Topic: The Last Of Us Part II - OT (No Spoilers)

So I have become quite excited about the Last of Us again after the announcement of the Last of Us 2 Remake. I should maybe wait to replay the game until the remake arrives but its honestly a little bit hard to do so. The announcement of the remake was actually little shocking to me in a sense (had no idea that it would happen). Now January 17 cant come fast enough.

Started playing the game yesterday and I've played it for 9 hours thus far. Absolutely insane to me how engrossing this game is as I wasn't expecting to get as addicted as I am with it now. This is actually the first Naughty Dog game that I'm genuinely enjoying. It could be because games like this appeal to me more now that I'm older. I played the first The Last of Us on PS4 back in 2015 and that was 9 years ago. In other words, I was a teenager back then. I remember liking the gameplay but it wasn't that captivating and I didn't care much for the story. With Part II, I'm absolutely loving the gameplay and the story is good, although it has slowed down a bit now. Not much is happening and I haven't met any new characters. But hopefully that will change soon.

I do have to mention how great the (first?) semi open-world area was. I feel like that was a trend with most first-party games on PS4, i.e. even though it's mostly a linear game, there are still some open-world areas here and there. And it was really fun to explore it! It wasn't overwhelming at all and it was very rewarding, both in terms of new equipment but also story moments.

My personal problem with the game is that I have to explore everywhere and loot everything, lol. I have to stop myself because I can't carry any more ammo/resources so there's no point in spending that much time exploring. It's fun looking for stuff but I'm at a point now where resources don't feel as scarce anymore.

It's great how much emphasis there is on stealth but I also feel like there should be more mandatory shooting sections. Otherwise you'll get rusty with your shooting once you find yourself in such a situation.

One final thing I have to mention is the fantastic checkpoint system. It feels like the game saves every ten seconds, which is super useful as mistakes can occur every now and then and I don't want to restart entire sections because of that.