They ruin the story’s pacing and feel like padding. But when it comes to telling a story, these repetitive passages of play are an obstruction. Sometimes the formula is livened up by a bit of exceptionally well-crafted level design, or the introduction of a new type of enemy, but several of those hours will be spent playing through scenarios that are too similar to one another.įrom a videogame perspective, this is totally normal. As you travel from one gutted house to another, or ransack a city block of burned-out businesses, you’ll regularly have to contend with the game’s zombies or, worse, human enemies, running through the same tactics and techniques without much to vary up the routine. It might seem weird to criticize a game for having too much game, but too often these sections feel bloated and repetitive. Most of The Last of Us Part II, reasonably enough, involves the player actually playing it. The bulk of the game, obviously, isn’t devoted to the cut-scenes or story elements. You might argue that attempts at comedy would undermine the game’s heaviness, or somehow cheapen its message, but a broader range of tones and emotions would actually heighten the power of those moments, while making the whole experience easier to handle. It’s a steady stream of misery, which is just so taxing. Imagine binging two entire seasons of Breaking Bad without Saul Goodman, Jesse Pinkman’s friends, or any kind of comic relief at all-that’s what playing The Last of Us Part II is like. It’s a relentlessly dour tale about the toll violence takes on people and the inhumanity it can drive them to, and although there are moments of quiet reflection and playable flashbacks to more peaceful times, The Last of Us Part II is unwavering in its grim task. There’s not much levity in this game, and no comic relief. More significantly, though, is the fact that it’s exhausting to spend so much time in a story fully devoted to hatred and vengeance.
The last of us part 2 game length tv#
The entirety of its story, from the past that clouds the main characters and drives their motivations, to the worldbuilding of this post-cataclysmic Seattle and its warring factions, could easily fit into a single season of a TV show, and would actually have more room for developing characters and locations in that case.
The last of us part 2 game length full#
Although it’s full of flashbacks, and hinges on the player’s awareness of several years of trauma impacting its main characters, most of the game takes place over a few days. As tense as the combat and action can be-as satisfying as it can feel to avoid confrontation or systematically pick off a pack of enemies one member at a time-the focus is on the characters and their interactions. The game’s main draw-and the main draw for any game made by the studio Naughty Dog-is its storytelling. It’s difficult for any story to justify that kind of length, but The Last of Us Part II’s is an especially bad fit for it.
I can go on, but I think my point is clear: in comparison to movies and TV-the mediums its story aspires to- The Last of Us Part II is absurdly long. In the time it takes you to finish The Last of Us Part II, you can watch all eight Fast and Furious films-and make it deep into a full rewatch. It eats up considerably more time than a full season of a typical broadcast TV drama. That’s longer than any season of The Wire, and over twice as long as the longest season of Mad Men. The Last of Us Part II, the latest high profile game that blurs the lines between gaming and cinema, can take anywhere from 20 to 30 hours to complete.
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