@leeveeu: Yea... so it goes, I suppose.

So I just finished the game and my gf and I were talking about the ending and Joel's decision.

I pointed out that I'm not entirely sure it really mattered...

Doesn't humanity face basically the same problem with or without the vaccine? Crap loads of existing infected and spores all over the place, which ultimately need to be destroyed/killed if humanity is ever going to reclaim full control of the planet.

Of course, being immune to the spores helps in that goal... and not adding to the infected numbers helps that goal too, but they have masks... and ultimately the only way to really clear up the infected is large numbers of organized, well armed people sweeping and clearing areas. That is the case with or without a vaccine! Sure, the caution levels have to be HIGHER without it, but the infected were attacking and killing Ellie just like anyone else... it's not like they don't attack people with her strain of it.

I don't believe they could successfully produce the vaccine in the necessary quantities and spread it to all the isolated, hostile, disorganized pockets of humanity anyway. And how can they be sure that it's safe? Maybe having those growths in her brain was eventually going to kill Ellie. She'd only lived 14 years so there's no way to know the long term course of that modified infection. It would be rather rash to purposefully infect everyone else with it.

So ultimately, I think Joel made the right call even if it wasn't for the right reasons (though maybe it was.)

OP here, now that I've just finished the game tonight I have to say it's definitely a 10/10 game. No doubt about that in my mind. Liked it even more than Bioshock Infinite.

If it wasn't before, my PS3 purchase is definitely justified now. I haven't played a lot of PS3 games before this, despite having a system for a good while.

The infected were a very important part of it and I'm not going to assert that they shouldn't have been in it, my original thread purpose stands: it was just to entertain the idea of whether the game could've stood without that angle and whether it would've been even more realistic as a result

try I Am Alive, no zombies (just radioactive dust) and this game borrows a lot from it anyway

wavelength121

1) Sure (not Shore)

2) They are NOT zombies they are infected

3) Whole point of the game is dealing with both human enemies and infected because without them it is just another us against them shooterOmenUK

1.) Yep, someone who uses the word "thus" and the phrase "bleak realism" doesn't know the word "sure" haha :) Seriously? It was a jokey way to write it. Deliberate.

2.) I referred to them as "zombies" AND as "infected" - I've avoided a lot of spoilers but you know damn well that any sort of mindless former humans can be referred to with the blanket term "zombies" if you're doing it in a casual way, really the point was to compare them to zombies... which are frankly over-used in games lately. And I love zombies. I also love infected ala 28 Days Later.

3.) My point was that despite thinking this game looks really good, and my own personal love of zombies/infected stuff, I just wonder if this game might not have benefited from a strictly realistic approach like The Road where humans were the only danger, humans and the dying of the world perhaps. It wouldn't feel like just another shooter if this was done... it's a third person thing and you have a partner with you the whole time, it would have plenty unique about it even so.

This game looks great and I'll be getting it fo shore

however, I just can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be even better if it had restrained itself to only human enemies, no infected/zombies whatever... and thus retained that sort of bleak realism of The Road

anyone agree?

My first FPS game was Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 when I was 12. Though if someone wanted to get really picky I know I played that 3D wireframe tank arcade game before that.

I loved it, but I never had more than the shareware of it I think. Same with Doom 1, just had shareware for the longest time.

It was really Doom 2, when I was 14 I think, that set my love for the genre in stone.

Quake 1 is still my favorite online FPG gaming ever, before QuakeWorld or any of that messing with it... TCP/IP Quake or whatever, that was the best.

My little claim to fame with Quake 1 is I was the first player to ever use the grappling hook. The guy who programmed it was a friend and he finished writing the code or whatever on a computer which itself was not able to run Quake, so he sent it to me in a file transfer over IRC and had me test it out. First person to ever latch onto a surface and get pulled toward it in Quake 1, right here baby :)

In that same Undernet #Quake IRC channel I also got hooked up with the very first Quake Clan. Or at least, I believe it was the first. Unholy|Alliance I think is how we typed it. So yea, pretty sure I was one of about 4 or 5 people in the very first online FPS clan (or at least the first for Quake.)

We had a moderator in that channel Disruptor, who would later go on to work for id software. Christian Antkow was his real name.

I've had Metro 2033 for a couple of years or something, never played more than a few minutes of it.

I know I should play that before messing with this, but on a scale of 1-10 just how important is it that I do that?

Looks pretty good to me, hope it is!

but if they never ever give a 10/10 then whatever the highest they do give, becomes the max score de facto.

I think the entire spectrum should be used. If that means cutting it down to a 50 point thing instead of a 100... so be it