![]() Serving to enhance our immersion in this moving story filled with complex characters is the stunningly realized world they inhabit. It's a deeply violent game that somehow uses its violence to protest violence. Pressing buttons to attack certain characters becomes agonizing once we fully understand everyone's pain. Do the people we kill really need to be killed? What about their loved ones? By the end of the lengthy story, players likely will no longer want to fight. Even as players engage in the violence to which our heroes seem committed, which is brutally intense and often terrifying, there's an unavoidable feeling of dread and regret. But the hub around which everything rotates is an urge for vengeance so strong that even the players might feel it, even though they know - as the protagonists do - that it's bound to lead to yet more suffering and tragedy. ![]() The Last of Us Part II is an epic, emotional, character-driven tale that focuses not so much on monsters or disease, but on familiar issues including family, love, friendship, anger, and death. Storytelling in games simply doesn't get any better than this. Outside of combat and exploration, the dramatic 30-plus-hour story edges forward through noninteractive narrative scenes that provide insight into the protagonists' motives and personalities via conversations and intimate moments with other characters. They can explore their surroundings to scavenge supplies necessary to craft weapon upgrades and ammunition that provide new strategic options for fighting both human and fungal enemies. Players have an arsenal of cobbled-together guns and explosives that they can use to defend themselves. These fast and dangerous monsters can often kill with just one strike. ![]() They go up against not just these two groups, but also the fungus-infected, zombie-like creatures that inhabit the city's abandoned streets and buildings. What they don't know is that they're walking into an escalating conflict between opposing military and religious factions. A tragic twist forces Ellie and her new girlfriend Dina on a mission to Seattle, where she's determined to settle a score with a member of the local militia named Abby. But the events of the first game, in which Joel saved Ellie from a group of scientists who wanted to kill her to understand her immunity to the plague and create a cure, are about to catch up with them. THE LAST OF US PART II picks up where its predecessor left off, with protagonists Ellie and Joel settling into a safe community in Wyoming after traveling across an America that has been ravaged by more than a decade spent suffering a fungal plague. Dialogue contains frequent strong language, including the "F" word. Characters are also shown drinking and drunk. Parents should be aware, too, that characters engage in on-screen sexual activity, with women shown topless, and that two protagonists get high smoking marijuana. Subplots promote diversity in sexuality and gender identity and explore the complex relationships between daughters and father figures as well as the sort of thinking that leads to the creation of military and religious sects in times of crisis. Outside of combat, players watch the protagonists engage in loving relationships, protect those they care for, and make unlikely friends by overcoming preconceived notions of who they are. While the fighting is intense and visceral, the primary message is that violence begets violence. ![]() Gunshots and stab wounds result in sprays and pools of blood. Bodies in varying states of decay litter the environment, including hanged and tortured victims. Characters' faces are strained with anger and fear in close-quarters combat that involves choke holds, shivs and knives, and snapped necks. It focuses on two young women who are tragically obsessed with avenging the people they love, but characters come from all walks of life, with different beliefs, backgrounds, races, genders, and sexualities. Parents need to know that The Last of Us Part II is a third-person action game exclusively for the PlayStation 4 that's set in a world that has largely succumbed to a global pandemic spread by fungal spores that quickly transform people into mindless monsters. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |