CapnConundrum

This game is simple, honest and stupid fun. I tend to play it as a palette cleanse between complex games that demand thought and involvement from me as a player. Cleansing my palette like this gives me a bit of extra time to bask in the afterglow of whatever immersive story or experience I've just had, without corrupting it with another straight away. Poison Control demands nothing from me. It puts fun in my hands with easy combat, a feast for the eyes and simple, heartfelt story for the soul. It's simple fps combat that controls perfectly well, breezy story and fun characters with enough heart to keep things interesting, and plenty of top notch, shall we say, "fan service". It's certainly a tad silly. But if you're like me, you play plenty of intelligent, deep and often challenging games almost every day. When I've conquered (or absorbed) a game like that, nothing is better than relaxing to the simple, honest fun **** like this, and Poison Control is the best I've seen in that particular unnamed genre.

Tonal spoilers but NOT plot spoilers ahead. If you're committed to playing this and just browsing reviews as I often do, don't read this. If you're on the fence, do. This RPG is worth the time of any fan of the genre, and the fan reviews are a real shame. I understand where they're coming from, but let's reward innovation instead of getting salty and whining about it. Experiencing a seamless blend between RTS and Tactics is worth the entry fee alone. The story is excellent. Honestly, people who say it's generic have not played for more than a few hours. It's true you've seen these elements before in the fantasy genre. It's also completely irrelevant. Where they take things is far more mature territory than the average book for adults, let alone RPG. There is no simple good vs evil plot to be found here. It's more like playing through the arc **** of Thrones (when it was good) character. I believe that's the reason some people are salty about it. You don't get to feel like everything is sunny and wonderful and you ride off with your waifu in the end. Instead you're left wondering what the crom you've just done. That's awesome, extremely rare, and to be encouraged in video games. I can't think of many RPGs where the main character is a machiavellian genius, and I'd bet you can't either. As far as gameplay goes, it's innovative, satisfying with smooth and polished controls, and sadly unbalanced. It feels like this was made by expert developers, and an amateurish designer with a lot of potential as an artist. If you have a functioning brain, you'll find this extremely easy. Your abilities are too powerful for enemies who attack in such a straightforward and predictable way. Play on hard mode to at least make the occasional neuron fire, but honestly, you'll be in this for the innovative game systems, and the story. Give the story a bit of time. It will subvert your expectations, and in a good way. "Subvert expectations" has become a dirty phrase of late, with good reason, but nothing here feels meaningless. It just also isn't the typical moral dichotomy it deliberately presents itself as at the start. Weirdly, it's a game meant for intelligent adults, where if you're capable of remembering what all the pieces do in chess, you'll feel like it's difficulty curve is made for small children. Easy to call this an 8/10. 10/10 for story, characters and polish, docked a few points for being an accidental cake walk.

The whole point of Ellie's character is her innocence and childlike quality, and all the emotional effect she adds to the main game is predicated upon that. This dlc strips her of that. It's just stupid, and it's terrible writing. It's done to be trendy and that's extremely patronising to the people it's trying to emulate. I was very disappointed that they went in that direction. As for the rest of it, I love Ellie, and I love getting to play as her. I did enjoy the whole thing. I was expecting a much greater deviation from the story though. I was thinking you might play as Joel's brother or something, and try to make a safe town. That would have been something interesting and new within their world, and given Neil Druckman's narrative prowess, it would have felt like a good short story. Instead, to follow the metaphor, it's like an unneccessary addition to an already perfect book. It's like buying a chapter that was quite rightly edited out. It's still great because it's The Last of Us, and I'll give it a high-ish score only because I want to be fair, but in the context of the story, just take it or leave it. You wouldn't be missing much. Weighed against The Last of Us, it ****. I'm honestly not sure whether it adds or detracts.

Honestly, anything other than a 10 for this game is completely insane. This isn't even my favourite game. But all the games I personally like better, I can see legitimate argument for something other than a perfect score. This game pushes every boundary of the industry. One day, many years from now, games will be nominated for Pulitzers and the like--will get accepted into mainstream critical culture. If any game paves the way, it's The Last of Us.

Honestly, anything other than a 10 for this game is completely insane. This isn't even my favourite game. But all the games I personally like better, I can see legitimate argument for something other than a perfect score. This game pushes every boundary of the industry. One day, many years from now, games will be nominated for Pulitzers and the like--will get accepted into mainstream critical culture. If any game paves the way, it's The Last of Us.