If you didn't catch it in the title, I aim to talk about many different areas of the game and give away key points of the story. If that is something you care about stop now.
Anyway... so the game world is somewhat alight with a critical love for this game. I liked it... a lot. But I have problem with listing this game as something 'different'. In my first complete run through I killed just over 500 people and considering the story line and the vibe on the game prior to release I just didn't like it. They could have done something pretty special here and I think they (Naughty Dog) may have pulled their punches a bit and stuck with the successful formula they established with the Nathan Drake Uncharted series.
So first off the good:
The art is incredible. 7 Years of work with the PS3 by Naughty Dog is shown off to good effect. The environments and characters look pretty awesome, just wish they were not so linear in nature but more on that later.
The character control is adequate. It rarely feels 'clunky' but overall your interaction with the environment is pretty limited. But considering how many great games have been generally ruined by awful character control this is definitely an achievement. The one stand out here to me is the 'listen' mode. The ability of the character to sit and give you a basic idea of where MOBs are in the immediate vicinity that are making noise is very effective and not much is given away as you only have relative location information in the 'see through walls' nature, you can't actually determine structures etc... in this mode. Ultimately I think it is underutilized.
The Story is engaging... if you like Walking Dead or any post apocalyptic story line Zombie based or otherwise you will find a LOT to like here. It is not a black and white morality tail nor is it completely bereft of a compass. The distinction between the good guys and bad guys here (as pointed out in countless professional reviews) is pretty damn fuzzy. Basically the whole story is a series of escalations of this point. I will dissect the process in a bit more detail down below... last warning regarding spoilers.
The Sound is VERY well done. Between environmental noise and sound track cues there is rarely anything sounding out of place. The infected in enclosed spaces are genuinely freaky. Turn out the lights and turn up the volume!
The So So:
Ammunition and Melee breakage. Ok, its a game and I get game 'mechanics'. But this is an area they really broke with the idea of 'you are there'. Enemies that are holding a gun more often than not fail to drop a weapon or ammo. I never heard an enemy go 'click' on an empty chamber and give up shooting and they are definitely playing by 'spray and pray' once they have you in sight. If you want ammo to be scarce then dammit make it scarce for everyone. To add insult to injury they added this notion of melee tools with 'expirations' based on the number of hits you put it through. A 2x4 breaks in 4 hits, a lead pipe breaks in 6 etc... The 2x4 I could be down with experiencing a random splintering, even a wooden baseball bat. But a lead pipe? Used on flesh and blood? Really? A machete that breaks? An Axe? In part this was to promote the crafting, you could essentially keep a melee weapon going by modding it, using the mod and re-modding it but it cost valuable supplies to do so. Also for the edge weapons like the machete and axe they were insta kills without modification so the limited uses was a way of limiting your ability to just hack your way to a full ammo belt. Finally... infected dropping ammo? Really? not to mention towards the end of my play through it seemed the infected were generally much more likely to drop ammo than say a soldier/hunter. As a game mechanic this s a well established way of getting things done, but here where so much effort was made with the storyline it presents a constant break with the idea of you are in the story as opposed to playing a 'game'. I put it here in the so so because as a game mechanic it generally works. It isn't like this is Doom with glowing ammo packs spinning around. Just wish they had gone a bit more 'Fallout' style on this where if someone had a weapon visible and you killed them it would be there on their corpse and animals/non gun wielding mobs dropped appropriate items rather than ammo.
Stealth. This is where I think the pulled the most punches. Many areas really do not have a good stealth solution. The game forces you into firefights requiring high ammo expenditure and hand to hand desperation moves despite having very stealthy story elements. The steal aspect rarely comes to the fore with a couple of exceptions. Where it works it is enjoyable. But there were many times I found it very frustrating not having a real option. A lot of this had to do with checkpoint based linear 'levels'. I am keeping this in so so because again the mechanics make for pretty solid 'last stand' encounters. Just seems in way to many cases that is the only solution.
The Bad:
Lack of options. Everywhere I went I spent the time to explore every nook and cranny... especially postmortem after a failed stealth attempt bloodbath to see if I just missed an option. Did not find one so I think I faced pretty close to the minimum number of shootout situations. Many force you to kill all enemies to trigger the advancement... same thing marred the Uncharted games as good as they are. I didn't find all the goodies in the first run through but I found better than 75%. By comparison my first run through on stuff like Tomb Raider rarely nets more than 25% of the hidden items.
Same problem I have with the Walking Dead I have with the behavior in this game. Multiple times you are in areas that get over run by 'just one unlocked door' or something similar. Yet as you go through doors and barricades that you could leave blocked behind you they are left open with no option for you to choose otherwise.
Linear tunnel levels. They looked great... really great. But the 3rd time I was forced through some funky only one path unblocked option through a massive tumbled/decayed building it got old... and there were a LOT of those kinds of environments. Bills Town could have been much more open ended on the options, especially with some smart usage of the map ideas. Some of the best sequences had the most open areas. Ellie's fight with the Hunter community while caring for Joel was probably one of the better sequences and hinted strongly at what this game (or a future Naughty Dog Title) could have been. Another good example was the Sniper level.
And last... surprise... the Story. You may be wondering, how can the story be both good and bad. Well as a story it is awesome. And it is very well told, and like the Uncharted series it plays damn near like a movie. I am honestly looking forward to sitting down and doing a play through all the cinematics with the 'play all' option. Unfortunately as with most cases where the story is so well told and so well voice acted etc.... there are no branches. The story advances along its path and the only real option seems to be whether or not you engage your various companions and Ellie in optional side dialog as you move along. So is there really a moral quandary if all you are doing is executing the steps to trigger the cut scenes? The story is powerful and it is ugly in a good way. But you take no active role in determining how it plays out. Tess will Die, Bill will not, The Man and his younger brother will die, Ellie gets taken by the hunters, You tell Tommy to go back to his wife, and lastly when you get to the end of that long hall Joel will choose Ellie over the possibility of a cure and end the tale with a Lie. I'd like the book. But this is where games have the chance to build you paths through these kinds of morality questions.
Suggestions:
If you want to make Ammo rare then be prepared to make shooting rare period. Don't make me get shot at like everyone I face is strapped on par with Arnold in an 80's Action flick and then after I kill them have 2 bullets to salvage and no gun. And this was on Normal. I presume this un-logical divergence in ammo supply and enemies ready to unload at you only gets worse the higher you go. Stealth, Melee and forcing your opponents out of ammo with stuff like bottle tosses etc... could have been a very welcome change from the typical shooter mechanic. But it isn't a well paved road.
If you are going to have a bottle/brick throwing mechanic do not litter your world with bottles you can't throw. For some reason you could only chuck brown bottles. I mean seriously... you couldn't enable holding any debris of roughly a given size?
Do not have melee equipment have such a pre-determined scheduled breakage... Why exactly is an axe going to break because I swing it at someone 6 times? I'd rather see melee get less effective than have this idiotic mechanic in there.
Add some critical branch points to the story. This one didn't need the mess of options like Fall out had. But some branches leading to keeping Tess alive, Getting Tommy killed or his wife, Happy ending solution for The Brothers rather than the mercy kill & suicide and of course... the biggie, do you choose Ellie's life over the possibility of a cure? A three way answer at that critical juncture could have been pretty Epic. Get to the ER, have the Doctor plead with you and give you your first chance to choose... Kill the Dr. and Take Ellie, Kill yourself because you couldn't live with letting it happen? Go down to the encounter with Marlene perhaps with a different set of choices. Kill her and continue with Ellie, Get her to agree to ask Ellie for her choice before making a decision? Get to the last scene and choose to Tell Ellie the decision you made for her or to give her the Lie. Naughty Dog could have taken some pages out of the Mass Effect playbook here, or Fall Out, or plenty of other options. Rather than a 'conversation dialog choice' I would suggest this branching mechanic could have been provided by a 'Pull the trigger' or Choose to interact (Ear icon used for optional conversations). IE shoot the doctor or choose to listen. Shoot Marlene or choose to listen.
Conclusion:
If you are a game nut you already have it right? If not it is worth the price of admission. If it pops up on used/classics cut rates and you haven't played it this one is a no-brainer. They only drawback from my perspective is this is basically a kickass movie with average move along mechanics in an outstandingly rendered game world. Re-play to me is pretty limited. I understand the online is a bit different but that aspect of games rarely interests me these days. I hope in a future effort Naughty Dog will be a bit more willing to break a bit more with the established action interaction formulas in search of mechanics that work to enhance the story telling rather than work against it or are at best neutral.
