That's not true, regarding

I just hope we get at the very least some DLC about these guys:

With regards to the end:





With regards to DLC for those guys:

I think this is the best game I have ever played! I'm at the part were Joel and ellie are in Salt Lake. The part were we played as her was one of the most intense points in a game I have played.

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Finished this last night. I absolutely LOVED it. Easily my GOTY so far. The story, the characters, the emotions, the gameplay, the environments and atmosphere, everything just clicked for me. I played through on normal and took just over 15 hours. I can see parts where people might have some problems with the stealth, but I just took my time on certain areas and after a couple trials found out what I was doing wrong. I also thought they were very generous with their placements of checkpoints. I'm really glad they didn't make Ellie noticeable to enemies while in battles and stealth mode, because I think that would have added a great deal of frustration with some of those encounters. I also thought they did a great job with sectioning the game with the different seasons. Each one felt like a great way to end and start a new chapter in the game. I'm not going to get into the emotional part of the game too much, but I really felt that this would have been an entirely different game if Naughty Dog didn't go down that brutal and graphic path without a mature rating. A couple more thoughts that might be spoiler related:

I'm not sure how much more gushing over this game I can take before I pick it up!!

I'm torn because I have a ton of faith in Naughty Dog, but I also really hate stealth games.

Play it on easy, it becomes a shooter.

That's probably good advice, though I worry a bit about spoiling the tone of the game by making it too easy. I did more or less the same thing with the God of War series, where I enjoyed the spectacle and the puzzles but didn't care to learn complex combinations.

If anything, most advice I've seen is to play it on hard, which makes it a true survival horror game. But there's something about the cycle of being spotted followed by instant death that just turns me off, especially when the spotting feels arbitrary or the game doesn't communicate well what it wants you to do. I'm not saying that's the case with Last of Us, but it was with Deus Ex, and I could only take a couple hours of that before moving on to something less stressful.

Trust me when I say that I am no stealth king my any means. I usually don't have the time and patience that it takes to make it through gracefully in most stealth (I'm looking at you Dishonored). But the way this game is set up, the stealth segments are such a small part of the game, it's really not that difficult if you take a little more time on a couple of those sections. And like others have said, the other sections you can go stealth if you want, or as loud as you want and blast people. It just really depends on how you want to play it. Towards the end, as you seem to encounter more human enemies, I went gun blazing and didn't have any ammo issues.

I'm glad you posted this because Last of Us is next in my gaming queue. I have no issues with a small amount of stealth, but I couldn't handle Dishonorned either -- and I really, really wanted to like it.

Ditto this. I'm also glad to hear it, and this is the very reason I didn't buy Dishonored.

I only tried Deus Ex because reviews had me convinced that if you spec'ed your character the right way you could play it as an action game. Not so much.

I stand by my assertion that the Batman games are the only recent games that have gotten stealth right, and that's because you were the hunter and not the huntee, and you were empowered to get spotted and quickly get back into hiding. In other stealth games, when you get spotted, you are generally hosed.

Did anyone try out new game plus after finishing? Do they let you keep all of your weapons and upgrades?

I haven't tried that mode, but that's generally what happens.

I think Far Cry 3 did a lot right too... Granted its not exactly stealth, but it could be in certain sections.

I'm currently doing my first Normal+ play through and already have Joel maxed out and almost all the weapons upgraded completely. It makes the game easier to an extent but you can still get overwhelmed if you try to run and gun like a maniac. And you can't upgrade Ellie or her gear so her levels remain the most challenging.

OK, that's pretty much what I was guessing. I want to run through it on Hard later on down the line, and keeping all of your gear and upgrades would help alot. Playing as Ellie is going to be a little difficult though since they don't give you much to start with.

The caveat about New Game+ is that you can't up the difficulty.

Makes sense. New Game+ should be a reward for past achievement rather than a cheat to make the harder difficulties easier.

Well shit, that I did not know. So what is really the benefit of New Game + then? If you just want to clean up some missed collectibles?

Do collected collectables carry over to new difficulties, like they did in Uncharted?

The collectibles didn't even carry over to New Game+.

The benefit is getting upgrade Joel and his gear all the way to maximum.

I'm having a great time with ths. I just started winter. I'm really enjoying

My only complaint is sometimes not knowing where to go. That has happened to me in Uncarted a few times too.

Yeah, but if you spend too much time lost, a hint will appear. I'm fine with that.

I actually had a glitch in my playthrough at the very end of fall

I had that glitch as well. I also had the glitch where you lose your health bar. I was really pissed off after I quit my game and came back and it was still missing. After reasearching, I found that you have to turn off the PS3 and restart.

I blame Discostu for not doing his job