Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsTerrible (Spoilers)
Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2020
Like has been said before, the game graphics are amazing, even better than before. But almost everything else is horrible.
First, this is not a feel-good game. There is almost nothing to be happy about in the story. Not even the ending. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few happy moments, like when we get to go back to the dinosaur museum. But the rest of it is misery upon misery. It seems purposeful. They kill or twist every character. Joel is killed, right off the bat, and Ellie is made out to be full-on evil till the end. Heck, you do even get to play as her most of the game. And the new main character, well you hate her because she kills Joel at the start and then the story tries to force you into liking the character and believing her to be righteous.
Apparently, from what I have seen, the director on the first game was upset because they wanted us to all hate Joel for taking away Ellies' choice to save humanity, something I agree she would have wanted to do.
Then it twists Ellie into this hate machine that tracks and kills everyone, even torturing a lady, in the name of pure evil revenge. I mean seriously, Ellie hunts down all these people and she never ONCE asks any of them why they did it. Never once. She never finds out why they came after Joel.
The new character is evil from the start then we spend the rest of the game seeing her backstory that I honestly don’t care about. Then we get to see how “good” she is because she lets Ellie live time after time so she can keep coming back and because she takes on two kids from yet another group of crazy survivors that she hates and protects them. And we never get to see much about their back story, and I guess we never will after this game, ugh.
Come to think of it; honestly, those two kids are the only two I cared about. I guess I liked Dina too, but she didn’t make much a difference to me. Yara and Lev were the ones I found myself most interested in. I really liked Yara and her personality up until the time, yup you guessed it, she gets murdered.
It tries to force you into thinking the Fireflies were the good guys in the first game and make us question Joel’s actions. And Abby’s backstory tries to make us love her father, FYI the Dr from the first game that was going to carve into Ellie’s brain. But let’s be honest, the Fireflies were evil. For me, it all comes down to one simple thing. They refused to even pretend to give Ellie the choice in the first game to give up her life,and they wanted to take it. Even though they knew she would do it. Heck, Joel would have gone with it too, I believe, since he loved her so much if she asked him too. Everything here all revolves around the simple fact nobody in the first game was willing to wait 2 hours for Ellie to wake up and talk to her…. But we are getting off-topic.
As far as actual gameplay goes, the length in several parts just hurts. Not sure, but this feels like some artsy way of purposefully making us feel bad. You just keep doing the same thing over and over in different places with the same enemies. Outside of one boss, that I don’t understand, there really are only three new enemies, a crazy new seeing clicker thing with stealth, some tank ladies with massive hand weapons, and dogs. And you kill lots of dogs. Heck, another one of the contrived ways the story makes us feel bad is about a dog. You see, Ellie has to kill a dog early on. Then when we play as Abby, the game makes you love the dog. You play games with it, fight with it, pet it, ugh… I hate my life.
Then there is the forced politics. Ellie and Dina are lesbians, ok, who cares. Oh and they are in a love triangle with Dina’s baby daddy and she didn’t want to tell him about the baby. Whatever, that whole story didn’t make a difference to me. Just sad to see him killed and left to rot with no second thought after he finds out it is his. Lev is transgender, apparently. Again, whatever didn’t seem important to me. The first thing that stands out is the legalize Marijuana push. I still don’t understand that. But there is a long cut scene about it. Out of nowhere right off the bat, we find out apparently hydroponic Marijuana is important and you can grow it underground in a custom bunker in the middle of zombie country. Then there is the new cult that Abby’s army is fighting in Seattle. Felt like they were supposed to be a stand-in for Catholics or something that were made to be crazy evil because they won't accept Lev’s wish to be male. But seriously, maybe the game should have focused a little more on them being evil because they wanted a 13-year-old girl to marry a tribal Elder. wtf
Hum, so much else but the last thing that stands out is the sex scene. Nope, didn’t want to see that, really, why did I have to see that. But I guess it is a great excuse to kill another male character. Come to think of it, I don’t think any male makes it through the game alive and well.
Oh, one last lemon in the wound. We spend the whole game thinking maybe Ellie will come to grips in some positive manner with Joel’s death. The game builds up that we will get some resolution based on learning to play the guitar as a way of connecting with Joel after his passing. But... nope, even that it was taken from us. After trying to kill Abby yet again out of revenge, Ellie loses her fingers and now can’t play the guitar. And we have to play through a painful scene of this in the end. The game actually forces you to try and play the guitar and makes it not work since she is missing the needed fingers. We are left with her realizing she has lost EVERYTHING. She has lost her father figure, friends, dream home, lover, and baby. Then…. drum roll please…. cut… credits, GAME OVER.
