The review embargo for The Last Of Us Part 2 was lifted on Friday the 12th, one week before the game’s June 19th release on PlayStation 4.
According to Metacritic, Naughty Dog’s latest is a critical darling, nabbing a 96/100 and earning numerous gushing accolades from reviewers calling it not only the best game of the generation, but perhaps even the best game ever made.
Now I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade in this post, but there are a couple of things I think readers should be aware of beyond all the gushing and praise as they decide whether or not to pick this game up next week.
First off, the review embargo itself is quite strict. While most video game embargoes contain some kind of restrictions on what you can talk about or use in video footage, this one forbids any discussion of the second half of the game and limits video footage to just three scenes.
The final 12 hours or so are completely off-limits, so the things that reviewers liked or disliked about that portion of the game can only be discussed vaguely. I understand wanting to keep spoilers out of reviews as much as possible, but this strikes me as more than a little over-the-top.
Whether or not this leaves something important out is impossible to say since I haven’t played the game. Here at Forbes, we did not receive a review code for The Last Of Us Part 2 (nor were we told why) so I’m unable to offer up any analysis or impressions. I would not have been able to talk about the second half of the game anyways, thanks to the embargo (which not only prevents discussion of the game’s ending, but also its beginning).
So we’re left with a very big, roughly 12-hour question mark, with some reviewers saying that whether or not you like the game may come down to what happens during the section they’re not able to talk about. Others note that the game’s best bits are in this embargoed stretch.
Second, and arguably more importantly, some reviewers (even those who ultimately liked the game) found the violence extreme to the point of questioning whether they could even finish playing. Since this game is somewhere between 25 and 30 hours long, you can see how that could be a problem.
And it’s not just the violence. Some critics are calling the story needlessly bleak, its characters completely changed from the first game, and its story riddled with plot holes. Let’s take a look at some of the more critical reviews, if only to get more information than “Best Game Ever 10/10!”
Note also, many of the reviews I’ll be quoting don’t include review scores—in other words, some of the most critical reviews out there don’t impact the final Metacritic score at all, for better or worse.