Casual Shinji said:
Nobody said TLoU was a survival game though. It falls squarely in the catagory of a Resident Evil 4; an action game designed to put the screws on you. This time it just has a survival theme. And every weapon has its appropriate strengths and weaknesses. And everything from the craftisng to the scavaging is designed for making it through enemy encounters.
It's listed as a survival horror game in many publications like IGN and the like. Credibility of those websites aside, they continually have called it a survival horror game.
Frankly, it's about as "Survival Horror" as every Resident Evil game starting from 4. The Last of Us falls into what the major publications call survival horror considering the other AAA games that get called survival horror are. Looking at Dead Space, Resi 4,5,6, Silent Hill after 4, F.E.A.R 2 & 3, and now The Last of Us, what we're getting is "action horror" instead of "Survival Horror".
Action Horror is basically a Survival Horror game stripped of most of its atmospheric horror in an unsettling setting and replaces with string instrument based musical cues and jump scares. While the Last of Us is basically an Action Horror, gaming media will be, and have been, calling the game a survival horror title since it was revealed. It set itself up to be a great survival horror game, but instead fans of true survival horror games were disappointed because its basically survival game made much easier and contributing to the "hand holdy" way games are made these days.
Now I never played I Am Alive so I can't comment on that, but if I were to take a wild guess I'd imagine it's not as long a game or has as large a fighting arenas. Playing a game as lenghty as TLoU with as wide a spaces as it has, only being able to carry two weapons, and having to constantly run back and forth to pick up the most adequate weapon for the situation when you're in the middle of a firefight or infected encounter with enemies coming from every direction, would... well, it would turn it into Bioshock: Infinite. It would cause you to suffer through most combat sections (and not in an engaging way), because you don't want to let go of a powerful weapon.
This assumes that The Last of Us and I Am Alive are both the dame kind of game.
They are not.
I Am Alive is not about cover based shooting, or shooting much at all. It's about survival above all. So there is no running around looking for weapons strewn about that happen to be very effective for the situation at the time. You only ever get the 6 shit revolver in I Am Alive. And its extremely rare to have more than 3 bullets at any given time.
The amount of weapons you get in The Last of Us makes you a walking army barracks that could supply a squad of soldiers no problem. Ammo is all over the place in that game. In I Am Alive, the gun is used in a more survival based fashion. You point the gun at your enemies in order to keep them at bay. Since guns and bullets are scarce you can use the sheer fact that you have a gun to scare enemies and in some cases avoid combat.
You can even point your
empty gun at enemies in order to bluff them into leaving you alone. Even with bullets, they're so scarce that you still may end up choosing to use then machete you carry instead. I Am Alive is not based on running from cover to cover and pulling whatever gun you need from the NRA Santa Sack you carry.
Actually, yes it did, seeing as the weapon sway was purposefully implemented. Now I can't argue if you didn't like the way the guns handled. But to me they sounded loud, they felt heavy, they had visible impact on enemies, and when I missed a shot it felt like my own fault. That's all I need from them. And burning through ammo does have consequences since you can't infinitely store ammo. The stronger a weapon is the less ammo it holds. The shotgun can hold only 14 rounds, and nearly every enemy usually takes two rounds to take down unless you let them get really close. The strongest gun in the game can hold only 8 or 9 rounds. And this limit also applies to crafting resources and crafted items.
The cabin attack in Winter with Ellie gives a good impression of the overall action scenes in the game. You only have your rifle and shots are costly. Enemies will drop ammo, but you never know how much or when. You're constantly kept aware of your resources, reminding you you can't just mindlessly unload, intensifying the action.
What you've basically described is a generic AAA 3rd person shooter on hard mode. That's essentially what The Last of Us' combat is. From GTA 4's beginning missions to Read Dead Redemption to even as recent as Spec Ops The Line, 3rd person shooters have generally adapted a lower ammo counts then previous shooters like Max Payne and Painkiller. The Last of Us is not much different than Uncharted gameplay wise and as such, makes it a great game, but yet another action horror title with Hollywood thriller elements.
And back to the shooting mechanics being kinda sloppy here, they were just as sloppy in Uncharted 1-3, so if Naughty Dog truly fixed the shooting to be sluggish on purpose, they didn't need to change much, and didn't. What they did however, is actually give you not only more carry on weapons than Uncharted, and access to a bunch more thanks to your bag. Why have the shooting be sloppy if you're going to give the player access to more guns than the semi legal archaeologist who occasionally runs into modern pirates? Seems pretty dumb to me.
Since when was The Road typical Hollywood though? I never saw the movie, but I read the cliff notes and from what I heard it's generally regarded as a super depressive film. Typical Hollywood would be I Am Legend, a movie where they changed the ending to something lame and sappy, because the original ending was too confronting for audiences. Something I heard also occured with TLoU, where the ending bummed players out, but Naughty Dog held firm because this was the story they wanted to tell.
The Road is a typical Hollywood drama. It's, really, really good, but it's the kind of movie that we get 6 of in the Fall season every year for movies. All of the big emotional Drama movies come out in the Fall. 2009 was The Road, 2010 was True Grit.
You want the Hollywood of The Road, I'll use a comparison to True Grit as an example.
Both are Drama's that came out in the Fall-Winter months.
Both are bleak and depressing films as a lot of Dramas released in this time frame are.
Both are also pretty serious because frankly, this is the time where the Golden Globes are near and its panel has been waiting to get past the crappy movies that get released in Late Winter/Early Spring, the comedies of Late Spring/Early Summer, and the major actiony block busters of Summer.
Both are adaptations.
Both feature high production values and a lot of reputed actors.
Just because its not shoot em up rah rah action film, doesn't mean it didn't fall into the tropes of a western Hollywood movie. It assuredly did. Then again, you haven't seen the movie, so I'd suggest you do. You'll find it to be very similar to The Last of Us in tone and in story similarities. The Last of Us just plays like what an I Am Legend game would play like.
The Road being compared to I Am Legend is actually a pretty parallel examples to the one I'm pointing out here with Action vs. Suvival Horror.
While The Last of Us is a good game, it's critical acclaim is ill earned because it comes from a lot of major publications that just shower the most advertised games with awards and near-perfect ratings. The Last of Us has all the cues of most Hollywood post-apocalyptic drama films made in the last 10-15 years in its story. The Last of Us also has every "Action-Horror" trope to come from every AAA survival horror game since RE4. Right down to the overused change in music when something is about to happen that Dead Space is known for.
The change in music making the player feel tense is what the environment of the game should be doing, but it can't because you're given a level 2 Bag of Holding and a lot of guns and ammo for all of them.
It's a good action game that tried to be a survival horror game and got caught doing it. It was kinda sneaky though, but not enough.
