Polls Open: PlayStation.Blog Game of the Decade

Honestly, your post is ignorant and flawed. Got any actual support for that? No, you don’t. I can actually name games some of my favorite franchises have inspired, with actual evidence. There have been a lot of strong story driven games since pre-2010. In terms of narrative, games like Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead already created this impact a decade ago, even before those games as well. TLOU having a good story vs not having an excuse story doesn’t matter at all, as again games have already started doing this a very long time ago. TLOU did not pioneer story driven games or ones with strong narrative, so stop acting like it did. And if anything, all the TLOU’s timeskips hurts the narrative quality, as they’re used to conveniently make the writing easier rather than it’d be in one continuous stream, hurting the immersion and consistency. Uncharted 3’s narrative was criticized for a similar thing. TLOU’s gameplay is not great, period. It’s just well designed for what it is, but it’s not praise-worthy to an extent as if it was innovative or among one of the best gameplay systems ever crafted in a video game. Good tech matters in a video game, but once again not to the extent you’re arguing. If tech (physics, animation, character models, etc) matter THAT much, then games like inFAMOUS Second Son, The Order: 1886, Killzone Shadow Fall, and many other games would have sold and got rated better than they did. You really need to stop bashing Telltale games when ND’s games aren’t far behind, due to their high scripting and hand holding elements. Gameplay mechanics like melee combat in ND series (Uncharted, TLOU) consist of nothing but mindless square mashing. Outside, some, puzzles there is nothing complex about ND’s gameplay in general, whether it be climbing, platforming, shooting, etc. Imagine unintelligibly praising gameplay because it’s highly scripted and well animated while being so, rather than because it’s unique and has a lot of depth. The difference with other games that are scripted in areas of gameplay is that there still manages to be a level of skill and/or depth actually involved. Being as how this is the (action) video game industry, gameplay matters just about over everything. It doesn’t matter what TLOU does well in other non-gameplay related areas if the gameplay isn’t that good; it’s going to drag the game down a lot. There’s not much depth in the gameplay, nothing is innovative, it’s not as fun as shooting in sci-fi shooters (Resistance, Mass Effect, Dead Space, Ratchet & Clank, etc)… it’s all just sub-par or average, same for stealth. That’s without mentioning those bad padded sections with the wooden pallets and ladders. The a.i. is massively flawed, as is commonly known. You can’t put the mere two opposing factions against each other (even though it’s only a simple 2), something you can actually do in games like Dying Light and Dishonored with their differing enemy types. Factions Mp is unbalanced (things like bomb expert 3 + shiv is disgusting, over-powered Tactical shotgun, etc) and has pay to win elements (guns/perks locked behind paywalls in the real-world). And I can go on. TLOU is a perfect example of an overrated video game, period, between its fundamental issues, online issues, plethora of bugs (which for some reason haven’t been fixed), a couple but major outdated designs, and mediocre gameplay that simply just looks cool due to competent animation work. If TLOU has the best gameplay, then where the heck does games like Bloodborne, NieR: Automata, Sekiro, Marvel Spider-Man, Nioh, Monster Hunter, God of War, Dishonored, and other similar games stand?? ND’s games have little agency and are highly scripted, so their gameplay is objectively not that good by nature of its limited design.. Your actions don’t impact or change the world around you to any extent, there’s a lack of depth and skill required via combative sections and non-combative sections, gameplay mechanics don’t compliment each other in spectacular ways, etc. You look like a casual gamer who thinks he knows what good gameplay is when he actually utterly doesn’t.

As for your red-herring/strawman argument with The Walking Dead, no I didn’t say it has better writing. Though it was impressive and had a strong impact when it released, even despite its zombie apocalyptic setting. You coming to these false and delusional conclusions because of the character in my avatar, is pathetic. The series does have gameplay (unlike visual novels), whether you like it or not, and The Final Season took it to a whole different level within this genre, with it having true gameplay sections where the player has full 3D control over the character and the aiming. Don’t even think Life is Strange 2 does that. I love how silly your argument is.. Somehow, a Telltale fan only plays point and click/graphic adventure games, because it’s impossible for them to be diverse and explore numerous game genres, according to you. That’s something that’s actually laughable.