everything that's bad about survival horror and stealth games though.

Im glad ND sorted out the patch issue really quick thankfully and I know alot of people suffered with it. But aside from that there has never been a "perfect" game without some kind of mishap in them, plus I had this and call of juaz gunslinger cos its my birthday and im enjoying them immensely :) oh im an old fart im 40 woohoo!!!!

Dat framerate

Not once, but twice I've gotten stuck inside pieces of the environment and had to reload from the start of an encounter.

The second time this was right after a really intense and difficult section that I had to redo.

Kind of sucked, but everything else has been spectacular

Just finished it, man hell of a game. I would give it five stars for the awesome story and the great relationship between Joel and Ellie but my complaints:

• Like many have said here Naughty Dog could not resist making some really contrived video game moments: boss fights, infinite ammo situations, towards the end there are way too many enemies.
• Combat at its core is not really that fun, if there is gonna be ammo scarcity then when I fucking shoot a guy he better fucking go down in one shot.
• Collecting stuff is a bit too extreme, I like the system but it is taken way too far, there is shit to collect EVERYWHERE.

Anyway, loved the story, loved the environment, and I thought the graphics were really impressive.

@naru_joe93: I marathoned it and explored the shit out of everything; took 24 hours over the course of 2 days. There's a couple of really heavy scenes that made me put down the controller for a half hour or so though. It's satisfying if not "fun," though I did have fun stealth killing a whole bunch of enemies in one particularly memorable chapter. Only found all the comics though, albeit they're the best collectible.

Some of the checkpoints are fluid to your location, but fortunately the game is fun/functional in and out of stealth so I didn't find this to be too much of an issue; there's only one part of the game where I could imagine you running out of medkits (on normal), though you shouldn't have run out of ammo/supplies if done appropriately.

I see your double post and raise you double post!

Oh god yes. This is more mid-game for me. Early game the women were actively PUSHING me out of my position to take it themselves. Then i hear the AI "there he is!" before bullets rain down on me. It got to the point where i could tolerate Ellie simply trying to take up the identical position.

Sure, people like such stuff. Doesn't change the fact that it makes me play less organically than I would otherwise (and so does everybody else), which is detrimental to the experience - at least by my standards. Hell - if you put it that way, it's the kind of design that could be linked to NG+, rather than pollute a first playthrough.

As far as I'm concerned, this stuff is toxic for games like The Last of Us, that try so hard to be something other than just a fun game.

You're probably right. For me, as an extremely anxious/easily stressed person, I can't play the game for more than 1-2 hours at a time. If I go longer than that I actually start to feel tell tale signs of anxiety (chills, butterflies, stomach ache).

It's really hard to explain all of this. One side of me is enjoying this game immensely, and the other side is yelling at me "JESUS, THIS IS SO FUCKED UP. AAAAHHHHHHH".

Spoilers. Seriously, I would advise not reading this until you have beaten the game (also, this is how far I am in the game, so don't spoil anything furthur)

Definitely need to go take a shower and sleep on all of this stuff.

Yeah, I'm not playing on normal, and for some reason I am extra terrible at aiming in this game. I mean, I managed to play Vanquish OK and Uncharted 2 was tolerable, but I can't hit anything for the life of me in this game. And the situation leading up to me having no medkits actually started with the forced aggro checkpoint I mentioned above that I eventually just had to fight through 8 guys to get past. That moved on to an unavoidable encounter with another four guys. Then there was a short stealth section with no chance to resupply that I fucked up at the end of, aggroing another five guys, but I said fuckit and pressed it. That culminated in a boss fight that drained me of what little I had left, leaving me with four shotgun shells, two rifle rounds, and one segment of health. Then it checkpointed me immediately after switching to my rifle to reload it (I only had one long-range holster at the time) as three more enemies spawned on me.

Of course after the fact I remembered I had a molotov and a nail bomb, but that didn't make that final checkpoint any less shitty.

Maybe it's just you? I am a completionist normally. In games like Dishonored and Deus Ex I explore every nook and cranny. If a building has three entrances, I go through all of them to make sure I don't miss anything. In a game like Fire Emblem I read a FAQ beforehand to make sure I don't miss out on any recruits or special items. When I play Assassin's Creed I hit up every possible location on my map before moving to the next story mission.

That hasn't prevented me from playing The Last of Us in an entirely different way. In The Last of Us I don't explore every nook and cranny. I'm too busy focused on survival to worry about items and secrets. I go where the game leads me and don't obsessively restart every checkpoint until I get a perfect outcome, because that feels like the right way for me to play the game. No one is forcing you to go after that stuff. The only way collectibles can detract from your experience is if you let them. You are consciously choosing to enjoy the game less.

Not on Hard there isn't. I could never get enough scissors and nails to do "enough" shivs and nail bombs, not to mention upgrades on melee weapons.

My biggest gripe is how the prologue left me and my wife desensitized to the next 10 hours of the game. Could not care about Tess or Bill or even Ellie. Then when the game said "HEY ITS TIME TO HANG UPSIDE DOWN AND SHOOT THINGS ENDLESSLY" I felt like quitting. I guess I had hoped this videogame wouldn't be so videogame-y.

Fuck this game. It's good, but fuck it.

Allie and the Main Character always end up on the same cover, it makes it look a little rapey.

The combat is the best part of the game for me, the acting is great and the characters are likeable. The story, i could take or leave it, it's your standard hollywood kind of thing.

One thing that irks me though is that they drop the ball in some cases regarding the combat. If you're trying to make a game based on resource management, don't just give me bullets out of nowhere because the specific encounter requires it, try to design around the mechanics in question or at least make someone actually give me the bullets instead of just the icon popping up telling me that i magically have six more rifle rounds in my pocket.

@starvinggamer: Aiming is progressive over time so always fire when stationary except in one section of the game where you'll die if you do that and have to use the available gun as though it were a different one. About to go through on Survivor and I'll let you know but I think it's probably still quite possible to have an abundance of supplies on Hard. That said that boss took me ~50% of my ammo on normal (though I might not have used the best gun for the situation) which was close to full with everything you have at that point. You should probably start being neurotic about supplies, or just go about it as though you were looting; you'll see many more details in the environments along the way, and in some respects the justification for the plot is tied to your survival skills being top notch.

Vanquish has super duper tight controls so it's all about how fast you can aim in that, especially on the harder difficulties. This is much more about planning when you're going to shoot except for ~4-5 cases during the game, though the strategy of placing your character's vision cone as though the reticle were there still holds up and might in fact be mandatory. You're a while away from the section I was mentioning, that might be quite tough on hard. Note the controls aren't bad in this game they're simply deliberate in the same way that the controls are deliberate in Dark Souls. The best ammo conservation strategy for Infected is throw a brick in the general vicinity of as many as possible then throw a molotov directly on top of that brick; I once killed an entire room of runners with one molotov like this. Also at the point you're at in the game you can let Bill do most of the work.

I really hate that the human enemies take so many bullets. It can take like three or four shots to drop a guy with a pistol. And also there are so many fights, I've lost count of the number of dudes I've killed. Kinda hoped there would be less frequent, more impactful fights sadly this isn't the case.

How long the load times are when loading a save

I watched my brother play through most of the game and I have to say, the AI is dumb as bricks.

I find Naughty Dog's disdain for headshots appalling.

Some *human* dudes do take three headshots before they actually die. Hell - some guns have such an awesome and powerful rapport, and then I get the super-headshot-hitmarker, and the son of a bitch barely flinched as his helmet clanks off his head, then takes another round to the frontal lobe, facepalms like a Stooge - and only after I hit his noggin a third time, he deems it timely to punch his ticket. These instances just feel anti-immersive, and it hurts my experience.

If you don't want to use *authentic* feeling damage models in your game, don't set it the real world. The Last of Us being one of the most accomplished games I've ever played in regards to creating a real feeling world, it just magnifies the issue I'm having with this circumstance plentifold.

OK, my TLOU status is I played about 3 hours of it and lost all my progress due to the save bug, but I definitely had some gripes about the game during that time. My general impressions are pretty good, despite that, but there's definitely stuff that sticks out at me. If these complaints are common for Naughty Dog games, then I wouldn't know, because I haven't played any of the Uncharted games. OK, here we go:

• Sometimes, combat and movement feel really stiff. There are times where I feel like I want to look at something without turning my whole body towards it, and the game doesn't want to let me. I don't think the combat is especially tight, but I suppose it makes up for it with just the sheer tension that surrounds it. A lot of enemies absorb a lot of bullets, which sucks since if you're playing on hard, you're super fragile, and can't take many yourself.
• I thought the prologue was pretty good, but I'm rather baffled by people describing it as one of the greatest sequences in recent gaming memory. Yeah, it was a pretty cool cold open, but I kinda just dragged myself through it without feeling like I was really feeling the moment. Too mechanical for its own good.
• The game's basic premise is sooo tired. I know it's like that TWD thing, where it's not about doing something groundbreaking or original thematically, but it's about taking an idea and taking it to a dark and deeply emotional place. But so far the game has just felt like deja vu all over again, and there's nothing that stands out about the world they've created.
• Sometimes the game is drop dead gorgeous. Sometimes the textures look a little grungy, and the animation stiff. The flaws stand out more when the rest of the game looks so good.
• It's yet another goddamn third person game where you walk into a room, see a bunch of chest high walls, and know immediately that you're entering a combat area. And I am so fucking tired of it. They're trying to create this tension about the combat which at times is completely undermined by the level design.
• I appreciate them not feeling obliged to tutorialise the player to death, but there was one sequence I had to redo about six times because the game wouldn't tell me a very basic interface/inventory thing. Maybe modern games have just made me soft, but it seemed like an egregious oversight to not tell me that.

But overall I think the game's biggest fault is that I feel like I can nitpick it until it falls apart - I wouldn't be doing that if I was more engaged in the drama of the world, and in the characters. But in spite of some really good character modelling, and some pretty good writing and voice acting, my experience with the game so far has mostly been pretty academic; I'm playing it like a critic, not like a player, and there's something wrong about that when I'm not a critic. It's the same problem I had with The Walking Dead.

@seppli: Yeah I couldn't agree more, the games is great overall but small inconsistencies like the one you mentioned really do pull me out of the experience.

I don't like when the multiplayer game I'm playing craps out and I lose connection to the host and find that my entire group of survivors is now either hungry or sick because I didn't get supplies in that last match. Anyone else getting this?

I Am Alive had none of these problems. Not as polished obviously since it had a lower budget, but a lot more consistent mechanics in comparison to the world for a post-apoc survival game with no need to rely on supernatural enemies.

@assinass: Always sounded fascinating. Didn't give it a shot yet due to bad reviews and just generally being swamped with games I do know I want to play. Eventually I'll have to check it out. Thanks for reminding me.

Is there anyone who doesn't hate clickers?

I'll be honest, my gripe is simply that I have to play it on a PS3. After using a PC for so long, the console controls feel clunky as hell and I find it far more difficult to deal with the game's technical issues (most of which are simply unavoidable on a console) - such as the aliasing, muddy textures and horrendous frame-rate.

I've also run into major glitches wherein Joel has fallen through the floor or the camera has somehow gotten stuck in a piece of geometry and I've ended up having to reload the game.

In the words of Dragon's Dogma: "It's weak to fire!"

But yeah, one hit kills sure have the uncanny ability to get me to be verbally abuse at the screen.

This. Gets pretty rough at times.

Recently got a new PC and have been playing most games on it. So it's been awhile going back and playing a game on a console. Just not doing it for me in some parts. The outside areas look pretty rough which is where the framerate tends to dip. The water especially is bad looking.

Otherwise the game is pretty great and I look forward to seeing what Naughty Dog does on better hardware.

Oh and the mulitplayer sucks so bad, imo. Maybe it gets better but when you first jump in it's like you can't drop anyone with a clip of machine gun. Just ends up being frustrating. I kinda like Uncharted multiplayer.

I have a few complaints so far. Most are the same as everyone else though. Nothing to major to make me hate it.

-Sometimes the cut scenes just cut to a black screen on me and then just re appear. Happened only a few times so far.

- Game feels like it has to much combat sometimes. I was in a building and finished chocking out a few dudes only to turn the corner and see more, I just pulled pistol and slaughtered the bunch.

-I do find it weird the enemy AI sometimes ignores my partners and sometimes attacks them, its never consistent, but weird to watch as they pass through someone and right at me.

Great game and all still, not the greatest game ever like some people were proclaiming before it even came out, but still great. The combat it just a total meh to me.

Haven't touched the multiplayer though.

I like to think that when all is said and done, the signature weapon for Joel will be a shiv, because I could never have to many of the damn things.

Nothing too major to complain about yet. Feels like in the first few stages of the game the AI has the tendency to walk right in front of you when you're trying to do something or sneak around which is quite annoying, but it seems like that's a problem that fixes itself shortly. I'm also not a big fan of the human soldiers, but that may just be because both levels I've seen them in have been frustrating to sneak through. Other humans have been alright, and I'm enjoying the Runner and Clicker areas so far.

I really cannot say I had any major gripes. I just finished the game just an hour ago and loved it all the way through. I even loved the gameplay. And I found the AI to be plenty smart. They flanked me and killed me because of it probably a dozen times.

Okay, maybe the only thing I didn't care for much was the Bloater enemy. Never found it as a fun enemy to fight. At least they only had maybe 5-6 throughout the entire game.

I said earlier I didn't like the combat but it has grown on me. I started to like it around highschool part.

In the section where Ellie first covers you with a rifle from some scaffolding, I slowly went around the area and killed each enemy stealthily. After I killed the second to last guy I checked the magic sound-o-vision and a load more guys had spawned hidden in the corners of the area. They weren't patrolling or anything just standing there. So I killed them until the last guy saw me...and four or five guys materialised out of thin air.

I get it if they want to show Ellie helping with the rifle but there must be a more elegant way to illustrate that than forcing me to fail at stealthing the whole section. Like have a cutscene, right when you first jump down, of the enemies seeing you so it's set up as a combat sequence right from the off.

Got a new gripe. This one's multiplayer related. I'm soon getting past 100 clan members, and I need to bring in more than 80 supplies to achieve a surplus. The thing is, that's borderline impossible in one-sided match-ups. Even if my team wins, when we dominate the match to the point of winning four to nil rounds - there's almost no way of actually gathering enough supplies.

The result? Dominating wins lead to supply shortages, leading to hungry and sick clanmembers - feeling like failure. It's very counterintuitive design. Onesided matches are more punitive for everyone, instead of being more rewarding for the winners (or at least rewarding enough to not translate into statistical failure), and appropriately punitive for the losing side.

Definitely needs some patching, because that's bullshit.

NG+ playthroughs seem less attractive since there is so much filler between combat scenarios. Many with Joel yelling at a little girl.

I think the collectables are integral to The Last of Us. The whole narrative is exploring, savaging, and surviving. This encourages and gives reason for you to go off the beaten path to find things. The notes and things you find give nice context to the apocalypse that has happened. I loved exploring the (pretty massive) environments.

I do have a few gripes. Like someone else said, the game looks so good generally that clipping and things like that are REALLY jarring.

I don't have a problem with allies not alerting enemies, but could they have made Bill's boot sounds less loud? That seems like an easy fix, at least for when he is clomping right next to a clicker.

Enemy AI is generally very good, but there were a couple of stupid times when people got stuck on something or whatever.

The whole *immersive* angle of salvaging is indeed beneficiary to the experience. That's not what I didn't like about it though. I don't like that mechanical character progression is tied to salvaging. Those pills you salvage are XP, and so are those cogs - and then there's the tools, which arbitrarily limit how much the player can upgrade weapons. Despite these things driving me to salvage so thoroughly, that it's been detrimental to the experience - because it made me act unnaturally - I've missed a set of tools (maybe when I got carried away fighting bad guys at some point). I just can't get friendly with these ideas.

I believe these systems are to the detriment of the experience. The player should be mechanically rewarded for playing organically, rather than incentivizing mechanical play by design.

Except I only upgraded my stats like 4 times and still did fine, and the tools are always in REALLY obvious places (like right next to tool benches). I don't feel like they made the important stuff hard to find. I don't usually love collecting everything in games - mostly I find it tedious and do it out of my need to complete everything (at least to a point). This is the first game in a long time where I actually wanted to explore the gorgeous environments and find everything I could.

Also I have no idea what your last sentence means.

I posted about this in another thread on these boards, there's another section just after this that acts in the exact same way (humvee..) it was so glaring as forced gameplay that it massively detracts from your enjoyment and immersion

What I hate about the collectibles is that it means you can't stealth through areas because you'll miss stuff the places you don't go. You pretty much have to kill everyone to collect everything.

Had a very similar reaction to the hotel key sequence, just so utterly blatant scripting that made absolutely no sense.

@naru_joe93: I feel the exact same way. I am an anxious person and this game nearly gave a stroke End spoilers:. It wasn't until the end until my stomach aches ceased, and even now, thinking about the story, it still hurts a little.

That's my main gripe, That, and some of the time jumps. How did Joel and Ellie travel from Pittsburgh to Wyoming and why don't we see it?

I think the voice acting is overdramatic, especially Ellie's.

that's probably my biggest annoyance at the moment. The rest of the game is fine.

My biggest gripe is Elli not swimming. Take Elli to a lake and spend 15 minutes learning the dog paddle already. After the 100th situation where swimming is needed you would think a 15 minute break is justified. Another method would be to find some floaties and put them in your pack. They weigh a total of 22 grams.

My biggest problem with this game (or the parts of it I've seen thus far) is that while the story is phenomenal, the quality of the experience immediately drops whenever this game attempts to "be a game". The issues I've seen seem to be what other people have been saying:

• Whenever you see a room with desks, low walls, and other sorts of cover, you KNOW there's gonna be some combat. Very tension breaking.
• Combat is a chore. I just wanna get to the next story beat. Putting bullets in zambies and soldiers gets tedious, especially considering that the combat mechanics aren't precise enough to make it feel satisfying.
• The AI frequently ignores your partners during stealth sequences. I have mixed feelings about this because on the one hand, your partners behave like fucking morons during stealth sequences (i.e. running after you and not using cover when guys are clearly looking at them); on the other hand, the game suffers from the same problem as Bioshock Infinite in that the AI ignoring your partners breaks the illusion and immersion factor of the game. It's comical to see Joel sneaking around while your partners talk, run, and stand upright.
• NOT BEING ABLE TO LOOT BULLETS/WEAPONS FROM ENEMIES IN A WORLD WHERE SCAVENGING IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH!
• Bullet-sponge enemies. If something gets shot in the head, it should die. End of story.

From what I've seen of the story, I love it. I just wish that the gameplay was more satisfying and enjoyable.

The one gripe i have is not being able to pick up more ammo because you're at max capacity with 7 shots

@seppli: The game focuses so heavily on scavenging whatever you can find I actually think this is one of the few times collectables work, unlike uncharted where there were just random artifacts stuck in corners.